Human territory was refreshing. In Eversong you could feel the magic in the air, and none could deny the ethereal beauty of my homeland.

But it was, in a way, a reflection of what my people had always been before the undead attacked us. Unchanging.

My people had lived in the same land, practiced the same magic, and enjoyed the same pleasures of thousands of years now. It was wonderful, beautiful, and incredibly boring.

Westfall was an obviously poorly cared for territory, nearly empty of any and all civilized life. The bandits wandered the roads, hunting for travelers and trespassers.

Hulking Mechanical golems tended to what fields the Defias decided were worth keeping active.

The only people who tried to combat the status-quo where a couple dozen guards from Stormwind, and a peoples militia made up of the angry remains of this provinces farmers.

In a way it was in a worse situation than my home ever was. The Blood-Elves were even more thinly stretched than the humans had ever been, and yet they were already retaking the lands they had lost control of.

I wouldnt be surprised if the undead had been pushed back into the Ghostlands by now. Give or take a few months and they would probably pave a road over the dead scar once they figured out the land itself would never heal.

The farmers and people of the land here had been all but abandoned by Stormwind, and they knew it too.

Oh sure the kingdom may claim the situation was beyond its ability to fix with the forces it has to spare, but whos fault was that?

The Horde was a threat, but a simple non-aggression pact would free up plenty of the necessary forces to fight the demons trying to get through the Dark-Portal, and to clear out the bandits in an important agricultural center.

The Orcs aren't usually so subtle as to say anything more than "no." and with the right emphasis on honor it would be easy enough to convince them to ease up on several war-fronts.

There always comes a time where you need to realize its time to regroup, and lick your wounds.

Then again, maybe the Prestor family had something to do with that. If I remembered right, around now several dragons were picking away at the primary human kingdom of the Alliance.

All of them disguised as well meaning members of the nobility.

Either way, I was taking advantage.

I had come here for peace and quiet, an opportunity to give myself a firmer understanding to the basics of each field of magic I had available to me.

If I strengthened my knowledge of the basics in every field, I could begin to work into the combination of their more complicated uses.

To do that I needed time, and most importantly anonymity. A giant underground mine would do nicely.

The shit-load of gold, magic users, and Goblin engineers inside, were only icing on the cake.

So here I was, stalking through the torch-lit halls of my soon to be home. I was taking my time in my approach to this ship in an effort to consider what needed to be done.

I could give VanCleef, the head of this operation, the mixture and take control as the power behind the throne, and experiment with my magic as an "adviser." but dark magic was frowned upon even by bandits.

I could try and feed the entirety of the syndicate my elixir over a few months, but that was an expenditure of resources I would not easily replenish.

We had enough of the mixture for a couple hundred people if we were smart about it, but the land around here was not suited to the necessary herbs to make it.

Which left me with my third and only real option. Cherry picking.

I had brought a couple dozen water-proof vials of the mixture with me in a sack, just enough for me to persuade a number of the Blood-mages, and the Goblin Engineers who managed the Golems.

I had left the rest on the ship, which now lay just past the horizon, invisible to the naked eye, to make landfall at the dawn of tomorrow. I told them to find the large walled off cove in the waters of Stranglethorn

With my undead body it was an easy swim to the shoreline, and in just under an hour I managed to breach the surface with only a small village of now dead murloc's to witness my arrival.

I was in a good position to take power in this place tonight.

Part of me wanted to wait, to settle for VanCleef and take it slow, but the more time I wasted the more likely it was people would notice what I had done. Magic was not subtle.

At least when it came to the kind that turns people into slaves. Whole kingdoms have fallen to that in the past, and bandits aren't so stupid as to blindly trust the suspicious Elven mage their leader is now treating like a king.

I would be a new factor to the common men, another suspicious party to watch.

If the way they were looking at the other magic users was any indication, I would be very closely watched indeed.

They did have the services of Blood-mages,, but it was easy to tell they weren't welcome.

At a glance it seemed the Blood-mages weren't trusted implicitly by the rest. Most of the robed men and women found themselves in almost entirely separate groups.

It made sense, while it was in more of a gray area than some types of magic, the things a blood mage is capable of are never pretty.

It drew its roots back to one of the darker subsections of Voodoo, and even the Amani were wary of it.

It was the magic of sacrifice. Power gained at the cost and manipulation of blood. Self sacrifice was one of its strongest forms.

A mage who taps into his own lifeblood could raze a city under the right circumstances, if at the cost of his life.

As a specter I had alot to gain from insight into that school of magic, perhaps more than any other could offer me.

I needed that kind of power.

It was time to make my move.