The characters and settings created by Blizzard Entertainment Inc in this story are owned by their creators. I do not claim them as mine in any way, shape or form. I am not receiving monetary profit from this story and no copyright infringement is intended.
The timeline? This story, like the whole MLFMP series, takes place in an alternate universe where Kael'thas survived in Outland to become King of Silvermoon. The Bloodknights responsible for saving him are still as mean and zealous as we first saw during the Burning Crusade xpac. So everyone's sexy and evil! Well, not-really-evil, just fun-and-slightly-evil.
Note: This is another holiday special! Woohoo! This story helps bridge between "The Embarassing Story of How I Became a Bloodknight" (at this moment, still in progress) and "The Fangirlverse" (also in progress, in typical me-style, writing a gajillion stories at once). And it won't be very long, just a holiday short, so 3-4 chapters, maybe? But that also means the pressure is off, so I'm going to have A LOT of fun with this.
So excited, I haven't done of these in a loooong while and I even get to write about a Tauren. This story is also an homage to "The Romancer Onyxbane", certainly, and "The Romancer Greatfather Winter" which was about another investigator, the well-loved Night Elf rogue, Alessandre. Here's to another totally fun addition to the pooktales-verse: an old-school, yet wiley Pathfinder you don't want ever to cross paths with… a Tauren named Turaho.
Chapter 1: Turaho Runestalker… The Man, The Myth, The Legend
Don't laugh, because every decent Tauren Pathfinder has said this at least once in his career, but I truly do think of Mulgore as a woman.
Look, give me a break here. I'm a Tauren and I just got back from a month of being trapped in Silvermoon. So I'm kind of a rundown sonofabitch at this point.
...Well, if I ever wasn't.
Oh, Mulgore… she's so beautiful whenever you're gone! Sure, you can miss her. The soft green curve of her hills. The powder blue of her dusk sky. Those fiery sunsets… and then you can fight with her, too. Ho man can you—it's worst when you've been away for a long time and she knows it. Whether you fly back home on a wyvern, or you stand on the bow of the zeppelin from Orgrimmar, wind in your mane, or if you've sneaked in on hoof in the night and later you're freshly up that morning, just then ready to see her properly and talk to her... Then you can feel how neglected missus Mulgore is. How, if you say the wrong thing, she'll get bright-eyed and slap you in the face. For cheating. For having been in other grasslands that weren't her sunny fields or atop her hillsides, or for not drinking from her sweet lakes. Poor thing, pretty thing. You'll never win that argument, by the way. And ontop of that, Mulgore, if we Tauren treat her right, she'll go on living and being right forever.
Maybe that comparison is little irreligious of me too, when this is the sacred land that Mu'sha gave us. But sometimes a Tauren has to roam, and nobody goes as far afield, and for stranger reasons than a Pathfinder. Us Tauren Pathfinders? We're a damned weird bunch.
Take me, for one. Pathfinder Turaho Runestalker, once a golden-colored bull, now a splotchy coffee-colored, meandery creature. In my early days, I was willing to go all the way across the ocean and into Lordaeron to help the Forsaken when the last Tauren who did that ended up wafting strange green… smoke, I guess it was, wherever she went and talking in deluded circles.
We already knew about the problem with the Royal Apothecary Society, we were already wondering about Sylvanas back then. (This was in Thrall's time, toward the end.) But hey, I was willing to go fight the good fight anyway. I was an ambitious, hopeful madman. That whole Royal Apothecary Putress mess? That was me. I was the one who uncovered it, and then they got nervous and sloppy and rushed to Northrend to unleash their plague before a certain Pathfinder could get word to our Warchief, or even to the Alliance in time. Turaho Runestalker was the reason Thrall was willing to help Sylvanas re-take the Undercity after Northrend, rather than kicking her directly out of the Horde, you know. I was the one who vouched for her.
Let's not talk about how I feel about her now that she's Warchief Sylvanas. Nobody in the Horde agrees on that… This may be a very cynical joke, but I do get about that whole 'there's no hope' thing. I'm getting on, my hocks hurt whenever it rains—if you're still hoping life gets better as the years go on, you're smoking something!*
Not too soon to make that, is it?
Another thing I'm not-so-well known for, that the storytellers won't say and the history scrolls won't show… Chief Baine always writing to King Anduin? And Anduin actually getting those letters? Another critically important Horde communication not failing at precisely the wrong time? Well, no, that's not me. I'm not the errand boy actually making his way up through Stranglethorn and entrusting in a secure chain of stops through Troll ruin after Troll ruin and then via a certain half-Troll postmaster who doesn't look it so can reside in Duskwood and deliver it safely into the hands of the Royal Stormwind Guard. (Yeah, Tim "Kumanji" Stevenson owes me one for setting him up so nice in the faction he wanted.)
However, I am the Tauren who arranged for that complicated mailing system between Baine and Anduin. I, through my connections, was able to make enough deals on both sides to ensure trust and make sure the Horde can talk to the Alliance if it wants to in another important plague-like Putress crisis. I felt damn bad about that…
And last of all, you can blame me for the Goblins. All Goblins everywhere? No, I won't let you roast me for that. But Goblins in the Horde? Pretty much, that's me.
Why do you think Thrall mysteriously let the Goblins into the Horde when Gallywix was obviously some fink? Pathfinder intelligence strikes, yet again! Thrall knew that he could control Gallywix because I was on that desert island where the Bilgwater Cartel was stranded, when the Alliance was attacking and Gallywix was upset and off somewhere, stuck with his half of the Town-in-a-Box and nobody to confide in. But Thrall wanted us to keep an eye on Gallywix, so of course I went above and beyond and got enough dirt on that old Goblin to bury him, let's say, sixty-six-feet-under, and also do it the minute the rest of the Horde leadership agrees. Sylvanas, Vol'jin, Garrosh, Cairne... they all knew it then and they won't forget it. Not even from the grave. So, if those Goblins ever step out of line, if Gallywix even truly believes he can, I'm fairly certain that the Horde should be secure.
My Gallywix stuff involves a failed circus he was secretly the chief investor for and several species of monkey and Gilbin that got extinct and squashed by these overgrown Elekk he was breeding together with Ogres for cheap… I won't reveal all, but it gets worse than that, if you can imagine, and I still have the, ah… proof. Regardless of how messy and tricky that proof is to keep safely preserved buried under Tanaris. Know this—one whistle in my direction and the whole of Azeroth gives Gallywix the boot, I can assure you of that.
I'm not a famous man, I'm not saying that. I'm just a very good Pathfinder. An excellent one. A Pathfinder whose path you never want to cross… Heh. I love saying that one.
A final thing about Pathfinders. Nobody does their gruntwork so thanklessly, either. Tauren aren't known for being wealthy, for sending people off on extended foreign escapades for wagonloads of gold, nor to save palaces, ransom royalty. No, we do it because our chieftan needs us. Or because someone vulnerable is in danger. We risk our lives over stuff like that. Us Pathfinders are, I guess the word is 'notorious', for not having a price tag hanging from our hides. Generally, we Pathfinders can't be bought. What we do, we do for our family. Maybe it's our Horde family or our Forsaken family, or an extended Azerothian family. And, ontop of that, all Tauren are a very close-knit family. (Grimtotem tribe excepted at the moment.) Pathfinders will do almost anything for our own. "Herd" is the proper phrase, though that's an old word we don't use much anymore, not since the Orcs joined with us and gave old Cairne weird looks for using it. We Tauren, even among the races of the Horde, are constantly in danger of being called animals. As if that would really be so offensive…
Oh, by the way, that arsehole Flight Master that overcharged me by a few gold (I'm still angry thinking about that) when I landed in Thunderbluff a couple days ago is not my family. I am going to smack him toothless one day with the very good, three-fingered left hook I have. When in the heck did Azeroth get so danged expensive? I remember when it was just fifty copper to fly from Orgrimmar over to Thunderbluff… But then again, the Alliance didn't have shaman either in those days, and a hunter's mark was a proper big red arrow over your head. Damn I miss how fun and demoralizing those used to be in the battlegrounds!
So. Women. That's the last thing I need to touch on before I start this account of my actions, before anyone accuses me of anything, uh, inappropriate. I didn't seduce anyone, I didn't set out to have a romance or steal anyone's anything, though maybe a few women still out there might be more than glad enough to remind the courts of Azeroth that I did used to get sidetracked by a pair of eyes and a nice tail (especially if there was no actual, wagging tail), while on my missions.
Yes, I confess that I was a very handsome bull, once. Not that I'm an ugly mug now. Thankfully, at least horns don't age and they suggest a kind of… eheh, virility, whatever your race. Anyway—I used to have this… flair that I didn't really even understand what it was, only that it worked. Show up, toss your horns, let them get a look at that shining gold hide and smile. I used to have it easy. Then over the years, I had to work harder and harder, especially for non-Tauren women. My hooves began to drag a bit, my jokes didn't seem to be so crisp. You know, like that old Hunter's Mark gag I just tried on you? And the bad Sylvanas joke I made earlier. Like that.
Gods and ancestors! I admit now that getting older and becoming less of a romancer was starting to depress me. It felt like I was finally all out of luck with the dames. Just wanna prove I'm no cassanova, I didn't get into this mission for that, no matter how the Knights of the Blood Nexus try to put it. I actually hate how love sort of, lassoed me in at my age and dragged me all over the place like a big idiot when I was trying to do my real work. And I did sense it would probably be my very last mission for the Pathfinders, by the way. I think that made my misery worse. So, all that's officially in my defense.
Hey, so what if I also claim now that I was going through some sort of mid-life panic? Would that get me off clean? (Wait, I guess I can't come out and announce that and expect any kind of entity of justice, to take it serious.) But I mean, to let myself get so agitated by King Kael'thas Sunstrider himself, that punk, and then play his little matador game the way I did! While Greatfather Winter was in the middle of it, too. And every time I think of that Kael'thas now, I see so much RED…
Actually, I wonder what Tauren women who are Pathfinders think of the mother-land while they're gone? It's not pertinent to my mission, but I figure, all things being equal, and this is maybe my last good chance to reflect, I should at least try to end my little 'about me' bit with something that doesn't make me sound like some kind of bulls-only boy. Not like Kael'thas. At least I'm not that outdated.
Well, I did ask one, once, a woman Pathfinder. But she's someone I'm not on very good terms with these days, so I might be a bit biased now that I'm recounting the conversation.
I said something to her like, "Does Mulgore feel like a long lost lover to you, Meydiri, whenever you return home? I think I miss her about that much when I'm gone."
"Turaho, you're an idiot."
Did you see her go for the throat there? After I actually went out of my way to try. I'm also clearly far too bitter about females to bother trying to get involved with another one. So, more proof of my innocence!
"…Right, but what's your answer?" I said, "How would you describe your particular relationship with Mulgore? How does a woman Pathfinder see it?"
Meydiri still resisted, determined to stare down the Mulgore sunset warming our naked bodies (more on that later), "Look, Turaho. You can have actual real emotions, you know. Your whole brain doesn't have to be so one-track."
I kept my mouth shut rather than say what I really wanted to say, right then, near the obvious end of our relationship.
Meydiri with her sage amethyst eyes found her way back to when she was good and ready, "Mulgore is just my home sometimes, Turaho. It's land. Maybe the flight master does charge too much when you get finally get back here. Maybe the constant drumming gets annoying at times. Maybe you're glad to race through the plains on kodo-back, or not, if it's raining, I don't know. But I don't need to have some sexual fantasy about it to make me feel better."
"But you do love it? You miss it and feel like you've got a part of you back once you're home again?" Maybe it was another way for me to find out if I was getting too old and too weird, I guess. That kept slipping out.
She resumed inspiring me whether I wanted it or not. Sweet girl, "I find my sense of home more in people, rather than places. I've learned that over the years, after so many missions. Turaho, maybe if you thought that way and invested more in your relationships with people…"
I can't remember what she was talking about after that, actually. My mind had circled back to the fact that I had said absolutely nothing about sexual fantasies, and she'd accused me of it, so she was being unfair. Eh, I was nitpicking. Then again, I am nearly touching upon a romantic fantasy now with this season's mission, so I guess now that's another stupid point in Meydiri's court. Anyway…
"…and honestly, that's what I've been waiting for you to do, Turaho. It could heal so much about us."
I hadn't heard that part. Which also means I hadn't actually meant to speak over her, "Ah, I see! So you feel at home right now, with me, because I'm here, and I'm looking out over Mulgore with you. So that actually proves my point in the first place! Meydiri, you complain too much."
Our conversation did not end as well as you think. Actually, it was our last conversation. Not that I'm bitter. She bit me.
Still not laughing? Damn, I must be very rusty.
Welp. I, Turaho Runestalker, have an important decision to make tonight. A life-changing one. So I think it's important to sit down now that it's all over and write down as much as I can remember about what has happened, before it strikes midnight. Last day of the year. Last month of the year. Last chance to make up my mind about which way this old Pathfinder is going to go. Being honest, I'm a very good hunter who never felt so lost.
So where's the beef? Well to sum it up, the Blood Elves have made me an offer and I'm very tempted to take it and make the biggest mistake of my life. And also make the worst enemies in my life because it will involve burning the last of my bridges here in Mulgore. Missus Mulgore will definitely dump me too, at long last.
And I thought this graying bull was done with drama and foolishness. I'm getting too old for this crap…
By the way, I hadn't even heard of the Knights of the Blood Nexus back then, let alone that they were Blood Elves-only. Just wanna be clear, in case you sense this feels like a set-up.
Whatever her true intentions, meeting Saturna Sunstrider on that day one month ago, at that time in my life, I assure you, it was my fate.
Of all the huts in Mulgore, she had to walk into mine…
Additional Note:
*In this universe, Sylvanas has not burned down Teldrassil, but I really couldn't resist making that 'no hope' joke for LOLs. Turaho really is bitter right now!
