The Mage They Call Jayne(z), Part 4: The New Adventures of Jayne(z) Quest

When we'd last left our heroic hero of heroes, he'd just finished traipsing through two of the new Northrend instances, Azjol-Nerub and The Nexus, merrily slaughtering everything in sight that could potentially drop phat lewt. Good times were had by all. Well, except the creatures that got slaughtered but nobody cares about them anyway, right?

While I'm not saying that there's necessarily anything wrong with wanton and whimsical wholesale slaughter, whether in the name of shiny new gear or just for fun ... but sometimes it's nice to have a bit of context, you know? So, I decided to give my dungeon-running muscles a rest and go get my quest on in the Howling Fjord.

I pick up where I left off before absconding on my dungeon-crawling adventure, the Forsaken outpost of Vengeance Landing. As one might expect from the name, Vengeance Landing is the foothold of Sylvannas Windrunner's armies in Northrend, and as High Executor Anselm makes very clear when talking to him, they are there for one reason and one reason alone: to destroy Arthas and get their revenge.

Apparently they're not too busy to give me quests, though. Hooray!

Despite the presence of a handful of mutual enemies like the Vrykul and the Scourge, old hatreds die hard, and there's a perpetual skirmish line not far off from Vengeance Landing where Sylvannas' Hand of Vengeance forces clash against soldiers from the alliance North Fleet. Given that it was the naval forces under Daelin Proudmoore who caused faction trouble back in Durotar, I can't help but wonder if maybe the Alliance naval academy needs to recruit soldiers who could hypothetically deal with having their copper vein ninja'd by Horde without declaring open warfare.

Of course, it's also possible that the Forsaken aren't entirely blameless here. The half-wrecked Undercity fleet off the Howling Fjord coast wasn't exactly transporting puppies and cake, if you get my drift. No, rather, their holds were filled with containers of the Royal Apothecary Society's new and improved evil-death-killing-plague. Sure, maybe its main target would be the Scourge, but really. These are the Forsaken. Minimizing collateral damage and secondary casualties ain't exactly high on their priority list.

After a little bit more legwork for the Apothecaries, I can't help but feel sort of ... dirty. Or perhaps "diseased" is more accurate. So, time to do some exploring, get some new flight paths, and try to find some questgivers who aren't bloodthirsty, murderous jerks.

But I won't hold my breath for that last one.

Oh, speaking of which! Looks like they've doubled - if not tripled - the duration of the Breath bar. A minor change, but a welcome one nonetheless. Maybe underwater quests will suck less now!

Far to the Northeast of Howling Fjord is Camp Winterhoof, and as you can probably tell from the name, it's a village of everybody's favorite cow-men. Well, to be precise, Winterhoof isn't a Tauren settlement, but a Taunka one. The models have since been updated (well, at least the male ones), but at the time I visited they were still using regular Tauren models as placeholders. I was slightly confused.