Bainan Stormbeard

"When I retired from soldiering for good, I was given a choice between working and starving. After a while I gave up. I had learned that, if I became an author, I could do both."

- Introduction to Greater than the Sum of Our Parts, 30 L.C.

Bainan Gareth Ranford Stormbeard (Born 5 July, -52 L.C.) is a Dwarven dissident, capitalist, liberal intellectual, and former Paladin of the Silver Hand. He is one of Ironforge's most prolific pamphleteers. In his works, he argues passionately for economic and political integration with other members of the Alliance, for economically liberal reforms, and for policies friendly to the development of industrial capitalism. His most original contributions are to finance theory, fielding experimental ideas which he is burning to prove would work in practice. He also has a reputation as an avid gambler and a shrewd financier.

Though Bainan was born a member of the insular Stormpike Clan of the Alterac Mountains, he left his home early in life to join a growing class of rootless internationalists capable of living and working anywhere in the Eastern Kingdoms, but never of really belonging. His impulsive decision to join the Stormwind Army during the First War would lead to a military career spanning twenty-five years. He earned a number of decorations throughout the three great wars, but was underwhelming as a soldier.

The Fall of Lordaeron at the height of the Third War prompted Bainan to flee into retirement. He sought refuge along with a group of Lordaeranian survivors in Ironforge, which he made his permanent home. In 25 L.C., Bainan began writing in a friend's publication about his frustrations with the turn that the Kingdom of Ironforge had taken under King Magni Bronzebeard, reorienting its focus from industry and finance to archeology, from inventing the future to obsessing over the past. Bainan's outspoken criticism all but ended his professional life – he was expelled from both the Miners' Union and Explorers' League – though his writing also inaugurated a new career as a dissident author and theorist.

Bainan was widely denounced among the high society and mystics of Ironforge, though he soon discovered that he had an enthusiastic following among the financiers, industrialists, professionals, and business magnates of the city. This turned out to be his ticket into the world of high finance. Primarily through high-stakes gambling, Bainan made powerful friends and began to dabble in finance himself – making enough to pay off the debts he would amass while playing.