An Epic Journey of Epic Proportions
Last night, my raid leader was looking for fools -- ahem, volunteers -- to undergo an "Epic Journey of Epic Proportions", as he called it. I love the random and offbeat things that one ends up doing in WoW (from random Molten Core pick-up groups to helping out guildies with crazy quests), so I signed up.
The epic journey in question? Infiltrating four dark, dastardly dungeons in order to "Steal fire! Become men! Obtain red (absolutely not pink at all) wisp minions!". With the Midsummer quests ending soon, and a sudden desire for rare pets, an adventure was on the cards.
Surprisingly, not many others seemed keen, so the group that finally set off comprised two mages, one priest and myself, a feral druid. Our first stop was with the friendly ogres in Dire Maul, who enveloped us in their crushing embrace; after a slight detour to visit the Arena, we embarked on wholesale ogre slaughter, visited Knot Thimblejack and finally found ourselves at the ceremonial fire.
A little gloating later, and it was time for dungeon number 2: LBRS. Out of the four, this was the only one I was really familiar with, and although taking the long route proved a fatal mistake, we found a sneaky way across to the fire. Leaving corpses strewn in our wake, a messy defeat of Mother Smolderweb and some nasty experiences with spiders meant we were glad to reach the fire and its comforting warmth.
Tired and yet somehow jubilant, we made our way to the Eastern Plaguelands for our third dungeon, Stratholme. With only four of us, the fight was tough, with a couple of "oops" moments -- but we equipped our Argent Dawn tokens, tallied up a number of deaths from both skeletons and Scarlet mobs, and stole the fire. We took on Timmy for good measure -- well, we were just passing.
At this point, it was mooted that we give up and come back later (it being very late at night by now). This was quickly flattened: we brave adventurers adventured on, towards the halls of the Scholomance. The fights here were interesting; tiredness, squishiness and the newcomer Lord Blackwood led to death and even a wipe, but we eventually prevailed, stealing the final fire at nearly 4am.
Five hours of travel and death, killing and being killed. Was it worth it? Undoubtedly. The exhilaration from finally getting the wisp was amazing, although it comes second to defeating final raid bosses -- but that's another story. During our quest, the fires and wisp themselves became secondary to the challenge of 4-manning instances and working together -- all told, it was one heck of a ride. Thoroughly recommended.
[Many thanks to Magefist, Maudlin and Jadis of Shadowsong (EU) who made this crazy journey possible!]
