Post Cards from Caius – Northrend Travel

 Hi All.  Zyrena here again with more interesting things from my intrepid cousin, Caius, up in Northrend.  This time he sent me a letter talking about some of the neat ways he’s encountered to get around since he got there.

According to Caius, he can’t fly his pretty white gryphon there yet. While the gryphon has no issues, Caius himself needs to learn how to cope with the colder air temperatures at such a northern climate before he can use her.  Yet another indication that my cousin may be a bit more…umm…delicate… than I had previously realized.  Ah well.

I mentioned the great icebreakers to you all before when we talked about Caius’ journey to Howling Fjord and Valgarde.  The Northspear can get through almost anything the northern seas can throw at her and do it with grace.  But Caius sends home word of another kind of ship used up there to get between the Tuskarr villages.  It seems they employ Giant Sea Turtles.  The Tuskarr tame these huge sea animals and build cabins on their shells.  I noticed from Caius’ picture that they are using a bunch of carrots on a stick to get the turtles to go where they want.  I’m guessing that at each port the magnificent creatures are rewarded for their service.  Otherwise, I’d think they’d get tired of the monotony and just dive.  That would be a rather uncomfortable situation for any passengers I’d think.  Apparently, there are sometimes traveling merchants on these vessles who can take any extra goods to help adventurers lighten their packs and sometimes there are even Tuskarr adept at gear repair aboard.

While wandering one of the Tuskarr villages, Caius came upon some personal water craft that he found noteworthy.  The Tuskarr use small outrigger canoes to go out on the water to fish and to get about on personal business.  These small craft are fitted with metal plating on the bows.  Caius surmised in his letter that this plating must protect the skin of the vessle from shell ice and burgs floating around that are too small to bother paddling around.  The metal plating also had serrations along the keel and bow-sprit.  The only uses I can think of for this would be for traction on the ice if one were to drive the bow into an iceflow, or to dig into the ice after the bow was dragged up on a flow.  Maybe this is how the Tuskarr keep their outriggers from floating away as they hunt over the ice.

The next interesting mode of transportation Caius wrote about is the cable-boat.  I know that sounds odd, but I’m not sure what else to call it.  It is a suspended cable system with a goldola in the shape of a small long-boat.  It has one end anchored above the Tuskarr village of Kamagua in Howling Fjord.  The Kalu’ak, the local Tuskarr, call this “The Ancient Lift” and it runs up from the Isle of Spears to the mainland, just to the south west of Ember Clutch and to the north west of New Agamand.  Personally, I’m not so sure I’d be using something called “Ancient” that travels over open northern waters and traverses such verticle distance.  I’m starting to think that for someone so delicate, Caius is much more adventurous than he should be.

Or that’s what I thought until I read on farther int he letter and saw the next two modes of transport he tried up there in the frozen north.  I mean really.  A Gnomish float plane with a cable hook on the back?  What do they use that cable hook for anyway?!  I’m not really sure I want to know.  I also couldn’t help but notice in the picture he sent me that the pontoons have maniacly grinning faces painted on them.  That must be to show the state of mind of any pilot crazy enough to fly one of these things.  And the plane hardly looked big enough to be carrying around a draenei of Caius’ stature.  May the Naru help him if they happen to encounter any low flying water fowl!  I really am starting to doubt the sanity of my cousin.

One more paragraph and I knew we had come to the end of Caius’ mental capacity.  He’s not “adventurous”…he’s insane!  Apparently Gnomish flying contraptions are not quite exciting enough.  Without a picture from an incredulous by-stander in Valgarde, I never would have believed this next one.  Caius writes that he was sent up above Wyrmskull Village to see a man called Icehammer.  That man sent him on a couple assignments having to do with massive harpoon guns.  At the end of the last mission… at the end of the last mission Caius was sent back to Valgarde.  Not by horseback, not back through Utgarde Keep… but…. on the back of a harpoon.  Yes, my brilliant cousin, the renouned priest, fired himself out of a harpoon gun.

I think I have to go and lay down now.

Until next time, have fun and keep safe

 – Zyrena

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Tags: Ancient Lift, Icehammer, Northrend, Tuskarr, Valgarde, WoW