Taylor and the Twisted Game Part 17 (Patreon)

Despite her earlier goal of making their gear overpowered, Taylor couldn't help feeling like a cheating cheater that cheated when she looked at her insane stats. Even without doing something crazy like piercing her nipples or other parts of her body that shouldn't have holes in them they'd managed to toss together an insane collection of magical items that effectively made them mid tier brutes and low end movers. "I feel a bit guilty using substandard trinkets for a base but we're missing some of the higher end material."

Colin shook his head. "Don't worry about it, you can always revisit the issue when you find better trinkets. Tinkers are always upgrading their gear."

"Or repairing it," Chris added as he continued working on cutting a gem.

Lisa glanced over at Aisha who was practicing against the weapon trainer with a staff. "Having extra stealth detection and a boost to our movement speed is a decent start."

Ezra finished tightening the bolt on her shrink ray then looked up at the group. "Do we have a plan for getting back home?"

Colin glanced at Emily then focused on Ezra. "We're going to work on clearing Fenris Island until it's claimed, then we're going to run the Shadowfang Keep dungeon until we can run Scarlet Monastery. That should get us into the 40's without too much trouble. After that, we'll teleport to Zul'Farrak and run it until we can run Zul'gurub."

"Why not just skip to Outland?" Emily asked.

"Zul'gurub gives us access to some of the shoulder enchants that I'd love to reverse engineer and two weapons that boost skinning speed that I wouldn't mind having someone take a look at to see if we can duplicate them. I wouldn't mind running Molten Core for some crafting materials before moving on to the various Outland dungeons but that's a problem for another day since we're not even close to sixty yet and we can always come back after we've grabbed a couple more levels."

"We've got time, Wings wants to find something that will keep us safe from mind control before we leave but I can't find anything on any of the websites that mentions permanent solutions to mind control."

"I saw a couple of tattoos that increased resistance but nothing that flat out stops it," Dennis offered.

"I might be able to figure out something if I can scan enough bosses," Amy offered, hoping she could find something that didn't require modifying their brains.

"That's worth checking," Emily said thoughtfully, knowing she'd sleep easier if they had an easy way to hand out protection from mind control. "We should look into duplicating the blood elf teleportation orbs that Clock mentioned. I'd love to have an orb in the PRT building that connects to an orb in the Rig, it would make things a lot easier."

Taylor nodded. "We should be able to talk to some of the blood elf trainers."

"In other words, we've got a lot of work to do," Dennis said, looking forward to walking around some of the dungeons. He turned to look at Taylor. "What are you going to work on while we're trying to level and Admin is building things?"

"I'm going to be hitting all of the libraries in the various dungeons on the off chance I can pick up more spells and because I need enough gold for flight training, I also need to grind my various weapon skills now that I've unlocked them."

"Flight training is going to put a dent in your wallet," Dennis pointed out.

"It's not like I have anything else to spend the gold on," Taylor replied, not particularly worried about getting gold as she was getting double what you normally would from every drop and from selling things because of her loot perk. "I'd also like to head to Blackrock Lair to see if I can figure out how they created their shield."

"You mean the dungeon attunement bit?" Dennis asked.

"Basically, if you get a magical mark you can walk right through it. Picture setting that up on a property or a prison cell where you can toss them in but it requires someone attuned to the cell to pull them out," Taylor explained, glad that she could look at the various game wikis on her phone.

"Would that help keep people from using their hearthstone to get out?" Emily asked.

Taylor shook her head. "No but it's a good step and I can probably find something about magical barriers in Karazhan's library that might help."

"Speaking of Karazhan," Amy paused when a void portal opened in the courtyard. "Do you think they found anything useful?"

"Hopefully," Colin muttered as Noelle stepped out of the portal. "Did you find anything?"

Noelle took a step to the side a second before a balding man with blond hair stepped out of the portal wearing a pair of shorts and a white shirt. "This is Elric Whalgrene, he's an alchemy trainer from Boralus."

Dennis frowned as he tried to remember if he'd ever heard of Boralus. "Where's that?"

"It's the capital of Kul Tiras, I trust you've heard of that," Elric said sarcastically.

"Yeah, that's where Jaina Proudmore is from…" Dennis trailed off as he realized that they'd grabbed someone from a place that they hadn't explored in the games. "What does he teach?"

Elric looked at Dennis. "Considering you're not an alchemist, nothing. If you had any talent, I'd teach you how to create alchemist stones, amazing potions, flasks of terrifying might and how to transmute one material into another."

"What can you transmute?" Colin asked.

"Cloth into metal, herbs into ore or fish into gems, that's a fairly popular one," Elric mused.

Colin glanced at the director then focused on Elric. "Wouldn't that screw up the economy."

"We generally don't advertise that we can turn fish into gems for various reasons," Elric replied with a shrug. "Besides, I'm not technically Elric, I'm just a copy so I really don't care about the local economy." He glanced between Taylor, Amy and Colin then gestured at the alchemy lab. "If you can impress me, I'll see about teaching you the secrets of the universe."

"Fantastic." Taylor grinned as she headed over towards the alchemy lab, figuring learning alchemy from a master was more important than heading to Karazhan in person.

"I can always explore Karazhan later," Amy said as she followed Taylor and Elric.

Colin smiled as he followed the trainer, looking forward to learning more recipes if only because being able to transmute various types of material would help stretch his tinkering budget.

"Let's see what we have to work with," Elric mused as he looked through the various boxes filled with random herbs they'd salvaged from the garden. "I know a couple of recipes we can use."

"Are you going to recruit an engineering or jewel crafting trainer?" Chris asked Noelle hopefully.

Noelle turned to look at Kid Win. "I'm going to copy all of the profession trainers, I just wanted to make sure we could get something out of it before I started copying a bunch of people."

Dennis glanced at the alchemist that was giving an alchemy lecture to Skitter, Amy and Armsmaster then looked at Noelle. "As much as I'd love to spend the rest of the night tinkering, we should probably grab everyone that isn't at least level 15 and work on grinding until we can rush Shadowfang Keep or the Stockades."

"I wouldn't mind dusting the rust off my ranged skills before running a dungeon," Emily admitted.

"Sounds better than trying to eke out another point of jewelcrafting," Chris admitted as he put his tools back in his inventory and walked over. "Where do you want to go?"

"I wouldn't mind talking to the folks in Darkshire and seeing if they have any useful quests." Dennis glanced at Rachel. "Can I talk you into coming with us and making some portals to speed things up?"

Rachel reached down and scratched Thor between his ears then opened a void portal to Darkshire. "Sure, I need to work on the rest of my weapon skills."

'At least they're working together,' Emily mused as she headed through the portal.

0o0o0

Admin grinned when her shadow bolt took a large chunk out of Attumen's health. [This is going to be easier than I was expecting.]

"Probably," Taylor admitted after she finished casting her vampiric embrace spell on the boss. "Can I borrow a hand?"

[Of course], Admin replied as she raised her hand and pointed it at the boss.

Taylor cast her mind flay spell, sending the stream of shadow energy out of Admin's free hand and into the boss, still not quite used to casting through Admin's hands or using her priest spells since she only had them when she was Admin's extra head. "Your voidwalker is holding up better than I was expecting."

[It gets about a third of my stats and half my spell power in attack power], Admin replied as she used her free hand to toss another shadow bolt at the boss, causing the boss to jump on his horse and charge her. She dove out of the way, rolled to her feet and jumped towards the wall.

Taylor felt a bit disoriented as Admin jumped off the wall then activated her flight and sailed towards the ceiling, putting herself out of reach of the boss as her voidwalker worked on taunting the boss. She tossed another mind blast at the boss then grinned when Admin's shadow bolt finished it off. "This would have been a lot harder if we didn't have insane gear."

[Or the lone wolf perk that makes it so we can solo stuff. Have you managed to defeat the spider boss?] Admin asked as she floated back to the ground, knowing that Taylor had sent a small army of puppets into the area where the bats and spiders were.

Taylor shook her head. "Not yet, I'm using my wolf to tank and I haven't found any gear that gives regeneration that we can move to his collar yet so I'm trying to be careful."

[What about having the puppets use bandages?] Admin asked as she walked over and looted the boss.

"I don't actually have first aid. I figured they'd tossed it or combined it with something like the gathering professions since it wasn't part of the character set up," Taylor admitted.

[It's probably worth checking to see if you can learn it], Admin replied as she glanced over the loot. [Schematic: Stabilized Eternium Scope, Steelhawk Crossbow and Vambraces of Courage.]

"In other words, no mount," Taylor said as Admin headed out of the stables area.

[Were you expecting the mount to drop on your first run?] Admin asked, fairly sure the drop chance wasn't any better than the drop chance in Warcraft, which was around one percent.

"No but it would have been nice," Taylor replied with amusement as one of her puppets looted the bat boss. "Okay, the bat boss is down and I just picked up Glider's Footwraps of Spirit. That should give us another 35 points of spirit on everything once we upgrade our gear.]

[I'd rather have the bonus shadow damage but we'll get there], Admin said as she headed towards the feast hall to deal with Moroes. [Any idea why the rest of us couldn't pick up the ability to teach patterns from the alchemist?]

"It probably has something to do with the teaching skill I grabbed when I made the character, I was thinking about my mom," Taylor admitted.

Admin turned her head and smiled at Taylor. [I'm not complaining.]

"I'm sort of hoping I can pick up the ability to unlock professions but I'd probably have to talk to the clone of a basic trainer for that." Taylor wrinkled her nose when the faint scent of rotting flesh hit her nose. "I could have done without the more annoying realistic scents."

[I'll take the good with the bad. Hopefully you can figure out a way to teach spells or classes], Admin said, hoping she could pick up some of the utility spells that mages had or some of Taylor's shadow spells.

"I'll let you know after I'm done learning alchemy from Elric and Rachel and Noelle get back with another instructor," Taylor replied as they walked into the feast hall filled with a bunch of undead servants. "Do you want me to shackle one of them or do we just want to start attacking?"

[We might as well just start blasting], Admin replied as she sent her voidwalker into the middle of the undead and started casting her shadow bolt on Moroes.

Taylor started tossing damage over time spells on the various undead monsters, wishing her priest had better area spells. "This would be a lot easier if I had my frost spells."

Admin grinned when Moroes dropped after her second shadowbolt. [We might be a bit overgeared.]

"Just a bit," Taylor admitted, looking forward to finding better gear so they could improve their already overpowered collection of gear. She grinned as she got to work cleaning up the rest of the undead with a combination of mind blasts and mind flay when Admin's hand was pointing in the right general direction.

[How long do you think it would take for your minions to clear the dungeon?] Admin asked as she hacked through one of the undead as it tried to stab her.

Taylor considered the question as they finished off the undead in the room. "Even if I had a way to heal them, I'd probably run into trouble with the bosses unless I can find better fabric and gems."

[Can you use the information from Tats' second head to modify a symbiote to give the shaman class?] Admin asked Shaper.

[I'd need a symbiote and I'd need to run some tests. Speaking of tests, do you think you could pick up my other host?] Shaper asked hopefully.

[Where are they and what's their name?] Admin asked as she looted the boss.

[Marquis and he just appeared in Silvermoon City], Shaper replied, figuring that Amelia deserved to see her father again.

[I'll let Skitter know], Admin replied. [Shaper might be able to create a shaman symbiote item using information she got from Tats' second head. Can you send a minion to pick up her other host from Silvermoon City?]

"Sure, what's the name?" Taylor asked.

[Marquis], Admin replied as she looked over the loot.

"Marquis? Shouldn't he be in the Birdcage?" Taylor asked warily.

[I'll check], Admin replied then sent a message to Shaper, [Was your other host in the Birdcage?]

[Yes, I'm not sure he deserved it. He didn't attack civilians and there are worse people running around without getting sent to the birdcage], Shaper replied.

[How did someone in the cage get a VR helmet?] Admin asked Shaper.

[It appeared on his bed with a note that said, enjoy your escape. I'll have to thank someone for springing him, I learned a lot more when he was free], Shaper replied cheerfully.

[Apparently, someone dropped a VR helmet on his bed while he was sleeping with a note encouraging him to enjoy his escape], Admin explained to Taylor.

"Is she nuts?" Taylor asked as they headed for the next room.

[She's a bit of a mad scientist], Admin replied, knowing that most of the shards only had a vague understanding of morality.

Taylor briefly considered her options before deciding that it was better to keep an eye on him and she wasn't particularly worried about someone that did physical damage considering her gear. "I'll send a puppet with a sign when Rachel gets back."

[Question, can you send your puppets into a dungeon while you're in a different dungeon?] Admin asked thoughtfully.

"I can send them into a dungeon without me, so maybe?" Taylor mused, figuring it wouldn't hurt to test things.

[Multitasking of yes for the win, you should test it with one of the low level dungeons], Admin suggested, curious if Taylor could run multiple dungeons at the same time.

"I'm still going to need a method of healing them between fights but sure, I'll send a group to Shadowfang Keep when Rachel gets back."

[Since you can use professions through your puppets, can you use them for gathering herbs and mining?] Admin asked, knowing they were going to need a lot of resources if they wanted to improve everyone's crafting to a reasonable level.

"They'd need bags and the puppets would probably have to be larger so I'd need more cloth but I don't see why not," Taylor mused, fairly sure her puppet pattern was more than a little broken but then again, so was Leet's plasma rifle skill so maybe all of the unique skills were that broken, Tats' skill certainly was. "Speaking of broken skills, what do you need for your unique skill?"

[Gem dust, pigments and enough skill to make it worth it], Admin replied as they spotted an undead patrol. [Do we want to kill the patrol or just walk past it?]

"We can always come back after we deal with the giant construct," Taylor replied, curious what they could skip thanks to their friendship perks.

[Works for me], Admin agreed as they walked past the patrol, fairly sure the boss would be easy enough to deal with since they were immune to holy damage.

0o0o0

Amy felt like she'd just walked out of a college chemistry class with a professor that was bound and determined to stuff an entire degree into her head in the span of an hour. "Now that we're done with alchemy for a bit, do you have any plans?"

"Admin is in the middle of Karazhan. We found a creature with natural flight, do you want a summon?" Taylor asked with a grin.

"Wouldn't that invalidate your Lone Wolf perk?" Amy asked.

"Do you think it actually matters with our gear?" Taylor asked with amusement, fairly sure they'd be fine even without her perk making things easier.

"Probably not," Amy admitted. "What did you find that has flight?"

"Mana worms, they can fly and they're annoyingly immune to magic, two properties that I'd love to have," Taylor replied with a grin.

"Toss me a summon," Amy replied without hesitation, looking forward to getting a better example of flight so they could fix their flight power and picking up immunity to magic if she could figure out how to duplicate it.

[Best host!] Shaper said cheerfully.

Admin finished killing the Arcane Watchman then focused on Amy and cast her summoning spell, creating a small shimmering portal that people needed to focus on to complete the summon.

Taylor had two of her puppets 'focus' on the portal. "Incoming summon."

Amy pulled her dagger and magic book out of her inventory then hit the accept button. She glanced around the large room to make sure that there wasn't anything immediately hostile then glanced at the eel-like creatures with fins that were flying around the room. "If I grab one, are the rest of them going to pull?"

"No idea," Taylor replied as she glanced away from her puppets that were collecting the pieces of the damaged Arcane Watchman and focused on Amy. "They're beasts, the perk might keep them neutral or they might swarm us if you attack one of them."

"Pulling." Amy dashed forward and grabbed one of the mana worms before it could react, figuring it was sort of like a snake. She ignored the arcane energy crackling over her hand and the creature's frantic wiggling as she tried to figure out how the creature's 'biology' worked.

Taylor relaxed when the other mana worms kept flying around without paying them any attention.

0o0o0

Marquis stared at the idiot undead player that was trying to extort money from him in the middle of the blood elf capital. "Let me get this straight, you want money that I obviously don't have or you're going to stab me or something to that effect if I don't give it to you?"

"Exactly, you're flagged for PvP, which means I can kill you without the guards doing anything. If you give me your weapons, I won't kill you," the man replied with a grin filled with rotted and busted teeth.

Marquis shook his head, not sure why anyone would want to be stuck as an undead. "There are three problems with that idea."

"That's what?" the man asked sarcastically, half expecting the blood elf to run.

"Even if I wanted to, I can't give you my weapons, they're soul bound. Two, you're assuming I care about the guards or you for that matter," Marquis replied, not particularly worried about the blood elf guards or the undead idiot thanks to his power and perks.

"And three?" the man asked in annoyance.

"You picked the wrong person to mug," Marquis replied as he used his power to twist and snap the man's exposed bones in various places, causing him to scream in agony and collapse. "You should pick better targets," he muttered as he flexed his power and caused the man's skull to shatter, giving him a large chunk of experience that boosted him up to level six.

"Five levels from an idiot," Marquis mused as he walked over and looted the man's bag of holding, netting himself 4 gold, 23 copper and 87 silver along with a bunch of random items that he was assuming were crafting ingredients. "I might have to go hunting."

He frowned when a group of three blood elf knights charged around the corner of a stone building. 'That's an annoyingly quick response time.' He forced himself not to scream as he activated his power and created a bone scythe out of his wrist and his familiar bone armor.

"Surrender and die!" one of the guards shouted as they charged down the street towards Marquis.

Marquis tossed himself at the guards.

0o0o0

Taylor looked up from the mask she was carving when she felt one of Rachel's void portals open in the courtyard and smiled when Noelle stepped through with Rachel and an unfamiliar brown haired woman in a black robe. "Profession trainer?"

"Myriam Spellwaker, professional trainer of mages at your service," the woman offered as she glanced around the courtyard.

"Can you teach us how to train people?" Taylor asked hopefully.

"It's worth a try," Myriam replied as she cast her training spell and taught Taylor her training spell. "Anything?"

Taylor read the description for her new spell to herself, 'Teaches target the selected spell or skill. No mana cost or cooldown but it requires teaching.' She focused on Noelle and cast her spell, causing a translucent window filled with skills and spells to appear in front of her, some of which were greyed out. "All of my high level spells are greyed out but it looks like I can teach you a couple of hunter tricks."

"Go for it," Noelle said enthusiastically. "I've already picked up all of the mage spells I can from Myriam."

"Happy to help," Myriam offered, happy to help her master.

Taylor started working her way through her collection of hunter tricks and spells that didn't match Noelle's hunter specialty, looking forward to sharing the teaching ability with Admin so they could swap spells. "I should see if I can teach Aspect of the Viper to Leet."

"That's the one that restores 50% of your magic stat and 30% of your level, right?" Noelle asked.

Taylor glanced at the ability. "55% of your magic stat and 35% of your level in mana recovery every 5 seconds."

"Close enough, I'm sure he'd appreciate it," Noelle replied with a grin as she watched her collection of abilities increase. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Taylor assured her as she finished teaching Noelle all of the hunter tricks she could teach her. "That should be everything."

[Can you teach me how to use your spells?] Admin asked, looking forward to taking all of the spells apart and trying to figure out how they worked.

Taylor twisted her neck and looked at Admin's head. "It's worth a shot." She cast her spell and looked at her available options then taught Admin frostbolt. "Did that work?"

Admin checked both of her lists while she waited for Amy to finish modifying Taylor's wolf with the mana worm's flight and immunity to hostile magic. [You added the spell to my symbiote's spell list.]

"That just means we have to upgrade each list," Taylor replied as she started working her way down the list of spells and hunter tricks.

[Speaking of hosts, have you found Shaper's other host?] Admin asked, knowing Shaper would bug her about it after she got done squealing with glee over her experiments.

"Yeah, he's currently fighting the blood elf guards on his way out of the city," Taylor replied, rather surprised that he was still alive considering he was only level 17.

"Who's fighting the guards?" Rachel asked.

"Shaper's other host," Taylor replied as she tried to teach Admin her teaching skill.

"That's what Amy called her power, right?" Noelle asked.

[Teaching?] Admin asked when the skill appeared on her list.

"Yeah," Taylor replied, answering both questions as she taught Admin the training spell. "Did that work?"

[Yes!] Admin replied and quickly started teaching Taylor the Rider special abilities and spells that she'd picked up. [Are you going to teach the rest of the group?]

"We might as well or at least everyone that helps with the symbiote gear and Rachel because her portals are awesome," Taylor replied as she cast her spell and taught Noelle the teaching ability then the training spell. "Did that work?"

Noelle grinned when she saw the new spell on her list. "Apparently. That's completely broken."

"If nothing else, it turns all of the hunters in the group into halfway decent mages," Taylor mused as she taught Rachel the teaching skill and the trainer skill. "That should let Rachel teach people."

Rachel cast the training spell and taught Taylor her void teleport ability, curious if she could and tired of being the guild's transportation monkey. "Did that work?"

Taylor stared at the void portal spell on her list, not particularly surprised that it required being a void elf to learn. "You didn't have to share your unique skill."

"You didn't have to share the teaching ability," Rachel replied with a shrug. "Besides, this way I don't have to stick around opening portals for people."

"Do you want a mixed enchanting and jewelcrafting pattern for floating skulls that shoot energy out of their eyes with the type depending on the gems you use to craft them?" Noelle asked, fairly sure the answer was yes.

"Of course," Taylor replied as she taught Noelle the other training ability so she could share patterns.

"On that note, can I get the portal ability?" Noelle asked as she taught Taylor her unique enchanting and jewel crafting pattern. "I want to grab a group and hit Shadowfang keep a couple of times."

"No worries, I wouldn't have the training ability if it wasn't for your clones," Taylor replied as she taught Noelle the portal ability. "I need to rescue someone from Silvermoon and head to Karazhan to loot the bookcases and trade spells with Admin."

"Let us know how that goes, I've got quests to finish." Rachel opened a void portal to the cemetery where the rest of the group was fighting and stepped through.

"Do you need help?" Noelle asked.

"Nah," Taylor replied as she opened a portal to Karazhan. "I'll just take a portal and send minions to fight the monsters, worst case, I lose a couple of puppets."

"Best of luck," Noelle replied.

"What am I supposed to do?" Myriam asked Noelle after Taylor stepped through the strange portal.

"Wander around and see if any of the mages need training or relax by the pond," Noelle suggested as she gestured towards the gate that led to the garden.

"That works," Myriam replied as she headed towards the gate.

0o0o0