"Worthless."

Gutripper huffed at the bottom of the mountain ravine as he inspected the corpse of his former quest partner crumpled at his feet. The gnoll wind rider and its wyvern mount had been assigned to him by a local neutral mercenary contractor at the base of Thunder Totem, most definitely against Gutripper's will. The Horde grunt had been in a rather foul mood as it was; a noob who'd exploited nepotism to be assigned a more experienced party leader was the last thing he needed.

Especially one who insisted on trying to ride a wyvern throughout their questing. There was a reason why flying mounts were illegal in the Broken Isles without exceedingly rare permission from Orgrimmar.

The boulder that had knocked the noob out of the sky was probably tossed by an ettin who immediately forgot about the act anyway. Gutripper was tempted to write it off as a waste of personnel, but considering the man's lack of skill it really was a minor loss. Looking away from the gnoll, he tried to find the path they'd been winding along a cliff face in Highmountain; they'd been sent on a regular patrol mission to a flatter, safer valley nearby, and now that he was by himself the soldier could probably cover much more ground much more quickly.

As Gutripper walked a little bit further against the cliff face, he paused and ducked low. Had his trusty dire wolf been present with him, he might have noticed the disturbance earlier, though his own senses were almost as keen. Over the wind, he could hear the sound of somebody weeping.

Keeping his weapons sheathed but his hands ready, he marched until the path against the cliff face led him to the flat upper reaches of central Highmountain, the beauty of which was nearly unmatched. The sound of crying was joined by another voice, pleasing in its tone and as melodic as the wind that had died down. Placing value in the concept of honor that his clan had instilled in him, he stopped crouching and made his presence known as two furry figures came into view around a bend in the mountainous environs.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" Gutripper said to what appeared to be local Highmountain tauren, one small and cute and the other mature and elegant.

When the older tauren turned to receive him, he could tell by the color of her fur that she was a relative of the smaller one - her child perhaps, or maybe a niece. The two of them had paused by what appeared to be camping gear beneath a tree, and the tauren girl was wiping her teary eyes. Not more than six or seven summers of age, the girl had big brown eyes that elicited sympathy even in the battle-hardened heart of the former Champion of the Argent Tournament. She appeared lest disturbed than her companion, who'd been crouching but moved in front of the girl defensively.

The tauren woman looked up at him with more mature but similarly deep, pretty eyes. Her face was young but bore the markings of a woman who worked for a living; if she was the girl's mother, Gutripper had the feeling she was a fine one, and the woman appeared reluctant to answer.

"Yes...well, no. We're not hurt," the woman replied cautiously, slipping over the words in Orcish - the Highmountain tauren had only recently come into contact with the outside world. "Are you...are you with those called the Horde?"

Realizing that the two bovine travelers were probably more in need of help than the woman let on, he held his fist over his heart in a display of sincerity. "I'm Lieutenant Gutripper of the Frostwolf Clan, officer in the Horde military, at your service."

The woman now looked more confused than cautious. Inspecting him up and down - and appearing shy for a moment when he caught her admiring his quads - she cleared her throat as if she was about to say something awkward. "But you're a human!" she exclaimed.

Smiling at the confusion over his roots, he tried to cut down on the usual explanation of his identity. "No; I am Horde," he replied, "raised from the cradle by the only clan of free orcs in Lordaeron after the Second War. And I'm honored to assist all who are in need. What seems to be the problem?"

Sniffling before her relative could answer, the little girl displayed the naïveté of a child who didn't deserve to be in such distress. "The Feltotem tribe stole my doll and the paladin wouldn't help us," she sobbed. The older tauren glanced around nervously at the mention of a paladin.

"Who wouldn't help you?" Gutripper asked.

The woman hugged the child close. "Feltotem ruffians stole my neice's doll when we had no cash. A paladin came by - a human like you, but he didn't speak your language. So he wouldn't help."

"Alliance," Gutripper murmured acrimoniously. When the tauren auntie didn't appear to understand, he waved the topic away. "Ma'am, I will get your niece's doll back."

Big doe eyes glistened up at him, this time the aunt's. "Oh, I don't want to trouble you-"

"It's not trouble; it's my duty, ma'am. Now, which way did these Feltotem ruffians flee?"

"Well...well, thank you so much, mister. They went north, in the same direction as...well, you can still see the paladin riding away over the hill." The auntie pointed to an offensively glistening suit of armor on an irritatingly blonde horse not too far away. "And, well, maybe you can ask him which way they went."

Gutripper thumped his fist on his chest one more time, garnering a laugh from the child. "I'll cut a swathe of destruction until I can dismember the people who stole this little girl's doll," he said just as he turned and sprinted after the unhelpful paladin.

"Well, well, thanks - Earthmother, you're fast!" the tauren woman called after him just after he ran beyond earshot.

Not even working up a sweat, Gutripper exited the flatter clifftops and reached another sharp drop into the valleys below. He noticed hooves from both tauren and a horse, the fel taint on the prints of the former enraging him. Before long, he'd already caught up to the paladin, trotting along on his horse as if the Burning Legion wasn't out ruining thenworld by stealing dolls from little girls.

Also of human racial stock, the Alliance member turned to watch Gutripper as he approached. The uptight looking paladin appeared entirely uninterested in the fact that two civilians were in need, and his eyebrows furrowed angrily when he saw Gutripper's Horde tabard.

"Veryily, thou hast indeed whomsoever thy whenst amongst perspicacity," said the paladin in Common, or at least Gutripper assumed that's what the man said. He had no desire to learn the language of such a two faced nation anyway.

"Need this," Gutripper said as he grabbed the reins of the paladin's horse and casually dropped an elbow onto the side of the other human's head.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!" the paladin screamed as he was knocked from his horse and plummeted to his death off the edge of the cliff. Though he was heavily armored, Gutripper was twice the man's size and gave quite a shock to the Alliance horse when he mounted up.

"Move, unnecessarily pampered riding beast!" Gutripper yelled as he kicked his heels into the horse's side. The animal whinnied and started to run more out of fear than anything else. "We have a doll to rescue!"