((Erph. Would've updated earlier but I've been under the weather and generally not up to doing much

Here, have some more!))
Dear diary
Refreshed at last I took up Fizzle's latest request: check up on Crazzle Sprysprocket and Kravel Koalbeard over at Splithoof Heights, home of the surviving centaur. It's been discovered that there is an oilwell up there that the gnomes want their hands on and I'm to help with negotiations. Good grief, how many more fairytale creatures am I going to get to meet?
Crazzle was waiting for me near the foot of the cliff saying Kravel was already up top talking with the chiefs. However the Horde also have their eye on the oil and are also trying to persuade the khans into letting them have it. Crazzle asked that I learn the Horde's proposal by beating their negotiator a bit so we can go one better.
These centaur are nothing like the ones I read about. They're supposed to be graceful and noble, a perfect combination of horse and human. Well, I suppose they are, except with all the negative traits: they're messy, smelly and uncivillised. However they are good fighters, fast runners and capable of taming the elements. Trackmaster Zherim, the Horde negotiator, was deep in coversation with one of the khans, a larger, tusked and no less ugly centaur, in his tent.
When the centaur turned away I clobbered the tauren hard enough to stun him and searched him until I found the proposal. Just outside the tent another centaur, an elementalist of sorts, had picked up on what I'd done but rather than reveal me he told me to be useful and regnite a brazier back in their old, now submerged home of Splithoof Crag.
First I returned to Crazzle to show him the proposal. It is worrying: the Horde are offering the horse-people a substantial amount of gold, more than we could gather in a hurry. The gnome said that he'd heard of some gold-looking ore down in the centaur's old stomping grounds, revealed by the Cataclysm. Hopefully that will do the trick. I'm headed down there anyway to reignite the brazier, so this makes things simple.
Pyrite. Fool's gold. I hope that gnome knows what he's doing, given the skycaller's reaction to me I doubt they'd easily fooled by this. It is all we have though. I gathered many chunks of it, using Bol's jaws to smash it open. Yes, Bolero was useful this time, but only because we'd been attacked by hungry remoras and I'd draped the corpses over the veins.
Right at the back of the cave was the brazier. For a moment I'd assumed that the skycaller wanted me to bring the thing somewhere dry so I could light it, but the flipping thing's huge. There was no way I could shift it. Half-heartedly I swung the brand he'd given me as I'd wondered what to do, only to watch the thing burst into flame. UNDERWATER. Magic fire, who knew? No sooner had I lit the brazier did a water revenant attack, saying that it knew who I am and that I'll never hold the “Sacred Flame”. We defeated him and I obtained a bottle of blue fire, which I can only assume is the flame the revenant mentioned. The skycaller will want this no doubt.
I knew it. Crazzle took the pyrite from me and set about coating it with golden paint. The centaur won't be impressed if they found out, and to make matters worse the gnome wants ME to give it to them, not the dwarf. But I was just about to prove myself to them slightly by giving the skycaller the flame. Fel.
That idiot gnome! I knew it. My work for the skycaller did nothing for reputation and the khan picked up on the trick immediately. I was almost skinned alive as the centaur turned on me. If there was anything good to be gleaned from this, it is the fact that they believed us all to be working together and turned on the Horde too. Crazzle wasn't best pleased (pfft!) but was determined to get that oil. He told me simply to retaliate, shoving a crate into my paws as he did so. It contains an unassembled oil-rig-device-thing which I'm to use at an oil pool. The retaliation part is to mow down any horse-men that interfere.
That done, one last task now remains to be fully free of any further threat from the centaur. Crazzle had heard of the skycaller I'd worked for and heard him mention an elemental leader of sorts, a giant wind elemental in fact. Best to blow that away too.
With any luck that will keep the centaur off our backs for some time. Impressed, Crazzle told me to go ahead and deliver the oil I'd managed to pump up. In the meantime I guess he'll be attempting to get more. Stupid, greedy gnomes. You have to admit, minus the oversized features and green skin gnomes and goblins are surprisingly alike.
Fizzle, almost sadly despite his argument with Pozzik, thanked me for all the help but has to send me away. The Grimtotem have moved futher into Thousand Needles and are ransacking the tauren outpost of Freewind. While the Freewind tauren are technically part of the Horde the night elves have decided enough is enough and have allied with them against our common enemy. Quentin, the first elf I met, set me off straight away killing the Grimtotem invaders. Brienna Starglow, just above us healing tauren and orcs -ORCS. I have to fight alongside ORCS?!- explained breathlessly that one of the sentinals have been kidnapped. Right, force my way in and save the prisoner. Alongside those who dared harm my homeland. Brilliant. Seriously, I've learned to accept troll and tauren through the Blackwater Raiders and Zandalar tribe back in Stranglethorn, but orcs? Well... as long as they focus on fighting and not step on my toes so-to-speak then things will be fine. Orcs... At least the forsaken aren't involved.
At the bluff we found the sentinal chained to a totem. Fighting off the Grimtotems I broke the chains and set her free. She ran on ahead to where Quentin and Brienna are.
While there I'd tripped over a tauren corpse. One of the Freewind braves identified him as their loremaster. I identified that the trail of blood he left came from the inn. At just the same time a voice yelled out that he, the cliffwatcher and leader of this tribe, had always secretly been a Grimtotem. Dreaded foes or not, no one should suffer betrayal from their own.
Quentin thanked me, and we both agreed that this is “Grim” business. Joking aside Brienna let me know that the sentinal I'd rescued was healed and waiting for me at Darkcloud Pinnacle. Together we set about setting the fear of the Goddess into the Grimtotems by putting the to death, especially their leaders, and burning the weapon racks. First of the leaders was directly up ahead: Isha Gloomaxe.

((20 shots. 20 flipping shots and this, the last one no less, was the only one where I could see her face!))
The sentinal noticed something outside the tent where Isha was hiding, a bone rattle. The sentinal believes this to be the aptly named Rattle of Bones, one of three items of legend. It can only be bad that the Grimtotem are collecting these.
What was with the large, red wind serpent that appeared as I picked it up? And did it really just tell me to follow it?

((A few fliers have been stuck with swimming animations lately.))
The second leader was a powerful shaman, Elder Stormhoof. The sentinal believes he was a direct deciple to someone called Magatha Grimtotem, the leader of said tribe. He called upon the powers of the elemental planes to try and defeat us, but he made himself too big. Remember what I said about “the bigger they are”?
Not far from where he stood we found the second item of legend: the Writ of History. Again the serpent appeared, saying something about having chosen well... and my name. Stormhoof also mentioned something about “chosen”. I imagine the only way we'll learn is to follow the serpent.
Third leader, Grundig Darkcloud, now too lays dead. He was supposedly the most powerful Grimtotem chief from Stonetalon. I assume the giant bomb scared him home.
The sentinal has a point; so far all three leaders have been spooked by me in some form or another. Just what is happening here? Not far away we located the last object: the Drums of War. Finally we have all three, we can at least prevent the Grimtotem from misusing them. But once again that wind serpent appeared, saying that the items were clues, going on to tell me to kill Arnak Grimtotem, Magatha's nephew and our final target. The sentinal believes it's voice is that of the elder crone herself. What would the leader of the Grimtotem want with me?
Even Arnak believed that his aunt sent me. The sentinal heard of a tauren woman with a distrubingly similar name to mine, Lakota Windsong, became a mystic recently. Arnak had tried to force her to be his wife, kidnapping her twice. Maybe she'll be able to shed light on these artefacts and the wind serpent that's been hanging around.

((I did not steal her name, honest! In fact I'd completely forgotten she existed ._.))
Lakota revealed that the wind serpent, Arikara, is Magatha's familiar. Something must have happened to the crone herself if she's controlling her pet like this. She was interested in the artefacts, so perhaps I can use those to bring the serpent back and explain herself. Lakota warned me that in doing so I may need to weaken the beast in combat before getting answers.
Harrowing. The beast hit hard and fast, and just when I thought I had it, it would put up a barrier formed from the energies of Grimtotem spirits. In turn I was forced to kill the spirits in order to continue. In time it gave up, Magatha explaining through it that she was captured by the Twilight's Hammer somewhere near Highperch. Lakota told me to meet with another tauren, Pao'ka Swiftmountain, and learn what he knows.
I think I can risk a break first, this whole ordeal has me exhausted. Camping on a river boat sounds interesting too. Later, diary.
((And with that, I'm going back to bed. I feel like a kodo just stomped on my head.))