Hodrik Barbacobre

In the Ironforge Clan there are two ways to treat metal.

One is to strike it until it obeys. The other is to listen to it until it confesses.

Hodrik Barbacobre has always been both.

He was a smith, like his father and his father before him. He knew by heart the colour steel turns just before it breaks. He still knows it. Now he looks for it in his enemies' armour.

One night, in the empty forge, the fire began to speak to him. Not with words. With a light that did not burn.

It was Elyra. She had chosen him.

Hodrik put down the hammer, but not the trade. He swapped the anvil for the wounded. He looks at them the way he used to look at a badly tempered blade: unhurried, searching for the crack, knowing that almost everything can be mended.

Almost everything.

What cannot be mended are the golems.

To an Ironforge dwarf, metal is worked by hand and respected. Tharion forces it to walk, to obey and to kill without knowing why. Hodrik calls it blasphemy. In the clan they call it "when Hodrik gets like that".

When a construct falls under his sword, he celebrates nothing. He prays for the stone.

The clan's young ones mock his sermons. He lets them. He knows that in battle they all end up looking for him.

Because when Hodrik raises his shield, the whole clan grits its teeth and returns every blow.

And because, when everything is burning, he is the only one who still smells of forge and not of fear.