Quick Overview
The dwarves of Ironforge turned increasingly toward archaeology after discoveries raised questions about their oldest ancestors. The Explorers' Guild became a means of pursuing those questions across dangerous and distant lands. Its investigations helped transform curiosity about forgotten ruins into a major undertaking of the Bronzebeard kingdom.
Full History
For generations, the dwarves knew their history through the rivalries of clans, the founding of their mountain holds, and the wars that divided them. Discoveries beneath the earth suggested that their past ran much deeper than any surviving royal lineage. Strange ruins and traces of an older world invited questions that soldiers and miners alone could not answer.
Muradin Bronzebeard helped establish the Explorers' Guild, drawing scholars and travelers into the search for answers. Under King Magni's patronage, archaeological work gained resources and a place in the kingdom's public ambitions. Expeditions ventured into old ruins and remote territories to recover evidence of the dwarves' origins, often at considerable risk.
The quest for knowledge also created new dangers. Excavations could intrude upon places already occupied or sacred to other peoples, and forgotten constructions were not always empty. The guild's search changed Ironforge's sense of itself: the dwarves were no longer satisfied merely to defend the kingdom they had inherited. They wanted to discover what had existed before it.
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Through History
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