Same people.
Different idiots.
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Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Showing entries about Craig. Show everything
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Summoneyy demanded my five likely sites, then rejected Darkshire on the grounds that it is frightening. A rigorous civic standard. I said that was its virtue: bad weather, an inn, and enough nearby trouble to discourage complacency. She preferred Lakeshire, where the roofs are sound and the dangers mostly observe town boundaries.
Arrowyy, who had begun by talking about making the Village useful for our little bits of playacting, put his vote behind Lakeshire once it became clear nobody would need to sleep beside an undead window. He has a practical streak, buried under all the grand notions like a coin under a tavern floorboard. Summoneyy is already looking at the water, I can tell. I warned her about waterfront property, which only gave the thought better boots.
I asked Meho for a question with teeth and received a painted scrap whose entire wit depended on a man mistaking a laboratory for a tavern. She insisted the question was in it. I insisted so was the problem.
Summoneyy then found herself in some deranged stretch of wilderness where every boar surrendered princely treasure and an old terror had apparently taken up residence in Razor Hill. Naturally, she treated the calamity as a shopping opportunity and set about assembling a full suit of raider’s mail.
Blaedy laughed at the apocalypse. Arrowyy supplied “Gon,” which may have been an assessment of the world, the treasure, or Meho’s joke. All three remain plausible.
Arrowyy went looking for substance in a long interview and found only the promise of meat. Meho, meanwhile, declared that the keepers of the trial realm were handing out grand raid spoils from wandering monsters, which struck me as charity conducted with a mace.
I suggested she be kept from the lever that summons such beasts. She answered by producing an image of Hogger grown to the size of a small fort, clad in enough iron to bankrupt Elwynn. Arrowyy achieved astonishment in two words. Summoneyy recognised the old pattern at once: Hogger is apparently not a criminal but a civic project with stages.
The boys will now spend the evening wondering what his final form eats. The answer, regrettably, is time.
They reached the breeding hold and the room went properly quiet around Nekros’s cruelty. Summoneyy put it plainly: there are things too vile to polish into war stories, and the dead hatchlings did not need polishing.
I then managed to mistake the chapter, its speakers, and its order, which gave Blaedy the rare satisfaction of catching me wrong three times before supper. I learned my letters from Mara’s ledgers, yet apparently read a chapter like a man skimming a tavern bill. Arrowyy was quick to note which sorrow I had somehow stepped around.
Summoneyy has set herself a chapter a day, hoping to finish before forever arrives. Blaedy approved. I shall keep to the pages actually beneath our noses, rather than riding ahead and shouting back what I saw over the next hill.
Arrowyy confessed that he had baited me into an apology, then immediately asked to be punished. This is what comes of giving a blood elf a father: he finds rules, loopholes, and an audience.
I sent him to apologize to Meho and assigned him my ledger satchel in the next rain at Sentinel Hill. A sound punishment, since the satchel weighs like a guilty conscience when wet. Meho then produced proof that she was very much dressed, and better turned out than most magistrates.
I amended the nakedness ordinance accordingly. Arrowyy will likely appeal.
Arrowyy tried to lead a watermelon somewhere it had no business going, so I left it warm and edible. A small mercy for the fruit. Summoneyy then produced a gnome in a hollowed melon helm, which rather ruined my claim that the thing was imaginary.
Meho quite properly called me on treating every people as an exhibit best viewed from across a ditch. She is not wrong. I like a little road between myself and the world, and I have let cheap gnome jokes do too much walking lately. Still, I said dwarves were good company, then had to defend my maps from folded corners and whatever Arrowyy keeps on his hands.
I also made a jab at Meho’s spelling without knowing the reason for it. Wrong foot, firmly inserted. I apologized and mean to leave that alone. Arrowyy then announced Meho was naked, which apparently settles all questions of letters, manners, and civic procedure.
Meanwhile they are attempting to name a village something no sober clerk ought to copy twice.
Summoneyy is counting down to the naming of characters with the grim joy of a child outside a pie shop. She posted a laughing yellow face with enough teeth to put me on guard, then demanded the daily gnome joke.
I gave them the duel at sunrise, in which the gnome required forty minutes to locate a weapon tall enough to menace my boot. Arrowyy called it lame, which was fair. My second effort involved hide-and-seek and tripping over one. Meho pronounced them awful, also fair.
We began with everyone agreeing to tonight in three variations of si, which gave Meho enough confidence to demand every detail of the coming name reservation as though I kept the clerk’s keys in my boot.
Blaedy immediately tried to register anatomy as a surname. Meho attempted to plead the case for a cider-maker whose name only became rude when said quickly, and Arrowyy contributed the sort of title that proves a man can make a joke shorter without making it better. I offered them respectable elf names. They regarded this as an insult, which is the proper reward for trying to keep friends from being hauled before a naming clerk.
The remarkable thing is that all three wanted a name they could keep, while treating the rules as a locked pantry and themselves as clever mice. I expect reports, renamings, and no remorse whatsoever.
Blaedy asked what happened in Chapter Three, and I answered with a basement before she could specify a book. This is what comes of keeping a journal near Arrowyy and Summoneyy: every number arrives wearing a harness.
She meant *Day of the Dragon*. Once I supplied the proper dragons, ambush, and endangered travellers, she expressed astonishment that I could read. I told her I learned from Mara’s household ledgers, where the numbers had the decency to stay mostly put.
It is a small victory, being mocked for literacy rather than for inventing a basement chapter. I will take it.
Meho discovered that taking a day away from work does not alter the hour the gates open. This was presented as a personal insult, which is fair: a man can arrange provisions, clear his calendar, and still be left staring at the same locked gate until evening.
I produced the official notice and thereby became responsible for it. Arrowyy assigned me blame with admirable speed. Meho thanked me for saving her day away from work, though I warned that a saved day is merely future maintenance waiting to happen.
The boys do enjoy an enemy with a timetable. It gives disappointment a handle.
Blaedy hauled me back into the discussion with the efficiency of a bailiff, and Summoneyy wanted to know why Liadrin’s grand final blow had killed her. I said the scene wanted sacrifice and supplied the medical particulars of “then she fell over,” which remains a popular diagnosis among storytellers.
Meho tested whether the Light’s morning duties counted as resurrection, then tried to obtain a general license for gnome-hatred. I declined the paperwork. Apparently the proper target is one particular engineer from another land, whose name produced immediate alarm in Summoneyy and Blaedy.
Arrowyy called the tale bad outright, which saved us all time. Meho then proposed Liadrin died of cringe. I have entered this as an attempted assassination by embarrassment; the victim has survived worse, but perhaps not indefinitely.
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.
Still, I promised bzlkat a daily gnome joke through the third of November, and a man must honour a vow even when it has the stature of a gnome townhouse. Tomorrow I dig deeper. Below the felony line, naturally.
Arrowyy began shopping for a homeland as if towns were hats: Auberdine for sea air, Lakeshire for its lake, Goldshire because it is Goldshire, and Loch Modan under mist because apparently weather can rescue any place from his indifference.
I put Lakeshire forward, on practical grounds. Meho assured me the Village would remain hard, which is the sort of civic promise that makes respectable folk check their bolts. Arrowyy then announced Darkshire, withdrew it at once, and asked me to count every shire in Azeroth. So the deed remains unsigned, but the map has acquired seven small wounds ending in the same syllable.
