Stabilized Effort Scope

Being Measured, And Found… Prepared

((In-character post. Be warned, as usual.))

It was rare that I graced the large building in Shattrath City that was rented out to the ruling council of the Elitist Jerks. Oh, sure, I was on many of their lists to receive periodic correspondence and post, but I rarely went in-person. Many of the Hunters held in highest esteem there were not fond of me for my rhetoric during the days where Illidan was considered the foremost threat in our world, and even though it’d been almost a year since then, my name was still one said with more dislike and venom than anything if it was mentioned at all. But still, this day I found myself lounging at the door, my steam-powered adding machine clicking away at figures beside me.

I had gone to visit Shandara for a new copy of her enchanted parchment – it was a magical thing, full of power and mathematics; A Hunter only had to scribe in the equipment that they used, and it did all sorts of numerology and analysis for you, probing the very nature of the Hunter holding it to glean varying figures for the power of our shots, ideal gear progression paths, and how much extra power we could expect to see from the various magical enchantments from other allies, such as a Warrior’s rallying shouts or a Paladin’s kingly blessings. Most of my idle time was spent tinkering with my copy of the parchment – scribing in random options with the erasable ink that Shandara had developed with the aid of a Gnomish Mage and scrivener, seeing their result, and then erasing it all down to the enchanted core and starting again.

It always was a sharp prick in my heart when I flipped the parchment over for its guidance on gear acquisition – the spells woven into the parchment would calculate how much power a certain statistic would grant to you, and then compute optimal gear placement for you from those values. It wasn’t perfect, as all gear interacts like a puzzle – change one thing here, and then suddenly the second-best option for your boots becomes the best option. Change your neckpiece, and suddenly your belt becomes irrelevant. But that was what I enjoyed – the chase for the one perfect solution.

Today, however, I found myself flipping over the parchment to find a surprise – many of the items that I’d placed into the fields on the parchment as what I was wearing were coming back as the best or second-best options I could find – my new crossbow, awarded to me for my triumph over an uninhibited Lord Jaraxxus within Fordring’s Trial of the Grand Crusader, was second only to the highest award an Alliance Marksman could find themself awarded: a combat rifle designed entirely by the now-retired Paragon of Hunters. My newly-acquired neckpiece was considered the best available by the parchment. My gloves, replicas of those worn by Alleria herself, were only inferior to the enhanced version granted only to those who successfully retrieved a Regalia of the Grand Protector from one of the Crusade’s Tribute Chests after a skillful victory in the Trial of the Grand Crusader.

Looking up from the parchment, I saw a female Night Elf standing near me, almost as if patiently waiting for me to finish so she could speak with me. Scooting over my adding machine for her to sit and handing her a spare copy of Shandara’s parchment, I smiled. “Trouble lately?” I marveled at the Sergeant Major’s insignia hanging from her shoulders – she was a veteran of the older wars for Alterac Valley, and was given official rank within the Alliance armies. “Come, math will solve it.” I said with a smirk, and handed her a pot of the erasable ink. “Terrisan, was it? Your letter was well-received… Let’s talk options!”