A Stranger in Dornogal

The first thing Laotou did in Dornogal was unroll a map that, by its own name, showed Everywhere All At Once. The second was to go and find money.

Laotou is new to this ledger. A Pandaren monk out of Stormrage, arriving in Khaz Algar with the steady eyes of someone who has already done a great deal of walking somewhere the chronicler was not watching. The earthen of Dornogal had a stack of letters waiting before the monk had properly set down a pack: something called Midnight, something else on the horizon, three separate notices that The Weaver, The Vizier and The General each wanted a word, and two special assignments, What Remains of a Temple Broken and Push Back the Light. Nobody arrives in Dornogal without immediately being handed somebody else’s problems.

The monk set them aside, found five hundred gold, and then walked into the Council’s Treasury and found thirty-five thousand more.

The chronicler has been at this a long time, and gold does not fall out of the sky. In the same few minutes that night, a Kul Tiran in Silvermoon, a gnome in Eversong, an orc in the Bazaar and a young Nightborne in Orgrimmar each emptied their purses. Burrly. Tibbit. Gruffhug. Zerxie. The chronicler draws no line between those dots in ink. In pencil, perhaps.

What Laotou did with the fortune was practical, which is the most Pandaren thing imaginable. Five strongboxes in the Treasury vault, bought one after another, each dearer than the last: a hundred gold, then five hundred, a thousand, twenty-five hundred, and finally five thousand. Then nearly nine thousand gold more changed hands in Dornogal, and the monk came away with an Arcanoweave Reagent Rucksack and three Sunfire Silk Backpacks. Pandaren understand something the other races keep forgetting. Before a long road, you sort your pack.

Then the monk sat down and remembered the old disciplines. Not the fist, but the mist. Chi-Ji, the Red Crane, called down out of the sky. Restoral. Celestial Conduit. Sheilun’s Gift, named for an old staff with older stories. And Revival, the art of pulling a whole company back from the edge at once. These are not a brawler’s teachings. These are the teachings of someone who means to keep other people alive, which in Azeroth is the more thankless trade by a wide margin.

From Dornogal the monk went to Silvermoon City and the Sanctum of Light, and was handed a road called Eversong. A small welcome called Adventuring in Midnight was finished on the spot. Something on the Horizon was set down unread; the horizon will keep. Laotou took on Hope in the Darkest Corners, as everyone in that city seems to, and then the hunters’ errands: Astalor’s Initiative, The Power of Anguish, When Predator Becomes Prey, To the Sanctum! All four done before the tea could cool, back and forth between Sunstrider Isle and the harbor, a pace that suggests the monk has run errands for elves before.

The night ended in Silvermoon with a pick and a pair of shears bought from the trainers, a gold coin each, because even a healer has to eat.

There is still a name on Laotou’s list: Knight-Errant Bloodshatter. By the chronicler’s count, he has been waiting for a great many people lately. And three letters from Khaz Algar remain unanswered, from The Weaver, The Vizier and The General, none of whom are known for patience.