Discovery of the Warforged

The first known discovery of autonomous, humanoid-based constructs (colloquially known as Warforged), was around the 24th century AR within one of the Ancient ruins in the Jagged Stretch of Ilkatu. Leodrin Willow, a cleric of Serphala, was credited with the discovery during the Era of Discovery in the Etani Kingdom.
Leodrin happened upon a large, broken-down workshop of some kind locked behind a massive metal door. Inside, he came upon rows and rows of broken and near-indistinguishable piles of scrap, but among them remained a few dozen constructs left mostly intact. Seemingly activated by his proximity, several of the constructs whirred to life in a frenzy, flailing their broken limbs about and screeching in a language entirely alien to him. They powered down shortly thereafter, but not before making a cry of pain that was "so eerily human, it shall haunt my soul till I depart from this mortal coil".
This citing, alongside similar discoveries made across Astalia in the centuries to follow, has led to the popular theory among historians that the Ancients attempted to create these autonomous constructs for the purpose of waging war during the Retribution. Perhaps the most peculiar discovery was made centuries later, when High Mysta Luthor II received confirmation from a Deva of Serphala that these Warforged once possessed some form of humanoid soul.
Since then, there have been increasing sightings of Warforged all over the world, some of which still operational to various degrees. Those that have been linked to Ancient design have little to no memory of the time before the Retribution, and while there have been occasional figures to successfully create a Warforged-like being, the experiments have often been unrepeatable or lost to time, making these beings all the more mysterious to the typical commoner.