Gnomeregan

Gnomeregan is the capital of the gnomes, a city of machines carved into the foothills of western Dun Morogh near the dwarven city of Ironforge. For generations the gnomes shared Dun Morogh with their dwarf cousins and built weapons for the Alliance in its wars against the Horde. They elect their leader, the High Tinker, and Gelbin Mekkatorque has held the office for seven years.

Mutant troggs, believed to have come from the dwarven dig at Uldaman, broke into the city from below. At the urging of his chief advisor, Mekgineer Sicco Thermaplugg, Mekkatorque ordered the city's radioactive waste released into its halls to kill them. The troggs survived, but nearly eighty percent of the gnomes died within days, and many of those left behind became mindless leper gnomes. The survivors fled to Ironforge, and rumor holds that Thermaplugg knew of the invasion in advance and let it happen.

Thermaplugg stayed behind with his sanity shattered and now rules the ruined city as its new techno-overlord. Leper gnomes serve him, some piloting war machines such as the Electrocutioner 6000. Troggs still break in through side tunnels, among them Grubbis and his pet basilisk, Chomper. A few gnomes untouched by the radiation hold out in a guarded room called the Clean Zone.

In Tinker Town in Ironforge, High Tinker Mekkatorque asks Alliance adventurers to kill Thermaplugg, the traitor he calls "the king of nothing." Other exiles want what they left behind, such as the data Master Mechanic Castpipe needs from a high-security terminal and the machine parts Klockmort Spannerspan calls essential artificials. Ozzie Togglevolt in Kharanos wants radioactive fallout for a cure he is testing on a captured leper gnome. For the Horde, the goblin Nogg in Orgrimmar wants the blueprints of a new gnomish rig that outclasses goblin shredders, kept in a safe near Thermaplugg.

Dark Iron dwarves, including a Dark Iron Ambassador, guard the approach to Tinkers' Court, where Thermaplugg waits. The goblin Kernobee, found beaten and dumped among the troggs, asks to be led out so he can warn Tinkerwiz in Ratchet that the Dark Irons helped build the new rig. For Alliance adventurers, a grimy ring taken from a Dark Iron agent and cleaned in a gnomish machine, the Sparklematic 5200, leads to Talvash del Kissel, an Ironforge jeweler who made it and once kept a shop in the city. For the Horde, the ring leads to Nogg, who guesses that the gnomes' new designs began as stolen Dark Iron golem plans.