Gnomish Investigations - Felwood (Part 1)

Felwood.

Adelheide looked about anxiously as she rode through the haunted trees. Some of them looked like twisted faces, screaming in anguish. A few even dripped an eerie greenish goo, which clearly was not mere tree sap. Mere tree sap didn’t glow that way. Even the wildlife seemed diseased, and decidedly hostile. All about, the land seemed to languish in decay.

"This is almost the worse thing I've ever seen," she whispered to herself. "It's so horrible! As bad as Gnomeregan, even!"

Speedy craned his head about, watching the clearly diseased landscape flow by. The tortoise (not turtle, as the confused Stormwind orphan had named it, poor confused and as yet uneducated human child that he was) was clearly curious, but not at all tempted to exit his carrying box to investigate himself. Besides, Addy reasoned, cleaning him of the muck and goo would be such a chore.

But there was a settlement ahead, they had told her. Cenarian druids, elven and tauren both, working together to combat the demonic taint that infected these woods. To draw out the poison, to cleanse the land. Reclaim it. Make it whole again.

It was why the gnome was here.

"There has to be something," the gnome muttered to herself, flipping the mechanostrider on auto-navigate and consulting her notes again. "If the druids have found a way, then there must be something to the process which can be adapted and modified to apply to a single individual as well. Maybe even amplified, to improve and speed up the process."

Speedy looked at her and tilted his head.

"Yes, I know," she replied shortly, sounding slightly annoyed. "I'm sure miss lady Lyirdanna and missus lady Alishe have thought of that, too. But they would have been looking at the question from a… a different viewpoint. A druid viewpoint. And also a night elf viewpoint. Not a gnomish viewpoint."

Speedy ducked his head inside his shell. "Oh, no, Speedy, I know you didn't mean it that way," she assured the tortoise, patting his shell reassuringly. "But… well, as Aunt Frazzlespigot always used to say, 'Sometimes doing your own research from scratch and conducting your own experiments based on that research allows you to succeed where others who rely only on the findings of other researchers without first confirming the validity and reliability of said research first find themselves hanging from the rafters with their clothes all on fire.' "

Speedy blinked at her solemnly as she returned to reviewing and organizing her notes.

"Only in this case," she mused absently, "the explosion in question might be a little more powerful than that…"
_____

There was someone up ahead beside the road. Addy was totally immersed in her notes by this time, and Speedy had to bite at the gnome’s clothing to get her attention.

“Speedy, no,” she scolded. “I know I’ve informed you several times that runecloth is not a suitable dietary supple… oh, hm? Ah, someone up ahead? Thank you, Speedy. You’re such a clever tortoise!”

The gnome quickly stashed away her notebook and flipped off the auto-navigation system (and made a mental note to talk to Nikolas about adjusting the automatic road-following settings, it seemed to be veering to the left a bit), taking the controls of the mechanostrider again. She slowed to a stop and waved back at the rather tall waving individual.

It was a tauren. A female tauren. From the facial expression the gnome could see (and Addy could see the tauren’s expression quite well from her perch on the mechanostrider), she did not seem hostile.

“Greetings and salutations, miss tall stranger lady tauren, ma’am!” Addy said cheerfully. “May I be of assistance in some form or fashion?”

The tauren blinked. “Tauruhe?” she asked the gnome, obviously not understanding much of what the gnome had just said.

Addy blinked back. “Oh dear, no… I apologize, but I am not capable of communicating in the native Tauren language… umm… one moment…”

The tauren looked on in bemusement as the gnome began searching her saddlebags, all the while mumbling to herself. Finally, Addy found what she was looking for, and proudly flourished a particular device.”

“Now, miss tall stranger lady tauren, ma’am,” she said slowly, pointing in as polite and friendly a manner as she could manage. “Could you please speak clearly and slowly into the Universal Language Translation device, perhaps it can help us to communicate more efficiently?”

The device sparkled ominously…