Apparently a gaggle of nobles spent all last night hiding festive eggs around Durotar, most of them containing candy surprises, but a few of them with more valuable items. Ysa wanted to look for a dress – I accompanied her to dispose of all the excess candy. I just hate to think of those poor sweets melting in the sun, uneaten, all that lovely chocolate running into the red dust… I couldn’t let it happen! Orcs value a noble death in battle, so I’m sure candy from Orc lands would feel the same. All told, I managed to send a phalanx of a dozen candy bars to their glorious demise – I also wiped out of a score or more of lollipops and at least a regiment of chocolate squares.
Unfortunately the blazing Durotar sun must’ve been especially strong that day, because I began to feel just a little ill. To avoid heatstroke, I was forced to beat a hasty retreat, but the chocolate of Durotar will sing of me in song and story for years to come.

Last night Fineas invited me to help explore an archaeological dig in the heart of dwarven territory. The results were amazing! As we administered the colonoscopy of inquiry upon the bowels of antiquity, we unearthed polyps of discovery both benign and malignant. First, there were the troggs, creatures I’d first encountered deep below Orgrimmar, but seen here in their full robust vigor, large as gorillas with pustules the size of my head! Then there were the earthen, and the ancient statues, and the room with the discs… and the astonishing revelation that dwarves and troggs are related, both the results of some earlier generation of experimenters known as ‘the creators’!
The skills of the creators certainly ‘dwarf’ mine at this point, but with this new knowledge, perhaps I’ll unlock the secret of dwarf-trogg crossbreeding – it will require a lot of alcohol, and probably nearly as much soap, but I’m sure it’s possible! Who knows… maybe in some far future time, my descendants will crack open a vault in the ruins of Silvermoon and pry discs describing the origin of the dwoggs from my crumbling, skeletal fingers! I can only dream!

I really ought to have written this up earlier – things have been busy lately what with attacking castles in the swamp and nearly being eater by trolls and gorillas and MOSQUITOS in the jungle and all manner of other diversions. So before it slides out of my head entirely, here’s what happened with Kaste’s fingers.
We traveled to Dun Morogh… exhausting journey… and managed to find a donor. We tried to negotiate for his fingers, but he just up and attacked us! Well, one thing led to another and he ended up buying the snow farm, and, well, there was no sense in looking a gift hand in the mouth. So I popped the fingers off of Mr. Antagonistic and onto Kaste and presto! Five fingered hands! They looked a little funny but they worked fine! Now that I’ve mastered the art of doing this operation on trolls, I’ll have to try it on a less naturally regenerative race. Gnomes are inquisitive, aren’t they? I’m sure I could find a volunteer in the gnome ruins where I got this lovely hat… but the hat is a story for another time. Right now I’m talking about fingers. Where was I? Oh yes, they worked perfectly! Eventually some of them went numb and fell off, but other than that, a total success!

It took a great deal of effort and many wrong turns, and by the end of the week I was very glad that I learned how to grab escaping ghosts and shove them back into their bodies, but I was successful! I was able transplant my subjects’ fingers onto the opposite hands, onto his feet, into his ears … anywhere, all over his body! Also, I put a row of fangs down his back, as a bonus. Subject looks impressively fearsome and will probably become the champion of his tribe as soon as his sanity returns!
Now that I know I can do this, it’s time to get Kaste his extra fingers! The sole problem is that while forest trolls are absolutely growing on trees around here, the only ice trolls I can track down are a few settlements living in Dun Morogh, deep in the dark, cirrhosis-ridden liver of the dwarven kingdom. I only hope that we can convince the guards at the mountain pass that our mission is worthy – but I suspect we may be getting hammered for science.

Kaste approached me recently with an unusual request – could I add two more digits to each of his hands? I’m not sure why he wants them, but far be it from me to look a gift experimental surgical procedure in the mouth! If I can manage to mult-dactyl him up to a full fistful of fingers, who’s to say I couldn’t graduate to whopping a few extra arms on here and there? That’s what I love about being on my own, whenever I wanted to delve into anything fun, Mother would always complain about “madness” this and “creating abominations in the eyes of all that is decent” that and so on. If somebody hadn’t dared to create, the world never would have known marvels like the shrink ray and the two-headed ogre!
I bribed one of the local Amani trolls with giant growth potions to agree to be my test subject. I think I’ve finally got that one almost down – the last batch I made just turned my left thumb really big for an hour but now I’m sure I have it right. Anyway, his name is Zeg, but for convenience’ sake I’ll simply refer to him as Digital Transplant Subject A. I don’t really know how I’m going to move his fingers around, but I guess experimental surgery is a little like dancing – you’ve just gotta get over your self-consciousness, jump out on that dance floor and figure it out as you go!

Another excursion to Orgrimmar today – I saw more of the city this time. I came across a gathering by the shores of a carefully cultivated poor of water. It was a bit overwhelming, being surrounded by so many huge musclebound monoliths (and quite a number of Forsaken), but they seemed friendly and polite, and I was lucky enough to hear some authentic troll and Tauren folklore firsthand.
Just before I left for home, I had a very fortuitous encounter! I was making my way along the Drag — a shopping arcade — and happened to trip over an orc who was lying face-down along the side of the street. Obviously, he was examining the tiny ecosystem of the gutter! Having gone through the usual phase of obsession with urban microclimates myself (and what young women in the bloom of life does not?) I instantly sensed a kindred spirit. He was so committed to his work, he didn’t even appear to have bathed or changed his clothes in weeks.
Of course, I introduced myself at once. He looked me over, his beady eyes resting on the bulging packs I was carrying, and he broke out into a grin. He was as pleased to see me as I was to see him! “My name is Ratstabber,” he replied. “Ratstabber the Completely Trustworthy. Sometimes known as Good Ol’ Honest Ratstabber.” I was delighted that I hadn’t disrupted his work, and said as much – he was so humble about it, he didn’t even seem to consider his activities worth mentioning, and kept trying to change the subject. Again and again he came around to all the things I was carrying – I happened to have found a patch of silverleaf and packed away all of it I could fit, to sell back in Silvermoon.
“Oh, no, no!” he said in horror. “Why, you’ll wear yourself out lugging all that around! I happen to have a little side business in the laundering of various goods, merely something I dabble in to support my three sick grandmothers. Whenever you scrounge up anything saleable, send it to me and I’ll move it for you and send the money back posthaste! I’ll get the best price for you, you can be sure of that. Just put your business in my hands, and you’ll never worry again!” He paused to let out a hacking cough, bend over, and vomit onto his boots. “Of course, I will be forced to take a small percentage of the profits – just to fund a … a long-term study I’m conducting to measure the effects of drinking and carousing on gambling performance.”
That sounded reasonable enough, and it WOULD be ever so nice not to have to cart everything to the bazaar myself. I agreed to Mr. Ratstabber’s proposal, and a deal was struck! From now on, he shall hold my financial pursestrings, and no more will I have cause to waste another minute worrying about money!

The other day, I was approached by a friendly-looking orc and given a pamphlet. Apparently his organization was offering free trips to Kalimdor – the only catch was one had to do some work in a lumber mill while there to qualify. Well, it was a good chance to see a distant land, and the work part didn’t sound so bad – I wanted to see how the Orcish industrial system functions, anyway, and if it’s really based on pounding chunks of flint together like Mother says (it turns out that it isn’t.)
I sign a few papers and before I know it I’m being pushed out into a room that smells of sawdust and sweat, with a bunch of other “mill workers” I’ve never seen before. It’s only after the cross-continental portal has closed that they explain that the REAL reason we’re there is that the mill is under near-constant attack by saboteurs. And we’re there to stop them – or failing that, give them some expendable targets so the people who actually know how to run the machines don’t get hurt.
Well, I don’t really appreciate being tricked like that, but the situation wasn’t the fault of the workers, and they DID need our help. It’s an ugly business to cut down sections of forest, but it’s just plain silly to expect a population as large as the orcs not to make any sort of ecological footprint – if the Kaldorei really wanted to cut down on logging in Ashenvale, putting a few Teldrassil-sized trees in the Barrens would provide for the orcs’ lumber needs for decades. So I can only conclude the decision to go the “attack” route was motivated by the same old zero-sum childishness that seems to be so common these days.
Unfortunately, my fellow sawmill-defenders were, for the most part, not the sharpest fish in the barrel. Some seemed drugged or brain-damaged, others ran and hid at the slightest sign of danger but still agitated for payment. I guess that’s what you get when your security force is made up of random people pulled off the street. I tried my best to keep us standing, but by the end of the day I was so sore I could barely move from the repeated pummellings and the stumblings-into-the-sawblade and whatnot.
Still, it IS a good way to observe the orcish work environment. Conclusion: the orcish work environment isn’t especially litigious.

I ought to go into more detail about the my first trip to Orgrimmar. It’s a harsh place, all red rocks and dust and houses built into canyon walls – beautiful, but wild and inhospitable, practically daring you to attempt survival. It could’ve gotten quite uncomfortable, but fortunately I spent most of my time in the city sewer.
The others (I was with Kaste, and Ysabelle, and Zaliron, and … oh dear, I forgot her name) didn’t seem to think my assessment of the cavern was accurate. Well, certainly I’ve never seen a sewer that was quite so on fire before, and it may have had a fancy name like Ragefire Chasm, but let’s be realistic. Orgrimmar is built in a canyon, a canyon with no real drainage system leading outside. So there’s only one way to describe the lowest point in the city, and that’s SEWER. Actually, the magma was probably a good thing, as it provided a quick and merciful death for any poor creature still lingering on after a trip through the orcish digestive system.
The place was full of demon wranglers. I do rather wish that my first real opportunity to socialize with the orcs hadn’t been so attacking-me oriented, but apparently they had some kind of hideout down there, closed to the public, and that whole rigmarole.
At least the flames seem to have helped cool Zaliron’s hopeless ardor for me … even though they’re flames. I do hope he gets the message that he’s not going to be getting into my pants. I have enough problems getting into them myself.
Sadly my hearthstone malfunctioned and I found myself back in Silvermoon before we had fully explored the place or identified the strange orb we found deep within. I’ll make a return trip someday… and next time, I’ll bring waders.

Finally, after some years of wheedling and prodding, I’ve been able to convince Mother that I am mature enough to leave home and begin my great project. Well, perhaps “convince” is too strong a word. Frankly I wonder if she didn’t just get to the point where she’d rather risk me being eaten by ogres than have to listen to me anymore. “Fandaleen,” she would say, “if I have to listen one more word of those meandering crackpot theories I swear I’ll throw myself from the top of the Sunspire!” Then she would tear big chunks of her hair out. Sometimes I think the only ones who appreciate my theories are the town wigmakers, who always send me a lovely card on Winter’s Veil.
Anyway, poor Mother won’t have to be driven to the brink of frothing wild-eyed insanity any longer, because now I have this journal to talk to, and a book can’t go mad. As far as I know. Oh, and I can also speak to the members of the Silverguard, the organization I joined. Mother absolutely insisted I join something so that I didn’t end up living in a crate and eating poisonous weeds to survive. Those are her words, not mine, I know how to tell which weeds are poisonous, and I wouldn’t eat them. Especially not since I’m still working through the fruit basket and all the chocolates from Mother’s therapist and masseuse.
What’s that you say, journal? It’s ambitious of me to plan a vast enclyclopedia cataloguing all the information in the universe, garnished with explanatory essays, moral lessons, cross-references and little cartoons to illustrate the finer points? Why, yes, I am aiming high, but I have experienced so many amazing things in the past week, I’m sure it won’t take all that long! I met Ysabelle, the woman whose room is next to mine, and Kaste, her troll servant, as well as a nice-seeming young man named Achates and another boy named Zaliron who appears to be in estrus all the time. I’ve seen the eastern Amani camps, the eldritch groves of the Ghostlands, and the burning tunnels of Orgrimmar’s sewage system.
About the only downside to all this adventure is that transportation has been sorely lacking. I’ve explained to the hawkstrider salesman that I’m not built for running everywhere, but apparently it’s a lot of “too inexperienced” this and “aren’t you the one that crashed that cart into the crystal vase store last year” that. At least when I get to the R’s I’ll have lots to say about red tape. Until then it looks like I’m stuck on foot. Oh well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to burn off some of the calories from the complimentary ham I received from the lady who sells Mother those little pink tranquilizer pills.