Somewhere in the mists of time, in a forest called Ashenvale, in a land called Kalimdor, in a world called Azeroth, a night elf called Furion Stormrage sat at the end of a table and said: “strangers from all over the place who have survived the Burning Legions mess thing, you have been summoned here to discuss what we’re going to do to heal the world”
“Correction,” said Jaina Proudmore “we’ve come because there’s nothing else to do and there was no booze left in Lordaeron and we’re so bored we don’t even want to hunt down undead anymore”. This last comment was directed at Arthas who had been kidnapped at the taking over of Lordaeron, knocked out and dragged across the Maelstrom because they’d thought it would be fun to torture him now that there was no undead army that he could threaten them with. Which would have worked perfectly if he wasn’t technically dead and therefore all torture objects and generally everything passed straight through him, with the exception of coffee and booze of any form. Arthas wasn’t listening anyway as he was not his best at third cup of coffee mixed with whiskey in the morning.
“Yeah whatever” said Furion. “But I said house meeting so we’re having a house meeting.”
“But we don’t live in a house.”
“Shut up, Medivh.”
“You’re the one who told me to come here.”
“I bloody well did not. All I said was that people who were bored and wanted a bit of fun could come.”
“That includes me.”
“Question: why the hell are you still here?” said Thrall. “Aren’t you supposed to go where all the other guardians go?”
Medivh gave him a withering look that was normally used by older siblings on younger siblings (especially brothers) that are annoying the hell out of them (I’m drawing on personal experience as an older sister). “And why exactly do you think I’d want to spend the rest of my existence in a place filled with people like me?”
“It worked for night elves.” Said Arthas groggily.
“Watch it, deadboy.”
“Although I’m not sure if night elves are counted as people.”
“Arthas I’m warning you.”
“Oh getting feisty are we now Tyrande? Do your worst, you can’t hurt me I’m dead!”
Tyrande used whatever sort of magic elf priestesses have on Arthas and electrocuted him. After ten minutes of impersonating Benjamin Franklin, Arthas fell off his chair and under the table. And then did the only sensible thing a man/death knight in his position could do. He went of to the part of the forest that was used as a kitchen to make more coffee.
Three cups of coffee (about half an hour) later, he came back to find Furion and Tyrande in the middle of an argument.
“Violet!”
“Lilac!”
“Tyrande, anyone with half a brain can see that it’s violet.”
“Then how did you work it out?”
“What’s up?” said Arthas to everyone else.
Jaina rolled her eyes. “They’re arguing over the exact colour their skin is, and Furion thinks it’s violet, and Tyrande thinks it’s lilac.”
Thrall was looking extremely confused. “But they’re just different names for purple.”
“Shut up, Thrall. Remember what happened last time? When we were treated to a speech that explained the exact difference between olive and emerald because Jaina said that they’re both fancy names for green? That went on for three days?”
Arthas shuddered. “Don’t remind me, I’m still having nightmares about that. And we ran out of real coffee halfway through the second day, so we had to drink decaff.” The others were busy looking and feeling sick as they remembered various parts of the horror.
Luckily for them Furion and Tyrande hadn’t heard Thrall’s comment and were still arguing.
“Night elves.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Several hours later, Tyrande and Furion finally agreed that the exact colour was actually purple. By this time the others had formed several escape plans, army formations and were discussing the finer points of where they were going to attack from, as well as who got what loot, although as Medivh said, “Not that there’s anything worth stealing from here.”
“Yes there is.”
“I mean anything besides coffee and alcohol, Arthas.”
“Then there isn’t.”
“There’s Tyrande’s tiger.”
“Tyrande’s what?”
“You know the big cat thing with black and white stripes, that she rides on instead of a horse? That’s her tiger.”
“Come on Jaina, you only want it so that you can turn it into a fur coat.”
“What else would I want it for?” “You could keep it as a pet.”
“Naaah, I’m allergic to cats.”
“Then should you really be wearing the fur?”
“But this is the only tiger around.”
Medivh gave up. Trying to reason with Jaina was one of life’s pointless and impossible exercises, along with convincing Arthas to eat something besides coffee and booze, and of course trying to get humans, orcs and night elves to get together to defeat the Burning Legions.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Several hours after that.
Furion and Tyrande had gone off into a deep philosophical discussion about the meaning of life or something. The battle plans were ready, despite being notably coffee-coloured because the cups were leaking, and all that was left to do was find enough people to make up the armies. And designing the uniforms, of course.
“They’re going to be black.”
“They can’t be black.”
“Why not? It doesn’t show the dirt and it’s exactly one colour so there’s no fancy names for it.”
“You’re wrong Arthas. There’s lots of different blacks.”
“Night sky black.”
“Crow black.”
“Dirt black.”
“The black eyes you’re all going to be gifted with if you don’t shut up soon.”
“I’ve already told you they can’t be black.”
“And I’ve already told you the advantages of them being black, and since nobody’s come up with any disadvantages, I take it everyone’s agreed except you, but majority rules.”
“But black’s not my colour.”
“Jaina, any colour’s not your colour.”
“There’s green.”
“I’m not wearing green, I’m a death knight, and death nights wear black.”
Medivh and Thrall traded long-suffering looks and decided to get out of there before they got caught in the middle of either argument. The ‘meeting’ had gone on for at least nine hours and they were both bored and thoroughly depressed. They made an unconscious decision to find the nearest stash of alcohol (Furion’s, hidden inside the boxes of muesli that he though no-one knew about) and get seriously drunk before they made an escape attempt.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Yet more hours after that.
Arthas, Jaina, Furion and Tyrande had argued their respective arguments and were busy making more coffee in an attempt to break the world record on the most amount of caffeine drunk in a day (in Tyrande, Furion and Jaina’s case), or just keep up the general amount of caffeine consumed per day (Arthas), when they heard drunken singing coming from another part of the forest-house thing.
“My my, at Lordaeron the death knights did surrender.”
Medivh was singing Abba, but since he didn’t know the proper words he used his own, with Thrall as back up.
“Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way.”
“Oh god they’ve found the muesli booze stash.”
Arthas dropped his bucket of coffee and ran off towards the sounds of singing because there was booze. Jaina sighed and went after him because she wanted to see what death knights, orcs and guardians do when drunk, and since there was nothing else to do Tyrande and Furion went after her because they still liked the forests and had seized the opportunity to watch a floor show.
Medivh and Thrall had their arms around one another’s necks and were swaying drunkenly and singing more Abba.
“Lordaeron, I was defeated you won the war.”
Arthas found a bottle of vodka, drank half of it in one go, proceeded to get drunk very quickly and joined in with the singing.
That night the forest animals were treated to a most unusual sight: two Night Elves, a death knight, an orc and two seemingly-humans singing and swaying and taking swigs from various bottles containing various alcoholic substances of the liquid type.
“Mama mia, here I.”
“We”
“Whatever, go again.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Several days after the night before.
Medivh, Arthas, Jaina and Thrall had all left the day before. All was quiet on the forest front.
“Well that was fun,” said Furion.
“Yeah. Should we invite them to do the same thing next year?”
“Including drinking?”
“Most definitely”
“Then we should probably start buying more booze.” “Okay. You open a wormhole and go to the nearest Safeway, and I’ll start working on the speech that shows that lilac and violet are two totally different colours.”