This weekend I finished my first legendary weapon – Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings. Playing a mage I couldn’t equip it of course – and even less use it. Strictly speaking it wasn’t even my property, but that didn’t make any difference. I was just as happy about this weapon as our priest Ostaker, who actually held it in his hands.

A long term project
Adrenaline has been working on this mace since Ulduar came during the spring 2009. Lately our Ulduar runs have been few and far between, and before that we we used to extend our saved instances in order to work on hard modes, rather than farming the place for fragments. That’s why it took us so long to get the 30th fragment and finally forge it together in the gap of Yogg-Saron.

Nevertheless it was clear from the beginning that this project would go on until the mace was complete. More than once has our guild leader reassured the chosen mace owner that he would get his Precious eventually. Leaving it unfinished was out of the question – even though more than one in the guild felt that we were over and done with Ulduar – especially with the arrival of ICC.

This Sunday time had come to make the final push to put it all together. We had a saved clearance up to general Vezax, and killing him was a quickie, even though I must admit that I ate far more shadow crashes than I should have. I suppose I can blame my lack of recent practice on that encounter, which is even more true about the following Yogg-Saron encounter.

I wasn’t alone in being ring rusty, I dare say. And the thing about this fight is that it’s so very much about control, precision and technique, and so little about gear. Even though we’re currently raiding two tiers above the encounter and have an average gearscore number far beyond what’s requested in Ulduar, it doesn’t help much if you accidently spawn adds in phase 1 or if you fail to keep track on your sanity in phase 2. Turning down the help from one of the watchers (Hodir I believe we picked), which is required for the making of the mace, definitely didn’t make it any easier.

We had to re-conquer this fight once again, getting reminded of all the things to keep in mind (and they are quite a few) until we finally got the hang of it, two hours into the raid.

Farewell to Ulduar
Words can’t describe the relief we felt as we saw Yogg go down. Ulduar had been awesome in every way – and for a good reason picked as the best raid instance in the PPI list of 2009. But now we were done and over with it, and you could hardly think of any more worthy end of it.

It was in this very moment that Ostaker started to say on vent that he couldn’t see any item on the corpse. During the fight he assured us that he had thrown the thing into the mouth of Yogg, not only once but several times to make sure it worked. But had it been enough? What if he didn’t complete the quest after all? It would have been the most epic fail you could think of. I started to make feverish calculations on the chances we had to convince a GM that our priest was entitled to get the quest done.

We all held our breath for a few nervous seconds. But finally, when all other items were removed from the corpse for disenchanting, he could loot it (and receive a well deserved temporary demotion from raider to “muppet”). However this wasn’t quite the end of it. It turned out that we had to go and make one finally Iron council kill to get it all done, and so we did, and Adrenaline had acquired our first legendary item.

I don’t care if there already might be better healing weapons available in ICC. I don’t care if killing Yogg+3 isn’t the most impressive of achievements these days. Because the true feat of strength in this is not the kill in itself, but that we have kept the guild together for such a long time, through progress and through difficulties, never giving up, never forgetting about our promise.

Shadowmourne next
Someone nominated Val’Anyr for the title “guild drama of the year”, and it’s possible that it’s been the case in some other guilds, but definitely not in ours. It has never been a source of envy and split – rather it’s the opposite. It’s something that unites us and glues us together – the very symbol of our common efforts.

Now the mace is done and we’re rapidly progressing on our next legendary weapon – Shadowmourne. A few days ago our chosen axe wearer (picked through normal dkp bidding, in case anyone’s wondering) had come to the step where he needed 25 primordial saronites to complete the quest and move forward.

If we just would have waited for them to drop in ICC, this would indeed have been a painfully slow long term project. But lo and behold, what happened? People in the guild started to donate saronites to speed up the process. And the willingness to donate was so big that you actually had to be very quick if you wanted to have a part in that weapon.

Legendaries in Cataclysm
One legendary weapon done and the next one on its way. It won’t be completed tomorrow, but it will one day. I know it and everyone in my guild knows it.

And it gives me such a fuzzy feeling in my stomach.

I hope they’ll create another legendary in Cataclysm. If it would be something a mage could find useful – the better. And if not – I can live with it.

The greatness in legendary weapons doesn’t lie in the stats or the ownership. No, it’s all about the process of making it. A lot of blood, sweat and tears will be shed over this axe. This is what forges a guild together, this is what distinguishes Adrenaline from pugs and "want-to-raid-one-day" guilds.

With Shadowmourne in our hands we will be stronger than ever.