Lessons from Gnomeregan

I definitely felt a bit better this morning; I was still bruised, but it didn't hurt unless I put a lot of pressure on it.

It may be darker than usual in Duskwood, but the lighting still changes enough that it's easily possible to tell what time of day it is if you pay attention, and it was not too long after dawn when we each hired a gryphon back to Stormwind. We'd been tasked with showing a journal to someone in the Cathedral, but I needed to replenish some of my supplies anyway, and perhaps work on my leather crafting a bit, so I vaguely planned on spending most of the day in Stormwind.

Daari had different plans, though. When we'd gone to Ironforge to get the candy for Jesper, a few gnomes in the Tinker Town sector had requested our assistance with Gnomeregan — the former gnomish capital, now occupied by troggs, that the gnome Reias had mentioned to me. At the time, we had been busy, and told them such; they informed us that if we should ever have some spare time, they would welcome our assistance. Daari apparently thought today would be a good day for that, and we hadn't spent very much time in Stormwind at all before I found myself dashing after her toward the Deeprun Tram.

Of course, she had a slight head start, and I only got into the station just as the tram she was on was pulling out, so I was forced to catch the next one a few minutes later. By the time I got to Ironforge, she'd already managed (in her own brand of broken Common) to inform the gnomes that we'd be ready to go to Gnomeregan today, and they'd already assigned a gnomish representative, who introduced himself to me as "Dougie," to come with us.

Things got a little easier once I showed up and was able to translate. We finalized our preparations, and headed out the font gates of Ironforge, allowing Dougie to lead us to Gnomeregan.

I learned two things quickly:

• Gnomeregan is not far from Ironforge at all.
• It's underground, just like Ironforge, probably because it's so cold in Dun Morogh.

I was more than happy to run the whole way, just to stay warm, and even so, I was uncomfortably chilly until we actually descended down the entrance ramp and out of the snow. That's when I made a third discovery.

• There are bad gnomes in Gnomeregan.

I remembered being told about the troggs that had invaded, and so I'd at first assumed that these things that looked like diseased gnomes were the troggs, but I voiced my surprise that they were invaded by something that looked so similar to themselves. Dougie informed me that these were not troggs; they were, in fact, gnomes, but they'd been poisoned during the process of trying to fend off the invaders, and now they were bad because of it. As if on cue, one of these "leper gnomes" attacked him, and he defended himself, easily dispatching it.

That was enough for me; these leper gnomes obviously were bad and needed to be taken out, so I started shooting at any that got too close to us, and had Kisha help with the attack.

Once we got down deeper, we found the actual troggs — the former city was practically overflowing with them. I needed no confirmation from Dougie that we needed to do something about it. We cleared our way along for a while — the air quickly became stale, though still breathable — and soon, at the back of a side tunnel, I learned something else:

• There are good gnomes in Gnomeregan.

Well, obviously Dougie was a good gnome, but there were non-poisoned gnomes who were still apparently making permanent residence there, trying their best to clean up and retake the city, although they didn't seem to be making very much progress.

The first such gnome we came across called herself Emi Shortfuse; she was a demolitions expert, which immediately caught Daari's attention. Whatever she was trying to do, she was having problems with Troggs interrupting her, so she asked if we'd be able to hold them off for a few minutes while she set some charges to close the small tunnels they were coming in through. We gladly did so — Daari especially, since I think she would have been very disappointed if we'd failed and Emi didn't get to blow anything up.

Kisha, me, Daari and her white cat, and Dougie, talking with Emi Shortfuse.

The other good gnomes were not that much further along; they'd managed to reclaim and clean a small section of the city, and it seemed that they were staging most of their activities from there. They even had machines there which could clean off nearly anything; we tried it on some of the junk we'd picked up around the city, and managed to get some worthwhile supplies!

We couldn't stay in the safe area forever, though, and we went on into the rest of the infested city with the gnomes' blessing.

Most of the rest of the time spent there blurs together in my memory; it was just a continuous stream of troggs, leper gnomes, and mechanical contraptions — until we got to a tunnel filled with dwarves!

These were bad dwarves, though — or at least, that was the only assumption I could make, as Dougie didn't hesitate to attack them. I suppose if gnomes and dwarves lived together in Ironforge, it made sense that they would in Gnomeregan as well; and if the gnomes could be corrupted by poison, then there should be no reason dwarves couldn't. But I never heard them called "leper dwarves," and they seemed to be much healthier than the leper gnomes, so I'm not certain. Regardless, although they put up a bit more of a fight, they were still no match for us, and we finally came to a dead end with a single mechanical device in it.

Dougie told us that it was the gnome that had ordered the poisoning that had killed and tainted a good many gnomes; once I looked closely, I could see that the machine was, in fact, piloted by a leper gnome. We attacked, and eventually managed to destroy his machine — I honestly don't know if the pilot perished with it.

Our gnomish escort seemed satisfied, though, and we trekked back up out of the tainted city, across the frigid hills of Dun Morogh, and back into Ironforge to report our success.