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Vol’jin

^{Shadows of the Horde}

Michael A. Stackpole

To all the World of Warcraft players, who have taken a fascinating world and made it that much more fun.

(Especially those who, through random acts of buffery, have saved me more than once. )

1

Brewmaster Chen Stormstout couldn’t think of anything he didn’t like. There certainly were some things he liked less than others. For example, he wasn’t terribly fond of waiting for his latest brew to ferment and mature to the point where he could sample it. That wasn’t because he was anxious to know how it tasted. He had that figured out already—it would be fantastic. What he liked less about waiting was that it gave him all sorts of time to think of new brews, with new ingredients, and he wanted to dive right in and work on them.

But brewing took time and care. With the equipment at the brewery fully involved in the last batch, waiting to develop a new batch was his only option. That meant he had to find something to do by way of distraction, otherwise waiting and planning and brewing things up in his mind would drive him crazy.

Out in the world, in the lands of Azeroth, finding distraction had been easy. There was always someone who didn’t like you, or a hungry creature that wanted to eat you—and discouraging both did wonders to occupy an idle mind. And then there were places that had once been, or were becoming, something else that might be again what they were. On his travels he’d seen many of those places and more, and had even helped make some into something.

Chen sighed and looked toward the center of the sleepy fishing village. There his niece, Li Li, was entertaining a dozen of Binan Village’s cubs—most of them residents, some of them refugees. Chen was pretty sure she had intended to tell them stories of her travels on Shen-zin Su, the Great Turtle, but this plan had gone awry.

Or maybe she was still telling a story but had enlisted their aid in acting out a scene. Clearly the story of a fight, and one that apparently involved her being swarmed over by a pack of young pandaren.

“Is everything going well, Li Li?”

The slender girl somehow surfaced from amid a boiling sea of black and white fur. “Perfectly well, Uncle Chen!” The frustration in her eyes belied her words. She reached down, plucked one scrawny boy from the pack, and tossed him aside, then disappeared beneath a wave of shrieking cubs.

Chen thought to step in but hesitated. Li Li was in no real danger and she was a strong-willed girl. If she needed help, she’d ask for it eventually. To intervene before that would make her think he doubted she could take care of herself. She’d sulk for a bit, and he just hated when she did that. She’d also be outraged and then would go do something to prove she could take care of herself, and that might land her in even greater trouble.

Though that was his primary line of reasoning, the whispers and tutting from the two Chiang sisters gave him further cause to hold back. The two of them were old enough to remember when Liu Lang had first departed Pandaria—or so they said. Though their fur ran much more to white than black, save where they darkened it around their eyes, Chen assumed they weren’t quite that old. They’d spent all their lives in Pandaria, and very little of them in the company of those who had lived on the Wandering Isle. They’d developed opinions of those who “chased the turtle,” and Chen had taken a delight in confounding them by acting against type.