However, the remainder of the raid did a great job of stabilizing the situation.  Sabik came over, drew aggro onto himself, and pulled Onyxia to the north wall.  The surviving healers did a great job of picking up the slack and keeping Sabik alive.

The remaining healers picked up the slack, but there was still a major problem.  There weren't enough of them.  The healing corps was down to four priests, four shamans, and one druid, and their mana bars were draining quickly.  The remaining druid had already used his combat resurrection and all the other rezers were in combat, so we didn't have an immediate way of getting the rest of the raid back up.  After some discussion, it was decided that Nerrad, one of our shamans, would suicide and then self-resurrect himself ("ankh") to get himself out of combat, which would allow him to start resurrecting the rest of the raid.  He resurrected some priests who then resurrected other priests and druids who then resurrected other players.

I was resurrected when Onyxia's life was at 20%, and by 15% the entire healing battery was up and at full mana.  Most of the healers and ranged dps characters got up on the ledges on either side of the room, where they wouldn't run into lava spurts when Onyxia feared them.  Now that we had recovered from the near disaster of the transition period from Phase II to Phase III, things were working like clockwork.

Go go go!

When Onyxia had a sliver of life left, we were told to pour on the dps.  Onyxia continued to put up a major fight.

But it wasn't enough to overcome this group of heros, and after 17 minutes and 11 seconds, the great dragon fell.  (New contest:  See who can kill Onyxia the fastest?  Just kidding!)

This was a great accomplishment for this group.  They didn't win the original race, but they could at least console themselves with the fact that once they got their full regular raiding party together, they were able to take Onyxia down on their first attempt.  (In contrast, it took the GV/Basin group three tries to take her down again the day before).  Onyxia dropped the following loot:

The Offenders uses a modified DKP point system to distribute loot among guildmates and those who raid with them regularly.  At this point, I still had negative DKP points after winning my Belt of Transcendence on a previous run, so I didn't have an opportunity to roll on loot this time.  However, due to this run, I'm back in positive point territory, so I will be able to roll on loot we find in the future.

The really lucky SOB in all this was Brolly, who as the only warlock in the raid, got to pick up the Nemesis Skullcap by default.  As you can see in the screenshot above, it looks like a big red turban.  There were several possibly offensive and borderline racist jokes made, including calling him "Osama bin Brolly," but we were just having a good time with him.

In addition to the loot shown above, Sabik and Thyrfing got a chance to fulfill part of an epic warrior quest series that starts with a book in Dire Maul.  (I understand that the book has a 0.1% drop rate and often sells for 1200g or more on the auction house.  Looking at the stats on the reward for the series, I can see why).  The main part of the quest series as I understand it is to take a special sword to Onyxia's lair, "fire" the sword under the flame of Onyxia, and then temper the sword in her blood after she dies.    When you take the tempered sword back to the quest giver in Dire Maul, you get this:

Those are stats to make any cloth wearer on a PvP server cringe.  Incidentally, looking back at my screenshots of the GV/Basin raid, I notice that Azul had done this quest the previous week.

We skinned Onyxia and got four Scales of Onyxia.  I hadn't realized in my earlier writings that you could get more than one Scale per run.  This makes the quest and leatheworking recipes that use those scales a little more reasonable.

We ported to Orgrimmar and held a big celebration when Onyxia's head was put on display.

When a Horde group turns in the Head of Onyxia, everyone in Orgrimmar is supposed to be blessed by Thrall with a Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer buff.  On the previous day, I had been told by members in the GV/Basin group at what time they were turning in the head so I could at least get the Dragonslayer buff (and take the above screenshot).  However, when The Offenders turned in their head on Friday, it didn't work.  No buff ever came, and we couldn't figure out why.  Oh, well.

It was still early in the evening when we finished celebrating in Orgrimmar, so we decided to head off to Molten Core to clear some of its early bosses.  In one week, Onyxia had gone from being an epic encounter to being a pit stop on the way to other things.  We killed Luciferon and Magmadar before calling it a night and then met the next day and cleared Molten Core all the way to Major Domo.

But that's a tale for another time.