I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but *beep beep*

Wait, let me take a step back here and give you a little background.  As anyone who has been doing the Firelands Daily Quests  know, they suck.  Sure, they bring in a decent amount of gold (about 300g for less than an hour’s work), but after a couple of weeks of running the same quests over and over, and over, and over again, you’d almost be willing to stab a hobo just to get the three hundred Marks of the World Tree needed to unlock the various vendors.  Because that’s why people endure this type of mindless insanity.  Your frontal lobe dies a bit each day, but it’s all worth it once you can buy some purples and profession recipes.   (Editor’s Note — Stabbing a hobo will not unlock the vendors, so don’t do it.  Trust me on this.  Also, they smell even worse when there’s holes in them.)

First you get the Marks, then you get the purples.  That’s what I thought after I’d finally recruited both the Shadow Wardens and the Druids of the Talon.  Yeah, great, join the cause, blah blah give me my epics damn you.  Sure enough, after handing in the last batch of quests and returning to the Molten Front, there was a new dwarf hanging out in the little Hobbit house.  I kicked Frodo aside and greeted him politely.  “Who the dripping Hell are you?” I inquired.

“I’m Damek Bloombeard, and I got me some  Exceptional Equipment.”

“Awwww yeah boy!  You and me both!”  I grabbed his hand and wove an intricate ritual of finger and fist gestures, much like I imagine all the cool people do when they greet each other.

He stared at me like I’d just asked him the square root of something.  As I suspected, this dwarf was Not Cool.  “Not so fast, sunshine,” he said after slowly retrieving his hand.  “I need ya ta get me buddy Ricket, and then we’ll be havin’ gear ta sell.”

What was this?  He was clearly a vendor, yet he claimed to need the assistance of another so that he’d have merchandise to sell.  It felt like a scam.  Worse, it felt like a trap.  My fingers curled in on themselves, producing a fist that wanted nothing more than to jump right through Damek’s thick, blunt skull.  “What are you saying exactly?”

“For only 125 more Marks of the W-”

That’s all I needed to hear.  I cut him off.  “You son of a bitch!”  I stormed out of the Hobbit house.  “Son!  Of a!  Bitch!”  I could feel parts of my brain crumble and die, and wanted nothing more than for that damn Dwarf to get a taste of sensation himself.  But he had me bent over the barrel, so back to the grind I would go.

And grind I did.  I amassed another 125 Marks, found his buddy (a goblin female, aptly named after a bone-weakening disorder), and picked up some nice  purples.

However, I also managed to hit Exalted with Alea Iacta Est, which not only gave me the in-house title of Champion…

… but unlocked some guild items that I could purchase.  Items such as the Dark Phoenix Hatchling –

A bigger bird, one that I could fly around on –

– and a Scorpion mount!

It may be good to be the King, but being a Champion is what it’s all about!