Once they were dwarfs like any other. When the ancestor gods led their people out of the east in the world's first ages, one great host marched too far and settled in the bleak volcanic country that men would later name the Dark Lands, and there, cut off from their southern kin and pressed on every side by the rising power of Chaos, they changed. Slowly at first, and then eagerly, they turned from Grungni and Grimnir to a crueller god who offered them power in exchange for everything soft in their souls. Their skins hardened, their beards grew rank with forge-smoke, and their hearts turned to iron and ash. They became the dawi-zharr, the Dwarfs of Fire: the Chaos Dwarfs.
They raised their empire around a single monstrous edifice: Zharr-Naggrund, the vast ziggurat-city on the Plain of Zharrduk, black with soot and lit blood-red by a thousand forge-fires that never die. From its terraced summit the Sorcerer-Prophets rule a land of smoke, slag, and screaming, where volcanoes are yoked as furnaces and the very sky is stained the colour of rust. It is a place built without pity, raised by suffering and running on it, and its masters would have it no other way.
The Father of Darkness[edit]
The Chaos Dwarfs worship Hashut, the Father of Darkness: a god of fire, tyranny, and the forge, whose sacred beast is the great black bull and whose altars run with molten metal and living blood. Hashut demands industry, cruelty, and endless sacrifice, and rewards his priests with terrible sorcerous power. But his gift is also his curse: a Sorcerer-Prophet who works too much magic slowly turns to living stone, his body seizing from the feet upward until he stands forever a statue at his own altar. The dawi-zharr accept the bargain without complaint. To them, to petrify in Hashut's service is the highest of ends, and the temples of Zharr-Naggrund are lined with the frozen stone forms of priests who gave everything to the flame.
An Empire of Iron and Chains[edit]
No Chaos Dwarf labours if a slave can be made to labour in his place. Their empire is raised upon the broken backs of a numberless host of captives (orcs and goblins, men, and any other race the raiding-columns can drag home in chains), worked to death in the mines and forge-pits beneath the lash. Chief among these slaves are the treacherous hobgoblins, whom the dawi-zharr elevate as overseers and cutthroat auxiliaries, trusting them exactly as far as fear will stretch. Everything the Chaos Dwarfs make, they make on an industrial scale and at an inhuman cost, and they reckon the arithmetic entirely sound. A slave is cheaper than a machine, and burns just as well.
The War-Machines of Zharr[edit]
The dawi-zharr go to war as they do all else: with fire and iron. Their armies are grim ranks of black-armoured warriors, hordes of expendable hobgoblins driven ahead as fodder, and above all the terrible engines of their forges: cannon that spew molten rock, rockets that shriek as they fall, and vast daemon-fired war machines that grind forward under their own smoking power. They fight not for glory or plunder alone but to take captives and resources for the furnaces, and every campaign feeds the bottomless appetite of Zharr-Naggrund. Where they pass they leave slag, ash, and empty chains, and the red glow of their forges burning a little brighter behind them.
Units
Bull Centaur RendersElite · Monstrous CavalrySacred fusions of Chaos Dwarf and mighty bull, blessed by Hashut, who charge with the weight of cavalry and fight on like the strongest infantry.
Chaos Dwarf BlunderbussesCore · Missile InfantryGrim Dawi Zharr warriors shouldering flared-barrelled guns that vomit a hail of scrap-shot, scything down whole ranks in a single volley.
Death RocketArtillery · War MachineA crude, temperamental rocket that screams over the front ranks to burst amid the foe in flame and razor shrapnel, when it works at all.
Deathshrieker Rocket LauncherArtillery · War MachineA war machine built to kill the spirit before the body, loosing daemon-headed rockets that howl like damned voices as they fall.
Earthshaker CannonArtillery · War MachineA dread artillery piece whose enchanted shells make the ground buck and heave, leaving whole regiments dazed and unable to move.
Great TaurusRare · MonsterA colossal winged bull of living fire and brass, its hide smouldering like cooling iron, ridden to war by the mightiest Chaos Dwarf lords.
Hobgoblin CutthroatsTroops · InfantryThe expendable greenskin masses driven ahead of the dawi-zharr to blunt the enemy's charge and soak up his arrows, and knifed if they flee.
Hobgoblin Wolf RidersSpecial · Light CavalryTreacherous greenskin slaves on slavering giant wolves, loosed to scout, harry, and loose arrows into exposed flanks before wheeling away.
Infernal GuardTroops · InfantryMasked warriors who burned away their own names in Hashut's fire, holding the line in silent, unbreakable, merciless ranks.
Iron Daemon War EngineWar Machine · War MachineA colossal armoured engine driven by a bound daemon in its furnace-heart, grinding forward to crush ranks and blast apart what it cannot drive over.
K'daai FirebornElite · Daemonic ConstructLesser fire-daemons of Hashut bound into cages of enchanted iron, living furnaces that burn all they touch until they consume themselves.
LammasuRare · MonsterA winged, idol-faced sorcery-beast that exhales a choking magical fog, prized by the sorcerer-prophets as a shield against enemy spells.
Characters
Astragoth Ironhandthe Ancient, Eldest of the Sorcerer-ProphetsThe eldest and mightiest living Sorcerer-Prophet, whose stone-turned body is hauled to the altar in a great steam-driven harness of iron and brass.
Drazhoath the Ashenthe Ashen, Master of the Black FortressEmbittered lord of Gash Kadrak who rides the fire-bull Cinderbreath to war and spends his god-given power recklessly to conquer his way back into power.
Gorduz Backstabberthe Backstabber, Captain of CutthroatsA hobgoblin Khan who has survived a career of betrayal, flattery, and knives in the right backs, and fully intends to outlive his Chaos Dwarf masters.
Subfactions
The Hobgoblin Slaver HostsThe treacherous greenskin auxiliaries the dawi-zharr raise as overseers and expendable fodder: too faithless to trust, too useful to kill.
The Legion of AzgorhThe great expeditionary war-host of the Dark Lands, based at the Black Fortress of Gash Kadrak and unmatched in artillery and daemon-engines.
The Temple of HashutThe Sorcerer-Prophet priesthood that rules Zharr-Naggrund, drawing molten power from the Father of Darkness at the price of slowly turning to stone.
Discussion
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