From the Dockside ((Brasspair's Backstory Part 1))

[Brass]

"Is this working? Well pop me in a pot and dinnerbell the Trolls – this damn thing works!

This is the latest time I’ve had to write all this shit down. My best friend gave me this new Journal for Winter Veil, and she says it’ll help me deal with things I bottle up inside. I think she’s using some potion-shiller or enchant jargon, but bah. At any rate, she knows I got to keep track of things somehow – given the amount of head injuries I take even just waking up out of last night’s mess – and that I don’t have the best luck for keeping things made of papery stuff for very long, so she enchanted up a storm on it. Thought-writing or whatever wacky word she used… telescriby? Bah. Water resistant, fire resistant (already tested that, I sure am glad), piss resistant, for all I know, other element resistant as well. Just in case storms chase me again or the mountains want a go at me this time. Bring it. Isn’t a safe time to be a Gob, that’s for sure, but its not boring neither. Truth be told, there’s no ‘safe’ for any of us out here. Nevah has been, nevah will be. So why not step up and punch the damn planet in the face when it wants to dance?

My first journal got burnt up by a rat-faced bastard when I was just two hairs shy a sly-nub’. He got his comeuppance with interest. Second time I lost my expensive, pre-owned blue dragon-back journal in a dice game. ‘course, I wasn’t even playing at the time. I wasn’t playing later, either, when I came to get it back. Several disfigurements later, I still didn’t get it back – but I sure felt better.

You don’t even want to know about the third time I lost my journal – and believe you me, you won’t want me to talk about that. (garbled imagery about a half naked goblin jumping out a window with an angry mob chasing and a nice looking but not entirely dressed Troll girl yelling at the mob). GAH! Tekk din’t say it jot down EVERYTHING that pops. Humph! Disregard all that. Where’s the erase thought, uh… thought? (Gulping noise, burning throat feeling that only alcohol can give) Ah. There it is. That’ll about do it. Yeah.

I forget many of the other times. But that doesn’t matter. The most recent lost journal was during the big one last year. Lost Everything. Literally. (flash of a lonely, beat silhouette on a beach, and some mournful feeling-but it stops abruptly). Hah. Din’t get me that time, Book. Not while I have my good luck tank here with me. Won’t find a tank without a tank, ask the beards out there – they got that shit down on these things.

But I digress…

My name’s Bazzil Brasspair. I wasn’t born with that last name. Fel, I was barely was born with any name at all. From here, I could give you down low. List out my life like a checklist on some quest post-board – that’s how bonehead Garrosh likes to do things, right? Bah. If I could get the details strait, that is. I could tell you where I was born, if not when about that was, and to what. Er. To whom. But then that’s dull an’ boring. I’ll tell you all that, but there’s a couple things you got to know first. A bit of context for you non-gobbers out there.

Frens’, I’m a born and bred son of the Bay. Booty Bay. And what that means I literally can’t tell you easy right off. There are a ton of words I could probably use to describe it, but none of them fit just right. Isn’t a one-word kind of thing to explain. It’s not even a one paragraph kind of thing. Since my feet hit the floor from my mah’s cashbox I’ve had to step tall to anybody or anything that looked to knock me over. Not that I din’t get knocked over. I did a lot, even deserved it once in a while. Point’s that when I got back up I stepped up taller, and no amount of ass-whoopin’ was gonnah change that. I’ll always look taller when they’re lyin’ out cold n’ pretty. Heh.

My mah’s name is really trivial, and my whole life there I never knew my pah. That’s nothin’ special, for you non-gobs out there – if you think that somehow matters. The sailors would cat-call her name all the time, and she wasn’t too discriminating – if you catch my drift. Real friendly sort when she was young, I heard, and had no small end of ‘special friends’ tah plunder her booty. But friendly runs out, y’know - just like her looks, then her money, ‘specially in a place like the Bay. She got done wrong, way wrong. By the time I came around wise, my Mah was scarred up by uppity bilgerats physically and mentally, twisting her into a shrill ol’ Gob. They worked the nice out of her, and strait cold. She was tough as a piece of old dark iron scrap, beat about as much to uselessness in jus’ about every way but light a fire under it and get the fel out of its way. Shit’s sharp.

Either way, she was a piece of work – nobody wanted on the bad side of my ol’ Mah or she’d beat ‘em within an inch of their scurvy hides. That beat definitely did extend to her kin, believe you me. I’ve known sharks nicer to their issues. I had no small amount of brothers and sisters, but most of them got sold off, beat to hobgobber smarts, or disappeared entirely. That was especially true the snivelers. She could dual wield whipping canes an’ slap someone up worse than a six-armed Naga siren sensitive about her weight.

Mah kept me, I think, because I din’t back down. I didn’t snivel or shut up. Contrary, I’d get up in her face and take the hit. I’d bark and bite, then she’d lip off as foul as the ol’ bitchbirds of Stonetalon in return. I’d get my green ass royally beat. Still I didn’t back down from her, an’ because of that, anybody else. One beatin’ from Mah and you just think that drunk Troll at the bar is trying to dab the sweat off your forehead all nice-like with his knuckles. An’ if came a fight I couldn’t win, there’d be Mah, ready to kick their teeth out their backside like she was putting on a boot with her one good leg. She’d do it, too, at least in the early days. Mean one, she was. Just such a lady was she. Though ‘lady’ might be stretchin’ the term to warranty voidage.

But if anybody messed with her later, hoo hoo – I’d be up and ready to adjust their ass-to-ears ratio. That’s my MAH. I hated that briny old hag, but that’s the interestin’ thing about being raised in the Bay. About bein’ a gob, too. Hatin’ doesn’t get in the way of love, friends or family. Crazy, that - but true. We hated each other fine. And I’m the only one she kept, and definitely the only one she fought with or for. She was MY Mah. She called me Bazzil. I was the only one she gave a name to, and I paid for it with my hide and temper. I earned that name. Much as I earned the one more mooks know.

Lookin’ back on it, Mah did the best thing a one-legged bitch could do by me - she made me tough enough to survive it. Tempered me like a good blade just needing to be balanced and strengthened. This was a place surrounded by uppity, savage Trolls who weren’t quite warm to having their turf tread by our kind and would just as much shrinky-hex your head off as eat you up with a side of papaya, elsewise drink with yah. This was a place where Pirates go to spend what they tore out the ass of some scruffy merchant, and they weren’t going to take no lip between their keg emptying shenanigans. A place of mosquitos that’d suck you down a few a few inches – if the locals didn’t. Know what I mean? This was a place of Slavers – and those were the worst – where in the dockside if you weren’t watching your back careful, you weren’t ever going to see home again with only a briny grave to hope for. That was if you were lucky. Trolls, Starving Crew, or Fish Heads might just as much eat what’s left of your unlucky hide. Flounder shit down, either way.

You can imagine there are plenty of jobs to be had in a place like that. Humans an’ their like try to always label things away so neatly like things are organized. Bah. I din’t have no profession as such – and to fel with the idea. That’s no way to make coppers. It’d cut me short no small amount of pay if I didn’t get creative. I’ve been called a sleazy opportunist before, but even that isn’t entirely accurate. I didn’t just look for opportunities, I made them for myself. Heh. That’s how you survive in a Gob-run town.

Most Gobs, I noticed, were little better than thieves. We all start out that way when we make the big connection of ‘profit equals food’ then those that survived that learn ‘profit equals poon’. Hmm. Perhaps ‘Thieves’ would be a lot too generous to call ‘em. They were more like scavengers with itchy hands and fast legs – with all the desperation of a Quillboar eating ham-hocks and the mental capacity of a hungry seagull. Where they used those things, I used something faster – my brain. Yeah, surprise – gob that gets beat pissless professionally’s always had one upstairs. Wannah fight about it? Bah.

I used their itchy hands and fast legs; beat down the little scabs and took their spoils, especially the more brazen ones. I jumped up notches on the local food chain in no time just by knowing which runner to trip. Sometimes I’d return the goods for a bit of coin and gratitude – make me some connections, work the angles, that sort of thing – you'd be shocked how many gullible goobers are out there. They always want to believe there’s something out there that ain’t what it is. Like an ‘honest’ Goblin, in my case. Which exists, mind you, I met a few later even if I still can’t believe it. Even I have my own code, after all - but theirs sure ain't it. Other times, I’d just blackmail them, or sell off the spoils to whomever would pay more. Y’know, the Goblin way.

When that opportunity didn’t knock hard enough – or I had to lay low before it knocked back – there was always Dockside work helping load or unload ships. But that was real work; hard, rough, and no end of risky. See, anybody with a ship has to keep it well manned. Most ships in the Bay were pirate ships, and Pirates aren’t well known for their longevity or decent retirement plans. Volunteers are even less than you’d expect, especially when there’s a deadline tide to catch. That goes double if they’ve given it a go before, lived to tell the tale, and realize their lifespan is about as much as a lobstrok in a boil-pot if no less comfortable.

If you din’t keep your wits about you, a Gob might just as much find themselves dragooned onto a boat as an expendable, exhaustible pair of hands to be broke body and soul, then end up as chum before next port. I made the mistake of letting down my guard only once, and by gold if I didn’t get lucky for the situation I ended up in – I weaseled my way into Cabin Boy status when their old cabin boy, some fop elf, accidentally brutally cut his head off while combing his hair in the galley. Damn shame, that. I was the only one short and stout enough to clean all the hard to reach parts of the amid decks, and sneaky enough to avoid getting bilked. Or killed.

Fortunately for me, I was able to get back before too long – and managed to secure the accident-prone Cabin Boy’s effects for good measure. Got to see Stormwind during that time, but that was about it. But I digress. That’s a long story in itself, but not a pleasant one. I’ll catch that up some other time.

Like I said, dock work’s dangerous – but necessary sometimes. The finest work, what I got after building up a steady take-no-shit reputation, was to work for the Steamwheedle Bruisers. They’d pay me to shake down the little bilge rats picking at the merchants. Usually the same ones I’d be shaking down anyway, just didn’t get to keep the spoils. In return, the benefits were pretty good and I got to learn a bunch of useful things. Even met Baron Revilgaz once or twice. Mostly in passing.

When I’d get home from an honest day doing dishonest things, I’d heap a share to Mah. With her one-legged bitchetry, she wasn’t much in the market of jobs. Even in her prime, she only had one … eh… ‘profession’. She certainly didn’t do any of that in my time knowin’ her. Peeps just too afraid. Heh. She was so bad the Slavers would pay her to stay at home and stop scarin’ away the product. It was that bad.

As days got longer, and I got bigger n’ tougher, she got smaller n’ weaker. She had to make up for hittin’ me, which only made her look silly as her cane bounced off me – and pissed her off more – with ever nastier words. I wish like fel I could remember them all. I swear, if she could read or write, she could’ve wrote an encyclopedia of insults in Goblin, Human, Dwarven, Troll, heck, even what sounded like must’ve been Elf. The Old Gods themselves don’t have words like the bitter streaming from her mouth and would make even a Succubus blush. But Mah was mah, come days end, we’d still eat and bitch about other people like a normal family. She wouldn’t say it, but damn it, bitch was grateful.

As I got bigger n’ tougher, it was like bein’ the big fish in the little bay. Ream a Pirate with a rum bottle and they’ll hesitate to poke you with that same broken bottle. Chain a Slaver to an anchor and they’re a damn sight more reluctant to throw chains on you. Wake up next to a sleeping Sea Giantess naked, and live to tell of it, you tend to get some extra space on the streets. And no, it wasn’t because of the smell. Reason you’re not seeing that in the book is –I- don’t even know what the fel happened. Whatever it was, I’m happier not remembering.

Even doing Dockwork I could afford to take a nap here n’ there without worrying about waking up to distant shores and seadogs that smell worse than a Naga’s wet bits. They eventually nicknamed me ‘Brasspair’ down by the docks. The name just stuck, and I wore it proudly. Like my first name, I’d damn well earned this. It was mine, and nobody’d deny it without getting a beating to remember. Fel, I looked forward to it.

So it ended up nice, in its own way. Lots of long stories, and sure, the bay was a shitty place with some nasty types. No lie there, but I mastered it. It was *my* place. My habitat, an’ all that. I wasn’t born with a name, and I’d earned both my first and last. I had friends there, eh… well… acquaintances. Peeps with money and weren’t out for mine, and enjoyed my company time to time. I knew the commons that’d ship in and ship out, enough that I wasn’t gonnah have to worry about getting locked in loading cargo holds. There were peeps that I could have a good ol’ fist fight with and wouldn’t get uppity if they lost. Some fun types hitting the boardwalks. Everything considered, the bay really made you feel alive.

Hard to believe it, but it’s only been about a year since those days for me. Maybe a bit more. It doesn’t feel like it though. Feels like a lifetime since back then. Funny how everything can up and change on you. Nah, funny’s not a good word for that. I don’t have a good word for that.

Many moons back (I remember it clear as the day that Troll dancer rocked me into Gobhood) I was working the Docks on a Bruiser shakedown. It was a Tuesday, an’ things were not quite so rushed. Very few hands to break, really, and pretty boring. The squallshaper (eh, that is, seadog mages or shamans good at sweet-talking weather) on the boat looked northwest at first very curiously.

Then, they started to shriek. Others of them started to literally drop jiggling and kicking, thrashing. Foaming at the mouth and biting their tongues. Horrible sight. Din’t know what to think, but the Bruisers rang the bells. I remember Revilgaz peeking out of his balcony and shouting over the ruckus.

And we saw it. Never has so many pairs of breeches been soiled so absolutely as was made by the sight we beheld that day in the bay. It was like that place on the horizon where the sea meets the sky literally turned sideways. It was wrong, real wrong, and roared at us. It roared like a gold-damn leviathan of the deeps. To my dying day I will never forget that sight. There was panic… Gobs, Trolls, merchants, even the Fish Heads and Crocolisks were hauling ass with both hands into the jungle away from the water. There were more pants ruined. There was Revilgaz bitching about his ridiculous statue… and before we knew it, a wave about ten times taller than it was coming to dinner.

It ate real well that day… I was standing right there facing it on the dockside.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. That’s some shit, right? Why didn’t you run like the others? Were you stupid? How’d you live? I wish I had a good excuse for all that. Maybe one that didn’t sound more retarded than a Hobgobber playing happy slaps with a dim wit Ogre. But the truth is that some small part of me, a crazy-as-a-tapdancing-tadpole part, thought ‘Heh, I’m not moving. FUCK this wave. My Mah is back there and I’m NOT moving.’ So yeah, I figured I’d punch the sea in the face. Laugh away, wiseass. If you guessed that I didn’t win that fight, you aren’t spoiling the story one bit. But I’m here, so I didn’t get myself killed. So there’s that.

To be fair, I don’t know how long I was out. But the ocean hits like a bitch. Eh… more than a bitch, really – given my vast experience with taking hits. What I do remember how it felt. Ever have a priest throw levitate on you? Imagine that. Now imagine spinning in all directions like some wheel, and that your lungs literally can’t breathe – like you just got punched in the chest by a pissed off meat-fist mook – but that feeling doesn’t go away either. And it was cold. Not just cold as in the ‘damn, better get my toe out of that irritated mage’s frost ring before I have to glue it back on’ but cold in the sense that you instinctively know that the water *itself* is pissed off and wants you dead.

That the water itself is angry, wants you to die slowly, angrily, and bitterly as possible, and isn’t pulling any punches as it comes to wreck you up. So cold it was. The universe spun, weightless, cold, and painful. Were I not thinkin’ this through to paper right now, I’d have expected to have died there. Obviously, I didn’t. But in some ways, I may as well have.

I woke up on the beach. On the exact other side of the cape, actually. I use the term ‘woke up’ very loosely. I gurgled like a gob that drank a keg of Volatile Rum – everything hurt, soggy from ears to toes, broke in a few places, and wanting his Mah. You’d have to take a beating like that to want –her- around. Over a flitting period of light and dark, throwing up, and delirium, nothing made sense.

Every sense of mine was warped like a reflection in an ale bottle. My ears were clogged and sore, all I could hear was the sea and my own heartbeat. Which I gathered was a good sign – it *was* beating. My nose burned with brine and the overwhelming stink of decay. That was obviously not good. From my cheeks down to my toes, where there wasn’t outright pain, there was bruised numbness. I swear, I had to be literally one whole bruise in goblin shape.

Mah din’t raise no quitter. As soon as I could focus strait and get enough feeling to figure out which way was up, I got my feet under me. Breathing hurt a lot. Just the act of breathing brought tears to my eyes, and one of my legs wasn’t cooperating. I was a veritable checklist of fuckup. The aches all blended together into a brass-band of pain, which I grew used to as I began to shuffle carefully up the sand like a zanza stiff.

Though it took forever, I got to the gates of Booty Bay. And I thought *I* was fucked up...."

[Brass]

"The wave had wrecked much of the boardwalk and crushed in a couple buildings. Revilgaz’s statue was still on the island, but blown over to its side like somebody had given it a kick to the coin-pouch. Many of the little shanty dwellings were utterly gone, washed out to sea like they never existed at all.

One of them was mine. It was where Mah always was. And now, it was gone for the most part. A wreck of flotsom was left there. Yeah, that was hard to take in. Many’d tried to off the ol’ harpy when my back was turned, but that wave fed her to the deeps and must’ve been regretting it. Everywhere there were bodies; so many in the bay that you could about walk across it. That was the smell, then. I thought they smelled bad when they were breathing and dry.

I even recognized some of the bodies from their clothes. One gob I used to roll dice with. Luck wasn’t with him that day. A loudmouth, but generally likable – he always knew what was going on around town. A Troll I used to fist-duel and jabber back and forth with. He was so good at yo-mamah jokes, even ones I hadn’t heard about my mah before. Believe me, that was a rarity. Troll had a GIFT. Another Gob I used to guard rice barrels for, and that Gob used to chat up a storm with me when we made the rounds doing bruising work. And that Troll, she always showed me a good time… even a few freebees. I never knew a savage could be so sweet-hearted.

My stomach lurched. Before that time, I didn’t just think I was a hard ass, I knew it. But there at the overlook entrance of Booty Bay, I was just a broken Goblin looking at people I liked who were gone forever.

They were all gone. All of them. I never saw nobody in the bay cry until that day, but believe you me that I saw it right there. Even shady slavers wore silence as thick and stony as gurub’s walls that day, and no one needed fear them. Pirates sung misty-eyed dirges and drank to lost friends, as Trolls lit candles, floating them in palm leaves like little boats. The wailing and drums chilled my blood with their intensity. I even saw a Human Pirate weep his glass eye out for a drowned dog, of all things. Amazingly, I din’t see a single Gob looting – the cold, mournfully murderous looks on the faces of Bruisers explained why none dared, and Revilgaz himself stood solemn, pale, and stark as his statue. He literally did not blink as he looked over his town, gathered to mourn and identify the dead.

There’s a reason I respect the Baron, even if his statue to himself is pathetic. The looting would wait for the mourning to pass. And next morning, the looting certainly came with it. The gulls will peck.

The looting would happen without any shame or control. You can only keep the scabs away for so long, and it was pandemonium when they got bold enough, even with the Bruisers beating what they could catch senseless. Was like river frenzies eating a hapless crocolisk to bones. Naturally, I took my fair share of spoils in the chaos. I even ran into one or two old acquaintances that didn’t get drowned. Naturally, I had to brain one with a mace. He should’ve had more self control. I know, coming from me that’s a bit hypocritical – but I’m here to speak of it, and he’s probably in some Troll’s bowel movement now. Let’s not split hairs here.

My mah’s body wasn’t found. I looked, dug around the twisted junk that used to be our hovel. Most I found was some old beat up lockbox half buried in her corner of the one room shack. Practically the only thing left of her or our stuff, but had more locks on it than a burning legion's most wanted poster. Still, it was something. I kept it. I like to think Mah was too mean for the sea to just kill her easy like. She always did want to know what was down there at the bottom, now she knows. I just feel bad for the Naga down there if she somehow lives. Strange though it is, I still miss the ol’ harpy. Then I get in a fistfight with someone over something stupid for old times sake. We all grieve in our own way, y'know.

In a day or so, the bay was back to almost normal. The scenery was different. While few faces stayed the same, most faces were different. Some of the buildings were the same, and some peeps were richer. Other peeps were buried or bones. But for all the similarities, it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t home anymore. Not really.

I could’ve had a cushy job. The bruisers lost a lot of meat-shields, and Revilgaz would’ve contracted me to full time Bruising. Nice gig. But my heart wasn’t in it – I just couldn’t forget that feeling that I had when the wave took me. How cold it was, how hungry, scary, and angry. Now, I’m not a Shaman; I’m about as sensitive to the elements as a chef cooking over a fish over a fire, but I knew the world wasn’t right. I got that same feeling, that same crazy feeling I had when I stared down a tidal wave fully intent on kicking its ass, even knowing I wouldn’t win, at the thought of finding what did this to my town. I don’t get beat without learning something from it. Also don’t get beat without giving a beating back. It's only polite. Besides, it was a direction to go in. My heart was in that.

So I decided to leave the bay. Thought I’d see if I might find better things out there while I track down whatever pissed off the sea. Cashing in everything I had except mah's dusty old lockbox, I took the first boat I could afford (and trust at least roughly) to Ratchet. It was not long before Gazlowe pointed me in the direction of Orgrimmar, to the 'Horde' – where, it turns out, I wouldn't be the only new Goblin in town..."

(To be continued in Part 2)