Flinthammer Hall

Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer rode unchallenged through the gate of Thoradin’s Wall — it had been guarded only intermittently since the end of the Troll Wars, more than 2,000 years ago.

Ringo noted what looked like a Forsaken campsite to the south.

“No time to see what ye’re up to,” Ringo muttered toward them, “Not today.”

The Wetlands had been flooded after Deathwing had shattered the Stonewrought Dam, and the Thandol Span appeared likely to fall to Dark Iron militants. The Arathi Highlands looked almost untouched by Deathwing’s wrath, and Ringo hoped he could prevail upon Captain Ironhill to send some of the Dun Garok garrison to help secure the region.

Indeed, the Hillsbrad Foothills were quiet when Ringo arrived, with winter songbirds calling to one another and the steady plop-plop of melting snow falling in clumps from the trees.

Frostmaw and Beer Run trudged along together, both snuffling as they went; the bear looking for winter berries on mostly barren bushes and the ram looking longingly at the last strands of grass peeking up through the slush.

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In Lordaeron, back when there was a Lordaeron, they had a saying: “A dwarf’s hill is his kingdom.” Wherever Ringo and Beli Flinthammer lived, even if it was simply a partition and a set of cushions of their own in Sun’s Reach Harbor, it was Flinthammer Hall. Wherever they laid their heads at night, that was their home.

“See that rock?” Ringo had once joked to Beli, putting down his cloak for her to sleep on, in a dusty corner of the Badlands, “That’s me pillow.”

After the final battle in Icecrown Citadel, Ringo and Beli had thought that their home, in a tower overlooking the village of Thelsamar, on the shores of Loch Modan, would be the real, the final Flinthammer Hall.

Arriving home for the first time after Deathwing’s attack on the Eastern Kingdoms, Ringo’s heart sank as he saw the home was dark, with no fire in the hearth, not even smoldering coals. He had seen the damage the dragon had done to the Stonewrought Dam and the muddy puddle that once was the loch. But Thelsamar still stood and he’d hoped to find his wife and son at home, safe and alive.

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“Let me get this straight … hold on,” Captain Tharran said, raising his rifle to his shoulder, and squeezing off a shot. The sound echoed across the snow field south of Kharanos. “So it wasn’t just a big earthquake that caused all this?”

“Nay,” Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer said, ducking down behind a disabled steam tank. “Ye didnae see the great big dragon, then? He smashed up Stormwind somethin’ fierce. The Bar With No Name in the district got crushed and he blew up the Old Barracks.”

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Mountaineer Ringo Flinthammer rushed out of the Deeprun Tram station and into Tinker Town. The home of the Gnomeregan government in exile had been in the process of shutting down, after the Battle for Gnomeregan and the establishment of New Tinkertown, but right now, it was packed with dwarven and gnomish refugees fleeing Deathwing’s onslaught.

“That’s the last time Ah listen to a bloody squid,” Ringo snarled, half-guiding, half-shoving his in-laws, the Rockbottoms, toward an authoritative-looking gnome with an officer of the Ironforge Guard. “Ah was away from me homeland and family when they needed me most!”

“Mountaineer!” a gruff voice barked from across the crowded hall. “What are you doing here?”

“Sir!” Ringo snapped off the best salute he could manage, as he was jostled by refugees. “Ah was in Stormwind, sir. The Earthen Ring …”

“What is your regular posting?” The guard wore the insignia of an officer of the Ironforge Guard.

“Loch Modan, sir,” Ringo said, then blurted out, unable to stop himself. “Sir, me family is there, is it …”

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