The Battle for the Highlands

The Battle for the Highlands

As for progress, Keya and Java now keep up with their Missions. The others will have to level further and complete certain quests before the Missions table is available.

Keya has been going back and forth between islands trying to find a thread that would guide her to better loot, better quests, and better information about what to tackle. Frustrated by the whole thing, she was mouthing off about how messed up the things were when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

"Raiston Cairn, Recruitment Officer for the 7th fleet, at your service."

Keya stared at him.

"You want action?" Cairn asked.

Keya swallowed, suddenly wary. "I'm not much of a joiner," she said.

"We don't care. Fight with the army, fight with friends, fight solo, we don't care."
 Keya growled. "I'm doing that already. There's nothing here for me."

Cairn shrugged, then said, "Then why not see what the rest of world looks like beyond the islands."

Perhaps it wasn't as simple as that, but that was how Mahakeya joined the 7th fleet army.
A few moments later a loud explosion rocked the town. Keya died with the rest of 7th fleet recruiters.
Other troop ships were still in the harbor, and the 7th fleet soldiers dug out of the wreckage and already began rebuilding.

"This is war," Keya told herself, hardly believing herself. Keya boarded the next troop ship and sailed to the Arathi Highlands. She was going to war against the Horde.

The Castle

This is the first time Keya has been to the Arathi Highlands. Wildshard sometimes talks about the time when Azeroth was the whole world. It's not something Keya understands. To her, there has always been other worlds.

Keya was fascinated, though, and actually looked forward to telling Wild the things she saw and did, and what memories he has, when she gets back.

Once she was at the castle and inside the walls of the Keep, she had some time to look around. She is without flight here. And she's alone.

The Alliance Gets Organized

After a few curt words Keya was cut loose to do whatever took her fancy. She located a corner of the castle where several quests awaited. Keya took the first one, got on her felsaber mount and roamed the country. The Highlands are spider infested, but were a minor irritant. More important was the house and barn on the property . . .  and the swarm of horde soldiers that had taken up residence there. At first she was the only Alliance around. Testing the strength of the enemy, Keya tagged a group of three. Immediately, two of the soldiers advanced on her. Keya fought them off, but she kept taking damage. It was then she saw the arrows from the third soldier. Keya was confident that she could kill all three, but the group was far more organized than expected. More soldiers arrived, and they took notice of Keya.

She tried several times to breach the security but she faced near death several times. Each time she thought she'd cleared a spot to gain some ground, more soliders arrived and drove her back. The goal she'd been given was to kill 20 of the soldiers. She managed just six, at great peril.

 Soon after, though, other alliance contingents began to arrive both solo and in groups. Where  possible, Keya waded in with the groups and helped in the kills while filling her own kill numbers. It wasn't organized, and nobody grouped up that she could see, but eventually Keya got her quota and returned back to the castle.

She was a bit stunned when she saw her reward. She gained a level 340 pair of leggings that jumped her gear score from i282 to i285, which is a significant upgrade.

She'll surely want to try her hand again later on. One thing she won't be doing is hanging around the recruitment table. That could be fatal.
===========================================================
Living Without Addons

Since the latest crash of the Jarte Plus program I use (and stubbornly intend to keep using) Chaitee has had to get used to things like a Mailbox that is nothing but, well, a mailbox. Oh sure, one can still send and receive things through the mail, and Chaitee is getting used to it. She is also using the plain vanilla Auction House. Chaitee had to brush up on her arithmetic to ensure her figuring was correct when making buys and sells. It takes more time and more back and forth to ensure good deals are made, but it's functional. She is also getting used to 24 hour bids and buys instead of 48 hour blocks. Otherwise she is leaving things alone to see just how it goes over a few days. There is at least the possibilty that addons aren't really needed.