A history of Artifice.

There have always been magic items. As long as wizards and sorcerers have been manipulating mana there have been those who have bound magic to objects to store their power. It has only been recently that Artifice has become a major study among scholars. The abiltity to literally make machines from magical energies is both an art and an area of academic study. Flying ships, automated guards and transportation vehicles are only the surface.

The study comes mainly from ancient ruins that have been dug up most recently by Avian scholars and has spread throughout the various arcane colleges. The information gathered thus far has been limited to power stones, which are stones made from compressed arcane power that can be inserted into various machines to bring them to life. There are other methods of artifice, but power stones have proven to be the catalyst. In addition the civilization that built these ruins appears to be tall, bipedal, hairless ape looking beings with over-sized heads. They only had fur on the tops of their large skulls and the males in some cases grew fur on their faces. Their physiology is similar to that of all modern bipedal races and it has even been implied that these beings paved the way for current species and may even have been the creators of the anthro races that now inhabit Saren.

-Nezuan's academic notes.