All that Glitters

Previous chapters in Linett’s backstory, the search for Grace Redfern:

• Have you seen Grace Redfern?
• Grace’s Raven
• Well-met in Bree
• Shieldmaiden of Rohan

This story falls immediately after “Grace’s Raven,” before the introduction of Pellandir and Arethryth in the subsequent stories.

Vanita says:

I’m Vanita, or you can call me Nita. Some folk call me Van, too, but it doesn’t matter much because I don’t generally answer no matter what folks try to call me. The reason is, I’m just so very easily distracted. You can be telling me the most fabulous, interesting story and let a sparrow fly overhead or a fish jump in the creek and that’ll have my full attention for a moment – until the next interesting thing happens. Oh, I don’t mean to be rude. My da taught me not to be rude, and I sure do try. I’m just curious! And I love shiny things. Comes from having a jeweller for a da, I guess. Growing up surrounded by shiny things. Da’s teaching me the trade, now, and I help him at market too. That’s what this story’s about, in fact.

More Spring Riders! Epic Lottos and Epic Flashbacks

Apparently the Valar of spring festivals loves Vanita and Linett just as much as Alduine, for several Springfest lotteries later…they too are riding cute neon-green-blanketed Springfest mounts! That makes one for each of my characters who are high enough level to ride it, so I’m done entering that lottery now. I highly recommend trying it if you don’t already have last year’s spring mount!

Floating Vegetables Follow Vanita, While….

[rest of title that wouldn't fit in the editor:...While Lennidhren longs to dance.]

Unfortunately however, this floating bunch of blueberries was not quite the right height for Vanita to add it to her novelty hat collection. It would’ve fit Alduine or another of the tallfolk though!

More Fun with Floating Vegetables

Vanita picked up a new title today in the Lone Lands. An unofficial title, though, as you will never see it displayed on screen. But unofficially, you may refer to her as Vanita the Cabbagehead, thanks to her fancy new hat:

Hehe.

Open for Business in the Barrow Downs

I’ve been working on my alts’ crafting this week, which is probably why I haven’t posted for a few days. There are just not that many ways to make “Smelted ore. Tanned hides. Spent hours researching which weapons to craft for which alt” sound any more interesting or less repetitive.

Anyway, today I logged on to Vanita to have her smelt some ore for Alduine’s weaponcrafting, and decided that since she was just a smidgen away from leveling I should go ahead and turn in some quests or kill something to get her to level 23. She actually had three or four quests ready to turn in and had just been consigned to crafting-alt status for so long…there they sat, just waiting. So I did that, and one of them was to turn in to Tobold what’s-his-name, who used to be in the Scholar’s Stair in Bree but now camps out in the Barrow-downs, which suggests he might be getting a little senile because who would really prefer camping out there to a nice comfy library in Bree? Anyway, while turning that in, Vanita picked up a few of the other quests from the Barrow-downs hubs, including the repeatable bounties for crafting. She got to go chop down some really mean and scruffy-looking maple trees south of the Barrows, as well as terrorizing the local wildlife in the form of bears, crawlers, barghests, rats, and wights. (It was also a handy spot for collecting more ore for Alduine, yay Vanita the multitasker!) I noticed a welcome change in the quest hubs of the Barrow-downs: They each now have a Traveling Vendor! It is no longer necessary to run back to Bree to empty your bags before you can actually turn in those crafting bounty quests (since they give you four or more different rewards for each quest…can’t do it after collecting all the vendor trash from the things you killed for the quest)! The last time I was in the Barrow-downs was with Arethryth before Siege of Mirkwood came out, so presumably the vendors were instated then or in the patches since. I am so so glad to see them there.

Alduine has been Yulefesting a bit too, in between crafting more weapons than she or any of my alts have any use for (nor does anyone on the Auction Hall, except she did sell a few throwing axes there, yay). She gathered snow and fir branches and mistletoe and all that, and attempted to grab some Glorious Beer with, alas, not a bit of success. Unless she was aiming for moonwalking practice, because something is definitely fishy about the gravity in that dwarven arena.