Dwarfen Mountain Holds

The dwarfs name their realm the Karaz Ankor, the Everlasting Realm, and it was old before mankind raised its first city. In the dawn ages the ancestor gods walked among their people: Grungni taught them to delve and to smith, Grimnir taught them to fight, and Valaya taught them to endure. Their children carved kingdoms into the roots of the World's Edge Mountains, hold after mighty hold, linked by the underground highways of the Ungdrin and lit by forges that have never once gone cold. At its height the Karaz Ankor ran the length of the mountains from the northern wastes to the southern deserts, and its vaults held wonders the world will not see made again.

That height is long past. The decline began with plundered caravans and envoys shorn of their beards, and with the war against the elves that followed: the conflict elven chroniclers call the War of the Beard and the dwarfs, with grinding precision, the War of Vengeance. The dwarfs ended it with a dead Phoenix King and a crown locked in their deepest vault, but victory bought only exhaustion, for when the elves quit the Old World the mountains themselves turned traitor. Earthquakes split the holds, fire-mountains drowned the labour of centuries, and into every crack poured greenskins from above and skaven from below. Karak Ungor fell, and Karak Varn, and at last even Karak Eight Peaks, fairest of them all: names that are no longer kingdoms but grudges.

Every wrong of those long ages is written down. In Karaz-a-Karak the High King keeps the Dammaz Kron, the Great Book of Grudges, its oldest entries inked in the blood of kings, and every hold and clan keeps ledgers of its own. A grudge is not a grievance; it is a debt, entered formally, remembered exactly, and payable in gold or blood however many centuries the collection takes. Upon that granite the rest of dwarf culture is built: the sanctity of oaths, the worship of craft, the reverence for elders whose beards remember better days, and a deep distrust of anything new, hasty, or elven. Even their magic is nailed down: runesmiths do not cast spells but bind power into steel, where it can be trusted.

What remains of the Karaz Ankor endures as only dwarf-work can. Karaz-a-Karak still stands unconquered, the surviving holds still muster their throngs, and the oath sworn to Sigmar at Black Fire Pass still binds the dwarfs to the Empire of men in iron friendship. But the halls grow quieter with every passing century, and every dwarf knows it. Theirs is a civilization outliving its own golden age, rich in memory and short on tomorrows. Yet no dwarf will yield one tunnel, one coin, or one line of the Book while breath remains to him. The Karaz Ankor forgets nothing, forgives less, and intends to settle its accounts in full.