A Quick Inventory Before Bed

4/21, night

I went through my bag first. It seemed like an easy place to start. I had an empty waterskin, some jerky, another two shirts, an extra pair of pants, three copper pieces, and a malachite necklace set in polished copper.

I was hunting for a smart phone or magic book for a few minutes before checking the necklace. When I grabbed the necklace by the stone, I could suddenly see a menu appearing in the air in front of me.

Retinue status: 1 member

Binding status: 1/0/0/5

Missions: 2 unread

Demiplane

Status

Shop: 2 credits

Functions

I flipped through the menus quickly. I was the one member of my own retinue, and was in good physical and spiritual health, but fatigued. I had one piece of tempest jewelry free, zero actively subduing a target, zero being worn by members of my retinue, and could have a maximum of five pieces that aren't currently being worn by retinue members. Great.

I was a bit more nervous about missions, as the company didn't really tell me anything about them. This was a beta test so they might even change up the entire reward structure on me at any time. I opened up the menu and found the following:

Minor mission: instantly replaced, can be discarded 1/day at no cost, local missions

The Brotherhood is Hungry

Assist the defias thug Darcell Torp in feeding her gang, currently occupying the Northshire Vineyar. Her gang of 30 defias thugs must be in a position to eat as much as they want for one day, and you must be responsible for it in some way.

Reward: a single use company stamp

Discard?

Standard mission: new mission 1/day, maximum 5 missions. Discard for one credit. Distance and difficulty are considered when determining rewards. Severity of penalties scales with severity of infraction.

That Witch

Discredit Drusilla la Salle, a human woman in Northshire Abbey, so that a meaningful proportion of Northshire Abbey will distrust her. If you do not draw attention to yourself in the process, you will be penalized.

Reward: Drusilla will be instantly captured, and you will receive an arcane orb

As I looked at each mission, I got a vision in my head of each target. Darcell was an emaciated looking young red haired woman wearing ragged brown leathers and a badly dyed red mask. Drusilla was a haggard looking middle aged woman with long grey streaked black hair. I knew I'd be able to recognize them without much difficulty.

Both rewards seemed worth pursuing, and the tasks reasonably doable. I don't know if Drusilla actually deserves to become an outcast, but if she's in my retinue she can leave along with me once I finish Alliance Boot Camp. I need every advantage I can get.

My demiplane was empty. I tossed most of my belongings in there, touching my meager money and food and willing them to vanish into my inventory over the course of a few seconds. My status mostly contained an overview of what I spent my starting budget on, and the shop hasn't changed.

Functions was kind of funny after all the rest; a flashlight, a camera, a note pad, a clock, a calculator, a simplistic map with major settlements marked, and what amounted to a phone. All accessible by just holding my necklace and willing it. The disguises and biological changes functions were more exciting, but I wasn't going to play around with them. Not yet.

I considered my situation. The Warcraft universe seems nice and fun at a glance, but, canonically speaking, horrifyingly brutal world wars happen roughly annually. I needed to plan or I might get ripped apart in a demon invasion or zombie apocalypse in a year or two. The missions will give me something to do, but I need some goals.

First, I need to get myself strong enough in a fight to handle myself when I'm inevitably attacked by demons, or zombies, or orcs from another dimension; training at Northshire should hopefully get me started on that, since the explicit purpose of training here was getting people up to speed.

Second, I need to build up my retinue, preferably with women that can help keep me safe and well connected. Once I've done that, I should be able to try to be proactive. If I keep these priorities in mind I should probably be able to survive through the next five years. Of course, I stopped playing halfway through the Mists of Pandaria expansion, so that's where most of my prior knowledge will run dry. Eh. Who am I kidding? This will probably be over way before then, and that should probably fill me with existential dread. I smiled. I'm pretty ok with that, given that the other option was being raw material; stress resistance was a good purchase.