Hallow's End

The Trade District of Stormwind City was different today.

Seemingly overnight, the whole district had been decorated with candles, pumpkins with faces cut out of them, skeletons, and so on. I later found out that this theme was in honor was the holiday of "Hallow's End." According to the people seemingly organizing the festivities, it was a celebration of one group of undead breaking away from another group of undead. I wasn't certain why that should be cause for celebration, other than maybe because two divided groups would be less of a problem than one united group, but they were celebrating, so I saw no reason not to participate.

The celebration seemed to consist of two activities: eating large amounts of sweet treats (which were provided free of charge at the inn in the Trade District) and disguising oneself. I myself wasn't too interested in the latter, but I sampled a large amount of the free candy!

When I found Daari, it came as no surprise to me that she'd been enjoying the festivities, and had probably eaten more sweets than was good for her. And she was much more interested in the disguises than I was — when I came across her, she was wearing one of those faced pumpkins over her head! It was obviously hollowed out, and I suppose she could see through the carved face, but it still really must have blocked her vision. And before I knew it, she plopped a second one over my head!

I did not like wearing the pumpkin on my head. I tasted pumpkin before, and I didn't really care for it, so having my head inside a pumpkin produced a strong enough smell that I nearly gagged. I pulled it off before I got sick — that would have been even worse, as there would have been nowhere for it to go. I don't know how Daari could stand it, but she seemed to be enjoying it.

She seemed a bit disappointed that I didn't enjoy having a pumpkin for a head, though, and removed her own pumpkin as well, replacing it instead with a mask in the likeness of a gnome. Of course, she kneeled to get the full effect.

Daari, disguised as a gnome.

Anyway, as it turned out, our assistance was needed in Goldshire, so we made the short walk over to the small town outside of Stormwind's gates. They'd been having trouble with a former knight known as the Headless Horseman, who had been periodically coming to the town and setting it on fire!

We got to the town just as another attack was starting, and sure enough, the buildings were in flames within minutes. A large crowd of people, myself and Daari included, helped with throwing buckets of water at the burning buildings. After the fires were out, there seemed to be enough people there to deal with the horseman himself, so Daari and I left the unnervingly large crowd and started back toward the city.

As we approached the city, I remembered the reason that I'd originally wanted to see Daari that morning. Once again, I'd received a package in the mail with no name on it; I can't imagine that it was actually intended for me, but I had nobody to give it back to, so the contents became mine. The contents, as they were, were a pair of [Swords Deck]s — a deck of cards with a face on it that seemed to be staring at me. It was thoroughly odd, and yet I couldn't stop staring at it — and it seemed that Daari found the one I gave her interesting, too. We decided to see what happened if we used them.

Not ten seconds later, a ghostly image of the person on the face of the card appeared, and she rewarded us with some fine shoulder armor! Then, not a few minutes later, she vanished as quickly as she'd come, but our new armor still remained.

Neither of us really knew what to think, but happy with the new armor, we headed back to the city, making only a quick stop at a farm along the way after an elf we encountered told us she wanted us to see some chickens she was guarding.

Once we got back into Stormwind proper, we took a trip up to the orphanage in the cathedral district, where we'd heard that there was an ill orphan looking for someone to obtain some treats for him. When we talked to him, it turned out that his name was Jesper, and he wanted treats from not only Stormwind, but Ironforge and Darnassus as well! But Daari and I agreed to help him — it would have been very hard to say no to a sick orphan — and decided to do the longest part of the journey first, which was the trip to Darnassus.

Fortunately, the Stormwind Harbor had recently been completed, which would take a little bit of time off our journey — instead of having to first travel up to Menethil, where we'd originally arrived on this continent, we could instead take a boat directly from Stormwind to Auberdine, and from there to Darnassus. So Daari and I headed to the harbor, and caught a boat, which we are presently riding on.