The Battle of Black Fire Pass

The Battle of Black Fire Pass is where a scattering of quarrelsome human tribes became the seed of an empire. In the founding age, when Sigmar still walked as a mortal chieftain, a monstrous greenskin Waaagh poured out of the eastern mountains, threatening to overwhelm the lands of men and dwarfs alike.

Sigmar had already sworn friendship with the dwarfs after rescuing their High King from captivity, and now that oath was tested. The pass was the one gate through which such a horde could spill into the western lands, and both allies understood that to lose it was to lose everything behind it. He gathered the fractious tribes of men and, with a dwarf host at his side, made his stand at the narrow gorge of Black Fire Pass, where the orcs and goblins could not bring their full numbers to bear at once.

Dwarf quarrellers and cannon held the flanks while the tribesmen met the green tide head-on, and the gorge ran slick with blood by midday. Time and again the line bent and did not break; the anvil of men and dwarfs held while Sigmar's hammer fell again and again. By day's end the Waaagh was shattered and the survivors sent fleeing back into the mountains, their power in the region broken for a generation. The greenskin warlord was slain in the press, and with his fall the horde's fragile unity dissolved into a headlong rout.

The victory at Black Fire Pass secured the founding of the Empire and sealed the friendship of men and dwarfs in shared blood. It became the Empire's proudest origin-tale, retold whenever the greenskins gathered again: a promise that even the direst horde could be broken by courage and unity.