Flinthammer Hall

It was during the years between the Second and Third Wars.

Despite the relative peace, it had been a bad year for Ringo Flinthammer. Little arguments and slights had festered and now, during the Feast of Winter Veil, when all of Khaz’s children should be gathered around the family hearth, singing songs and feasting together, he was alone, trudging through the heavy snows in the Coldridge Valley, hunting for his dinner.

“Ah’m nae responsible fer how ye choose tae get offended by completely reasonable opinions, nae matter who ye …”

He paused, raising his blunderbuss. It had been a hard winter in Dun Morogh, following a poor harvest and a dry summer. The animals who could afford to were hibernating and dreaming of a green and prosperous spring. Scrawny wolves stalked the barren hills, hunting bony rabbits and, occasionally, raiding dwarven farms for their rams.

Ringo’s stomach growled as he peered through the thick snows. The wolves would have some competition tonight — it’d been a while since he’d eaten himself, after storming out of his parents’ home before dinner, not remembering, at the time, that he didn’t have enough coppers for dinner at the Thunderbrew Distillery.

There was that noise again — but what was it? The Frostmane trolls, as hungry as the wolves or dwarves, had been out raiding as well, and it was rumored that some of the dwarven disappearances of late — which normally ended in finding out someone got pointed the wrong way when going home from the pub and had ended up sleeping it off in another pub the next town over — had ended up roasting on spits in Frostmane camps.

It suddenly occurred to Ringo that storming out on his family might have felt good, but against a pack of cannibal trolls, the rest of the Flinthammer Boys would be very welcome.

The curtain of snow cleared for a moment and there was a blur of white fur. Ringo jerked up his gun and prepared to fire.

“Rabbit, wolf or boar, ye’re gaein’ in the stew pot t’night!”

…

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For whatever reason, most Forsaken never spoke the Common tongue, as they had in life. Maybe it was a spell cast by their Dark Lady. Maybe it was an edict from the warchief. In any case, they tended to only speak a strange gibberish that sounded like Common, but wasn’t.

But this undead soldier, Ringo understood, which was just the way he wanted it.

The Horde was assaulting Lion’s Landing Tower — and, at the moment, they looked like they were going to take it. Ringo had arrived with other Shieldwall Riflemen, laying down cover fire and taking out scouts and observers. But now, they were nowhere to be found. Ringo had somehow ended up in a forward position alone, cut off, and surrounded. Even Frostmaw was nowhere to be found.

“Heh heh heh,” the undead soldier cackled as he approached, his black tongue waggling, his lower jaw rotting somewhere in a grave in Lordaeron. “Rumembuh Southshowah? Rumembuh Dun Gawok?”

“Did ye say ‘Dun Garok?'” Ringo snarled, raising his rifle and squeezing the trigger, only to be greeted with the click of an empty chamber.

The undead soldier waggled what remained of his eyebrows.

“Menethuh Hawbaw is necks. An then Thelshamuh!”

“LIKE HELL YE WILL!”

Ringo sprang forward, wielding his rifle like a club; if he couldn’t shoot his way out, he’d at least smash this Forsaken bastard’s skull in before they got him.

There was a loud thunk behind Ringo. In the fraction of a second before he sank into unconsciousness, he realized it was the sound of a Horde rogue — likely another damned undead — thwacking him with a blackjack. Then he fell forward into darkness, the sound of jawless laughter echoing all around him.

The Alliance has a saying about Ironforge, that it’s a city of dwarfish charm and gnomish efficiency. And normally that’s true: It’s a city of clanking gears and pounding hammers, drunken brawls and machines run amok.

But when it comes to the Alliance war machine, the sons and daughters of Khaz Modan were a wonder to behold. Within hours of the Alliance fleet landing, a blue-roofed barracks was constructed, a mine secured and producing and defensive towers well underway.

But the Alliance wasn’t alone on the southern coast. Gyrocopter patrols reported the Horde war machine was tearing through the forest, shredding trees, spilling oil into the waves and filling the air with smoke. Where the Alliance built, the Horde destroyed.

Ringo Flinthammer enjoyed the work, digging out rock suitable for the fortress city of Lion’s Landing. Sweat poured down his bare back and his hands were sore from swinging the pick, but it drove out all other thoughts. There was simply finding the rock, splitting it away and loading it onto Frostmaw’s saddle bags.

He had smelled the same scent wafting over the Krasarang Wilds years before, in Stranglethorn Vale. But what the goblins of the Venture Company had taken years to do, ruining vast sections of the wilderness, the goblins of the Bilgewater Cartel had accomplished in days.

For the good of Pandaria, the Horde had to go.