World of Warcraft®

"Hi, you one of the pie people?"

Gentyl looked up at the dwarf lady standing in the doorway of the keep. She was a bit disheveled as if she had traveled a long distance. Pie people was a tag Mika had stuck on them years ago, and it had become a fairly common nickname. How this young dwarf had heard it was a mystery, however. "Please join me," Gentyl said and motioned to the chair at the table where numerous stacks of papers were scattered.

The dwarf grinned and ambled over. "Name's Caasta. Ah'm here ta join. You be Miss Gentle?"

Gentyl blinked. "I see. Pleased to meet you. Aye, Gentyl Turncutt." She poured another cup of tea for herself and another for their visitor. "We do have an application process."

The dwarf took a sip of the tea and wrinkled her nose. "Application. Lahk reading an' stuff?"

Gentyl rummaged through a nearby stack and dragged out a manual and application for the dwarf.

"I have to read all that?!" She had an aghast look something akin to Meriste finding a snake in her cooking pot, not that it had ever happened...over a few times. Broodin tended to hide things he didn't think were supposed to be in the guild hall or kitchen.

"Well, we can get someone to read for you."

Just then a chopper roared to life right outside the doorway. It revved a few times and then a familiar, horrified Delver voice screamed and the chopper squealed away. "Aaaaaaaaauuuuuugh! Git me off thas thin'!"

Gentyl ran to the door in time to see a cloud of dust heading for the stable with a great cat following. Horses bolted from the stalls. Chicken flew and squawked out of the way. Two goats bleated, ran out and smooth over Broodin who was leaping in the air to catch one of the terrified chickens. They ran the length of the cat and disappeared toward the garden. Broodin got up, shook his head and refocused on the hunt.

Gods, they just delivered a new shipment of cherry grog. If that fool dwarf smashed them she would kill him. The thought was followed by a loud crash and splash.

Pia would miss Delver after she didn't miss him.

Delver zoomed out of the stable covered in feathers, straw, and cherry grog, and then headed down the road out of Hearthglen. He was still yelling at the top of his lungs when he disappeared into the distance.

"Umm, yes, about that application." She needed to try and restore some semblance of normality and order. Normality was relative in Pia.

Caasta's eyes were as big as silver coins. "I heard ya have ta faller rules here? Not very good at thet."

"Well, yes, we're a military order, so we do have to faller, er, follow rules."

Gentyl led her back to the table and sat down. She took a long sip of tea and vaguely wondered where the Commander had his whiskey stashed.

"I can faller a couple, Ah guess. Kin I pick them oot?"

"We really need to follow all of them. It's not that bad."

Caasta wrinkled her nose again, took another drink of tea and wrinkled it more. "Do Ah have to pick up stuff? Lahk mah axe? Have ta hang it up an' stuff?"

Gentyl pondered the thought of a floor full of weapons scattered about to tiptoe through in the middle of the night. "Yes, pretty sure you'd need to hang your axe up. We like things neat and orderly here. It's a military thing."

Broodin strolled in with a squawking chicken in his mouth. Feathers and bits of straw flew everywhere.

"Broodin!" Gentyl screamed. "Get rid of that chicken!"

Much to her dismay, he gulped it into that great maw. Two frantically scrambling chicken legs extended out of his mouth like very animated fangs.

"Let that chicken go!" She hit him in the head with a nearby book she sent sailing through the air.

He opened his mouth to yowl and the chicken raced out the door.

"As I was saying," Gentyl resumed. "We need to maintain order here, so, yes, you need to put your things up. I'm sure you can understand how chaotic it would be if people just scattered stuff everywhere."

That, apparently, was the queue for Broodin to haul in a bag of sheep innards. Gentyl pushed the manual toward Caasta. "Perhaps if you can just read this and then we will discuss the application. If you'll excuse me a minute."

Gentyl dashed after Broodin who was hiding behind a couch, gnawing on the bag. She lowered her voice to an angry whisper. "If you don't get that out of here this minute, I am going to skin you myself. We'll have a lovely new rug for those cold winter nights."

Even in the dark, she could see his eyes get big. He chuffed and reluctantly dragged the bag out from behind the couch, then headed toward the door trailing sheep innards behind him from the torn bag.

Caasta watched the sheep innards disappearing around the corner. "Jes invite me. Ah want ta be a pie person. Who cooks tha pie? Dun heard 'boot yer cookin'. No offense, Miss, but Ah was warned about thet."

"We have cooks and some of the Guards like to cook. I don't."

"All raght. Ah'll think aboot it." Caasta got up and walked out the door, the application and manual in her hand.

Gentyl was just about to finish up the ledgers when a dwarf death knight wandered in. "Ye be Miss Gentle?"

"Aye. How can I help?"

"Me sister is all tore up. Sez ye won't let her join tha pie people."

"I said no such thing. I said she needed to read the manual and put in an application."

"Wall, here's tha thing. She dun read an' Ah'm too busy ta read it ta her. So, stop bein' difficult and invite her ta be a pie people."

Gentyl watched the dwarf walk out the door, whistling merrily.

Where was that blasted whiskey?

A Strike Squadron of the 15th Maggot Air Flotilla zoomed down, evading the automatic defensive fire from Hearthglen's many defenses. Captain Escargot twidled his mustache, blue maggot eyes peering through his goggles. The Pia Compound was sighted, and the signal given!

"Ch'toooorrrrrr!"

The first zeppelin bombers swooped in, Ichor bombs dropping!

SPLASH! A direct hit on two dwarves and a cat standing outside a large building.

SUCCESS!

The squadron flew off, signing "It's a Long Way to Tarren Mill, It's a long way to Home..".

Tergen, Delver and Broodin wandered into the keep covered with green slime. All three wore a similar shocked and somewhat dismayed look.

"What have you three been in?" Gentyl asked.

"Nuthin" Delver replied. "We wus jes' standin' thar when some wee flyin' machines buzzed us."

"They bombed us with slime," Broodin added. He tried to lick the slime off and then coughed, sputtered and stuck his tongue out in revulsion. "Don' lick ith," he said with his tongue still hanging out.

The two dwarves stared at him like he'd lost his mind.

"Than the' sang sum Ketchy lil tune aboot long way teh Tauren Mill and flew off," Tergen said.

"Flying, bombing, singing, little...could it have been maggots?"

"Iffen maggots be fat worms then aye," said Delver.

Gentyl sighed. "Abominus. He sent one of his maggot patrols to ichor you. Best go get washed up."

Tergen folded his arms across his chest. "Taint doin' thet. Ah took a bath in March. Taint near March agin already."

Delver shook his head. "Tha's raght. An Ah took one las' month. Ne'er said anythin' aboot takin' a bath e'ery month when ah joined this outfit."

Broodin eyed the upside down washtub he had been recently doused in to get rid of his fleas and fled.

It was going to be a long day. One more thing she owed Abominus for.

((Thanks Abominus. Much fun. For those of you who are wondering, Caasta is a very good friend. She was just having some fun with me and Pia. She does understand the process.))

Gentyl, sorry about this but Castaa asked me to talk to you. Look, I understand that she is stubborn. She has it in her head that you are the leader of the "Pie People" and she wants in your guild more than anything else. She will not follow all of your rules. In fact, she will forget most of them about 10 minutes after you tell them to her. She is a hard worker and a fierce fighter for one so young. I told her to go to the Blue Recluse and see if the "Pie People" were there and just sit quietly and listen. Then she can decide if she REALLY wants to join. I want you to know that I would never use our friendship to pressure you to take her into your guild. Knowing Castaa, she will forget about this soon and move on to something else. Thank you for your understanding. Elvenmoon

Elven, see if you can find Castaa so we can visit. I would love to discuss Pia with her.

((sorry I poofed before we could talk. I'm back and would very much like to visit.))

Gen

Haha...how I missed this, I don't know, but I love it! I will watch out for snakes in my cooking pots from now on.

Cray had been told not to engage in combat since he'd been shot in the shoulder. Same shoulder he'd gotten a spear through only a few short years ago.

This was never good when healers gave Cray such orders.

Not so much for Cray. For everyone around Cray. These doctor's orders always made him grumpy. Well.... grumpier.

The ruckus outside was enough to roust him from his office, where he had been tearing through -- or, more often, tearing up -- paperwork, muttering things like "Nobody needs to know how much we spent at the Feathers tavern last week! We paid the tab, who cares about the rest?" But with the noises coming from outside, he abandoned his efforts.

"SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO DO WORK!" he roared, slamming the door behind him. It wasn't a complete lie. A green-stained Broodin streaked past him in a flash. It was headed for the kitchen.

Cray sneezed and headed in the opposite direction.

He'd barely made it into the foyer of the tower before he could sense the Sepha's bad mood. Oh, Cray could be a grouch.... but in a competition of foul moods, the Sepha could still win. Only a few things could put her in this frame of mind.

"What happened to the cherry grog?" He declined to mention that he'd torn up the delivery notice that had made it into his stack of papers.

"Delver," she frowned, "But that's not--"

Broodin streaked by again. Cray guessed that someone had been in the kitchen. Probably Meriste. She'd probably tried to wash him.

"Abominus," Gentyl finished saying. He'd missed most of this, watching Broodin race towards the gates. But that was important. It was important to know this was going to a completely chaotic waste of a day.

"This makes me want to go hit something," Cray announced. This was met with a fierce glare from the Sepha.

"Have some tea," she said. The words were polite, but it was not an invitation.

There was only one way out of this. "Gust and I are going to pay a visit to Ironforge. We'll order some more cherry grog." That decided, he stalked off towards the stables. An Argent recruit made the mistake of crossing his path, then scampered off after being snapped at. "Don't you have some training to do? Learn to actually hit your target?!"

((OOC: Sorry that Cray obliterated Pia's budget for the month, Gen. Shouldn't let me get hurt like this! :P))