Yes, that is Niqora on a netherdrake. No, she is not exalted with the Netherwing faction yet. This is in fact a glitch that happens sometimes when you’re doing the Netherwing dailies. You know how whenever you fly over Netherwing Fields, you get changed into one of those Dragonmaw orcs and your flying mount turns into a netherdrake? Well sometimes when you fly away, you turn back to normal but your mount doesn’t. It kinda lets you preview what your character looks like on a netherdrake.

So the bad news is Niqo doesn’t have her pretty dragon…yet. But the good news is that she’s on her way to getting one! The hardest part of getting Netherwing rep is the quest line from hated to neutral. There’s this incredibly annoying part where you have to kill Zuluhed the Whacked, a level 72 elite. For someone who spends almost all her time soloing, this is an impossible task. What’s even harder is actually finding a group for this quest. Either everyone’s done it or they don’t want to do it. I had been looking for a group for about a month, almost had one at one point but it seems that no healers were around. Luckily, I managed to make a couple friends not too long ago. 🙂

You see, I saw this all-tauren RP guild called The Freeriver Tribe advertising on Trade or Guild Recruitment, I can’t remember which. It piqued my interest so after watching their website for a little while, I decided to give them a try. Let’s just say that I’m glad I did. Everyone there is really nice, helpful, and just plain fun to be around, including members from the other guilds that Freeriver has an alliance with. There’s even one of my guildies, named Onai, that I seem to have a lot in common with. The two of us always seem to be joking about one thing or another, be it how to throw a good beheading party (with pony rides!) or how big of a crush we both have on Riddick. As Onai put it once, “Niqora is an incorrigible smarta$$…and I like it.” It’s good to be loved. 😉

So, back to the Zuluhed story. The day after I almost had a PUG for Zuluhed, I mentioned in guild chat that I really really really wanted to get this group quest done. A netherdrake mount is the closest I can get to owning a dragon of some sort and being my favorite character, I really wanted Niqora to get one. I wasn’t expecting anything right then and there, I just figured I’d ask in case someone else wanted to join me in the search of a group. I did also consider the fact that the guild leader has a level 70 resto shaman. 🙂

But before I knew it, we had a group coming together for it. It turns out that the guild leader’s wife also wanted to do the quest so she arrived with the GL’s shammie in tow. The GL of one of our alliance guilds also showed up. It turned out that he didn’t have his flying mount yet…so we all pitched in to buy him one. There was a good bit of cheering as he flew circles around our heads. A few more calls went out and suddenly we had 2 more people who didn’t want the quest but were just willing to help out in return for helping them on another quest.

In the end, we had 2 healers and 4 DPS. There was no one to tank. This is where Grakoth stepped up. Remember my warp stalker Grakoth? That’s right, he tanked Zuluhed. With 2 healers on him, he did a great job. I normally don’t pay very close attention to Omen but this time I watched those little bars very closely. In the end there was only one death, the GL’s wife. I think she managed to pull aggro somehow and Grakoth couldn’t get it back in time. I remember trying to smash my Intimidation hotkey as quickly as I could. Either way, her husband rezzed her at the end of the fight and she managed to complete the quest so all was well.

There was cheering and congratulating and me offering thanks over and over again because I was soooooo happy to have completed that part of the quest. I went to help the people who had wanted help with the other quest…only there wasn’t much I could do. Apparently the mob they needed to kill could only be seen with a certain set of goggles, ones that you get from the quest giver. It was part of a quest line that I hadn’t done so they quickly helped me get my own pair of the goggles. Only it seems they were the wrong ones and I couldn’t see the mob. It was kind of amusing to watch the other party members drop dead around me for no reason I could see. They finally managed to do it without me dealing any damage. I felt kind of silly standing there just bandaging the void walker tank because I couldn’t do anything else. They were nice about it and said that any help was appreciated. 🙂

Anyways, Niqora is slowly but surely working through the Netherwing dailies. She should be going from friendly to honored today. By the way, does anyone else notice how the Dragonmaw peons say things that reference Silence of the Lambs? Things like “It puts the mutton in the stomach!” and “Why it put da booterang on da skin?!”, which come from the movie quote “It rubs the lotion on its skin”. It’s amusing and creepy at the same time.