The Queue: ACHOO

It’s a balmy 72 degrees and climbing, and while in most places that’s cause to open the windows and breathe in that lovely floral spring air, for me it’s cause to hunker down. The tree pollen here gets so thick that I start sneezing, not because of allergies, but because the particulate in the air is so thick it tickles my nose. Even without the sneezing, everything outside is covered in a light yellow-green dust, and honestly, I don’t want to spend the next month mopping.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and we’ll answer as long as you brought us a tissue.

We have a murder of crows which sometimes frequents our backyard, and I have a huge thing of unsalted peanuts to give them this spring in an attempt to become a real life Disney Princess. Crows are ridiculously smart, and may bring things like shiny pieces of metal if you befriend them. Maybe that technically makes me a villainess? Eh, either way, crow army.

We also have a whole family of Cooper’s Hawks which have been decimating our chipmunk population, which I’m pretty happy about because I’m growing currant tomatoes and cherry tomatoes and even with bird netting those little jerks somehow find a way. I’m trying datil peppers too, so hopefully they’ll eat one of those and heck off.

Unfortunately, both these opposing factions, and a whole flight of Blue Jays love to square off, almost exclusively while I’m trying to record some kind of audio.

Probably Onyxia.

She’s a solo boss, relatively easily accessed, and had to be farmed constantly for Onyxia Scale Cloaks in order to fight Nefarian in BWL. We went back fairly frequently to stock the guild bank for new recruits, and to sell them for potion materials. Then, she was revamped and made current content in the middle of Wrath of the Lich King, with both upgraded loot and a chance for a mount.

Beyond that, while I don’t make a habit of killing things weekly, I’d say probably Kalecgos in Sunwell. While I’m running that raid in pursuit of Thoridal off the end boss, since I did do it in progression while it was current, I’ve definitely killed the very first boss in that raid more times than I have the last. I feel like, even for raids I didn’t run as progression raids, it’s pretty likely I DCed or lost interest or something after the first few bosses, anyway.

So, the initial disappearance of Anduin, plus Jaina, Baine, and Thrall, was done via a cinematic called Dark Abduction. I believe this was shown in-game in the 9.0 patch before Shadowlands actually launched, to let the players who hadn’t read the tie-in novels know their character’s motivation to go to the Shadowlands.

Following this, Anduin spent most of Shadowlands either literally enslaved or in thrall to the Jailer and Sylvanas, doing their bidding. Following the Jailer and Sylvanas being defeated, Sylvanas was still (un)living, and was punished by being sent to the Maw to free innocent souls she’d stuck there incorrectly. Anduin opted, not to join her there per se, but to do his own quiet penance, trying to sort out his conscience over the things he did — and to procrastinate on calling on the light, uncertain that it would answer him.

Anduin hasn’t returned during the time gap between Shadowlands and Dragonflight. We can (sort of) assume he’s still in the Maw, though it’s possible that he’s somewhere else entirely. And I mean, I can’t blame him for a little soul searching excursion after all that.

I would kinda prefer no characters really be mothballed, even if their storyline isn’t necessarily the “A” plot for the expansion or patch. Like, for example, it wouldn’t be out of line for us to see someone like Lillian Voss doing a little intel, or Magni communing with whatever local unique nature and/or rocks happen to be laying around, even if it doesn’t necessarily advance their whole story. Most of the current faction leaders got their positions by being war heroes or adventurers or inventors, or even in cases where primogeniture was a factor, are seasoned commanders in their own right. You’re telling me that, even injured, Mekkatorque isn’t going to be fascinated by ancient tech dragons used? Come on.

I know this isn’t everyone’s preference — for example, see the reception of Arthas randomly popping up across Northrend and how some people thought it was weird at the time. But in the case of many of these characters, it defies expectation that they wouldn’t check in with our character occasionally. The one outlier actually is Shadowlands, where people weren’t supposed to traipse back and forth across the veil between the realm of the living and the dead, but even then I’m sure Thalyssra would ask me to retrieve some kind of random geegaw from Bastion to bolster her magic or something.

His major form of cardio is Dance, Dance Bearvolution.