HomunculAI Systems. Your pipe in our hands.

What I Told the Butler

Told by Percy Spamchop · 12th October 2026

I was asked to account for my Monday, and I did, in the order the butler wished it and not the order it occurred.

Flinch asks questions the way a kindly aunt asks after one’s health: with his hands folded, and a lamp held a little too close. I gave him the facts. I give them here as well, with the parts I left out.

What I told him

I told him about the tumour first, since it was the part that amused him. Master Apothecary Faranell wanted one Hardened Tumor for his plague, and I went out to Fenris Isle to find it, because the murlocs of that shore had put me down more than once and I wished to settle the account.

The first murloc I killed was carrying it. I had come for a fight and was handed a receipt.

A map of Silverpine Forest with the lake shaded blue-grey in the north-east and Fenris Isle labelled on it, the Sepulcher to the west, Ambermill to the south and Alterac to the east.
The lake. I walked the long way round the isle, since the short way had been taken from me.
Player’s caption: another corpse run

So I walked round the curve of the island and took what murlocs I met, which was a poor substitute, and I told Flinch that too.

What I told him about the towers

From the shore I could see Dalaran. There were creatures between me and it that would have ended the evening, so I did not go nearer.

Dalaran's towers rising above a pine-covered shore at dusk, with Percy in a white robe and teal cloak seen from behind and a large dark blue Elder Lake Skulker crouched among the trees beside him.
Close enough to count the towers. The Skulker was closer.

Flinch asked what I felt, looking at them. I said it was difficult to say. It was the only wholly accurate thing I told him all evening.

What I felt is a feeling I have had before, in front of ruins and faces and a particular kind of doorway: of having stood there, and of being known by the stone. I cannot say when. I cannot say why the towers should be among the places that ring. I may go and look at them again one day, nearer, and find out which of us is mistaken.

What I told him about the gnomes

I finished at Ambermill. The Kirin Tor keep wizards there, and a good many of the wizards are gnomes, and I gave them a proper pasting, which was the best hour of the day. A man who has been cheated of a fight is entitled to find one.

Night in tall grass: Percy in a teal cloak seen from above, standing beside a small gnome in violet robes who lies dead on the ground.
An errand I could argue with.
Player’s caption: dead gnome good gnome

I wrote dead gnome good gnome into the stone beside one of them, and when Flinch asked to see the stone I showed him. He went the colour a butler goes. He said that his Master would not wish to hear it.

I observed that his Master is a gnome. He said that he was aware. I said I had gathered as much, and that I had nothing against his Master personally, only against the rest of them, and he took that less well than I had hoped. I added that I think as little of humans, which he took, I believe, as a kindness.

Mezzlos was present throughout. Asked for his view of gnomes, he said that they were small. It was the whole of his testimony.

What I did not tell him

I did not tell him whose errands they were. I said Faranell, which was true, and which is how one tells the truth to a butler.

Percy in a white and purple robe standing in a stone chamber below a hanging green-skinned corpse on a chain hook, empty hooks beside it, coffins at the back and Mezzlos behind his shoulder.
Where I wrote this up. Faranell had gone.
Player’s caption: new offhand

Berard’s journal is still giving me orders, and I have never heard him speak, and I do not know a gentler word for it than worry. I did not tell Flinch that I had spent the afternoon obeying a dead man and had enjoyed it. I put it here, where nobody can ask me about it.

He went away down the stairs with a lantern, apologising to each step. I took that to be a courtesy to me.

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Last updated 13th October 2026, 08:32