Karag Dum

Karag Dum, roughly translated as "Doom Mountain" in Khazalid, was once one of the northernmost holds of the Karaz Ankor. It fell to the forces of Chaos during the Great War Against Chaos in the early 24th century IC.

Karag Dum was the mightiest of the mountain fortress cities of the Dwarfs in the northern lands, standing at the threshold of the Chaos Wastes.

When the armies of Chaos led by a warlord named Skathlok Ironclaw conquered it, Karag Dum and the lands up to Blackblood Pass became part of the ever-shifting territory of the northern Chaos Wastes. 1a King Thangrim Firebeard led the last stand of the Dwarfs against the armies of Chaos, but was defeated when the leader of the Chaos army summoned a Bloodthirster.

Thangrim was forced to retreat deeper into the halls along with his surviving warriors. Only a handful of Dawi managed to escape the fortress. When the city was captured, Skathlok Ironclaw was drawn away towards a great battle in the south, leading to the occupying forces to turn upon each other for control.

Ever since its fall to Chaos, Karag Dum had become a haven for the forces of the Dark Gods, who used its great furnaces and smithies for the creation of their own weapons and armour. Armies of the four major Chaos Gods clashed against each other for the honour of possessing Karag Dum, with whole levels of the mountain city dedicated to one of the Ruinous Powers. The surviving Dwarfs fought a bitter guerrilla war against the occupiers, seeking shelter in hidden chambers of the hold warded by powerful runes.

Two of the most powerful artefacts bequeathed to the Dwarfs by the Ancestor Gods were lost in Karag Dum -- the Hammer of Fate and the Axe of Runemasters.

To retrieve them, one of the survivors, Borek Forkbeard, planned an expedition, including himself, his nephew Varek Variksson, the slayers Snorri Nosebiter, Malakai Makaisson and Gotrek Gurnisson, as well as the Imperial Human Felix Jaeger. They were to usedthe Dwarf airship Spirit of Grungni to travel across the Chaos Wastes and reach the fortress. Instead, a group of adventurers from the Gilded Iron took this mission along with Varek and Malakai. Felix, and the remaining slayers went to Kislev and Praag to warn the Tzarina and help defend the city of Praag.

Within the hold, they found mostly the skeletons of armies that had died in battle, as well as marauding packs of Khornate Flesh Hounds. The party also found a few survivors, who thought that the outside world had fallen to Chaos.

For the defenders, only twenty years had passed, while two hundred years had passed in the rest of the world due to the warped nature of time in the Chaos Wastes. The Dwarfs refused to leave and abandon their treasures to the armies of Chaos, but were then discovered by the Bloodthirster who had been drawn by the wakening of the hammer and axe. During a mighty battle, King Firebeard was slain and the Greater Daemon banished back to the Aethyr. The few survivors, now too few to hold their outpost, agreed to leave Karag Dum and be evacuated to Karak Kadrin, especially now that there is more room for all their treasures with so few of them left.