Same people.
Different idiots.
A living scrapbook
of our adventures.
Explore
Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Arrowyy brought in a fresh notice from the wider road and reacted as though somebody had finally put a proper roof on adventure. Blaedy answered with a whole little village charter, complete with instructions, and immediately began herding us toward it.
Summoneyy liked the new emblem, which was sensible. She has an eye for whether a thing looks inviting before the rest of us have finished inspecting its hinges. Arrowyy contributed a picture in the universal language of delighted confusion.
Blaedy wants our doings recognised and chronicled when we set out together. I approve in principle, having made a trade of the same impulse, though I mistrust any ledger that claims it can keep pace with Arrowyy once he spots something shiny.
Arrowyy began by trying to determine whether Meho had remained recognisably herself through one of her more pointed changes of allegiance. Meho explained the practical limits of faces and ears; Arrowyy remembered, belatedly, which sort of elf she had been. Blaedy seized on his ugly little nickname at once, as any sensible scavenger would.
Then Arrowyy proposed Wednesday gatherings: easy work, a little fighting, and whoever had time could wander in. Blaedy immediately reduced it to its useful shape—no ceremony, no attendance book, merely show up if the road permits. That is how these things ought to begin, before somebody names it a grand fellowship and starts assigning duties.
Arrowyy wants company more than he wants to admit, which is decent of him. He disguises it as a plan, naturally.
Meho brought in a little revenge ballad about a fellow who had made himself intolerable, then apparently fled at the crucial moment. Blaedy asked for a sequel before the first telling had cooled. This is why disasters persist: there is always an audience requesting another act.
The hidden barb pleased them both immensely. Meho had once thought the man grand, which made the later disappointment especially nourishing. Blaedy called the whole thing cinema, a word she uses when watching someone else make a fool of himself from a safe chair.
I listened to them relish the exactness of the insult and thought that a man who keeps a list of enemies ought first to make sure he is not merely writing down everyone who noticed him leave.
Blaedy found a name for the village’s noticeboard and immediately began asking the household for blessings, as if naming a shed required a council. Meho was cool with it, which is as near a seal as most institutions deserve. Blaedy wisely waited on Summoneyy before making it official.
The greater excitement was fishing. Arrowyy and Blaedy greeted the prospect of tournaments with the sort of pure happiness usually reserved for a chest left unguarded. Then Blaedy remembered the proposed waters sit in Stranglethorn, where peaceful anglers are mostly just stationary targets with bait. Arrowyy still intends to try. Naturally. My son hears “absolute chaos” and checks whether he has enough line.
Meho asked how open fighting works, and I managed to answer it first as a barrister for invasion, then as a man remembering which side of the fence he was standing on. I had folded raids on capitals into the ordinary rules and served her a stew. She quite properly asked whether I was cracked in the head.
Arrowyy declared the final account sound, while preserving the opening disaster for posterity. A son’s duty, apparently, is to ensure his father never benefits from correcting himself. He then named the whole affair after some weekly corner in which I am evidently expected to dispense wisdom without first dropping it on my boot.
Meho wanted a plain answer before wandering into danger. Arrowyy wanted open season. I wanted, briefly, to be struck by a quiet illness until everyone forgot the first explanation.
Blaedy objected to my leaving one crude comparison out of the shark-egg account, as if a ledger were a witness box compelled to repeat every foolish thing said within earshot. Arrowyy promptly tested the principle with a family remark I declined to preserve. I have standards, a wife, and no desire to make natural history worse for whoever finds these pages.
Then they turned to naming the guild’s public noticeboard. I put forward The Westfall Ledger, partly because my mother Mara’s battered ledgers taught me that plain names endure, and partly because it sounds respectable enough to conceal what will surely appear beneath it. Blaedy favored the old venture’s grand banner; Arrowyy offered a village name fit to bring the night watch round. Blaedy, to her credit, recognized the trouble immediately.
Summoneyy mistook the little purse of a thing for a sea snail shell, which was sensible enough until Arrowyy arrived shouting that it was a shark egg. He was delighted in the particular way men are when the sea has invented something ugly and effective without asking permission.
Blaedy’s astonishment was immediate. Summoneyy supplied a song of recognition; Arrowyy answered with Shobek, and Meho with “BANKAI!” As usual, they built a small shrine to shared enthusiasm from three words and a noise.
Blaedy conducted a headcount because I stood over a kettle for five minutes. Apparently a household may survive bandits, but not my brief absence. Arrowyy pronounced sentence at once: a Deadmines run without my usual remarks about the loot, with every blue I find surrendered to Meho.
Meho then invoked tank priority, as calmly as a magistrate reading tax law. I have promised the same blue twice, which is efficient if nothing else. The green scraps are mine, fittingly.
Arrowyy judged my patience at five and said I might earn pride at ten. Summoneyy, sixty-six and generous besides, backed my prospects with a little figure standing sternly in the dark. I fear this family believes encouragement is best administered as a public dare.
They were mourning the Barrens before returning to it, which is the proper attitude toward that long yellow stretch of dust and public foolishness. Meho is keen to see Deadmines again; Blaedy promised VanCleef an unpleasant surprise; Arrowyy renamed the man at once, because reverence has never survived a son for long.
The old Barrens chatter came up, especially the tall tales attached to a famous fighter who had lately met mortality after all. Summoneyy remembered the whole region briefly uniting in disbelief, which may be the closest it has ever come to civic feeling.
Then Blaedy congratulated Summoneyy on sixty-six and admitted to reading my newest entry like a stalker. Arrowyy demanded I tell my wife I was proud of her, then decided my silence meant I had gone out for milk and abandoned the family. I was fetching ink. A man cannot even replenish ink without becoming folklore.
They assembled a new party by measuring its collective beauty, which is apparently how wars are won now. Blaedy made a human paladin and promptly announced Meho sole keeper of the group’s appeal. Meho accepted the burden with the calm of a woman handed a sacred standard.
Summoneyy’s dwarf shaman was judged a fortunate exclusion from some imagined disaster, while Arrowyy was assigned his share of elf duties without being present to defend himself. Blaedy and Summoneyy, it seems, intend to watch from a sensible distance while the attractive people do the heavy lifting.
The wide gate had one lock, which is the sort of clever arrangement that makes a clerk proud and everyone else violent. Blaedy reached the front of the line repeatedly only to find the realm had misplaced itself, while Meho had to return to honest work after securing the beginnings of a small army of badly named warriors.
Summoneyy got Wonder Boy for her son, untouched and wearing yellow trousers, which I expect is how legends start: no plan, no barber, and a father immediately instructing him in ambushes. Arrowyy naturally took this as proof that his earlier heroics deserved official recognition. I gave him the gold star. He has not yet tried to pawn it, so perhaps there is hope.
Then they turned their attention to my name. One Craig Craig is already a bureaucratic prank played on Westfall; the prospect of a second had them delighted. My wife called me one and only, which was kind. It also sounded dangerously like an invitation to test the registry.
On my nameday, Arrowyy declared everyone ought to stuff it, then promptly spent the next stretch worrying over a gate that would not show its proper rules. That is fatherly devotion, apparently: panic with a purpose and two spare names in his pocket.
The gate coughed them out by the dozen. Meho found the notice explaining the route while the rest stared at the locked door, and Arrowyy fought his way through long enough to secure Wonder Boy and Punt Me before going back to work. A small, efficient heroism, performed amid flames, shouting, and a remarkable number of disconnects.
Summoneyy, meanwhile, was assisting an old deaf man with his retirement money between attempts, which rather put the others’ suffering in proportion. Blaedy still had no luck, though her name was rescued. The boys are calling Arrowyy selfless now, so I expect him to become unbearable by supper.
Summoneyy was still waiting for the dead to make a proper entrance in some grand martial spectacle, which is a perfectly sound use of an afternoon if one has no customer demanding one’s attention at the third bell.
Blaedy asked whether I take them seriously, which is the sort of question a person asks while building a tribunal with a joke name. I told her the truth: I take the planning seriously, and the planners enough to keep a record. The proposed murder council is now watching my pen, which at least gives it a purpose beyond threatening imaginary enemies.
Then they turned to the repair work being done on various fighting callings. Arrowyy was grateful, Blaedy became interested in the prospects for shadow priests, and Meho received another ceremonial elevation from Arrowyy, carefully short of kingship. Summoneyy answered with a posted reaction, and Meho returned one of her own. Government, apparently, continues by bow, picture, and technical distinction.
Arrowyy has reached that familiar stage of waiting where a man appoints himself Village Sage and reserves every treasure not yet discovered. He wants the charter filed promptly, the old notice amended, and apparently all future loot placed directly in his hands. Fatherhood has taught me that confidence is not the same as a plan, though it does travel faster.
Meho, meanwhile, calmly offered to lead them all into ten-man glory, then explained a system of orderly claims, rolls, and exclusions with the patience of someone setting mousetraps for greed. Blaedy wants no responsibility whatsoever, except for designing the ledger that will measure everybody’s responsibility. An honest desire, at least.
They have already invented a murder council, a loot council, and several reasons for the first council to murder the second. The guild has not yet secured its name. This seems appropriate.
Summoneyy called it a war, corrected the name, and immediately had Meho and herself producing the customary cries of traitor and jail. Arrowyy demanded I account for my inspection of public offices, with the pleased alarm of a son discovering his father owns a lockpick. I do not.
I told them I had only rattled a few doors marked public and found their locks made of wet bread. Arrowyy called this going hard, which is rich from a blood elf who has mistaken several minor inconveniences for quests. Still, it is nice to know they would notice if I were hauled off. Eventually.
Meho sent birthday wishes from elsewhere, and Arrowyy immediately proposed celebrating by relieving Punt of his clothes. Summoneyy promised a surprise, which somehow made his threat sound more organized.
Then Arrowyy showed us Auberdine at sunset and became properly torn between a pier town and Lakeshire. Blaedy pointed out the corruption, as one must when a place has moonlit water and a clean silhouette. Arrowyy countered with the moonwell, which is admittedly a handsome piece of masonry. Summoneyy sided with the night elves on aesthetic grounds.
I have watched men choose lodging by worse standards. Still, it is hard to haul supplies through an aesthetic.
Arrowyy spent the evening deciding which trades would best suit a druid, which apparently involves studying every leather strap in the kingdom for hidden properties. He settled on skinning and leatherworking with the grave confidence of a man selecting a military campaign.
Summoneyy announced skinning, mining, fishing, and cooking, thereby ensuring our proposed Lakeshire camp will be supplied with hides, ore, fish, stew, and no shortage of ambition. Arrowyy accused her of preparing to make a fortune. He was not wrong, though he said it like a man who had only just noticed money exists.
They were both pleased that whoever sits by the fire may benefit from what the others have made. A remarkably civilized arrangement. It will last until someone needs one particular hide, at which point civilization will be asked to step outside.
Then Arrowyy brought up the name reservations and their “few hiccups.” I suppose even a clerk can be defeated by a list of names and a clock. The shark egg, at least, knows what it is becoming.
Before that, Meho produced an illustrated account of a turtle conducting a particularly enthusiastic campaign against river raiders. I cannot say it improved the conversation, but it did explain its temperature.
Meanwhile Blaedy studied the new choice of rules as though the signboard might bite, then set about reserving names with the urgency of a quartermaster securing rations before a siege. She claimed Star Platinum. Arrowyy, being free and therefore immediately enlisted, took Wonder Boy. He has the useful family trait of accepting an errand before asking why it matters.
I said nothing. A man who has watched people fight over a campfire’s practical arrangements knows better than to stand between them and a fresh gate with their names painted on it.
Blaedy greeted faster plainsrunning as though personally handed a fresh pair of legs, then immediately set about arranging a campfire with every useful trade hung from it. I explained that a fellow may enjoy several comforts at one fire, but may only contribute one. Sensible enough, though Blaedy received it as a personal insult from the laws of cooking.
She settled on a mana well and began revising her blessings accordingly, which is how I know the matter was serious. Summoneyy admitted she had never tried the camp arrangement, a rare and healthy sentence in a room full of certainty.
Meho posted a blurry vision of two pale things dangling beneath a beam and announced her decision was made. On what, precisely, remained her private business. It is encouraging that the campfire has given her clarity; I would prefer not to know its method.
Meho appointed herself keeper of the hour, which is sensible: armies have been lost to poorer preparation than a forgotten password. Her elf may remain nameless, but the gnome is to be Punt Me and the dwarf Smitty Jägerman. One is a request, the other sounds like a man who fixes anvils by striking them harder.
Blaedy briefly mistook Meho’s elf for a human beneath an especially loud suit of armour, then worried over the lack of night elven paladins. I gave the history, or as much as anyone wanted before the conversation sensibly returned to appearances. Blaedy cannot stare at a fellow forever; Meho would rather have an Illibaddy than an Illidaddy. Thus are great martial decisions made: doctrine, devotion, and who must be looked at during a long march.
