That voice belongs to Girl # 2!

Girl # 2 get!

Uther beams. "Ah, greetings, Moira Bronzebeard. It's good to see you're safe."

...

...

...

What? You don't know who Moira Bronzebeard is? Oh, that's a relief.

Woah, woah, woah, you do? Okay, lower the pitchforks, douse those flames, and please let me explain?

Pretty please?

Thanks.

Moira Bronzebeard, daughter to the current king of Ironforge Magni Bronzebeard—is this series' loli figure. She's a somewhat mysterious priest, is old enough to have remembered the First War, and was Arthas' teacher back when he was a neophyte. Oh, and did I mention she's a loli?

Ow! Ow! Stop poking me!

It's just that in this setting, like the orcs mentioned last chapter, the dwarves have been envisioned into something completely different. The males are the standard stout, bearded fare, almost lifted directly from Tolkien-esque influences.

The females, on the other hand, practically look like young nymphs beside their counterparts. So much so that the Japanese creator has to append "These characters are over 18 years old" to the work. This is painstakingly justified all the time within the story, the other races even not finding it odd they look like they belong to elementary school. A minor detail is in adding breasts to them, so they look more like "oppai lolis".

So Moira Bronzebeard is perfectly legal—

Ow!

... She's got a modest bustsize (at least relative to her peers—

Ow!

... And she lords over Arthas like she's his homeroom teacher (which she technically is)

Ow!

Hey, c'mon, there does need to be a loli somewhere aye? And may I add that I also have strong reservations to objectifying the underaged like this, so it's not that I made the female dwarves lolis because I like lolis.

What? Gnomes? What are those...?

Anyway, what's done is done. It's final. Set in stone. She's a female dwarf, a rare sight in even World of Warcraft, and a priest at that, which is double rare (As my uncle tells me).

So. Any other objections?

...

What? Why Moira? Well, I don't really have a lot of prominent dwarves to draw on. More specifically, there ain't a lot of prominent female dwarves, imagine that. With Moira I don't need to create an OC out of thin air. I do need to tweak her story a bit, but hey, this is AU from the get go.

Plus, this gets her out of that icky mind control mess by Thaurissan and right into Arthas' arms. Ow! What? She's perfectly legal! She's the daughter of a pretty decent Mountain King! And she's a priest, which Arthas could use right about now. Even if he is a paladin.

"Greetings to ye, sir Lightbringer." She nods to the man. Then she nods at Arthas. "Arthas, dear."

Arthas makes a noncommittal noise. It's apparent he's not really comfortable with Moira. He's got memories of her as a very strict instructor, being one of the few priests in the Order who've endured through the harshest trials. He doesn't exactly know what those trials were, though.

She's also prone to teasing him sometimes, which means he's on guard around her even now.

"And this must be young Jaina Proudmoore. Hello, lass."

"Hello, milady," Jaina replies. Her manner is stiff, polite.

Moira snorts. "None o' that 'milady' crap. Though I am partial to 'master'." She wags a brow in Arthas' directions.

"Moira," booms a voice outside the tent. "We're ought to go ahead to the tavern. You coming?"

"No!" she shouts back. "My party," she explains, addressing Uther. "Not repirmanding them, Lord Uther? They said they're off to a tavern."

(It's not really apparent, but if dwarves had voice actors, they'd all speak Kansai.)

Uther shakes his head. "All things in moderation. As long as they don't make a fool of themselves, or start needless conflict." Arthas knows that the paladins had long argued about the degree to which they drank liquor: most dwarves, for example, swore to leave the Order if they were denied; while others rigorously cried for abstinence. Therefore no clear tenet was established, as long as the drink did not drive a brother to unworthy behavior.

For himself, Arthas drank little, if at all.

"Now then," Moira says, her eyes sweeping to the kneeling blademaster. "I hear ye got a problem with this stubborn one? Well, let's see about that."

Arthas can tell Uther slightly disapproves, but allows Moira to do her work. He remembers rumors of Moira disagreeing with the Lightbringer on certain parts of dogma. Arthas doesn't really understand the theology, being more keen to battle more than arguing about the Light.

Moira casts [Mind Control], though no one in the room knows about that except Moira. She just explains that she's just charmed him with a spell, which makes him spill info about the hidden orc enclaves.

The information is not that impressive. The orcs have apparently split into "Clans" spreading throughout the southern lands. And even within the Blackrock Clan, this blademaster's army was only the vanguard, in preparation for a raid on Dalaran. (At the mention of the city, Jaina starts.)

"Foolish, to waste a vanguard on attacking a town such as this," remarks Uther. "Did they think us weak, to not defend our own?" Arthas thinks in his mind that orcs having a modicum of thought would be a miracle in itself.

Arthas is disappointed that the blademaster knows nothing else about his remaining comrades. Apparently, the orcs keep moving around in secret, never really massing until an attack like this. They probably already knew they'd crushed this army, and were perhaps fleeing like rats.

Or maybe they were regrouping north, to lead an attack on the capital itself.

Which is a problem, because Arthas knows much of Lordaeron's forces are tied up patrolling the realm amidst rumors of plague and disease.

Uther agrees to send a messenger to the capital regarding the information; while Jaina excuses herself to her tent to start a long-distance communication with Dalaran.

This leaves Arthas and Moira alone.

Arthas can't help but feel a bit self-conscious about the way Moira talks to him. She gets in his space, elbows him (and being a dwarf there's only one place that elbow goes... what's with the look? It's his belly! It's painful, that's why he don't like it. What? Dwarves aren't that short.), pokes him, etc., like she doesn't know anything about propriety. Especially between two royals. Except Arthas is pretty sure she knows—but just chooses not to.

And he's very confused.

"So I hear you did some very grand magic just now," Moira says, referring to Arthas casting [Resurrect] so easily when he's still got a hard time casting [Holy Light], a standard art all paladins know. She pinches his cheek. "Teacher is very proud."

Arthas scowls. "It's not really that impressive. I don't think I can do it again."

"The Light works in mysterious ways," Moira says sagely, nodding to herself. "Still, it does show that there's little doubt now you're a paladin. Still a little ways off from old Uther, of course, but that guy's a real monster when it comes to the Light."

"Thanks," Arthas says, though he doesn't really know how to take that compliment.

Perhaps sensing his mood, Moira smirks. She slaps him in the back, saying, "Oh, lighten up, prince. A frown's just going to scare away all the women."

"I don't need any of that," he grumbles. For some reason, she howls with laughter, like she's a barmaid and someone cracked a joke.

Several days pass while Arthas oversees the repairs to the city and the many burials for the fallen. It turns out that some of his men had died. It causes a conflicted feeling in him—if they had come with him they might have been resurrected, but that wouldn't have been a guarantee.

He witnesses the contrast between Jaina and Moira. The mage actively looks for better methods of repairing the city inside the camp, while Moira is more focused on conversing with the townsfolk, even delivering sermons to them.

There is a minor bit of drama with the decision to execute the blademaster. As the King's representative, Arthas can pardon the orc, but obviously he does not.

While a paladin reads the order to the doomed orc, the orc laughs. "'In the name of justice?' Don't delude yourselves, human. This is slaughter, pure and base. Your kind coat it in your vaunted 'Light', gird it in the trappings of 'justice', as if it would wash your hands of the crime; our people are more honest, at least: we execute the weak, the traitor, the mad, that we may preserve the honor of our race. And yet..." he glares at Uther in particular. "The time will come when fire will rain from the sky... when the world's true masters shall return... And when that time comes, human, how far can your 'justice' lead you?"

The deed is done, and Arthas is privately disturbed by the orc's last speech, particularly about the dire warnings of the "true masters". Uther just says that it is just more of the "orcs' rhetoric". Moira dismisses it as the ravings of a madman, while Jaina offers nothing and is pensive.

News comes confirming the information from the blademaster. Accordingly, the roads surrounding the capital have been bolstered with scouts, while parts of the army deployed to the northern villages are pulled back in case of a raid. The scryers of Dalaran have nothing to report from their observations of the surrounding region, their attention being more on the plague.

"News of the plague is... troubling," Uther says. "There have been unconfirmed reports of entire villages going silent, with all its residents disappeared without a trace."

"Perhaps the orcs are abducting them," says Arthas. "For some sinister ritual, perhaps, as they did here?"

"That may be so," says Uther. "Or it could be some other, nefarious force. And that is precisely why we must not delay. We must aid Lady Jaina's quest." Jaina had been sent by her superiors in the Kirin Tor to investigate the plague when she'd met with Arthas. They'd frowned upon her delaying this long.

Arthas is present during that long-distance communication, where an elven mage wonders why Jaina had to be sidetracked by Strahnbrad. Arthas interjects, she was very helpful in the defense, to which the mage glibly replies that more lives might perhaps be lost from her negligence than the "little incident".

Arthas explodes, demanding the elf's name. Uther has to restrain him from punching the mage's astral projection while the elf suavely gives his name as Kael'thas Sunstrider, crown prince of Quel'thalas.

Yeah. That Kael'thas.

Eventually, it is agreed that Arthas and a small group shall accompany Jaina, while Uther scours the area for orcs. If the plague has some connection to the orcs, Arthas will have followed his father's request. If they're not, Arthas still helps his kingdom by finding the root of the plague.

Privately, Arthas fumes, his target that "pumped-up elf". Jaina asks him to please refrain from similar outbursts—"Prince Kael" is influential in both Quel'thalas and Dalaran, and antagonizing him would only be bad for Lordaeron.

Arthas, of course, doesn't care. He explains that it's not just about his beef with the elf, it's how he treated her; her, the "rare prodigy" no humans have produced in generations. She can't just take that shit lying down. (well, that's roughly what he tells Jaina)

Jaina is of course thankful for the pep talk. She does want to succeed in her mission, and on her own terms. She can finally prove that she's not just about the books. She can be the leader her father expects her to be, one to match people like Arthas, or Moira.

Moira, who overhears, laughs, and jokingly points out Arthas' failings. Then she derides her own—the dwarven princess who went against her father's will to travel the lands.

"The Bookworm Princess"

"The Wandering Dwarf"

"The Angry Prince"

"A nice little group, eh?" says Moira.

Moira confirms that indeed she is coming with Jaina and Arthas. She had come north initially to help her fellow priests administer aid to plague victims—now that she knows there may be some sinister agent behind it, she can't just turn a blind eye.

They set off a day later, bound for the distant city of Hearthglen.


Shurpuff says: More to come. Comments welcome!