Dark Iron clan

Long ago, three dwarven factions lived together in Ironforge under High King Modimus Anvilmar. When the king died, civil war erupted. The Bronzebeards defeated both rival factions, casting out the Wildhammers and Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan's Dark Irons. Vowing vengeance, Thaurissan established a settlement in the Redridge Mountains while his sorceress wife, Modgud, led an army against Grim Batol. When both assaults failed and the united Bronzebeard and Wildhammer armies marched on his stronghold, Thaurissan attempted to unleash an apocalyptic subterranean entity to save himself. His ritual breached the core of the world and freed Ragnaros the Firelord.

The rebirth of Ragnaros violently shattered the surrounding peaks, carving out the blazing caldera of Blackrock Mountain flanked by the Searing Gorge and the Burning Steppes. The sorcerer-thane perished in the cataclysm, and the surviving Dark Irons found themselves bound into perpetual servitude to the Firelord. Over centuries within the lower chambers of the mountain, they constructed the sprawling subterranean capital of Shadowforge City. Their artisans and sorcerers became masters of stone golems, dark sorceries, and steam-driven siege machinery, weaponizing the molten elements around them under the gaze of flamewakers and elemental overlords.