After finishing Of Love and Family, they didn't return to town right away. Instead, they stopped at Chillwind Camp, planning to make the most of the trip by heading into Scholomance and finishing Barov Family Fortune, a quest they had picked up earlier.
"The others still haven't finished Stratholme. Once they do, they'll still have to run through Of Love and Family. We might as well hit Scholomance now and finish Barov Family Fortune."
Gabryell's main reason for going was still the Barov Peasant Caller. The trinket was surprisingly useful for solo farming and even nastier in PvP. Three Barov servants beating on a caster could make hard-casting practically impossible with constant spell pushback.
The Barov Family Fortune really was a fortune, even by real-world standards.
Four land deeds: The Deed to Caer Darrow, The Deed to Brill, The Deed to Tarren Mill, and The Deed to Southshore.
Land deeds.
Those four pieces of parchment represented the former glory of House Barov. Draw a rough boundary around Caer Darrow, Brill, Tarren Mill, and Southshore, and an absurd amount of Lordaeron had once belonged to a single family.
"House Barov practically owned half a kingdom."
Gabryell couldn't help sighing. The Barovs had once been one of the great noble houses of Lordaeron. In the end, they handed their lands over to Kel'Thuzad's Cult of the Damned in exchange for the promise of immortality, only to become undead servants of the Scourge themselves.
Scholomance now occupied the former Barov holdings at Caer Darrow. Judging by the level and strength of its bosses, it was a little tougher than Stratholme but still a step below UBRS.
If they weren't here for Barov Family Fortune, Gabryell would've preferred bringing a larger group.
"Let's get the Barov Peasant Caller first. Once everyone else finishes Stratholme and Of Love and Family, we can come back with eight or ten people and farm gear."
At the current point in Vanilla, Scholomance could still be run with more than five players. For pure gear farming, an eight-to-ten-player group was much safer and faster than forcing every run as a five-man.
For the deeds, though, they needed to handle the quest properly first.
After picking everything up at Chillwind Camp, they headed east toward Caer Darrow.
Scholomance apparently hadn't been part of Blizzard's earliest dungeon plans. Later, the area was expanded into a full instance, giving players a much closer look at the history and downfall of House Barov.
When they reached the entrance, DeathScum stepped up to the locked gate and tried it.
Then he stopped.
"Ogabs, my Lockpicking is only 260. I can't open this."
The Scholomance door required 280 Lockpicking.
Gabryell walked forward. "It's fine. I have the Skeleton Key."
That entire key quest chain had been for moments exactly like this.
Then he glanced at DeathScum.
"Get your Lockpicking to 300 when you have time. Go pickpocket Heavy Junkboxes in BRD, or hang around Ironforge and offer free lockpicking on people's lockboxes. Either way, you'll get there."
A Rogue with maxed Lockpicking was incredibly convenient. Once DeathScum could handle the important dungeon doors himself, they wouldn't need to carry every key around all the time.
"I'll work on it tonight," DeathScum said.
Gabryell also planned to show him a proper BRD pickpocketing and lockpicking route later. It was a much easier way for a Rogue to make gold than grinding mobs at Tyr's Hand, and considerably less dangerous.
There was an even better BRD solo route for making money, but as far as Gabryell knew, nobody had figured it out yet.
He wasn't planning to teach that one anytime soon.
The Skeleton Key opened the way, and the five of them entered Scholomance.
"Make sure you have your Argent Dawn Commission equipped," Gabryell reminded them. "If you're using Seal of the Dawn for the Undead attack power, wear that in your other trinket slot."
At this point in the game, Rune of the Dawn didn't exist yet, and Seal of the Dawn hadn't been updated to replace the Argent Dawn Commission either. If they wanted Scourgestones to drop, the Commission still mattered.
Once everyone had their trinkets sorted out, they buffed up, drank to full, and headed down the stairs.
Four elite skeletons waited near the entrance.
They were spread far enough apart that a cautious group could pull them one at a time, but there wasn't much point in doing that here. Any competent level-60 player could handle one of them alone.
With five people, they could take all four.
"Carlos, grab the whole pack."
"Got it."
Carlos charged in and pulled all four skeletons at once.
If he couldn't tank a handful of entrance trash in Scholomance, Molten Core was going to be a very short and painful experience.
"Watch your footing," Gabryell warned. "Don't fall."
The walkway overlooked lower sections on both sides, packed with mobs. There were ways to survive a drop if you knew exactly where to land, but Gabryell was the only one in the party who knew the safe spots.
Anyone else who fell was probably dead.
Back when he used to solo farm Skin of Shadow, Gabryell had often jumped down from this very area to save time, using the shortcut to reach the construct section faster.
After the four skeletons were dead, Carlos moved toward the door ahead while the others sat down to recover.
Smooch wandered over to the edge and looked down.
"Wow. There are mobs everywhere down there. Falling would be awful."
"Then don't fall," Gabryell said.
Smooch laughed. "Relax. I'm not that clumsy."
Then she started jumping in place.
That was the sort of sentence people should never say out loud.
A second later, Smooch screamed and disappeared over the edge.
There was a brief silence.
"Sorry," Danielly said quickly. "She didn't mean to do that. A cockroach crawled past her foot and scared her."
Smooch's Hunter had fallen into the mobs below, but the player herself was apparently still too busy dealing with the real-life cockroach to react.
Feign Death never happened.
Her character died almost immediately.
Girls' dorms weren't magical spotless places just because television liked pretending they were. A cockroach showing up was hardly unbelievable.
Danielly moved to the edge and tried to find an angle for Resurrection.
"I can't get line of sight."
Smooch's corpse had ended up a few steps underneath the walkway, completely out of view.
A little while later, Smooch finally spoke again.
"I'll run back. Wait for me."
She sounded slightly embarrassed.
After all, she had just announced her fear of cockroaches to the entire party by falling off a bridge.
Fortunately, Scholomance's graveyard was right there on Caer Darrow, so the corpse run was short.
Less than a minute later, Smooch was back inside.
"Try not to do that again," Gabryell said. "We start Molten Core next week. I don't want you discovering you're afraid of lava while standing next to it."
Smooch said nothing.
Gabryell was starting to think she and Igor really were made for each other. Both of them had an impressive talent for turning tiny mistakes into completely unnecessary disasters.
"Which way?" Carlos asked.
He was standing at the next doorway, looking at the stairs descending on both sides.
Gabryell asked, "Any patrols?"
"Two skeletons."
"Wait for them to come up. We kill those first, then go down."
Leaving the patrols alive would just invite trouble. The room below was full of caster mobs with obnoxious abilities, and getting two extra skeletons in the middle of a pull was exactly how a clean run turned into a wipe.
They waited.
A short while later, the two patrolling skeletons reached the upper level, and Carlos pulled them back where the party could kill them safely.
Once they were dead, Gabryell pointed left.
"There's a door on that side. We go left."
They didn't need to clear the entire room for the deed. Hugging the left side was enough.
The first deed was in there.
"Kill the Neophytes first."
Scholomance Neophytes were more dangerous than the Acolytes because they could cast Fear.
Their Fear only hit one target at a time, but in a room packed with mobs, one player running in the wrong direction was more than enough to bring another group into combat.
Fear Ward helped, but Danielly couldn't simply cover every possible target for every pull.
The safer answer was to kill the Neophytes quickly.
"Ah, I'm Feared!"
DeathScum suddenly lost control of his character.
Fortunately, instead of running deeper into the room, he fled back toward the stairs.
No adds.
"Carlos, pull the packs farther back from now on," Gabryell said.
"Yeah. Definitely."
Carlos had seen how tightly packed the room was. One bad Fear path could drag half the place onto them.
From then on, they pulled each pack back toward the entrance and killed it there.
Progress was slower, but much safer.
After clearing the mobs along the route, they hugged the left wall and finally reached the first deed.
Gabryell picked up The Deed to Southshore.
One down.
Once they collected the other three deeds, they could return to Weldon Barov at Chillwind Camp and complete Barov Family Fortune.
Then came the follow-up: The Last Barov.
For the Alliance version, that meant traveling to The Bulwark, assassinating Alexi Barov, taking his head, and returning to Weldon.
And after that...
The Barov Peasant Caller would finally be theirs.