Journeys in Azeroth, Part One

The Armchair Empire has begun a new diary series for Blizzard’s World of Warcraft entitled “Journeys in Azeroth.” The first installment offers the thoughts of a Dwarven Hunter as he partakes in some of the game’s quests. An excerpt:

As I made my way through the snow swept wilderness of Dun Morogh, I could see the plumes of green exhaust billowing out of one of the huge vents on the outskirts of Gnomeregan rising in the distance, and knew I was getting close to my target. Arriving at my destination, I could see a number of Leper Gnomes wandering around, the poor, altered gnomes that Razzle was setting out to save. While there were quite a few of these creatures in the area, they were usually spread out enough that there wouldn’t be many cases where I would need to worry about any unwanted links during my fights. With that, I set Whiskers on the nearest gnome and started some carnage. As Whiskers handled the up close melee combat and tanking, I had Oloneise unload round after round of buckshot into the gnomes from a distance. Things went very smoothly, as I was able to set my pet on the monsters, and the two of us could quickly take them down. If it looked like a link may form from sending in Whiskers, all I would have to do is shoot the desired creature with my gun to get its attention, and pull it away from its friends, after which I could have Whiskers attack, and get back to our normal combat routine. With a lethal one-two punch of snow leopard and blunderbust (one of the more popular firearms at this level), the Leper Gnomes fell fast, and hard, and before long all of the necessary items had been collected for Razzle to conduct his experiment in trying to cure these corrupted gnomes. Items in hand, it was time to head back to the gnome inventor’s home and see if his idea would work.