Boralus, Tuesday evening. A firepit near Pinky’s Groggery in Upton became a stage for heroes, wanderers and accomplished embellishers on Tuesday, as around three dozen people gathered for an open evening of stories hosted by Frolbar Boldbeard.
Boldbeard opened the gathering with a simple case for telling tales. Dwarves, he said, have long looked to stories and songs for guidance, even when the deeds within them have acquired some generous polishing along the way. Anyone present could speak, whether their offering was heroic, tragic or jaw-dropping.
Ale moved around the circle, cushions and chairs filled quickly, and Lyhrra Skysong provided soft lute music beneath several of the performances. It was the sort of arrangement that made room for both seasoned speakers and those still deciding whether standing before a crowded fire was courage or a task best left for another night.
Drinul Thunderfist volunteered first, recounting what he described as the Morodnir’s first journey to Khaz Algar. Their attempt to rescue a stranded Earthen from a quarry outside Freywold became a battle against what he called “little, sentient, bipedal, murdering mushrooms”. The injured Earthen was eventually carried out by gryphon while the company cut its way through the fungarians and, at the first respectable opportunity, ran.
Thunderfist was followed by Wakener K’aaros, whose story reached much further into the past, to the draenei’s early years on Draenor. As a young Rangari exploring Gorgrond, K’aaros said he found an orc village under attack by a gronn. He shot the creature in one eye to draw it away from the villagers, then fled through the night before bringing down a stone bridge beneath it with his final arrow.
When K’aaros later regained consciousness, he said, orcs from the village stood over him. Rather than take him captive, their elder returned the bloodied arrow and the villagers bowed in thanks. K’aaros told the gathering that the arrow still hangs above his bed.
Hruroth Runebraid then offered a shorter dwarven parable about a gifted chef whose prices rose as swiftly as his portions shrank. When the chef demanded payment from a penniless miner merely for smelling food outside his restaurant, a magistrate shook the miner’s last three coppers and ruled that the sound of the money was fair payment for the scent of the meal.
“Never tolerate greed,” Runebraid concluded, a judgement received warmly by an audience whose drinks had been placed on the house.
Hetheris Hollowstorm turned next to Pandaria and a midnight hozen who repeatedly knocked at his master’s door to call him bald. Hollowstorm eventually caught the prankster and retaliated by shaving its head. The following morning, twenty hozen appeared at the door, all requesting the same style. It was the evening’s clearest warning that revenge can become an unwanted trade.
Jade Sage Ame’Sielu, known as Patch, shared a family story from her own time training at Niuzao Temple. Her young daughter Nerea repeatedly fell gravely ill while visiting Kun-Lai Summit, only to recover upon returning to the temple. The mystery ended when the child admitted she had twice sampled milk directly from a yak. Patch said the reaction permanently deepened Nerea’s voice and revealed an allergy the family was unlikely to forget.
Captain Adolphus Jaggerhawk carried the gathering from domestic mishap back into battle. He recalled a campaign in Stormheim against a vrykul necromancer who, according to Jaggerhawk, sought to spread a new plague as far as Boralus. During an attack by a vast undead dragon, three of his companions jumped into the creature’s mouth. Jaggerhawk followed under the Tideforged Warhawks’ maxim, “One ship, one crew.”
Protected by a magical barrier, the group attacked the beast from within using a sawblade, explosives and, in Jaggerhawk’s case, a decision to call lightning down upon himself. He could not say which blow finally killed the dragon. A picture taken from inside it, he said, remains displayed aboard the Daring Spirit. This newspaper has attended enough naval briefings to know that few useful tactical discussions begin with entering a dragon, though the Warhawks apparently produced one.
Ýri’s monster hunt began more recently and much closer to home. Her company was offered fifty gold to recover crates of “Eversong Lettuce” from a wreck along the Tiragarde coast. The supposed merchant showed greater concern for the vegetables than for his missing crew, and a false bottom in the recovered crates revealed the true cargo: lightbloom pods being smuggled into Kul Tiras.
The company found eleven of the twelve pods before a three-headed, Light-infused cabbage creature burst from the wreckage. After a prolonged fight, Ýri said, the hunters destroyed the creature and burned the remaining pods. Their employer had fled by the time they returned to Boralus, taking his promised payment, but the Order of Embers paid a bounty for the slain monster. Smuggling invasive growths under a layer of vegetables is subtle by the standards of Boralus crime, but allowing the vegetables to grow teeth rather spoils the disguise.
Boldbeard eventually took the floor himself with the longest and most closely tied tale of the night. Following rumours of an ancient battle beneath Stonetalon, the Morodnir discovered a ruined Earthen complex scarred by fel fire. Inside, a doomguard said to have been trapped for ten thousand years attacked the company before being brought down by their combined efforts.
The sealed vault beyond contained no hoard of weapons or gold, only memory crystals and a final carving left by the Earthen:
“Pass along our story, you who finds this place, so that all the world may know that we were here.”
Boldbeard said the message had remained with him. A person’s stories, he told the circle, can outlast them when others care enough to pass those stories on.
Raiia Beart answered that thought with the final account of the night, choosing to speak for someone who could no longer do so himself. During the Legion’s invasion, Beart said, she served beside a monk named Konstantine Kloot. After weeks of fighting through the Barrens and Stonetalon, their exhausted group stumbled into a demon camp near Ashenvale. With wounded companions and little strength remaining, Kloot stayed behind to hold the enemy while the others escaped.
The survivors returned after regrouping, destroyed the camp and recovered their friend. Beart remembered Kloot telling her that he wanted to leave a mark upon the world and for something he did to mean something.
“My group would not be alive. I would not be,” she said. “Next time ye are in Ashenvale, think of me friend, and his deed.”
The fire had burned for nearly three hours when Boldbeard called the evening to a close, thanking the tellers and their audience. Runebraid had another story ready, while Jaggerhawk said he had more of his own, but both were asked to save them for the next gathering.
That promise supplied an appropriate ending. The night began with a claim that stories can inspire the living and finished by preserving the name of a man who gave his companions the chance to live. Somewhere between those points, Boralus also received sound warnings about greed, yak milk and unusually aggressive salad.