Stormwind has changed.
I don’t quite remember how many months it’s been since I departed for Northrend. Twelve? Sixteen? Up north the days bleed into nights, and the nights into days, and the weeks slip by in endless twilight, until a year goes uncounted and all that it’s been spent on is cracking long-dead bones and sundering brittle armor from the husks of walking corpses. Impossible to really know up there, the passing of days. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my long years, it’s that man’s work is never done in this world. Each one of those days and weeks we must wrestle for, tear from fate’s own hands. Usually with blood and iron.
On the mercenary ship, I looked forward to returning. The coarse company, the piss-water those sellswords called ale, the stink of confined quarters… none of it mattered then. Stormwind lay across the seas, the jewel of humanity, a bastion of hope and warmth, with its cobbled streets that my feet knew so well, the grand keep, and the Cathedral, the Light’s own hearth nestled at the center of the civilized world. My home.
Home. It wasn’t until after I stepped off that ship, a sack of belongings over my shoulder, that I realized what home meant, and how much it had changed.
I’d heard the tales of the destruction that damned dragon had wreaked, but to see the torn earth and burnt towers made something in my stomach fall. Such a strong, proud city, and it had been wounded as easily as I’d wound a rabbit. Something like anger came over me first. Why? For what mad reason? But that subsided within a fortnight. Who can understand the mind of an Aspect? Fathom its worldly schemes?
A feeling of emptiness followed. I realized, as I wandered the rebuilt streets of my youth, that I recognized very few faces. Those that replaced the ones of my memory were both young and old, of all races and calls, of orders noble and petty. It jarred me when I witnessed a dwarf wielding arcane magics just as my old human companions had, hurling spheres of flame and frost for both practice and war. The Cathedral’s clergy had nearly doubled in size, reinforced by an influx of gnomish priests, a people I had though agnostic and secular. But perhaps the strangest phenomenon was for the distinctive Gilnean accent to once again fall across my ears, but to turn and see a feral beast not unlike the brutish races of the Horde. It took some time to learn and understand the Gileans' plight and their Worgen curse, but still I was left unsettled. Who were these people who inhabited my city, who had appeared from long-forgotten realms and risen to face the challenges of the modern day? Though I did not begrudge them their presence, I could not help but feel alone.
My elderly mother still lives in her Elwynn homestead, and I visited to find that my frequent letters from Northrend had indeed reached her door. She hugged me, gave me a kiss on each cheek and one on my forehead, tears in her eyes as she spoke of how happy and proud she was of her son who had done his part to protect our people from the greatest threat the world has ever known. And sadly fulfilled that the traitor prince was slain. We were not of Lordaeron, but as bygone Azeroth’s sister kingdom, the prince’s death brought some satisfaction to us. I stayed another fortnight with my dear mother, bringing spoils of war that would support us both for years to come, and ensuring she was well cared for. I found the local farmer that I had asked to watch over her while I was gone, and pressed in his palm a ruby the size of a man’s eye. He was, to say the least, thankful. I did not tell him that I had, in fact, pried it from the eye-socket of a skeletal warrior.
On the fifth week of my return, I set quill to parchment and listed all those I still knew in Stormwind and all those factions that recognized my name. The list was short. A few retainers from the Silver Hand, old officers long since retired – one of whom was half senile – and an order whose numbers had dwindled so much that it could hardly be called more than a guildmaster and his closest friends. Hardly a list. My companions were few enough that I knew even my distaste for politics would have to be set aside, if I were to win allies.
But one night I slipped into a Dwarven District tavern, and the old ambience rushed forth from every crack in those worn, wooden walls. It was so much like the Stormwind I knew, the Stormwind of years past, that I could not help but grin and order a few drinks more than I normally would stomach. It was that night that I struck up a conversation with the barkeep, a middle-aged (by his people’s reckoning) dwarf, and veteran of the Second and Third Wars. Through the hours we exchanged stories of valor and sorrow as patrons shuffled in and out, young men and women oblivious to our verbal reenactment of the very events that had shaped their lives. Eventually, the conversation came to my return from Northrend. I bounced a few names off the dwarf. He shook his head to all of them, except one.
Jarrick Mason. The dwarf said he knew the name but not the man, though he was certain he still frequented the city’s streets. After another round I paid the tab and thanked him, promising to return. He grinned at that, and I would like to believe it was because he enjoyed my company, and not my coin. But at that time it didn’t matter.
Jarrick Mason. At long last, a name I knew. A name I could seize. It was time to put quill to parchment yet again.
