Ironband's Excavation Site

Full History

The dwarves of Ironforge had begun to look beyond their surviving clan histories for clues to a more distant origin. Excavations in Loch Modan formed part of that search. East of the lake, Prospector Ironband supervised work among older ruins, while aides such as Magmar Fellhew managed the practical burden of keeping a remote camp supplied. The dig was not only a source of stone or metal. Its workers hoped buried structures could tell them something about the makers of Azeroth's earliest monuments.

Progress became difficult when large, violent troggs invaded the excavation. The excavation’s managers struggled to explain stalled work to the patrons who had supplied their venture. The problem was not merely bad terrain or an exhausted seam: creatures emerging from the earth had displaced the prospectors from places they intended to study. The incident echoed troubles at other dwarven sites, where searches for antiquity brought modern explorers into hostile contact with inhabitants of underground passages.

Ironband's dig is therefore a smaller chapter of the story that also runs through Uldaman and the Explorers' Guild. The dwarves were beginning to question inherited explanations of their own people, but the landscapes containing answers were rarely empty. Ruins were occupied, defended, or changed by generations who did not share the excavators' purposes. The excavation left the dwarves with an interrupted search for answers and a costly reminder that the earth protected its secrets.