Posted as my response to the Eleventh Hour Challenge:
Bah!
Another season, another senseless war.
It seems as soon as I patch them up, the warriors and knights run headlong into adventure and knives and long sticks with pointy bits on the end and back they come for me to wrap them up again. The ceaseless sounds of battle echo in my head when I sit sewing, as I perform my small enchantments over weak blades- when I’m asleep, even! And in the midst of the noise and dust and fearsome clanging, back my companions come, bleeding and broken and battered as if I’d never ministered to them in the first place.
I’ve had it, I tell you!
My mind, I think, had been made up for some time when I saw it: tucked into a hillside in this place called the Blasted Lands. Red rocks basking in the sun around it, buzzards keening in the air, and always, always the sound of distant thunder threatening from the mountains. Even the occasional crystalhide couldn’t deter this feeling. I had come, at long last, home.
Brother Mahar Ba at Nethergarde Keep has tried to deter me. He says the swirling portal to the south keeps spitting out weird creatures from Outland’s desert, and that the orcs are most pressing in their desire to keep the sanctum sanctorum of their heathen Dreadmaul Hold.
He’s told me the local miners are desperate for medical assistance- apparently there’s some trouble down the mine- which does not surprise me. When I attempted to find someone in charge in the Keep, the place appeared to be all but abandoned! Even their cellar was quite empty of provisions. These people need me.
At last I might sit upon the rocks and warm my fragile bones in the blinding sunshine this place has in abundance. I might finally practice my sewing without the frantic hustle and bustle Dalaran offers without respite! Perhaps in time I shall even delve deeper into the art of enchantment.
And then when I stumbled upon my home- well, it was as though the Gods had spoken. Just needs a bit of mucking out.
I love this Blasted Lands place.
It is unchanging. It is immune from the vagaries of the hectic world. It is perfect, and here I shall stay.
Disciplinary Action 
Lovely – I never thought much about the zone – it was always somewhere I rode through on my way to the Portal – but now I’ll go and revisit it soon (mind you, not the same place, if I recall folks that welcome the night elves rarely give blood elves _quite_ the same welcome!)
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I was really hoping they would flatten the Blasted Lands but on reading this, I’m now pathetically hoping they leave the mine and Nethergarde Keep alone. Although some extra quests there would be nice.
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You’re both definitely too kind- I almost cried when I got my most hated area, Blasted Lands (I was sorely tempted to re-dip in the Coffee Cup of Destiny, but you’ll be happy to know I remained upright and true!). It was really very fun, in the event, to think about why *anyone* would want to retire to the Blasted Lands. Once I realized it looked just like an Arizona Retirement Community, it got easier š
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I enjoyed this very much! I never have liked the place, but this gave it a whole new feel. I migt actually go see what quests there are there, which I’ve been putting off til the end of my Loremaster hunt.
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