Java Peppers' Guide to Quel'thalas 1&2 (edited repost)

This is an edited condensed version of parts 1 and 2. The format of this story is based on VBS-TV's
Vice Guide to North Korea
I claim no ideas/names/places. everything [c] Blizzard or VBS

Java Peppers' Guide to Quel'Thalas

Quel'thalas?

(Thalassian): "KIFIROA, SIN'DOREI! D'BAAR ASHL'MEDO AL'DRASSILDU, TEL'KAR SIN'SCOTHAR!"
(English): "Attention all Blood Elves! Here is our Grand Magister and Father, Tel'kar Sin'scothar!"

*TV images show Blood Elf red guards marching, followed by magi, paladins, and death knights down the main street in Silvermoon City.*

Right when we, the Java Peppers- an Indy media group launched the our travel series for STAMP magazine/tv in Kerning City and Singapura, our fans and readers, and those who watch our shows on TV began spamming us with letters during our project in Azeroth- Amy and I were doing a tv/magazine guide out there, and as we were finishing up, people were asking, 'Why not go to Quel'thalas?'

Why? Well nobody knows anything about Quel'thalas other than what it looks like on the map as a huge blank spot. We were curious and intrigued. For about two years we tried to get in, but nothing worked out. The Sin'dorei don't let anyone in. They don't want anybody corrupting their 1000% pure society which is 1000% indoctrinated by their propaganda, and ruled 1000% by their leader, Tel'kar Sin’scothar. It is a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist, and every minute of each of the blood elves' lives is strictly regulated by this or that. They've been brainwashed for hundreds of years since their revolution.

Quel'thalas is roughly the size of Alaska, and has a population of over 850 million blood elves; the largest single-faction population in Azeroth.

We talked to so many people about arranging a trip to Quel'thalas, even for just a guided dime tour. After our filming for our project in Azeroth was done, we chilled up on Calvert floating Island on the outskirts of Dalaran.
Since the end of the 4th war, the Kirin Tor had been building up Dalaran; carving out chunks of land from all around Azeroth, and assembled this massive chain of floating islands. They bulked up the landmass that is Dalaran itself, and the city increased exponentially and it is now the size of Hong Kong Island. Thousands of smaller islands are hooked to it via chains and bridges, and this floating island chain, floats way up above Northrend.

In the 5th war, while the fighting in the Plaguelands was really intense, the blood elves tried to storm Dalaran, and take over the city. The Kirin Tor, backed by the Horde, Alliance, and foreign factions fought back the Blood Elves and when the armistice treaty was signed, they had the Sunreavers’ Sanctuary, and soon they built their own floating island and chained it to the back of the Sanctuary. They also had their own floating platform, since they were banned from using Krasus Landing.
The reason of the blood elves’ presence here is because of appeasement efforts from other factions trying to be friends with them and water down these political tensions.

Since the Fifth War, the buildings around the Sunreavers’ Sanctuary on Capitol Island, had been cleared out, and filled with concrete or explosives. This loop of blockaded streets and buildings is Blockade Bar. And at the entrance of the Sunreavers’ area, the Kirin Tor set up their version of Checkpoint Charlie, and the Blood Elves set up their own counterpart complex. Pretty much the rule is that NO ONE goes through without written permission from officers of all of Azeroth’s factions.

This has been the most obscure militarized part of the country, other than the dmz between mainland Quel'thalas and the Plaguelands, where nobody is allowed to go, so here we can get a view of things. Since the Fifth War, a wall has literally cut this corner off from the rest of Dalaran. Think Berlin Wall, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

At the other end you got the Blood Elves’ checkpoint, the Sunreavers checking their own as they come and go on state orders, and scrutinizing any outsiders brought in by their envoys. Because Blood Elves have killed unwanted guests who attempted to get in, the Cenarion sentinels and KT guards at the other checkpoint see to it that NO ONE gets in without theirs and the Blood Elves' approval.

We're going in!

"Quel'thalas is a totalitarian regime that is enslaving its population and arming itself with weapons of mass destruction. Kingdoms like these pose an ultimate evil; They threaten to destroy the peace and unity in Azeroth. The grand Alliance will not permit Azeroth's most dangerous regime to endanger us with the world's most destructive weapons!" — King Wrynn III, at the A-14 summit, Stormwind.

We tried to get in, but we couldn’t. Everyone we talked to that had connections with the Blood Elves was like, "No."
We tried the Stormwind consulate; I've seen Blood Elves go in there all the time in Dalaran. We tried the Horde office, no dice, we tried the Sha'tar consulate, we talked to travel officers of the Silver Covenant and Kirin Tor, and they all said no. Okay, we would have asked the Blood Elves ourselves, but there are two things preventing that.
One, is the Blood Elves only come out and use their office out here three times a year, usually during holiday events in Quel'thalas. The other impediment is that it's against the law to even say 'hello' to a blood elf without prior written approval from the high elves in the Silver Covenant. You gotta actually get a permit saying you can talk to Blood Elves. If you're caught by the guards talking to a blood elf, even if the elves wave you over to their table- yeah they will set up information kiosks in the park or popular markets in Dal; they will come up, grab you by the arms, and escort you away. I think the penalty is 12 hours' confinement and a 500g fine. If you talk to them without consent again, it's a whole day in jail, probation, and you might even be deported out of Dalaran and banned for a month. And the fine's 5000g.

(On Location, Silver Enclave entrance, southern Dalaran)
"Okay, we just had a meeting with the Covenant officers. We got busted chatting with blood elves over by the area center fountain. Because we're not even from Azeroth, they sat us down for three hours and gave us a crash course on politics, diplomacy and pretty much how and why Blood Elves are screwed up. Um, I tried to convince the officer to give us permits, and he said no, so we'll try tomorrow. The KT sentinels are watching, he said, because they are to keep Blood Elves from luring people over to the Sunreavers' Sanctum. It's to prevent kidnapping, and all that. So, um we'll try again tomorrow…"

So we began interviewing Blood Elf refugees who lived in Dalaran, because they defected, we are free to meet with them, and asked them about how to get to Quel'thalas, and they all looked at me like I was insane, but one of them, this pretty girl said "just go to the Sin'Dorei Friendship Company, and bribe them, and then bribe the Kirin Tor, not the Covenant, and they will give you your permits while the SDFC makes arrangements with the Sunreavers to meet with you, and they will take you from there."

The SDFC poses as an organization dedicated to integrating blood elf refugees into society in Alliance cities, but really it's an invisible eye and hand for the Sunreavers. Of course no blood elf refugee dared to go within three blocks of the SDFC's office, but the SDFC tells newcomer refugees, in the presence of Silver Covenant officers mind you, that it wants outsiders 'to see the real Quel'thalas'. So we're taking a big risk. How the SDFC even exists is beyond me what with the Covenant, Alliance, Horde, and KT officers and troops all over the city.

Why not? So we went to the SDFC office and explained we were tourists and simply wanted to see the blood elf kingdom. In fact they gave us each the 15000g to pay the Alliance's exorbant preventative fee to get our permits to go there. The Silver Covenant will not write permits for anybody but the Stormwind marshals demand 15000g to give someone a permit to go to Quel'Thalas. In mesos, that may well just be 150 million mesos. You can go out and buy a motorbike for that much money. The point of the fee is to prevent people from obtaining permits period. As the Kirin Tor demands, Stormwind officials must weed out those who they think will be a cause for trouble or won't last long in Quel'thalas. Instead of effectively scrutinizing would-be travellers, they impose the fine, which the SDFC already gives you the money to pay.

When the SDFC gave us the money, they warned against walking off with it; that blood elf rogues were watching and would be following us until we bought the permits. If we attempted to leave Dalaran or walked into the Auction House the rogues would have killed us and taken back the money. We paid the officials. The members of the SDFC we talked to were human because we didn’t have permits to speak with Blood Elves, and there would have been hell to pay for them if guards walked in, and found regime-faithful blood elves posing as refugee members of the group. The "refugees" came with us to the Alliance office and we gave the officers the money and they had us fill out these permit applications. It was a 50/50 chance of being approved: whether your application was sent to the KT or the Covenant, along with a cover letter written by the Stormwind officials and by us about who we were, how we'd be well behaved, and all that. If the Covenant gets it, then we must re-apply and pay again. If the KT got it, they, trusting Stormwind officers, would sign and stamp our permits and we'd get them back.

Okay, us going into Quel'thalas, the KT and Covenant know that, and they think the SDFC is separate from the Sunreavers. They know we're going on the guided tour, since we paid for it, and they think Quel'thalas needs our money, even though they actually paid for us. They think the SDFC will not be with us when we walk through Blockade Bar and to the Sanctum.

(On Location, Sin'Dorei Friendship Company office, Alahurn District, Dalaran)
"Okay we're halfway through a lengthy meeting, um the guy talking to us is in the Sunreavers, he's going over the itinerary of the trip, and local laws, customs, traditions, oh, and he said that we're not just going on a dime tour, no, we're actually going to be there for 90 days. That's three whole months, no less. He said the reason why that is because they are sick of people coming, gawking at them for a week, pretending to be nice, then going home. People change- they are affected by different surroundings if there long enough, and that's what they want us to get out of it. He also said that we are required to learn and speak Thalassian, and not just speak it, but fluently. On top of that, we might have to take up their religion and worship the Sun, and all that. It's going to be fun sitting in a Blood Elf church…not. I'm actually having second thoughts about this; I mean before now, I thought we'd only be there for like two weeks, but now, 12 weeks…. I guess we'll see when we get there."

The SDFC took our passports and our money, and all of our other stuff we were told to leave it in lockers here at the office. After putting all our stuff away, they told us to take our permits and go down to Blockade Bar to the checkpoint and show the guards. Walking through Dalaran, I was pretty nervous, I mean, we were going to be free for about the 30 minutes it took to walk to the checkpoint, and I was real tempted to just bail. If I did the SDFC would have had to give us our stuff back or face being exposed and executed.

We made it through the KT checkpoint and after getting to the Sunreaver checkpoint, eight blood elves surrounded us the whole time; they were the Sunreavers, and they looked pissed already. I think that was their intended demeanor, and any pleasantries wouldn't becoming from our hosts. As we were already in the Sanctum, we were given a rundown of expectations and rules, and they stressed and stressed what would have happened to us if we so much as stepped out of line. We would be killed; raised as mindless suffering undead and put to hard labor for eternity.
The sunreaver officers enjoyed talking about that, and we were horrified, but now it was too late to back out. We all had to smile, and fake our way through. Because if we didn't, the mages flanking us would have killed us on the spot.

We were forced to strip off our clothes and wear this green robe. It's got Thalassian letters stitched on the breast and side legs of the robes. In English it means 'extra-national' if I got my translating right. Second, we all had to drink this- Turbo Lax diarrhea potion. I never had to shit so hard in my whole life. They said they made us drink that was they didn't want us shitting out stools of human food into their toilets and stinking up the whole place.
Dinner at the Sunreavers' Sanctum was pretty much bread, salad and glowing water. The food was saturated with magic- I could taste the mana on the food, it was almost a cross between what paint thinner and melting plastic. I never knew mana could taste so bad, and we had to force down the tainted food, apparently a mage or an alchemist altered it to 'cleanse our bodies' of all that fouls smell. I had a hell of a stomach ache that night. My stomach was coated with mana, and it felt like it was full of alcohol.

Next came the make over. We were latched to these chairs in what they called a barber shop and just went nuts working on our hair and faces to make us look good for when we actually went to Silvermoon. We had to drink these potions that pretty much caused us to shed all of our body hair except the head. Leg hair, armpit hair, chest hair, nose hair, even pubik hair. My co-worker, D, was force-fed another potion- this icky green stuff that was 95% microbes. The blood elf apothecary was able to remote-control these microbes in her body and used them to make her grow her hair long. D had short hair, and they made her drink so much of that stuff until her hair went down to her elbows. That elixir looked exactly like green goose shit. She was spelled by another causing her immune system to shut down for the process, and that made D weak and tired. She almost passed out after she got up from that. They cut and dyed our hair. The stuff they used made our heads itch, and it felt like bugs were on our heads digging into our scalps and no, no bugs, it was the acid burning through our skin. A healer priest was throwing heals spells on us , and accelerated cell growth is not a pleasant feeling.

We had to bathe in these shower rooms, and instead of it being a normal shower, we were blasted with hot water that smelled like ammonia, it was a water-ammonia mix as they said, then after we were cleaned, we were blasted with nearly boiling hot water to get all the ammonia off us.

We were put up in this plain hotel, simply plain walls, plain beds, everything colored red or yellow. There were no doors just thick curtains that were welded to the walls with arcane blasts from the blood elf mages.
We tried to sleep that night, remembering the Sunreaver officer telling us at 4pm the next day it was time to head out.

5am the next morning, the curtains are de-welded from the wall, and like 10 blood elves came in. There were just 2 of us. I was woken up as they came in, but my co-worker, she was pricked and zapped with arcane sparks until she was out of bed standing with her back to the wall. Like parents or whatever, they ordered us in a loud unison voice to make the beds, and then they said the airship was ready, we were leaving NOW.

The Blood Elves don't use Krasus Landing. Instead they got their own platform on their own floating island chained to the city outside. We got on the airship. It was packed- blood elves coming and going, and all that on all sorts of business. We were made to wrote on a glass sheet and declare what we were bringing into their country, and since we were not allowed to bring anything, and if they find out you did, you are royally screwed.

We were flying from Dalaran to Silvermoon in Quel'thalas, and you sit there, looking out the window, and then it hits you: "Holy shit. We're going to Quel'thalas!"
And we were going with the intent of taking pictures, which you're not allowed to do; with the intent of making a documentary, which you're not allowed to do; with the sole purpose to see the kingdom in a bad light, and try and find grounds to criticize them in the future; this was absolutely terrifying. So from the first minute we got there, I was scared shitless.