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...let the games begin
in this world where time is your enemy, it is my greatest ally. this grand game of life which you think you play in fact plays you. to that i say... (margaret in azeroth)
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This is Coldarra, one of the nesting places of the blue dragonflight, an island off the southwestern coast of Northrend. Cold and forbidding, outsiders are almost never welcomed by the watchful flights of drakes that patrol the skies. In the center stands the Nexus, one of the largest confluence of leylines in the worlds. The blues use its power for their mightiest enchantments and deepest spell research, and to guard their most dangerous relics.


At the foot of the Nexus, one of the eggkeepers notices his charges are close to hatching. He calls to the sentries and has them double the patrols for manawyrms in the area. It would certainly not do for the whelps to be drained before they can hatch. Once those are in place, he sends a message to the broodmother and begins inscribing the sigils that will swirl the ambient mana in the patterns most conducive to a healthy hatchling. The broodmother arrives as he finishes, touching down and shifting into her elven form, pale-skinned with long blue hair, in order to get closer to the eggs.

"Almost certainly a dragon-whelp among these, Broodmother," he reports.

    "Oh, wonderful!" she cries. "I love you all, you know, but I have been so looking forward to another drake. How much longer?"

"Very soon, I think. Look, that one's cracking."

    "Come to mama, darling," she coos, holding out her arms. "Come here, come here."

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The baby is small and scaly and healthy. She looks around at the world like it's a fascinating mystery, and attempts to come to mama on brand-new limbs.

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"That's it, sweetheart, that's it. You can do it!" Aahhh, the little flaps! Too cute!

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She makes a little noise and flops the rest of the way over to her mother, alternating between using her wings and tail for balance and tripping over them. It washes out.

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She scoops the little whelp up in her arms and twirls her around. "What should we call you, little one?" She tickles her snout. "How about Maragosa? Are you a little Maragosa?"

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So many new sensations wow! Time to blink a lot and stare at everything and say "Arra!"

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Cutie!! The broodmother begins tracing a glyph into the whelp's side with two fingers.

It's a cool tingle at first, and then there's a sense of something flowing around and then into her. The world snaps into sharper focus as the glyph starts glowing brightly. This is mana, she knows now, the stuff of magic. This is what she was born for.

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"Oooooh." Maragosa wants to learn everything there is to know about magic, and incidentally also about everything else.

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"Look, here come your brothers and sisters." The other eggs are cracking open and more whelps begin clambering out of their shells, chirruping and peeping. "You'll be a good example to them, won't you?"

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"Yes, mother. Hello, brothers and sisters!"

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The broodmother tosses Maragosa into the air and moves to start drawing the same glyph on the other hatchlings.

Flying is very natural. She's able to catch herself well before she hits the ground.

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Flying is fun is what it is! Whee!

Now that she can see a bit farther, what's around here other than family members and eggshell fragments? And can she pick up anything with her new awareness of magic, in addition to sight and hearing?

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She's in sort of a trench, at the base of a tall, tall tower. It has some kind of rings circling around it, up near the top, and it's glowing. She can sense streams of energy converging on it from all directions. Below the ground, on top of it, above it, all the streams are flowing into the tower, and it's gathering them all up to do... something. She can't quite tell what exactly, but she can tell that it was made on purpose.

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That's neat! She flaps harder, trying to get to the top of the tower for a closer look.

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The top is very far away, and she is a very small whelp. Also, her mother is calling her back.

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Back to Mother it is, then. How are all her siblings doing? Are they all flying around too now?

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All a-flutter in a cloud around their mother, flap flap flap. She leads the group out, away from the pile of eggshells. There she shifts out of her elven form and back into a dragon, large and blue with magic inscriptions running down both her sides. If Maragosa pays close attention, she can see how the magic turns the body inside out and shuffles it away as the replacement folds in.

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Oooh, neat. Maybe she can learn to do that. She's not in any especial hurry, though, she likes the shape she's got already. It's just one of many things magic can do that she wants to learn every single one of. She joins the crowd of flapping brothers and sisters, figuring out as she goes how to maneuver in crowded airspace.

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There's a few bumps, but nothing to knock anyone out of the air. They're all moving too slowly for that.

"Okay, little ones. Everyone find a perch, we're going to see what home looks like."

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Perching: she does it. 

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And off they go! Dragon-mama flies a lot quicker and higher than any of the whelps are able to. The size of her wings probably has something to do with it; translucent sheets as wide across as she is long, and trailing little ribbons of mana.

They start with a spiral up and around the tower. Its exterior is of roughly-worked stone, carved with various runes at irregular intervals denoting the points where a stream of magic runs inside. A flight of three smaller dragons banks past. They have the same sort of glyphs running up their sides, though fewer than the broodmother does.

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Maragosa stares at the runes and waves a wingtip at the other dragons.

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The runes on the tower feel like... guidance and taking and molding. The mana follows their bends and swirls obediently, shifting its character to match. Before, it's raw, a potentiality of possibilities-that-might-be, but strong. Afterwards, it's weaker, but more focused. The runes' power comes taking part of the mana flow and turning it against itself, altering the rest. The design is elegant and efficient, with no leftover friction or wastage.

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It's beautiful. What about the runes on her mother, what are they like? (Maybe there will be runes on her at some point?)

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They speak of speed and strength and health. This one in particular is for intelligence, and the mark her mother drew on her feels distinctly similar.

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That explains why she understands so much more stuff than she did the moment after hatching when she hasn't seen or talked about most of it! Her mother is so good. Runes are so good. "Everything is so good," she says to the nearest sibling, because this feels like important information.

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"Mm mm!" They nod in agreement. "Those runes are neat. I want to draw one."

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"Oooh, yes. I want to too. Maybe we can draw runes on each other."

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"Wait until you're older, children," says their mother, looking over her shoulder back at them.

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"Okay." Back to examining everything. Do all her siblings have the same rune? How far up the tower have they gotten?

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Seems like, yep.

They're about thee-fourths of the way up.

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Can she see what's at the very top? And what's off in the distance? She can see so far from up here. She cranes her neck around trying to take it all in.

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At the very top is a huge mess of magic, flaring off into the sky. As far as she can tell, it's not actually doing anything in particular. In the distance, there's a ring of mountains, and beyond that, a shimmering blue ocean.

The broodmother pauses her upwards flight and hovers in place. "This is the Nexus, the pride of our flight. We gather leyline energy from all over Northrend and see it returned to the wider ecosystem. We also use it to power our containment systems for the collection of dangerous artifacts inside. We are blue dragons, and our charge is the magic of this world. We manage its use, we see that it is conserved, and we handle its dangers."

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She has so many questions it takes a bit to decide what to ask first. "What are the dangers?" She pipes up.

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"Magic is a tool of great power. Like any tool, the dangers it carries are of two broad kinds. First, that the one who seeks to wield the tool lacks the ability to control it and it turns in their hands, damaging the wielder and others. Second, that the one who uses it subverts its purpose and turns it to evil ends, harming both others and themselves."

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Woah, this magic stuff is serious business.

She stares at the mountains and the ocean and the mana flaring off the tower. Maybe that's what 'returning it to the wider ecosystem' means? She'll ask, once her siblings have had a turn to ask their questions.

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Her siblings want to know about people who use magic! Her mother talks about the great elven mages, the nightborne and the highborne, who raised great citadels and towers in time before the Sundering. The Moonguard, the Shen'dralar, the Duskwatch, the Tirisgarde. In modern times, the most notable group of magic users in the Kirin Tor, largely composed of humans and a spiritual successor to the Tirisgarde, based in their home city of Dalaran.

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Now she wants to know about humans and elves, and what the Sundering was, and whether there are other kinds of people besides dragons and elves and humans! 

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The tour moves on from the tower to the rest of the landscape, mostly snow and frosty ground, plains and hills. There's a small lake on the northern part of the island and a stand of trees. Various small wildlife lurks in various spots.

Long ago, the land of the world was all one big continent. The first sapient race to appear after the dragons were called the trolls. They had green or blue skin and long tusks, and were deeply connected to the land and nature. They were spread into many tribes that eventually organized into a series of empires. Following the breakup of one such empire, a significant group of trolls became involved in studying a great wellspring of magic called the Well of Eternity, which had been around since the Titans shaped the world. Close exposure to the magic gradually changed the trolls, softening their features and shortening their teeth until they became recognizable as a different species entirely, and these were called elves. The elves built a great civilization, but became arrogant and stopped heeding the advice of the dragons. Their foolishness brought to Azeroth an otherworldly invasion bent on destruction. A great war was fought to drive off the invaders, and in the process, the Well of Eternity was damaged. The release of energy this caused blasted the great continent into pieces which spread across the world. That was the Sundering, an event which changed the face of the world forever, driven by the foolishness of mortals.

Humans are descended from the vrykul, which themselves are remnants of the Titans' servants. Humans are presently the most numerous race on Azeroth, occupying much of the continents they call Lordaeron and Khaz Modan. Also present in those regions are the dwarves and the gnomes, diminutive races who care more for craft than magic.

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That's a whole bunch of kinds of people to meet! And her mother is such a good teacher.

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The broodmother points out a sinuous pink shape winding its way over the ground below. That's what a manawrym looks like, she explains, and they should make sure to stay away from them until they're older. They feed on magic, and will suck a whelp dry given the chance.

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"Can manawyrms fly, or is flying away a good way to escape them?"

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They can. Not very high or very fast, so you can still get away, but you do need to be alert enough to see them coming.

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She's already paying as much attention as possible to everything within the range of her senses, on account of how all of it is new and most of it is fascinating, but she'll do her best there.

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The next stop is at the base of the tower, with a large dragonkin. He has four legs, two arms, two wings, and carries a long pike. He introduces himself as Malec, the captain of the guard at the Nexus. He is in charge of security and patrols, and if they ever have any problems or see something odd, they can come to him.

The next dragonkin they meet is named Kharmeena, and she's assigned to be their tutor. Everything they need to know about magic, history, and the world, she can teach them.

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The existence of tutors as a type of person is possibly the best thing in this whole amazing world. Magic! History! Information in general! Maragosa is a little blue sponge.

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But first, food. Eventually the whelps will be able to hunt for themselves, but for now they can share the meals the dragonkin cook. A whole roasted goat is set aside for them.

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Om nom goat! What's hunting like? What are goats like when they're not being eaten?

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Hunting is about getting to the prey before the prey can get away. Either through stealth, speed, or numerical superiority.

Goats are hoofed animals that are sometimes kept as livestock for their fur, milk, and meat. They are hardy creatures and tolerate the harsh climate well. Some species are adept mountain climbers and can scale very steep cliffs.

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Going up very steep cliffs is not hard, but doing it without wings is pretty impressive. Is it time to learn more about magic yet, she hopes it is.

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Yes, it is!

The first lesson is about the schools of magic. There are six, three major schools and three minor schools. A school is a broad category of similar ways to work with mana. By dividing the study of magic into schools, one is able to focus their efforts on a particular method of manipulation and refine their approach without becoming overwhelmed. The three major schools are light, shadow, and arcane. The minor schools are frost, fire, and nature. Blue dragons tend to have an affinity for the schools of arcane and frost.

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Frost sounds like it's good for making things cold; what else is it good for? And what does arcane do?

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Frost, fire, and nature are referred to as the elemental schools. They deal mostly with conjuration and manipulation of their subject and have primarily offensive applications. At high levels of mastery, one can also call forth elementals, which are low-intelligence semi-autonomous servitors.

The arcane school is the magic of purposeful creation. It is the purest school and the most versatile. It was arcane magic that the Titans used to sculpt Azeroth, and it is arcane magic that blue dragonflight uses to maintain the Nexus. Enchantment, teleportation, scrying; all these are of arcane magic.

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She wants to learn everything about all of the kinds of magic but arcane is definitely the best one (she whispers this opinion to her nearest siblings). Do all of the kinds use runes? 

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They can, but runes are most often used for long-term effects or for things that require more intricate specification than a reasonable amount of active casting would allow.

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What else goes into active casting? What kind of magic lets their mother turn into an elf and back? How long until they can cast their first spells?

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Active casting is the process of taking one's personal mana and forming it to the proper shape required by the spell. Every being has a certain amount of mana and this determines how much magic they can do at one time. As whelps, their mana pool is currently too small to cast any spells. As they grow, the amount of mana available to them will increase and they can start casting spells.

Shapeshifting is a form of instinctive magic that does not fit neatly within the paradigm of the schools. When they're older, they'll be introduced to how it works. Certain mortals who are deeply in touch with the rhythm of the world, usually druids, are also capable of shapeshifting.

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That's a lot of waiting. But they can learn all the theory while they wait, so when they have enough mana they can be ready to do all sorts of things with it!

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That's the idea!

Magical theory is, it turns out, a tricky thing to grapple with when you get down to the gritty details. Most whelps don't have the patience or the ability to concentrate for so long, so a significant portion of each day is also devoted to time spent flying around, exploring, and playing.

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Maragosa can concentrate for quite a long time, for a whelp. She enjoys the other activities too, though. And she can think about what she's learning as she flies around, and talk about it with her brothers and sisters who might have thought of something she missed. All in all, an excellent set of ways to spend time! The gritty details slowly get less confusing as she builds up conceptual frameworks to fit them into. 

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Eventually they're ready to cast their first spell, a simple ice lance. Kharmeena demonstrates how to pull the ice out and sharpen it and send it flying a few times. There's a line of target dummies set up for them to practice with.

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Magic! Is so great! She experiments with pulling different amounts of ice, and sharpening it more or less or differently, and practices aiming at the target dummies.

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It's easiest to cast using close to the same specifications demonstrated.

Using more ice costs more mana, using less lowers the cost. It seems like the cost increases more steeply than it decreases.

Changing the shape is fairly trivial, as long as a constant volume of ice is maintained.

Aiming is more about concentrating on the right spot at the right moment; the lance will hit whatever she's looking at.

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Can she make it change direction in midair? Can she do two at once?

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She can't make it change direction unless she keeps an active connection, which is a significant drain on her present mana.

To do two at once, she'll have to split her attention and magic. If she wavers, she could lose one or both lances.

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Once she manages to get it to change direction once she moves on; she doesn't have enough mana to give that the effort it deserves yet. Doing two at once is much more interesting; she works diligently and gets better at concentrating on multiple things at the same time.

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It takes a couple days of practice before she's reliably able to get two ice lances to hit the target without one evaporating or melting into a puddle or shattering mid-air. Everyone's very impressed, especially her siblings. They all clamor for her to teach them the trick.

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She does her best to explain it! "You have to think about everything you need to think about for one lance, but twice. Practicing helps, because eventually you can sort of bundle up everything you need for one lance up into a single thought, and then just have that thought twice."

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Hm! The whelps set to practicing this.

Kharmeena sets Maragosa a new challenge. Can she make two ice lances, fire only one of them, and then keep the extra hanging around while she makes two more?

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She can sure try it! There's going to be a fair bit of accidentally firing both of them first, and also some dropping the second one while working on the third and forth, but she keeps at it.

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Good, very good.


This is the key to the school of frost, Kharmeena explains. Fire propagates itself, it's the way of nature to grow, but frost does not self-sustain. Frost requires attention, maintenance. A mage who studies frost understands the value of careful management of power. You get out what you put in. If the mage is clever, they will find ways to make the most of what they can do.

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Hearing the general principles laid out like that helps bring some clarity to her nonverbal intuitions, which is really nice. She starts trying more explicitly to find out exactly how much attention she has to put into each lance, and how much can be held back for the next one.

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That does help her progress on the challenge.

They also get history lessons, starting with the ascension of the five Dragon Aspects. In the early days of the world, while the Titans were still molding it to their desire, they faced much opposition. Their primary foe was the Black Empire of the Old Gods, beings of pure shadow and darkness imprisoned within the crust of the world. But there were also natural threats. Among these was the great proto-drake Galakrond, Grandfather of Dragons. He wreaked havoc across the northern half of the world, destroying the Titans' servants and creations with impunity. Of his children, five stood up to end his depredations. These were Alexstrasza the red, Neltharion the black, Nozdormu the bronze, Ysera the green, and Malygos the blue. A mighty battle was fought, and at the end, the five stood victorious with Galakrond dead below them. In recognition of their service, the Titans imbued them with great power and charged each with the management of a facet of Azeroth. To Alexstrasza was given life, to Neltharion the earth, to Nozdormu the timeways, to Ysera nature and the Emerald Dream, and to Malygos was given magic.

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"Wow!" Maragosa mumurs to a sibling. "The five were so brave and heroic!"

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"Yeah! And then they got cool powers and now we have cool powers!"

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"Such cool powers. And the blue powers are the best ones! We'll be able to do all kinds of stuff someday."

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"Time powers sound neat, too."

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"Yeah, those are definitely next coolest. They're all pretty amazing. Which is good, it would be sad if only some of the five got good ones."

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"I guess the Titans knew what they were doing."

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"They knew so many things! We could study for a thousand years and not run out of things, probably."

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"That's a long time, wow."

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"Uh-huh." She makes two ice lances, fires one, makes two more one of which is misshapen and immediately falls apart.

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It's more than her siblings have gotten to so far.

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She's less interested in competition than she is in what it feels like for an ice lance to form successfully and what it feels like for one to fail. Does the magic give enough feedback to be useful there?

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When it goes right it's like adjusting a telescope into focus. Things line up just so into crystalline clarity. When it fails, what it feels like depends on how it fails. It can be like stepping in an unexpected pile of slush, or slipping on ice, or a bone snapping in half.

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Does the same sensation always go with the same unwanted result? Maybe she can learn to feel the magic heading off in the wrong direction faster, and steer it back toward what she wants.

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There does seem to be a correlation, yes.

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Splitting her attention between all the things she was already thinking about and also introspecting on the sensation of the magic is pretty tricky! Practice practice practice flying around practice.

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Expecting this sort of thing from their whelps is part of what sets the blue dragonflight apart from the others. They are the fewest in number, but each and every one of their members is of the elite. So it has been since Neltharion betrayed the other flights shortly before the Sundering and earned the name Deathwing.

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That sounds awful. Why did he do it? And why did it make blues in particular the rarest?

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When the Burning Legion invaded, he came to the other Aspects with a plan to repel them. They would pool their powers into an artifact known as the Dragon Soul and turn it against the demons. However, Deathwing had been corrupted by the whispers of the Old Gods slumbering deep within the earth that was his charge. He planned to use the Dragon Soul against the other dragonflights in order to become the supreme ruler of Azeroth. His treachery was not discovered until after the Dragon Soul had been imbued, and Malygos, as the Aspect of Magic, was the first to notice. He ordered his blues to attack Deathwing, and they took the brunt of his first attack. With their sacrifice, the other flights had time to rally, and Deathwing was driven off and the Dragon Soul recovered.

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Where is the Dragon Soul now? Hopefully it's being kept super safe somewhere!

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After Deathwing's defeat, a powerful protective enchantment was placed on it, and it was hidden away where he and his flight would be unable to find it.

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Yup, that sounds super safe and not at all a problem. Back to ice lance practice! Eventually she manages to keep one hanging around un-launched while launching a couple more.

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Congratulations! That counts as mastery of the spell.

The next topic they're going to learn about is enchantment and runes.

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Yay achieving things and double yay for enchanting stuff with runes! Enchantment is the best because you get to make stuff once and then have it for a while.

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The process of enchanting is in short, to imbue an object with power such that it permanently alters local mana. In effect, the object will be casting a spell continuously or in response to certain triggers, depending on the exact implementation. As such, most enchantment spells are in the nature of passive enhancements rather than any kind of active effect.

Enchantments can be cast freeform or using runes. Freeform enchants require that the entire desired spell is held in the mind as though it were to be cast without actually casting it. That sort of separation is very hard to achieve reliably. Runes act as a shortcut, a description of part of the spell that the caster then does not need to hold themself.

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That makes sense! How many runes are there and what do they all mean and how do you connect them to the part of the spell that's in your head?

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There are quite a lot of runes! Some of them are very simple and some are very complicated. If a spell is a sentence, a rune is a word or a series of words. A rune can represent an elemental school, a targeting parameter, a duration, an intensity modifier, a trigger condition, or any number of other aspects involved in spellcraft. Once the rune is inscribed, the spell is cast through it, using the rune as a focus.

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Can you have more than one rune in a spell, to specify different parts of it?

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You can, but the concatenation of runes is a tricky business, as the new pattern formed might itself be a valid rune which has an undesirable meaning. As blue dragons, they have an instinctive sense for the meaning of a rune, so that simplifies things. Less naturally gifted mages have to make do with tables of rune types and known safe and unsafe combinations.

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Another reason to be super happy she's a blue dragon! More studying. How long until she gets to try enchanting something for the first time?

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The first thing they're going to do is try an enchant that will augment their ice lance spell. To do this, they'll need to inscribe a basic frost rune, which is five interlinked circles of equal diameter, on a piece of vellum and use that to cast.

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Awesome! Does it matter that it's vellum in particular? For that matter, does it matter what they inscribe it with?

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Vellum is easy to use and re-use. For particularly powerful or complex enchantments, materials that are independently magically active can be used to increase the potency, but again, one must be vigilant for unintended side effects. For their first attempt, they will be using ordinary ink.

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How important is precision in the drawing--the size of the circles, their positioning, how perfectly circular they are?

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Pretty important. If you get it a little wrong it won't work, and if you get it a lot wrong, it either won't work or it will do something you didn't intend it to do.

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Then she will be meticulous in her drawing!

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That's a good habit to be in. The frost rune is fairly simple, so it shouldn't take more than a few attempts, and it'll be obvious when she gets it right.

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Awesome! Ice lances don't seem to be good for much on a practical level, but they make a fun learning tool.

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Once they've all got the frost runes working, they can use it to practice more freeform conjuration. With the base of the spell formed by the runes, finer detail should be possible for them. Kharmeena demonstrates with a scale model ice sculpture of herself, down to the scales.

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Oooooh. A sculpture of herself might be too hard for a first try, but can she make a pair of interlocked rings?

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She can get sort of a figure-eight shaped chunk.

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Then she picked the right difficulty level to start with! Time for practice and more practice.

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If she tries do the rings as one object, there's always some sort of connection between the two. A bridge or a pinch or a thread of ice leading from one ring to the other. The trick is to visualize them separately but overlapping, so they end up inside each other.

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There's that "doing multiple things at once" thing again! Good thing she's already got some practice at that.

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It does seem to be a bit of a recurring theme in this school.

Once they've got the hang of using runes in active spellcasting, they can try enchanting a small rock with a passive effect.

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Awesome! Do they get to pick which effect? She wants one that hovers in the air, if that's doable.

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It is! In fact, there are a couple different ways she could achieve the effect. She can attach a repulsive effect to the rock, lower its weight, or bind it to a fixed distance from a certain object.

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That first one sounds like the most fun!

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Then the enchant she'll be making will be one of minor levitation. Levitation is a low-level arcane spell, and therefore requires new runes. The basic arcane rune is three equal circles tangent to each other in a triangular pattern. If that is augmented with an air rune, it will form an acceptable base for the enchantment.

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Okay! Draw draw double-check, focus, cast! But why is air the right rune for a repulsive effect? Is it just that there isn't anything closer?

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She wants it to hover in the air, and air's the thing it has to push against.

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Oh! She had thought it was going to be pushing against the ground. It makes sense now.

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Magic always makes sense when you think about it. (It's okay, they can say this. They're blue dragons.)

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How lovely to have been born a blue dragon in a world full of sensible magic she can learn! She's a happy little dragon and she's going to go flying about it.

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Hooray!

Next, now that they have enchanted items that might theoretically need the protection of the Nexus vaults, they can go see how it works.

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Oooh, cool! Off to the Nexus vaults!

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The entrance to the vaults is in lowest level of the tower. There, a stone ring taller than all the whelps in Maragosa's flock combined is guarded by a pair of imposing dragonspawn. Inside the ring shimmers a fluctuating blue-green curtain of magic.

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Oh wow it's so pretty and magical and shiny!!

"Hello!" She says to the guards, then adds to whoever feels like answering, "How does this work?"

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"This is the portal to the vaults. The vaults themselves are technically some distance below yet, in a hermetically warded foldspace, which means they're much bigger on the inside than the outside."

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"Wow. And the portal is the only way in? How often do people need to go in and out?"

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"The only point of entrance or egress is this portal, yes. Except for the Vault-Warden, entry is only permitted to those who have need."

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"I want to learn how to make places bigger on the inside. And how to make portals!"

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"Both are applications of arcane magic, which we will cover in due course. For now, let us proceed with the vault. The first step to gaining entry is asking the guardians to contact the Warden." She nods at the dragonspawn. They nod back, and one of them places a hand on the portal ring, which begins to glow with arcane charge while the other begins weaving a spell that extends its tendrils through to the other side.

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The visual is almost as cool and impressive as the thing that's happening to cause it, and that's great. 

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An irritated-looking humanoid pokes his head out of the portal. "What is it thi- oh. Kharmeena. And another batch of whelplings, here to destroy my cataloging system. Again."

     "Please try to set a good example for the children, Azuregos."

He heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Oh fine. You'd best come in and get this over with, then."

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"I don't want to destroy a cataloging system! Is that something that can happen on accident?!"

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"Only if a careless whelp does not watch where they are flying," Kharmeena says. "But none of you are the sort to do such a thing, right?" She passes a stern look across the group.

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They all do their best Totally Innocent Faces.

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"Good. Through the portal, now."

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She flies through the portal, slowly enough to avoid any unseen obstacles on the other side.

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Going through the portal is a bit of an interesting experience. Physically, it doesn't feel like anything. But if she's paying attention, she can tell there's a layer of magic serving as a bridge between here and there.

The far side of the portal is a wide stone plaza, limned in a blue glow with walls of ice.

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She wants to fly out and back in again a few times to get a better look at that magic! . . . But she won't, because she doesn't want to collide with her siblings or hold up the group. Oh neat, ice walls! Does it look like they're a thin layer of ice over stone, or that the structure itself is ice-based?

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It looks like it's actually just ice. The room is surprisingly warm, for that.

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Probably the ice is enchanted not to melt, which is awesome, but she's not super clear on what the point is. "Why are the walls ice?"

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"Magic is the best containment for magic. Frost is strong and stable, and comparatively easy to work."

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"Oh, okay. Thanks!" Delighted flapping!

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Once everyone's in, Kharmeena tells the whelps to line up to present their artifact to the Vault-Warden. "Make sure to inform him of the nature of the artifact, the circumstances under which you obtained it, any groups that might attempt to retrieve it, and any other unusual circumstances so that he can assign it the correct degree of protection."

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She is vaguely aware that this is a total charade but it is still So Fun! She stands very straight as she waits in line and watches the first few siblings present their artifacts.

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Azuregos plays along with a minimum of grumbling. Probably because Kharmeena is standing right next to him.

Then it's Maragosa's turn. "Next!" he calls.

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She presents her floating rock. "This is a floating rock! I enchanted it, probably nobody is going to want to retrieve it except maybe me I guess."

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"And what is the nature of the enchantment?"

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"It repels the air using an air rune and an arcane rune, so it floats instead of falling."

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"Hm." He examines the rock, sniffs it, flips it over and pokes it into the air, watching it bob. "...Neatly worked."

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Grin. "Thank you! Making it was fun!"

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"Hmp. Continue your studies, young- ...What was your name?"

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"Maragosa!" chirps Maragosa.

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"Ahem. Continue your studies, young Maragosa. You may be worth your egg yet."

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She gets out of the way and lets the next sibling take their turn, then whispers to one of the others "What does he mean, 'worth my egg'?".

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"Uhhh. Sounds like an idiom. Those are usually kinda logical? If you look. Um. Eggs need to be cared for, so maybe it's like you're worth the effort?"

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"Huh. I didn't realize eggs needed that much effort. I thought they just sat there." Back to watching. What other artifacts has everybody got?

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Several rocks that are colder than the average rock. One rock that is solidly encased in a prismatic chunk of ice. A rock that drips snowflakes. A shiny rock. A rock that is the opposite of shiny.

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Neat! She speculates about what runes went into each one until everybody has gone. What are they going to do then?

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There are three paths leading forward from the area where they are now. Once Azuregos is done inspecting everyone's submission, he stands in front of the middle path. "To the left is the library, where writings and other accounts of knowledge are kept. To the right is specimen storage. Ahead is general storage, where we will be putting... these." He pats the box o' rox. "Don't touch anything." He leads the way further in.

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She follows Azuregos instead of trying to sneak off to the library, but both options get some consideration first. Hopefully they'll go to the library later. And ideally also specimen storage. But mostly library.

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General storage is basically a series of very large rectangular cabinets of a dark blue material, textured like wood but hard as stone, and with no obvious markings explaining what's inside. There are no apparent doors or handles to the cabinets, and they're anchored to the floor. It is, in short, slightly unclear how Azuregos expected a flock of whelplings to be able to cause a mess.

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Maybe somebody caused a mess in the past and then they made it easier to avoid doing that but forgot to stop worrying about it. "What are these cabinets made of?" she asks the next time an opportunity arises.

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"Imbued treant bark, from the grove in specimen storage," Azuregos answers. He slaps a particular spot on a particular cabinet, and the front of it shimmers and disappears to reveal shelves full of boxes very similar to the one he carries. Everyone jostles in to get a closer look.

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Maragosa has no particular advantages at jostling, but not particular disadvantages either. She ends up somewhere in the middle of the crush, while wondering what exactly the bark is imbued with. Magic, maybe.

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A whelp is jostled too close to the shelf and yelps in alarm as the ward flares. Azuregos sighs. "You can see it just as well from three feet further back, so everyone move away."

The ward is actually really interesting, magically speaking. There's a bunch of different layers and signals and trigger conditions baked into its weave.

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She shuffles back along with the rest of the morass, staring at the ward and trying to wrap her head around all of its logic one piece at a time.

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Arcane energy gathers around Azuregos's fingertips and he pokes the ward just so. It ripples back like a curtain being pulled from a window, exposing some of the inner folds. Kharmeena takes one of the boxes off the shelf and Azuregos puts the one with their rocks in its place.

"If you have any questions, you may ask."

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"How does that ward work? It's so complicated!"

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The explanation is almost as complicated as the ward itself. Azuregos can be persuaded, if prodded, to slow down and explain with fewer unfamiliar terms of art.

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She does a combination of prodding and memorizing terms of art to ask someone else later, and ends up with a mostly decent understanding of what's going on with the ward and a strong conviction that she wants to build stuff this impressive someday.

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Next up, they can visit either the library or specimen storage. The others are roughly evenly divided about which they'd rather visit first.

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Maragosa votes for the library.

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The library it is, then. Azuregos leads the way back to the landing area and then down the path to the library.

The shelves are made of the same solid wood and there are just as many, though these are open-fronted. There are books, scrolls, scraps of parchment, carved stone tablets, lengths of knotted rope. The words visible are sometimes familiar characters, sometimes runes, sometimes incomprehensible scribbling.

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Maragosa points at the knotted ropes. "Are these books too?"

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"Yes, a technique used by a subset of the jungle trolls, seafarers. These describe certain of the stealth magics used by their shadow hunters."

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"I guess seafarers would need a kind of book where it doesn't matter if it gets wet."

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"Some tribes write entire histories in their nets and rigging. A primitive technique, as with most troll artifice, but there is a certain charm to the creativity behind it."

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"In their nets and rigging? Don't they need those for catching fish and sailing boats?"

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"It is a form of poetry for them, that their knots can be both functional and informative."

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That's pretty clever! Time to explore the library some more.

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The sorting method, if there is one, is not immediately apparent. The shelves are arranged in radiating concentric circles. Based on the titles she can see, there doesn't seem to be any common theme to a given circle, but it looks like the same topics are repeated if you follow a line from the center of the circles to the edge.

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That's more reasonable than a topic per circle, when you think about it--the outer circles are a lot bigger than the inner ones, and it's easier to expand a topic sideways a bit than to move all its books to a bigger circle. Is this the kind of library one can check books out from?

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No. No, it is not.

Maybe, when she's older, and has a good reason, she can come back and read one of the texts. Under supervision. (And under protest, Azuregos mutters through gritted teeth, quietly enough that he probably didn't intend to say it out loud.)

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Maragosa has not undertaken a comprehensive study of library science but she is pretty sure that the best kind of library is the kind with books one can read. She doesn't intend to say this out loud either, but maybe Azuregos will not hear her if she doesn't hear him.

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Harrumph. Moving on, then.

The first thing of note about specimen storage is that it is cold, even by Coldarran standards. Azuregos explains that this is to keep the specimens preserved and prevent any... undue rambunctiousness.

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"Rambunctiousness of the visitors, or the specimens?" asks Maragosa, rustling her wings for warmth.

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"Yes."

The specimens are living creatures, contained in blocks of ice as clear as glass. There are a variety of beasts, some things that look like trees, a couple drakonids, some tall humanoids with six arms, a few figures with horns and hooves for feet, a pint-sized gnome wearing an incredibly garish robe.

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Okay that's actually pretty creepy. Other siblings have one less competitor for better viewing angles.

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Everything in here is magically dangerous, Azuregos explains, either to themselves or others. The blue dragonflight has taken the responsibility of securing those who are too dangerous or difficult to kill and preventing them from inflicting further harm on the world. One of Maragosa's clutchmates asks about the six-armed people.

They are called shivarra, Azuregos says. A race of demons from a world deep in the Twisting Nether, masters of seduction and mind control and members of the Burning Legion, the mad titan Sargeras's personal army bent on the destruction of the cosmos. These were captured during their attempt to invade Azeroth ten thousand years ago in the so-called War of the Ancients.

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Are there more of them still out there in the Twisting Nether?

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Hundreds of thousands. Sargeras corrupted their entire race when he razed their world. He has done the same with dozens of others over the eons. The nerazim, the annihilan, the sayaad, the eredar, the aransi. All once mortal, now consumed by fel.

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Once mortal as in they're immortal now? Getting corrupted is still awful, but making mortal people immortal without that would be good.

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Their souls are bound to Sargeras's will. He can forcibly draw them back from beyond death and remake their bodies.

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See, that sounds like a great solution to the problem of some species dying of old age, except for the massive amounts of evil. Are there any similar phenomena out there that aren't massively evil?

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Shaman can recall the spirits of the dead and there are healing magics that can recover even those on the brink of death, but there is no cure for old age and no way to create a replacement body.

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Good to know. What else is there to learn from this room?

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If she wants to know anything about the physiology or abilities of the species on display, now might be a good time to ask. In addition to the demons, drakonids, and trees, there's a giant crocolisk, a beetle bigger than a horse, some kind of snake-fish-elf hybrid, a dog with two heads that looks like it's made out of fire, a flock of ravens...

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Once she's over the creepiness of all those eyes staring at her out of the ice, she definitely wants to know things! Like why that beetle is so much bigger than all the other kinds of beetle, and whether the snake-fish-elf is actually a hybrid or just happens to resemble three other creatures, and whether the dog with two heads has two minds or just one and how it manages to be made of fire, and what the thing that looks like a flock of ravens actually is that's so dangerous.

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The beetle is a nerubian, an underground insectoid race hostile to all life. They've mostly kept to themselves since the vrykul pushed them back to their citadel deep beneath Northrend the last time they tried to wage war on the surface. The snake-fish-elf is a naga. They first appeared after the Sundering, invading coastlines near some of the remaining elf cities. They've cropped up periodically ever since, usually after some high elf relics. Some speculate that they are in fact the descendants of high elves who survived the Sundering and have adapted to their new life underwater.

The two-headed dog is a core hound, a variety of fire elemental. Elemental minds don't work quite like those of other sorts of creatures. It's debatable how much the lesser ones even have a separate mind. They're sort of a gestalt experience. The ravens are actually kind of the same. A necromancer killed the flock and used their bodies as the basis for a golem.

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That is all extremely cool. She's getting such a good education!

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That's the Blue Dragonflight way.

And with this, the tour of the vault is finished. Azuregos is very slightly happier as the group heads back out through the portal than at any point thus far. Kharmeena, still holding the box from earlier, congratulates everyone on their good behavior.

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That was a really awesome experience, but it's nice not to be being glared at by Azuregos anymore. Maragosa is looking forward to learning more magic. Also more history and biology and geography and everything else, but mostly magic.

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She's in luck, because the next thing they're going to learn is more magic. Specifically, they're going to be disenchanting the rocks a previous generation had stored in the vault.

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Aww, that's kind of sad, destroying someone else's first project and knowing her own will get destroyed by the next generation. But hey, she gets to learn disenchantment! That's too exciting to worry about whether the method is kind of sad.

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Disenchantment is the process of untangling magic from an object. This is a good way to learn more about the enchantment, the magic, and the mindset of the caster. The downside is that the object is destroyed in the process, though the remnants are quite often magically useful in their own right.

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That suggests that any new enchantment should first be done on something you don't mind losing, since you might mess up the spell and have to destroy the thing. She'll keep that in mind. What sort of thing do you learn about the mindset of the caster when undoing an enchantment?

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Enchantment is a permanent record of mana impressed on the world and mediated by a caster. Part of the caster is left behind, and during disenchantment, one can pick through it. Their overall attitude to the piece, how much care they took, whether this was one of many, if it was an experiment or part of of a process, their level of experience...

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That's really neat! You could probably send hidden messages like that. Although, what does it mean that "part of the caster is left behind"? Is it a part that grows back, or is she going to run out of self if she enchants too many things?

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It's more like a partial copy. Unworked mana is impressionable and worked mana contains impressions, like fingerprints on clay.

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So she can enchant as much as she wants and not worry about losing all her Maragosa-ness, good. She takes a crack at disenchanting the rock she got.

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Her rock is shiny. It gets brighter and dimmer over a period of about a minute. The two base components of the enchantment are a light rune and a time rune. The way they're entwined means that the magic available to the light rune is mediated by the time rune. The length of the cycle was determined by the enchanter during the inscription. They were proud of their cleverness at setting up the system.

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They should be proud, that's really neat! Pity She's going to take it apart. Maybe she'll make one of her own at some point; a timekeeping device could come in handy. She sets about disentangling the magic and setting it loose.

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It's kind of like picking at a patch of dead skin or tearing off a nail. Once you get the initial grip, the rest follows easily. She's left with a small pile of faintly glowing dust.

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Fun! She's never had rock dust before, either, that's kind of neat. Do people ever enchant and then immediately disenchant things they want rid of, as an easy way of destroying them?

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That can be a useful way of clearing out the bags of odds and ends one accumulates over time, yes. Of course, then you have enough dust to start some of the half dozen projects you've been thinking about and those generate even more detritus... ahem. Not that Kharmeena's speaking from personal experience, here.

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"Oh? What do you use the dust for?" She examines it more closely. Does it look like just powdered rock, or something else?

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It's a useful reagent for more complicated enchantments. It's already slightly magical so it takes very easily to becoming more magical.

Looking more closely, she can tell that the faintly-glowingness of the dust is, in fact, residual magic.

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That's really neat. Does it seem like an equivalent volume to the original rock?

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No, there's significantly less.

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"Does the amount of dust you get from disenchanting something depend on the size of the thing, or the size of the spell, or is it always the same, or what?"

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Higher-magic items give more dust, and a more skilled enchanter can get more from a given item.

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"Then if you enchanted something really small with a lot of magic, you could get dust that weighs more than the thing?"

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Theoretically that would be possible, though in practice it's difficult to get that much magic into such a small space.

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Well, it was mostly a fun idea for theoretical reasons rather than practical ones, so that answer doesn't make it much less fun. What's the next thing to learn?

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Hmm. Well, let's see... They're probably old enough to start learning shapeshifting. Does that sound interesting?

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That is possibly the most interesting thing that has ever been suggested to Maragosa in all of her admittedly rather short life!

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Everyone else also shares this opinion!!

The first step is picking what form you want to turn into. A good first choice is something humanoid: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes, trolls, goblins. That body plan is different enough from a dragon to have advantages at some things and is useful for blending in to mortal society.

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Dwarves seem neat! She'll try one of those. 

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Dwarves are a short, thickly-built people, with powerful arm, chest, and back muscles suited to mining out the underground caverns which are their natural habitat. Both the males and females of the species tend to have heavy beards covering the lower halves of their faces and spilling onto their chests. They're not noted for being especially innovative, but their solid and reliable machinery is prized by all, though they don't do much trading with outsiders. There are three main factions of dwarves, the Bronzebeards, the Dark Iron, and the Wildhammer. A civil war between the three clans was recently concluded and the Bronzebeard now control the dwarven capital of Ironforge and are beginning a tentative alliance with the Wildhammer to the north, while the Dark Iron have been exiled to the Redridge Mountains to the south. The blue flight knows about this because the Dark Iron attempted to summon the Firelord Ragnaros, an excessively powerful and dangerous elemental. The act of doing so created a new volcano which the flight set a watch on, but it seems the Firelord failed to manifest fully in the world and no action will be required.

Most of the rest of the clutch would rather be an elf (graceful and pretty!). There are a couple who want to be humans and one who wants to be a gnome. Older dragons stop by to demonstrate the forms that the whelplings want. They'll have to carefully study so that they can create the whole form in their minds, adjusting the appearance to suit them.

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Is shapeshifting going to affect their minds, or just their bodies? Do they need to learn about the anatomy of the target form beyond the surface appearance? Will using magic be different in dwarf shape than in dragon shape?

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They'll still be the same person regardless of the form. Having a deeper knowledge of the target will make the shift easier, but it's not strictly necessary.

Other (read: lesser) flights find that using a humanoid form helps them interact more delicately with magic and perform more complex spells, but that's not really an issue for the guardians of magic on Azeroth.

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It's good that shapeshifting won't mess with her brain; she likes her brain. She likes her body, too, but trying out a different one is still very exciting. She starts studying everything she needs to know for that, plus a little dwarven anatomy for convenience and a little dragon anatomy since it would be weird to know less of that than the dwarven kind. 

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Dwarves, like most creatures, are bilaterally symmetric. Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs. Major muscles groups, bone structure, organs, et cetera. One dwarf is pretty much like another. Dragons, on the other hand, have a couple sub-species known generally as dragonkin, all of which start off as whelplings. First are the whelps, which don't ever grow beyond that initial state, and live for only about fifteen years, when the others would be entering adolescence. At that point, there's a differentiation between the drakonid and the dragons proper. The drakonid, like her teacher Kharmeena, lose the ability to fly with their wings as they stretch and grow into hands and arms, and their lower body thickens and lengthens. The dragons proper continue growing on the same bodyplan as they were when they were whelplings, slowly getting bigger and bigger over time.

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Only living fifteen years would be really sad. But that's still good information to have. Study study study . . . shapeshift?

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It feels like her body is being pulled inside out and sideways from everything. Unfamiliar muscles grow and stretch in new limbs in new arrangements. And then...

She's a dwarf. Standing on the ground with her two feet attached to her two legs attached to her torso atop which sits a head with curly hair and a fluffy sky-blue beard.

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Ohhhhh woah that was weird. Okay. She's got this. It's not nearly as cool as being a dragon, and she already misses her wings, but the novelty is interesting. She swings her new limbs around experimentally, walks a bit, then tries enchanting a rock to see if it feels any different.

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She finds it very slightly easier to do the little swoops and to get the magic to go just so.

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That is nice. And she'll definitely be better at fitting in certain buildings like this. She practices going back and forth a few times to make sure she's got the hang of it. 

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It doesn't really stop feeling less weird, but it does start to come more easily.

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Yeah, she doesn't expect being anything other than a dragon will ever feel good. But practice is nice. Eventually she gets sick of that and goes back to practicing enchantments; that's really her favorite.

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Time passes. Maragosa and her clutchmates eventually drift apart, as she's the only true dragon among them. The others are funneled into the various jobs that need doing around the Nexus. Maragosa herself is encouraged in her various interests, and tutors are available to help her learn almost anything she desires. She can even access certain books in the Nexus Vault, as Azuregos has gone on an expedition to the western shores of Kalimdor and the new Keeper, Tarecgosa, is much friendlier.

Maragosa's body grows along with her knowledge. She's fifteen feet long and ten feet tall at the shoulder. As a young drake, she need fear almost no creature on Azeroth, and her innate magical prowess cuts that list even further. For all the treasures of the Nexus, much still awaits in the world at large, and she's in a prime position to go see it.

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At first, Maragosa's desire to learn everything there is to learn keeps her at home, where books and tutors abound. But in time she starts looking to broaden her knowledge, and learn the kinds of things that only come from seeing the world. She packs for a long journey, bids goodbye to her family and to Tarecgosa, and sets out to cross the length and breadth of Azeroth and seek her fortune.

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Wyrmrest Temple would make a good first stop. It's east of the Nexus, near the center of the southern shore of Northrend and just south of Galakrond's Rest, the grave of the ancient proto-drake. It's considered a meeting point for the various flights, so it might be a good place to meet someone new.

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Meeting new people, especially other colors of dragon, sounds exciting! Eastward she goes, flying low enough to enjoy the scenery.

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Across the small channel that separates Coldarra from the rest of Northrend is a wide expanse of tundra scabbed over with hardy plants and grasses taking full advantage of the brief summer. A herd of caribou flees from underneath her shadow, breaking wide around a sulfurous hot spring. Further on, the Icemist River thunders down the mountains of Wintergrasp, runoff from the glaciers of Icecrown even further to the north, and spreads into a thousand half-frozen fingers to grasp the Great Sea.

Beyond that is a small forest dotted with half-ruined buildings carved of smooth white stone, now pitted and cracked with age. Highborne ruins, she recognizes, remnants of their civilization before the Sundering. To the north is a small taunka village. The taunka are bovine humanoids, cousins of the tauren of central Kalimdor and more adapted to the cold climate of Northrend. When the forest ends, she can see Wyrmrest Temple rising from the plains and a handful of red drakes circling. That's a good sign that Alexstrasza the Life-binder, leader of the Red Flight and Aspect of Life, Dragonqueen, is currently in residence.

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So much of Azeroth is beautiful! The natural landmarks are gorgeous of course, but she's more excited about the places people have made. Even the ruins were clearly lovely once, for all that they're depressing now.

Maragosa approaches the temple, admiring the architecture and searching her memories for anything she knows on the etiquette of interacting with dragons of other flights.

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Proper etiquette is mostly based around not presenting as a threat. The visitor is deferential, doesn't hide their approach, leaves when asked. In the case of Wrymrest Temple in particular, it is customary for everyone to shift out of dragon form for as long as they're in the building itself.

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She glides toward the temple and starts making a slow circle around its top, curious whether anyone will approach her.

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Some of the reds shift to orbit around her path, though they don't approach close enough to talk.

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Once she's gone all the way around once, she lands, shifts dwarf, and heads inside.

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A male human figure with bright golden hair is waiting just inside. He has a magical aura around that is quite unlike any magic she's seen, swirling and looping in patterns that are missing pieces and change in response to unseen stimuli.

"And there she is, just on time. Maragosa, right?"

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"Yes, that's me. If you don't mind my saying so, your aura is fascinating."

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"Well it's not quite all here right now. That's Bronzes for you."

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"Huh. Okay. So, you know my name, but I don't know yours." Hardly surprising for a dragon whose domain is time.

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"Right. I," he bows grandly, "am Mezadormu, Warden of the Sands and inveterate troublemaker."

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"Pleased to meet you," she says, slightly bemused. "I've never heard anyone describe himself that way." Though he has heard various caretakers describe various clutchmates, and occasionally her, as such.

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"I'm not surprised. There aren't very many Wardens of the Sands and we don't get out to the Nexus that often."

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"I'm afraid I don't even know what a Warden of the Sands is."

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"Means if something goes wrong, I'm the one who has to tell the Aspect. And then Nozdormu would probably make me fix it."

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"Oh, okay. So what brings you here? Hopefully not something being wrong."

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"Just checking in, catching up with some friends. Come on, I'll give you the tour."

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"Oooh, thanks!" She happily follows along on the tour, still slightly graceless on two legs but capable of keeping up. 

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The halls of Wyrmrest Temple are large enough to fit a dragon, even if no one is ever actually dragon-shaped inside them. There are rooms for sleeping, eating, socializing. Items of historical import and written records.

"So what brings you out into the world?"

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"I want to see new places, and meet new people, and learn things I can't learn at home. It's working pretty well so far."

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"That's a rare attitude for a blue. For most dragons, actually. We tend to be pretty hermetic."

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"Well, I don't know how long I'll keep doing it. Magic practice is definitely easier with a home base, not to mentioned more experienced blues to talk to. But I wanted to try it at least the once."

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"That's the spirit! Try everything once."

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"Yup! Does your Warden work involve much travel?"

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"From time to time, yes. There's not a place on Azeroth I won't eventually already have been."

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Maragosa chuckles at the phrasing, takes a moment to decipher it, and concludes that it would be valid even if Mezadormu interacted with time in a purely linear manner.

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"It's great for meeting all sorts of people. Good and bad."

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"I bet you've got some interesting stories to tell," she says between admiring the architecture. 

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"Mhm. The only problem is sorting out which ones it's safe to tell."

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"What sort of dangerous are the dangerous ones? Or would that information also not be safe?"

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"It's mostly about what has and hasn't happened yet, from your perspective. Time can be... fragile, if people know things they shouldn't or learn information out of order."

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"So someone could . . . find out about something that's going to happen, and prepare for it in a way that makes it happen differently? That does sound like a problem."

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"Loops, paradoxes, divergent streams... it's a huge headache."

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"I'm glad there are people managing that sort of thing."

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"Thank you, thank you. A story, though... let's see. Ah, the War of Shifting Sands. That's a fun one. Old Gods, insectoid armies, dragons and mortals coming together to save the world."

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"Exciting! Much more fun to hear about than to participate in, it sounds like." Maragosa leans back against a wall with an attentive expression.

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"In the far southwest of Kalimdor, there's a region known as Silithus which is home to a ruined city of the Black Kingdom, Ahn'Qiraj. Way back when the Keepers were still fighting the Black Kingdom, Ahn'Qiraj was razed and all the inhabitants exterminated, or so we thought. It turned out that a remnant of qiraji had hidden underground and survived the war. They spent millennia breeding and growing and building their strength again until they finally boiled over and began swarming across the surface.

"The first ones to notice were the night elves. Some of their druids, sent by the Cenarion Circle, were in Silithus to try to rejuvenate the land. Enough of them managed to escape the initial onslaught to send word to their kin, and the Archdruid gathered a large army and marched down to fight. The battles went back and forth for a while, but the qiraji seemed endless in number. For every hundred the elves would slay, a thousand more would appear. One night, in the culmination of a lengthy push, the qiraji broke through the elven line and began to swarm across the deserts of Tanaris, where the Bronze Dragonflight keeps a stronghold. As you might imagine, this rather caught our attention."

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"I'd expect so! Did the dragons join in the fight?"

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"Yep. Letting the Old Gods gain access to Bronze secrets would be very, very bad, so we didn't have much choice. Given the sheer magnitude of the enemy, we also sent word to the other flights. The Reds weren't hard to convince, anything to do with Old Gods is a surefire bet to get Allie riled up. The Greens have a soft spot for night elves and sent help, even with Ysera occupied in the Dream. Even some Blues showed up to help. With our help, the night elves rallied and the combined forces began pushing the qiraji back, but not before the Archdruid's son was killed.

"The Archdruid pushed for total extermination, but once we reached the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, the dragons knew that was not viable. A dark power lurked beneath, one that we were not prepared to face. Instead, we chose containment again. A massive wall, made impenetrable by the combined might of the dragonflights, blocking off the whole of the city. It was called the Scarab Wall, and after it was locked, the key was broken into four pieces and one was given to each flight for safekeeping."

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"Why not just destroy the key? When would it ever be a good idea to open the wall again?"

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"The key can't be destroyed without compromising the integrity of the wall. Like the keystone of an arch, if you take it out, the rest will crumble. And what lurks beneath Ahn'Qiraj will have to be dealt with eventually, when the time is right."

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"At least we'll be more prepared then, right?"

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"That's the idea."

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"Well, that's good. What sort of preparations are being made? Unless they're secret."

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"If they were secret, I wouldn't be able to tell you if they were happening or not."

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"Heh. Fair enough, I guess at least some of them aren't secret."

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"They do take time, though. You, unlike me, can't skip directly to the good bit."

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"True enough. But all the bits of time I've had so far have been good, though not exciting enough to make good stories."

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"Enjoying the journey is an important skill. There are things happening basically everywhere all the time."

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"There really are! And I've been to so few of them so far. What are some places I should see in my near future?"

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"I recommend Dalaran. Even if you might find it some what quaint as a blue, it's still worth a visit. And the forests of Lordaeron are beautiful this time of the century."

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"Thanks! Does the forest really change on a cycle a century long?"

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"It's not a cycle so much as a gradual evolution. Trees are actually interesting to watch, they can live for centuries."

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"Oooh, and you can see them a century apart with both times fresh in your memory. That's neat."

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"It is very neat."

There's the sound of footsteps, and then another group turns the corner, lead by a tall elven woman with jeweled horns emerging from her layers of fire-red hair. "-then send a message to Aneth. She was complaining of boredom, was she not?" she says. "Oh, hello, Mezan. And who's this?"

"Dragonqueen," he greets Alexstrasza.

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Maragosa echoes the greeting, and adds "My name is Maragosa."

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"Well met, young blue. I hope Mezadormu has not gotten you into too much trouble yet."

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"Nope, he's just being an excellent storyteller."

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"Aww, thank you!"

     "I see. Enjoy your time at Wyrmrest, Maragosa." And off she sweeps down the hall.

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"I will, thank you." She says to Alexstraza on the latter's way out.

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"So that was Allie. She's usually a little chattier than that. Must have something on her mind."

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"It must be quite a something, to be noticeable on top of how busy she is most of the time."

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"Eh. Reds. There's more of them than any others, and somehow all the individuals are still busier than the rest of us."

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"Yeah. Nobody asks me to do much of anything yet, since I'm still on the young side. I look forward to that changing, but I'm enjoying my free time while I've got it."

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"As you should indeed. Speaking of free time though, I've about used mine up. Good luck in your travels."

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"Thanks. It was nice meeting you!"

Now to wander around Wyrmrest some more and see what and who else there is to see.

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It's fairly empty, apart from the red dragons.

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Eventually she takes off for Dalaran, because why not.

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Dalaran is in the north of the continent of Lordaeron, so to get there she'll have to cross the ocean. It's a journey of about a week. Less, if she flies non-stop, which would tax her stamina somewhat. There will be small islands dotted around she can stop for a rest on.

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Flying nonstop is for people in a hurry. She wants to explore a few of the little islands and also sleep on them.

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The islands are, by and large, uninhabited and deserted. One of the larger ones has some ruined stonework and another hosts a small village of trolls.

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The ruins are neat. She observes the trolls for a bit before moving on, but doesn't bother them if they don't bother her.

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The trolls duck and cover when they see a dragon circling overhead.

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Very reasonable of them. She picks a different island to sleep on.

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This one has a tribe of murlocs on the southern coast, with little driftwood huts dotting the beach. They seem to forget Maragosa exists as soon as they can't see her.

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That's very funny. She will not play peekaboo with the murlocs, but it's undeniably tempting. 

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Their cries of "Mrglrlgrlrglgrlrl!" to meet the dawn make a fine alarm clock.

It's not too much further to the coast of Lordaeron.

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Mice, a higher ratio of scenery to ocean! Also she has eaten a lot of fish lately in addition to hunting game on the islands and is looking forward to more non-fish food.

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The trees are, as promised, quite lovely. And they contain a variety of deer, boars, bears, wolves, rabbits, birds, squirrels, and other tasty tasty animals. There are also villages of humans. She'll have to be careful about being seen as a dragon if she doesn't want to start a panic.

If she remembers her geography correctly, Dalaran is on the shores of Lordamere Lake, south of Tirisfal where she made land.

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Om nom tasty various-vertebrates. She avoids the humans and has an excellent memory for geography.

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Then she'll find Lordamere Lake fairly easily. Its most distinctive feature is the crescent-shaped isle in the center, rumored to harbor a population of worgen, former druids who succumbed to the call of the wild and became feral.

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It's a pretty lake. She's kind of curious about that rumor, and checks out the island to see if anyone on it resembles a feral druid.

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Not during the daytime. At night, there's a suspicious amount of wolfly howling, but nothing shows up to play with the dragon.

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Being terrifyingly powerful is pretty great most of the time, but not so great for getting random people to interact with you. Ah, well. Onward!

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Dalaran is close. Given her recent experiences vis-a-vis mortal opinions of dragons, it may be wise to make her approach on foot and in shapeshift.

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Bleh, being a dwarf again. Yeah, she'll do that. Maybe if she does it enough she'll stop wondering on some level how she can balance on so few limbs.

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She'll at least have lots of examples to look at.

Dalaran seen from the outside is a city of smooth white walls and needle-thin spires poking at the sky with purple tips. The gate is made of dark metal and is guarded by humans wearing purple tabards embroidered with a stylized eye in gold thread. They don't seem to be preventing entry, just ensuring safety.

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She is neither a source of danger nor in any herself. In she goes, admiring the guards' clothes along the way. Her dwarf shape is wearing practical traveling clothes and of course her true form doesn't need any, but there's something to be said for sparkles.

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If it's sparkles she's after, the city has them in plenty. Mortal mages tend towards the fancy in their choice of outfit, it seems. Most of them also bear some variation on the eye sigil somewhere on their persons. Almost everyone present is either human or elven. There are a few gnomes and only one or two dwarves such as herself.

Not far from the gate is what appears to be an inn. The sign proclaims it 'The Legerdemain Lounge'. Along the street to the left, it looks like a commerical district. To the right seems residential. Further in, a large citadel dominates the center of the city.

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It's too early to be thinking much about inns, but she notes the location of that one before she starts wandering the commercial district.

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There are a variety of shops, most magical but some mundane. A smithy, a jeweler's, wand shop, bookstore, robe shop, staff shop, antiques store, greenhouse, restaurant, potions shop, another bookstore, wine shop...

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She window-shops cheerfully, examining things and forming opinions on their quality and craftsmanship but not actually buying anything.

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Nothing's obviously cheap, but it doesn't seem like anyone's spent ten years on a single item refining its quality.

She's passing by a bookshop when a young girl walks out of it carrying a stack of books taller than she is. She runs right into Maragosa and spills the books everywhere. "Eep!" One of the books that was on the bottom of the stack begins flapping away. "Oh no! Come back!"

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Why would someone make a flying book? Maragosa grabs for it anyway.

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The book stops flapping when she grabs its spine.

"Oh, thank you! I am so sorry master dwarf, I didn't see you. I checked for tall people but not short people, eheh. It's just Archmage Marwyl wanted Addevalt's Compendium and Mercer's On the Dragonish and volume six of Gryffon that's the one that started flying and Karl said that it was important to get them quickly or I'd have to do the dishes again but this time they wouldn't let me animate them to wash themselves-" The girl is babbling.

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"It's no trouble, I don't see how you could have known I was there around all those books. I happen to have nothing pressing to do today except wander the city; I'd be happy to help you carry them just to give some more direction to my wandering." She starts scooping up books as the girl does the same, until they've each got half.

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"That'd be really helpful, thanks!" She stands up. "My name's Diane."

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Maragosa is kind of obviously a dragon name. "Pleased to meet you Diane, I'm, uh, Mekith." She stole that name out of a history book but the original owner is dead.

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"Mekith! Nice to meet you. Mekith, Mekith," she mumbles the last bit to herself, beginning to wander off down the street. "Mekith Mekith Mekith. That's a uhhhh Wildhammer name? I think? Oh yeah, yeah. Hey, Mekith's in Gryffon, actually! He did the thing, at the Battle of Dun Aldr!" She glances back, quizzically. "...That wasn't you, was it? Could have sworn he died after that..."

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"Yeah, he's dead, I'm a different one. So, tell me about yourself?"

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"Me? I'm an apprentice at the Violet Citadel. I was born on a farm but Da said they already had enough girls, eheh, and I was pretty smart so after my fifth birthday when the Kirin Tor taxmen came around I went with them. Been here ever since."

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"There's probably a lot more interesting stuff here than there is on a farm."

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"Yeah farms are boring. Also kinda smelly." She wrinkles her nose. "I don't miss pigs. Now I only have to see them when we have pork roast. Books are better. Well, most books." She glares balefully at the volume of Gryffon.

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"Why would someone even make a book that tries to escape? Maybe it was an accident." After all, not everybody can have gotten as good an education as she did.

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"I asked the clerk and she said the enchantment was 'authorial direction in order to enhance empathic verisimilitude and reader engagement with the socio-historical milieu of the Wildhammer dwarves'." Diane pronounces all the words in the quote very carefully. "I think he just wanted to play a mean joke on everyone."

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"That seems pretty likely. Or he just really liked enchanting things and didn't have the courtesy to stick to enchanting his own."

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"Eheh. Yeah. It is a pretty neat enchantment. The flaps are very realistic. And some of the others back in the shop were pecking at birdseed. Have you ever met a real gryphon?"

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"No, I haven't." That would be cool, though. "I suppose a silly spell done well is better than a silly spell done badly, at least."

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"'If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well'." Diane does her best impression of a gruff old man. "That's what Archmage Marwyl always says. He can always tell when I'm trying to take a shortcut on something, eheh."

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"Well, far be it from me to contradict your teacher. Though I find that finding the fastest and easiest way to do something can be part of doing it well."

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"Yes, exactly! ...But most of the shortcuts I try don't, uh, work. So that might be why he's like that."

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"Well, if you try something and it doesn't work, you still learn something. If only not to try that particular thing again. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can figure out what will work in advance at least sometimes."

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"There's so much stuff to learn, though. Sometimes it seems really hard."

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"That's very true." Maragosa knows she's been lucky in having as much time to learn as she has.

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"I won't give up, though! I'm gonna learn all the magic and become an archmage and have lots of great adventures!" She nods with fierce determination, then almost trips over a loose cobblestone. "Eep!"

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"That's a good plan! I hope you manage it." It sounds pretty similar to Maragosa's plan, actually, though she's more planning to invent things than she's planning on having adventures.

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Diane recovers herself with a little hop. "Thanks! Oh, there's the Citadel." It's the large building she saw earlier, a smooth spire with no visible joints or mortar capped by what looks like some kind of purple crystal. There are more guards at the entrance. They don't seem like they're going to let Maragosa in.

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Pretty reasonable, given that she is in fact a relatively dangerous person in disguise. "Looks like you're going to have to take the rest of these back," she says, holding the books out.

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"Oh! Right." She maneuvers into placing Maragosa's stack atop her own. "Thanks for your help, Mekith."

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"You're welcome, Diane. It was nice meeting you!" And off she goes to walk around the Citadel and admire its architecture.

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Much of it seems obviously impossible with ordinary building techniques. Most of it stands on its own now that it's been instantiated, but there are a few spots that are still actively supported with magic. These generally serve a double purpose as decorations, as fountains of lights. Maragosa can see the way the mages here have hooked into the ley lines to power this, though their methods are undeniably cruder than those of the blue dragonflight at the Nexus.

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Seems a bit wasteful to have magic keeping the building up when it would be totally possible to design one that stands on its own while still being conspicuously magical in construction techniques. Still, pretty impressive for people working under the handicap of not being dragons.

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Perhaps the mortals are worried people will forget they can use magic if they don't wave it around ostentatiously.

"Pardon me, master dwarf," says a voice from behind her, dripping in condescension, "but are you lost?"

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What's this guy's problem, do they not like tourists? She turns around with a cheerful smile nonetheless. "Nope, just wandering!"

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"There's nothing for you to see here." The speaker is a sneering, blond-haired man. "Dalaran is the city of mages. Run back to your little hole and scratch in the dirt. You have not the wit to comprehend the sights here."

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The contrast between what this guy knows and what he thinks he knows is too funny for Maragosa not to snicker. Which is not a wise or a courteous response, so she tries to turn it into a cough.

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"Are you laughing at me?"

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"If I am, I'm still being a lot less rude than you are."

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"Why you-!" The man is interrupted by a tall elf with pale hair and piercingly blue eyes clapping a hand heavily on his shoulder.

     "That's enough, young Hooper. As a magus-in-training of the Kirin Tor, you are expected to show some decorum in public." The elf's voice is deep and commanding.

"M-master Arcus. I... I was just-" he stammers.

     "I do not care. This is not the first time you have attempted to pick a fight on the streets. You are confined to quarters until further notice. Go." The human slinks off, head down.

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If he had wanted a fight, he would have had better luck asking, "Hey, want to fight?" But presumably that wouldn't've helped with whatever his problem was. "Hello," she says to apparently Master Arcus rather than voicing any of that.

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"Well met," he says, inclining his head. "I do hope you won't let his actions sully your view of this city's inhabitants overmuch."

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"No fear, I expect every place has a few like him. Dalaran has otherwise been quite pleasant."

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"That is good to hear." He smiles, eyes twinkling. "Too few of our kind take an interest in our mortal cousins."

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Blink blink.

"I hope I'm not being too obvious."

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"Only to someone who knows what they're looking for. My name is Arcanagos. I am among those tasked with keeping an eye on the Kirin Tor."

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"Maragosa. Has the Kirin Tor been doing anything interesting of late?"

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"Not especially, no. There have been some growing concerns over the past year over the one they call the Guardian. I don't expect you're familiar with that one's powers?"

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"I'm afraid not, no."

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"To make a long story simple, after the War of the Ancients, a group of elven mages gathered together to hunt down the demons remaining on Azeroth and forestall further invasions. To make their efforts simpler, they decided to imbue a single member with the power of the others. And indeed this was effective; the Guardian previous to the current fought and destroyed a fully-realized Avatar of Sargeras only about nine and a half centuries ago."

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"That is impressive. I assume the current one has more or less the same powers?"

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"Yes. Which is why it is somewhat concerning that he has secluded himself in his tower of Karazhan, far to the south, shunning contact with all, even those who were his friends."

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"Ah. And I suppose he wasn't so helpful as to give a reason."

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"Quite. I intend to travel there myself, and ascertain the truth of the situation. If you would care to join me, I would welcome your company."

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"I'd be happy to."

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"Excellent. Do you have any plans here in the city?"

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"Nothing that can't easily be dropped, if you want to leave soon; I was just exploring."

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"Not before tomorrow. There's a small copse of violet maple just off the road a few miles south of the city. Meet me there in the morning."

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"I'll be there." 

She is there, the next morning, having elected to sleep far enough away from the city that she could do it in her natural form and get a proper night's rest. She's in dwarf shape for the meeting, though, just to be on the safe side.

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Arcanagos shows up an elf, so that was probably a good decision.

"Good morning. Did you sleep well?"

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"I did! And you?" 

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"The sleep of the just," Arcanagos says, chuckling. "Shall we be off?"

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"Yes, let's." 

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"We'll have to go on foot a ways before it's safe," he says. They start heading south. "How have you found your adventures thus far?"

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Hike hike hike. Not as fun as flying, and in these forms her legs are much shorter than Arcanagos', but it covers the ground. "Interesting and pleasant! I've passed lots of lovely scenery. And I went to Wyrmrest, that was interesting."

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"It quite often is," Arcanagos says. "Was anyone else there?"

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"Dragonqueen Alexstraza and Warden Mezadormu were both around, or at least passing through at the same time."

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"That's a rare treat. The Dragonqueen, that is, not Mezadormu." He shakes his head. "I've never known a bronze to use their powers so freely as he does."

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"Why is that? I can imagine it being disorienting, but are there other drawbacks he's unusually willing to accept?"

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"The Bronze Flight is not very communicative about the extents and limitations of their peculiar magic, but our own research suggests that no matter how much you fold and stretch time, there's only so much of a person to go around. Being in two places at the same time ought to be very tiring."

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"It does sound exhausting when you put it like that. Perhaps," she jokes, "Mezadormu is simply so energetic a person that if he weren't in two places at once, he would tire the rest of us out."

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"That is disturbingly plausible. Though he may also simply like to be able to gossip. Did you notice he knew your name before you introduced yourself?"

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"Yup. He does that a lot, then?"

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"In every instance I am aware of, the first time you meet him is not the first time he has met you."

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Maragosa turns this over in her mind for a bit. "That sounds like it would take a lot of effort to arrange."

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"It undoubtedly does. It is a good trick, though."

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"It is. As hobbies go it's a pretty interesting one."

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"We all need to fill our time somehow, bronzes perhaps more than others. I once knew a black who collaborated with a green on a sort of rock garden. Interesting fellows."

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"That sounds worth seeing. I've mostly been filling my time with study and more recently travel. How about you, do you have much time for things other than your work?"

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"I paint. Mostly landscapes; I can't seem to pick up the knack for portraiture."

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"That sounds nice. And I get you get lots of inspiration, with all the traveling you do. Speaking of which, how much farther are we going on foot?"

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"Just far enough to not cause any undue alarm. If we cut through those hills there, that should suffice."

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"Oh good. This form is serviceable, and still somewhat novel, but I wouldn't call it comfortable."

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"Many find humanoid bodies to be so. If the Titans themselves were not built to the same plan, I doubt we would have adopted their use."

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"That and an advantage at fitting through doors."

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Arcanagos chuckles. "Very true. Here should be fine."

He shifts into his dragon form. He's about twice as big as Maragosa, with slight tattering along the trailing edges of his wings.

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Maragosa shifts likewise, and stretches her wings contendedly. "Heh. You're taller than me in both forms by the same amount for different reasons."

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"It's funny how those things work out sometimes. Just mention when you'd like to stop or if you want to take a closer look at anything. I don't think we're in any great rush."

And they're off.

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Flying is by far the best way to get from A to B. Though admittedly it's harder to talk to your traveling companion when you have to stay far enough apart that your wingbeats don't interfere.

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They cut east overland, past Alterac and into the Arathi Highlands. To the south is Stromgarde, capital of the kingdom of Arathi and ancestral keep of the famed Trollbanes, human warriors who carved their kingdom out of land formerly occupied by tribes of the Witherbark forest trolls. They also profit by trade with the dwarven outpost of Dun Modr, which guards the Thandol Span, connecting the continents of Lordaeron and Khaz Modan.

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Maragosa has never seen any of these places before except on maps! She matches up the sights to the places she's heard about as they go, slowing down a bit over Dun Modr.

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From above, it's not much to look at. A large door carved into a hillside and a pair of round stone watchtowers, cunningly mortared without visible seams. On the top of the hill above the door, there's a flat stone pad, slightly recessed.

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"Do you happen to know," Maragosa calls out as she gets altitude again, "what that pad is for?" She gestures at it with a forelimb.

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"I am not entirely sure. It was not there when last I passed this way. Some new technology, perhaps."

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"Something for me to investigate later, I guess."

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"Let me know if you discover anything interesting."

As they travel further south, the land becomes marshy, and a great mountain range crests the horizon. Somewhere underneath these peaks lurks Ironforge, the great subterranean home of the dwarves.

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Maragosa flies along in silence for a while. Eventually she asks, "Have you ever been to Ironforge?"

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"Only once. It is carved out of a cavern in the heart of a mountain, a fitting testament to its people's spirit. At the center is the great forge from which it takes its name. The forge never rests, producing all the metals the dwarves require for their craftsmanship night and day. There are practitioners and masters of every art, all working together and learning from each other."

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"It sounds wonderful. Perhaps I'll manage to see it too, in time."

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"The other city of note in the south is Stormwind, which belongs to the humans. I don't recommend visiting it without picking up a human form, the natives tend to the xenophobic. Stormwind is almost as isolationist as the Gilneans, and their geographical separation exacerbates that tendency."

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"Thanks for the warning; I'll be sure to follow it."

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The mountains of Dun Morogh are sharp and snowy. It's easy to see why they form a barrier that creatures who can't fly or tunnel would find a difficult barrier to relations with those on the far side. It takes the two of them most of a day to pass over them.

Beyond are more mountains, but the Redridge are of a different character, the tone being set by Blackrock Mountain, an enormous volcano that dribbles lava from various cracks and crags, and leaks smoke unquietly. It is surrounded by a desert, ashen land.

"Be cautious," Arcanagos warns as they transition. "The Black Dragonflight has a presence in the area."

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"I will," says Maragosa, unconsciously flying a little closer to Arcanagos. This is definitely the creepiest area she's ever seen.

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The scorched earth stretches on for miles... and oddly, seems to almost pulse in some sections. It reminds her vaguely of the Nexus.

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Once she's sure she isn't imagining it, she asks, "What is that . . . pulsing . . . thing, that the ground is doing?"

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"A ley line convergence. Natural, not artificial like the one at the Nexus. The elemental planes will be closer than usual here, and the corresponding magics empowered."

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"Interesting, though possibly also dangerous. Do people come here to try things they don't have the power for elsewhere?"

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"I'd say so. The dwarves must have used this convergence in their attempted summoning of the Firelord."

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"And that didn't work or turn out particularly well. Hopefully the next ambitious thing someone tries here will be abetter idea."

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"It might be better if no ambitious things were tried at all."

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"Somehow, people being people, I don't think you're going to get your wish." And it would be kind of sad if he did, but he's got a point, so she's not going to mention it.

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"Over countless millennia, the foolishness of mortals remains a constant. Ah, but I should not be troubling you with such thoughts. Youth is a time of optimism."

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Maragosa shrugs, such as one can when one is flying anyway. "The landscape doesn't really lend itself to pleasant conversation."

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"I suppose not." There's a stirring of dark wings in the sky to the west. "Speaking of which, it appears we have company."

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She has no idea who that is. "Were you expecting anyone?"

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"Hoping to avoid it, rather. That appears to be one of the blacks who call this region home."

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"If we've seen them, they've probably seen us," she says nervously.

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"Yes. Thus far it is only the one, so it may be they merely wish to talk, and remind us of their claim on the area. We'll land on the hill there." Arcanagos banks and angles downwards.

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Maragosa follows, planning to let Arcanagos do the talking.

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Arcanagos lands and shifts to his elf form. "Best to change," he murmurs. "Let us not start with hostility."

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As the distant figure gets closer, it reveals itself to indeed be a black dragon, slightly smaller than Arcanagos with scales glittering like flecks of obsidian. The dragon circles overhead twice before landing.

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Maragosa changes as well, and attempts to smile as she watches the black dragon circle in in silence.

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The dragon lands and shifts into the form of a tall human woman with dark hair and a severe expression.

"A young drake and a hoary old wyrm," she says. "You should be old enough to know better, Blue. What is your business in these lands?"

     "We are simply passing through, on our way to the south. I am Arcanagos, and this is Maragosa. Might we know your name?"

"You might." She sweeps her gaze across the two. One feels her eyes could as well be smoldering coals for the way her gaze seems as though it ought to burn.

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Maragosa looks back at her neutrally, wondering if there's any context they could have met in that wouldn't have made them so suspicious of each other.

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"For what purpose," she asks, "do you travel south?"

     "We go to visit Karazhan, and the mortal Guardian. Nothing that will trouble the Black Flight," Arcanagos replies.

Her lips curl in a sneer. "You follow the path of a fool, and as all fools, labor in vain. Know this, then. You have skirted the dark mountain and so I am instructed that you may continue, but should you survive to return this way, I will kill you both."

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Maragosa has so many questions and is much too nervous to ask any of them!

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She waits a bare moment longer, then shifts form and launches herself into the sky and flies off.

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"...Well," Arcanagos says. "That was bracing."

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"So was that just about territory, or was it about our reason for being here?"

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"Mostly the territory, I think. They must have plans for the volcano. I doubt that bodes well."

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"It probably doesn't, no. What happens now, do we get back on the move or wait a while?"

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"Let's move on. Best not to tempt fate, or irritable dragons."

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"If you think she's solidly gone, definitely let's get moving." She turns back and gets ready to take off.

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Off they go. They're not too much longer in the wasteland, the southern Redridge Mountains fast approach. On the far side is a green and wholesome land, with dense forests studded periodically by idyllic farmsteads. Small villages are interspersed at intervals that are more or less a half-day's walk on the ground. All in all, a lovely place to live for a mortal. This must be why the Stormwind humans don't much care for other people's problems.

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Maragosa thinks she would probably still want to poke her nose into other people's problems if she were human, but it's much easier to get anything done as a dragon. She glides along and enjoys the lovely scenery.

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The tower of Karazhan is located in a region called Deadwind Pass, a series of jagged cuts through the mountain range that begins in the southern jungles and walls off the shires of the Stormwind humans from the swampy eastern coast of the continent. The region is well named, as even the hardy scrub growing up the foothills turns brown and withered as they get closer, as though all the life has been sucked from it, and a fierce current of air springs up to contest their approaching flight.

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This is more effort than she usually has to put into flying. For a while she just focuses on finding the best way to work with or around the wind.

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In the midst of the pass, the central tower of Karazhan rises like a dark omen. Its back is snug against a cliff face and it's ringed with balconies and parapets at various levels. Two shorter towers bracket it to either side, and there are a scattering of outbuildings around the base. Four ley lines cross at the tower, gathered up and used to power enchantments and wards that are visible even at this distance.

Arcanagos lands on a hilltop with a view of the tower. "Karazhan. It is still impressive, even after Dalaran. All the more so for being maintained by one, instead of a group."

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Maragosa nods, admiring the massive flow of magic.

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"So," Azuregos says. "We must now decide how we wish to approach the Guardian."

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"Ideally, with as much information as possible. Maybe the people around here know things we don't about what he's been up to."

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"A good thought," Arcanagos says. "Information is power, no matter the source." He shifts into the form of an old human man, with long grey hair.

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Maragosa still only has the one humanoid form; if she's going to be doing covert things she should probably get another one at some point.

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Perhaps she'll see an inspiring human here.

As to their cover: best they don't advertise their magical abilities. Perhaps they could be traveling merchants.

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That works, as long as she doesn't have to know a lot about how much things cost. She keeps an eye on the humans; there's only so much of the actual magical work she can do in her head in advance, but at least she can decide what she wants out of a face.

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Azuregos creates a smallish portal in midair and pulls from it two hefty backpacks for himself and Maragosa. It would be a heavy load for a regular person, but as dragons they have no problem with it. Azuregos leads the way down to the path and up it to the tower grounds. They're greeted by a pair of stablehands, and Azuregos draws them into easy conversation. One of them heads inside to let the cook and the steward know they've arrived.

Humans tend to leaner faces than dwarves, with less hair. Still less pointy than an elf, though. Only the males grow beards.

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There isn't any reason she couldn't go for a male human form, she supposes, but she's not that attached to having a beard. She'll probably composite something together out of a few of the women, so she doesn't end up weirdly resembling anyone in particular.

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The steward, a gaunt, gangly man named Moroes, formally welcomes them to Karazhan and invites them inside to take some rest and perhaps spread out their wares.

Their arrival is timely, he confides, for the master will be hosting a fĂȘte over the next two days, and nobles from across the kingdom of Stormwind will be in attendance. They are welcome to stay and join in the festivities, if their schedule permits.

Arcanagos allows as how the invitation is an honor and they would be happy to accept.

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Maragosa, or whatever she's calling herself, nods her agreement and follows Arcanagos, or whatever he's calling himself, inside. The fĂȘte does sound like a stroke of luck; with that many people around, someone will probably know something.

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They lay their wares out and the servants spend some time picking over the trinkets. Some copper and silver changes hands; naturally they don't have anything worth gold.

Soon after, a troupe of actors arrive. It seems they are to be the evening entertainment over the following days.

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Commerce is fun, and when things are quiet she can think about magic and keep her ears open for gossip.

She eyes the acting troupe curiously. Actors wander around a lot, right? Maybe they know something useful.

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It's very possible they do. They're an eclectic bunch, mostly humans but with a few elves among their number. A trio of gnomes seem to handle the technical matters, and there's even a worgen among the actors who doesn't seem to be entirely feral.

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Huh. That's odd. What sort of roles does a Worgen actor play?

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Whichever ones he wants, ahaha. Does she want to go ask?

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Sure, making conversation sounds like a good idea. She says hello to the group sometime when they don't seem particularly occupied.

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"And a fine hello to you too, master dwarf!" the leader greets with a dramatically flourishing bow. "We are the Humbling Bole Travelers, actors renowned from Stratholme to Stormwind."

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"That sounds like a great way to see the world."

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"Truly it is! Kings and peasants, lords and lumberjacks, all are welcome at our shows. And all can learn something from them. I imagine you must see quite a bit yourself, as a traveling merchant."