Postcards from Gameville

Children’s Week! A time when adventurers selflessly donate their time to instill hope and happiness into those youths who have lost their families to the wars that have been waged across our lands.

In reality, this means you become a field-trip chaperone to a class of one, and all you need to do to qualify for the job is be level 10. I’m not entirely sure that’s a good set of qualifications. You could be level 10, summon evil demons from the outer regions, still say obnoxious things like “l0l u n00b pwned lern2play” on the general channel, and be controlled by someone who doesn’t even pay rent. Not exactly the kind of role model I’d want for a kid who’s lost pretty much everything.

I, however, being the bastion of respectibility and keen intellect honed by the scientific method, was perfectly capable to step up to the challenge of mentorship, and so I did. Randis was a plucky human youth. Plucky and freaking tall, I mean, I’m an adult and this kid stands taller than me, my hair notwithstanding!

Randis already had grand ideas of what he wanted to do. “Let’s go see the dam in Loch Modon!” he exhuberantly asked. “And there’s a pirate ghost by this lighthouse in Westfall and the bank in Darnassus looks like a bear!” And I’m like, uh, hey, kiddo, I’m 10th level, we’re not going to survive the trip. But Randis was persistent, like he had the best idea in the world, glowing above his little noggin.

I checked in with a priest friend of mine who sets me up with threads. He told me that he got temporary custody of Randis last year, and he wanted to see the exact same things. “Afterwards he wanted me to get Jaina Proudmoore’s autograph for him, and some ice cream.”

Right. Okay. I’m an adventurer, right? We can go visit a few siteseeing spots. How dangerous can that be?

The first time Randis and I died, we were running across the plains of Westfall. We had left the road to head southwest towards the coast, and at some point we got too close to some of those Defias rebels that camp there. One ran over and we couldn’t get away fast enough, and Nova Burst can be cast only so often. As Randis and I appeared as ghosts in the graveyard, I suppressed the urge to say something to the kid about this being exactly what happened to his parents. There’s a first time for everything when you’re that young, and I figured the next time I tell him, “Hey, don’t go over there or we’ll die,” it’ll have some deeper meaning for him.

But eventually we arrived at the lighthouse where the ghostly pirate captain was playing cribbage by his lonesome. Randis looked like he was going to hide behind me, but realizing that it would be physically impossible to do so, he went up to the ghost and said, “Hi.”

“Yaarrrr,” the ghost replied.

“Awesome,” said Randis, who immediately after had already had enough, despite his earlier enthusiasm. He started tugging on my sleeve to see the Stonewraught Dam.

We made it back to Sentinel Hill without incident, and from there we flew to Thelsamar.