When the massive reinforced wooden doors opened on the next morning I had my other two ships settle into the makeshift docks of Ironclad cove.
I decided to have all the living servants under my command take up residence in the Defias ship. It was, after all, the most secure place in the Deadmines.
The zombies on the ships, and the ones I had just aquired were both made to hide in the murky waters of the cove. In part it was to increase the security of the cove itself, and in part it was to clear room for the more acceptable servants in my employ.
The time may come when people visit this cove now that Ive cleared out the bandits, and zombies were far from inviting.
The totems I just created were magical batteries of a sort, similar in a way to the ziggurat I had disrupted before I left Deathholme.
They existed both as a means to power the zombies nearby without me actively channeling into them, and also as emergency sources of energy for spells and rituals.
Once everything was settled, i doled out the first of my orders. The Goblin Engineers quickly returned to their workshop with orders to return to the constuction of more Harvest Golems.
I had one of the Goblins take up the task of pulling the Harvest Golems on the Surface back into the Deadmines with whatever they had managed to harvest so far.
I needed defenders more than I needed farmers. Antheol and the bloodmages could conjure enough food for the rest of us if the Defias supplies ran out.
I had Vancleef himself eaten by the zombies of his old crew. On the surface of the cove the Arcane-wraiths floated over the water, using the relatively free space to add to my defences.
When I had guests over I could have them cluster together in the shadows., making them all but impossible to see.
I had plans for the Deadmines themselves as well, but I would need more time to see them underway. Under Defias control it was a fortress the couple hundred members overseeing its defense could hold off thousands, easily collapsing caves should the Alliance ever reach too far.
With me in control It would be all but impregnable.
Of course the location and servants werent all I had just won with that ritual. The Defias had enough supplies to feed everyone of their members for years. They had several naturally cold rooms filled with grain and sailed meat.
They had enough cannons and gun powder for a small navy, and enough steel to arm the men manning it.
Most importantly, The Defias had gold. Westfall is still today a safer route for merchants to travel than the neighboring province of duskwood, filled with undead and feral Worgen.
Symptoms of a curse from an ancient lowborne weapon, though the humans didn't know that.
A scythe crafted from the staff of Elune herself, and the tooth of a wolf deity. Apparently it was somewhere in those woods. If Its still there, I'll be looking into it.
The kind of power that scythe held was legend on par with something like Frostmourne. Of course, as it was now it held little use to me.
If one didnt understand balance fully and completely, the scythe would consume you. It was made for druids, but if I got there first I might eventually find a way to get it to my way of thinking.
Everything can be corrupted. That scythe was no different.
Still, Merchants had little interest in why the curse came about, but they did know Duskwood was a death sentence for most.
It was easier to pay bandits off then fight the products of the Curse Of Elune off.
Inside the ship was a treasury filled to the brim with gold and glittering gems. The wealth gathered from fifteen years of thievery, and fifteen years of taking advantage of abandoned, but not dry, mines.
Westfall wasn't rich back in the day just because of their fertile fields. It had once accounted for at least a fifth of Stormwinds gold before the second war and the Defias. There were three mines aside from the one I now resided in within westfall, all still had gold.
They probably werent as lucrative as they were back in the day, but I knew they still held gold within.
Whatever was left of the Defias was either working within those mines, or currently lay in ambush for passing merchants.
The amount of gold I had on hand was enough to buy-out a medium sized kingdom outright.
I planned on using it well.
When I returned to my new quarters on the Defias Vessel began to plan out the possible ways I could handle my new posistion in Westfall.
The Defias were the almost undisputed rulers of the whole province, and I had all but destroyed them in one fell swoop.
The Alliance would surely want it back, and that would provide a somewhat managable state of affairs so long as I possessed the right people, but it felt almost like a waste to do so.
I could start releasing the zombies into the wild, they required very little in the way of magic to maintain, and with the right use of rituals I could have thousands of them swarming the country side before anyone knew what was going on.
It would keep the Alliance distracted to be certain, but zombies alone werent actually as much as a threat to Stormwind as the Defias were.
Not to mention the dual attentions of the Scourge, and the Alliance that would suddenly be on the place.
That left an option I hadn't wanted to consider this soon.
Conquest.