The Ironsong Garrison

[Zlinka]

Zlinka, her face smudged with dirt and soot, sits astride her wolf overlooking the Ironsong garrison under construction below.

The previous day had been brutal — they were lucky to be alive. Ironsong, with the rest of the Horde, had gone through the portal to attack the savage orcs coming through. What they had found beyond the portal… Zlinka shivered, and her face creased with pain… was far more orcs than anyone had imagined, even with Anca, Vilemoon and Sunlia’s reconnaissance. An army of orcs. A torrent of orcs. An unending savage river of orcs pouring toward the portal, toward Azeroth.

The fighting had been fierce. The invading force from Azeroth was pitifully small. But despite this they’d managed to carve a small moment within the chaos, and in that eye of the storm they had destroyed the dark portal from the Draenor side. They had closed the door, they had stopped the river of orcs from pouring through to destroy their land.

But in so doing, they had trapped themselves on the other side.

Through the night they had fought their way out of the Iron Horde forces, carving their way through the troops, dashing to safety with as many survivors as they could find. They gathered under the protection of a local orc tribe, the Frostwolves, to amass their strength for the next battle.

They would need to dig in for a while, to make a new base from whence to launch operations. They would make a new guild hall in Draenor, a garrison for Ironsong.

Below her, hammers pounded on nails, saws bit through wood, and shovels chewed through the soil. The palisade had gone up first, in the hours before the dawn, and now as the sun’s rays came up, Zlinka could see the frameworks of buildings.

And in the middle of the compound stood a flagpole, and as she watched, a flat went up, slowly, flapping in the chilly breeze.

A red hammer on a black background. Zlinka smiled.

Ironsong is here. We are small, but we are fierce. We will destroy this Iron Horde before it reaches our homeland.

Then she rode down into the garrison, into her Tribe, to help.


((Share stories about your garrisons below!))

[Cloudjumper]

He was home.

That was the realization that struck him as he sat in a tree smoking his pipe of Felweed. Below the massive form of his summoned Abyssal was being used by the goblin workers as an earth mover, preparing the fortifications for the new Ironsong Garrison.

It has been almost 40 years since the old Orc had stood on Draenor, it seemed familiar, but those memories were many decades ago. Yesterday Ironsong, as part of a larger Horde force, had gone through the portal to attack the savage Orcs coming through. What they had found was shocking, an army of Orcs, unlike any that had been assembled since the Great War, was forcing its way through the portal into Azeroth!

The fighting had been brutal; wave after wave of Iron Orcs had charged their ranks, try to break them and stop the destruction of the portal. Many of the Horde had fallen before the portal was destroyed, stopping the invasion but trapping them on the Draenor side.

It had been many hours of guerrilla fighting, but the Horde force had managed to break out of the Iron Orc’s territory and found some semblance of safety with a local Orc tribe the Frostwolves, to rest and regroup for the next battle. Frostwolves, he recalled them from his youth, even their leader Durotan was here again in Draenor. Dergash shuddered at the thought, temporal magic. Even he as a master of the darkest of arts knew enough to not meddle with Temporal magic. But here they were, trapped on an alien world from his past with people he knew to be long dead.

If these ghosts from the past really were the legends he remembered then Ironsong was in for a long and brutal war. Another war, so much war, he felt tired in his bones.

A scream from below snapped him back to reality. Looking down he could see that his Abyssal had stepped on one of the peons. He snickered. Tapping out his spent pipe he jumped down from the tree, headed towards the middle of the encampment. A small wave of his hand was all that was required to send the demon back to the Nether from whence it had come.

A Fel Imp materialized on his shoulder, “Greetings my Master.” A grunt was the only reply given.
“Is this to be our new home?” it asked.
“For now, we have a great deal of work ahead of us.” With that statement the fire in his eyes began to burn bright. He strolled into camp with a new resolve; they would end the threat of this Iron Horde!

[Skrap]

There is nothing like a huge explosion to get you thinking. At lest that's what Skrap thought to herself as the concussion knocked her back against the garrison wall. With a wince she hopped to her feet, adjusted her goggles and looked back.

"What the heck was that!?"

Through the dust she saw Kimzee stand up, waving away the cloud with one of those giant wrenches of hers. "Testing on the new tank prototype, boss. The munitions are workin' great! Just the housin' ain't there yet."

Skrap smirked as she ran over, taking a look at things. One wall of the workshop was gone, smoke was everywhere, and it looked like a second mineshaft had been blown into the side of the mountain. She grinned as she helped one of the goblin workers up.

"Well, at least we got the priority right. Okay, see who all's hurt. Penny!?" she turned, calling out, and seeing the other goblin girl waving from by the new mine. "See what kind of damage is done to the place and get some salvage crews on it! Oh, and repairs!"

"You got it, Ma'am!"

Skrap winced at the title, grumbling a bit and muttering under her breath as she walked out of the cloud. To her right she heard the chuckles from the trading post. The Laughing Skull orcs had set up a shack there, claiming that there was no part of the Ironsong garrison more amusing, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves as they watched the chaos. But Srakp felt a chill as the mask of Kaz the Shrieker turned towards her, and wondered again if that was all there was to it. Kaz seemed to smile back.

"They don't call it the Skrapyard for nothing, do they."

"Everything looks good, Boss!" Penny called, from up above. Skrap nodded to Kaz and turned, glad to have the reason to head off. She hopped up, climbing the outside of the watchtower. There were stairs inside, but what fun was that? She smiled as she hopped over the top and went to the oversized telescope that looked down the mountain.

The Ironsong Garrison looked amazing, spread out and walled off in the snowy valley. She could see some commotion among the guards pointing up her way, and chuckled as she thought about what she'd need to tell Zlinka. Some animals were flying or running from one side, and she could picture Anca running about after them. And out by the inn she thought she could see Sreng laughing with a beer in his hand.

Up above the Ironsong garrison, on a cliff off the side where most explosions should be well out of range of the rest of the place, the Skrapyard (as the goblins had started calling it) went about it's normal schedule of repairs and inventions.

"Skrap!" the call came from below. She looked down to see Xen, the pandaren engineer who had decided to come with the tribe on the raid. "We have a marvelous new invention to test!"

"What is it?"

The burly pandaren held up a gaint sized rocket with a smiling face painted on in Pandarian style. "You strap it to your back, and it will carry you high to survey, and then glide you safely down."

She couldn't smile any wider as she jumped down for the tower. How could you not love this world!?

[Tempestmoon]

What a miserable world. Thousands of Orcs everywhere, and none of them interested in new drinks. Just because one demon offered them a tainted drink, suddenly they were all put off of anything new... Also they were out to kill him, but that was pretty standard for Tea Moon.

Khadgar had summoned the heroes of the Alliance and the Horde. They had gone through the Dark Portal, and then it had shut down a while later, presumably because of something they did on the other side. Tea Moon knew about it, but he had bided his time. He wasn't much for being first. Being first was a bad idea. Firsts got hurt or killed or worse. Being second was pretty solid, though. So while the big heroes stormed the portal, Tea Moon answered a different call for the best of the best. Gazlowe's request for the best workers in handling frontier living arrangements with limited supply lines.

So when Khadgar had sought to open a portal from Draenor, Tea Moon had been there to reinforce it from Azeroth. He had seen Gazlowe head through, and the peons and the taskmasters. Tea Moon handed off the magic to the Horde Mages for maintenance, and headed through after. Everything seemed pretty calm, at that point.

He got to work, testing local botanicals and animal parts for their brewing potential, and set up a small lab. It wasn't until he started setting up the tables and chairs that anyone even noticed him, and by then business had started booming. Building a Garrison up from nothing is thirsty work. Sadly, the frigid locale they were situated in, while probably ideal in some strategic sense (like why would anyone ever want to come invade here), was not great for getting him supplies. So Tea Moon recruited a few Frostwolf Orcs that weren't entirely bereft of sense of taste to mind the new franchise, and headed out to seek out new flavors.

As he started riding out the gate, that's about when the explosions started. "Maybe I should have warned them about the high-pressure tea-brewer... Eh, I'm sure they'll figure it out." Luckily, the Skrapyard wasn't all that far, so he had a handy alibi should anything important get damaged...