“TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!”

– Overheard every night in the Dwarven District…

Ah! Smell that?  That stench of molten flux and grain alcohol?  We’ve made it to the Dwarven district, my friends.  The Dwarven District is world apart from the rest of Stormwind, the moment you step inside the walls of the area, you’re lungs are filled with smoke and your eyes begin to water.  This may seem a bit extreme to many but to the dwarves of Ironforge, this is as homey as they can make a town that has such strange customs as not cutting their homes from the side of a mountain.  After all, Ironforge is built on top of a massive magma filled forge, you can’t expect dwarves to live in nice clean air like the rest of us.

However, the amount of pollution there are plenty of other things that you’ll find out of place in this district, and I’m not talking about the fact that the Mage Quarter has at least double the alcohol on hand.  If you’re going to survive in the Dwarven District, you’ll have to learn how to blend in with the local customs and really get to know the dwarves… like me!

By the titans, what the hell is that?!

Can We Build It? Yes We Can!

What in the Light’s name have those dwarves done to Stormwind?  Why is there construction equipment all over the streets?  There are massive logs just dangling over peoples heads over here!  Why do they even need the logs?  The district is built! It’s done! They don’t need anymore lumber to do anything here.  There’s not even enough room for another house.  Okay, what about that massive crane? What are you planning to do you dwarf bastards? Fish for people with a massive crane?  It’s low enough that anyone taller than a dwarf will just smack their head in to it.  Do you people not have any sort of safety measures in place?

*Sigh* Sorry about that folks.  These dwarves are just bringing part of their…  “interesting” life style to the streets of Stormwind.  Dwarves as you know are excellent craftsman, and I kind of wish that they had helped rebuild Stormwind instead of Van Cleef and his teamster buddies, but someone was to busy sitting around their TITAN LOVING MOUNTAIN to raise one finger with the relief efforts despite and yet still get an entire section of the city to themselves.  What’s next? We’ll just start letting wild animals take up residence? Ha! Not likely.

Anyway, aside from their “unique” culture, the dwarves are also renown for their smithing abilities, and the Dwarven District is a wonderful display of that.  No matter where you are in the district you’ll be hearing the tinking of hammers upon anvils all day…  and night…  every single moment of the entire night. Oh come on! What’s with the excavator?  I mean I know you guys needed the wood maybe to build extra floors in the houses and the crane to… do something…  but what on Azeroth are you gonna do with a giant excavator?  Are you digging under Stormwind now? You know maybe if you dwarves stopped putting massive construction equipment on every corner, you’d have some room for signs for your shops! I’ve walked into that gun store four times now looking for a bite to eat! Fortunately, the dwarves do bring something to the city: the Deeprun Tram.  A massive gnomish transportation device that runs from Ironforge to Stormwind and apparently right through Loch Ness.

I know what you’re saying, “Didn’t the gnomes invent the Deeprun?” Well, yes. But gnomes are just pets of the dwarves.  Don’t look at me like that! It’s not racist, it’s a fact! I’ll show you.

No Gnomey! That’s My Guild Hall! That’s a Bad Gnomey!

Come here.  See over there in the corner?  Those are the gnomes of the Dwarven District. Living in those tents.  The dwarves have doubled and tripled the living space in this district, they house more dwarves in this little section of Stormwind than all of Ironforge, but the gnomes are living in tents.  Just when you think the dwarves shafting them with putting “Tinker Town” in a hallway, they get this treatment here.  Why not? All they ever did was design and build a massive underground train for the dwarves to easily access home all the way in Khaz Modan.  The gnomes are a bunch of moochers to be sure!

They surely deserve to be placed in what is equivalent to a refugee camp in the corner of town.  I’m sure the dwarves are 100% justified by this one.  After all, there’s 30,000 dwarves living in this district.  That’s right 30,000 dwarves live in this corner of Stormwind.  They must be completely out of room for the gnomes.  You know, except for the massive empty building that’s 10 yards from them.  Yup, that big building in the corner of the district that looks like the Stormwind Bank.  Did you ever notice that sitting there before? I bet you didn’t.  Have you ever gone inside?  Well, this is a tour – in we go!

Wow! Look at all this completely unused space in here!  Not only is there never touched benches but there are two whole fancy desks in the front of the room.  I don’t even know what those dwarves wanted to do with this place. People have told me it was supposed to be some kind of a guild hall, but what guild hall needs two big desks?  Do guilds have two guildmasters?  I’m actually a bit creeped out by how symetrical this room is.  The benches are in the same spots on each side of the room, the two desks are a mirror image of each other.  It’s like there’s a mirror in the middle of the room, or some freaky dwarven feng shooey going on here.  But my point still stands! Why can’t the gnomes living in tents be in this room? It’s huge, empty and completely pointless!

Alas, the gnomes still sit outside in their cold tents.  The dwarves were at least kind enough to stick them outside of the big empty building, so they can always look at where they could be staying but aren’t because of “dwarven kindess.”  I suppose this has something to do with dwarven “culture” as well.  However, the guild hall isn’t the only place in the Dwarven District where the gnomes could live but aren’t allowed too.  Though I’m thinking this one is by choice.

Stab-Neck Lane Wasn’t Available Apparently

There’s a secret area in the Dwarven District.  One the dwarves don’t want you to know about.  How do I know?  Because the entrance to it isn’t even in the district.  It’s in the canals outside of it.  Right around the corner on the side that faces the Cathedral Square, you’ll find a small shop that if you look inside there will be a back door.  This door leads to a very strange area in the Dwarven District simply known as Cut Throat Alley.  Which, surprisingly, is far nicer than the majority of the district.  There’s no pollution here, no smoke or cinders.  An odd sense of calm is all that you’ll find here.  The alley runs along the back of a number of houses in the district and leads to a secret house where the road dead ends.  This house is… very nice! It’s cozy and fully furnished and has an extraordinarily large bed.  The oddest thing is that this entire alley and home are abandoned.

Why would such a nice place be abandoned and have the name Cut Throat Alley?  Was it built by the same people who constructed Murder Row?  Could there be something far more sinister in the works here?  Maybe the nice look of this place is a trap!  Maybe that’s why the gnomes don’t come here. They’ve been in Ironforge, they know what those damn dwarves are doing!  They’re KILLING PEOPLE! To feed their dark titan masters! You think Yogg-Saron was imprisoned in Ulduar? Wrong! He lived there! The titans are evil and their little servants the dwarves are working for them! They’re trying to shut up the gnomes! They’re trying to kill the people with smog and dangerous equipment littered everywhere! This is the proof we needed! We got them! Come friends! We’ll get those dwarven fiends! Death to the Dwarves! DEATH TO THE–

…We here at Oddcraft would like to apologize for having to put you through that folks.  Rest assured that we’ll be getting that tour guide the best medical care possible.  Maybe some with a nice clean straight jacket.  Oddcraft in no way endorses the comments stated above, and we would like to clarify that we like dwarves, think highly of gnomes, and do not think the titans are evil monsters trying to kill us.  Except Sargeras.  Cause he actually is trying to kill us. But Sargeras is not representative for the entire titan pantheon in any way.

We’ll make sure that we find a new, more stable tour guide to show you Old Town next week.  –The Administrators