At The Gates ~ Karak Eight Peaks

At last the time has come for the dwarves to address one of the greatest grudges ever inflicted upon them – the fall of Karak Eight Peaks. Standing before the massive defiled gates, the Oathbearers spearhead the attack with the help of their allies to dislodge the Greenskin from the World’s Edge Mountains. The grand statues of once proud kings are profaned by Greenskin filth, adding to the drive behind the dwarven host. Though the mountains crawl with a living slick green film, the forces of Order are undaunted by the task before them. Now is the time to strike at the forces of Destruction.

Karak Eight Peaks – Da Warboss’s Place

In the south-east corner of Karak Eight Peaks lay the grandest hall of the former dwarven Hold, the Citadel. The Citadel was the final section of Karak Eight Peaks to hold out against the greenskins, day after day, month after month. The battle of attrition wore on, but the defenders stood firm determined to not let Karak Eight Peaks fall on their watch. So long as the throne of the Citadel stood, the dwarves would reign over this land. The Crooked Moon tribe under Skarsnik, the night goblin Warlord had pummeled the defenses for months. When the greenskins withdrew to recooperate, the skaven would press on seeking to expand their own influence. A three-way battle raged on, but the dwarves could not match the numbers of the hosts of skaven and greenskins. When the Bloody Sun Boyz arrived the tide turned heavily in favor of the greenskins. The skaven were driven deeper underground and the renewed efforts of the greenskins broke the defenses.
Now the Citadel has become Da Warboss’s Hall for the Bloody Sun Boyz. The floors of its halls littered with filth and muck, the columns and ceiling encrusted with greenskin shanties, the halls echoing with the crude laughter of the greenskins. The only remnants of the dwarves in these halls are bones and beards used as decorations. What has fallen must be reclaimed.

Karak Eight Peaks – Beasty Pens

Undgrin Ankor, the artery of Karak Ankor. The underground passageways link all dwarven Holds, mines, breweries, and strongholds. Every key Hold has a grand station acting as a regional hub for Undgrin Ankor, even and especially Karak Eight Peaks. The very tunnels that link Karak Ankor proved to be this Holds downfall. Such a wide open cavern provided little natural ways to block the tide of greenskins. The only choice left to the dwarves was to blow up the tunnels to seal off the greenskins, but by doing so they would also cut themselves off from reinforcements. The decision was made to keep the tunnels open with the hope that reinforcements would arrive in time. They didn’t.
The greenskins overwhelmed the defenders and the grand station of Karak Eight Peaks was quickly in the hands of the greenskins – any relief forces that arrived from the surrounding holds fell into an ambush. The greenskins were cleaver in their seizure of the grand station for they strictly ordered the hall to not be defaced or damaged so arriving dwarven trains would think they were safe. Once the trains rolled to a stop an entirely different scene took over. With the complete conquest of Karak Eight Peaks the grand station was handed over to the Crooked Moon tribe and the night goblins. However, the Bloody Sun Boyz were not stupid in giving over such a large portion of the underground Hold to the rival tribe, for they demanded monthly tributes of mounts from the Crooked Moon tribe. And so the grand station of Karak Eight Peaks turned into a giant nursery and kennel for the various creatures the goblins tried to breed as mounts for their orc overlords.

Karak Eight Peaks – Da Dark Places

When Karak Eight Peaks was first assailed, it was from under ground. The first places overrun by the greenskins were the tunnels and mine shafts. Slowly the tide poured through the upper levels and eventually broke through to the ground level halls. As the battle for Karak Eight Peaks wore on week after week, month after month, the battle of attrition began to take its toll on the dwarven defenders, while the hordes of greenskin seemed to suffer no dent in their numbers despite suffering losses by the hundreds daily. As the dwarves pulled warriors off of the Grand Wall and the Karag bastions to defend the halls, the defenses on the surface and outside world of Karak Eight Peaks were drastically thinned.
The greenskin assault on Karak Eight Peaks was led by Skarsnik, warlord of the Crooked Moon tribe of the World’s Edge Mountains. The first ground-level hall to fall to the Crooked Moon tribe of night goblins was the hall of Karag Rhyn, and soon after adjoining Karag Nar fell as well. By the time the Bloody Sun Boyz arrived, the defenses of the outside world of Karak Eight Peaks were so drastically thinned to hold back the tide of night goblins underground, that the Bloody Sun Boyz poured across the mountain bastions and valley floor like an unstoppable deluge, only the Ironhold held out.
By this time the night goblins of the Crooked Moon tribe had evicted the dwarves from all underground passages and were waging a vicious war with skaven in the mines and tunnels, and the Silver-Station of Karak Eight Peaks was firmly in their hands – effectively cutting off the four remaining pockets of dwarven resistance off from each other: the Ironhold, the Halls of Grungi and Valaya, the Hall of the White Lady, and the Citadel of the King of Eight Peaks. The Bloody Sun Boyz quickly remedied the situation with a brutal assault on the halls of Grungi and Valaya and the southern hall of the Hall of the White Lady – a battle so long and vicious that no doubt one day legends will be told of it. Turning their attention back to the Ironhold, the Bloody Sun Boyz left the Citadel to the Crooked Moon tribe to waste their efforts on. For months the battles over these last two pockets of resistance waged on, neither greenskin faction showing signs of success and rumors of dwarven reinforcements from the north arriving soon on the greenskins tongues. Eventually the greenskin bodies piling up in front of the Ironhold created a ramp for the Bloody Sun Boyz to scale over onto the walls of the Ironhold. With this last above-ground dwarven pocket captured all that was left was the Citadel.
With the fall of the Citadel the greenskins made a pact to split rule over Karak Eight Peaks with what seemed to the Bloody Sun Boyz as a fair deal. The Bloody Sun Boyz due to sheer physical strength would gain the above ground realm and half the mountain halls; the Crooked Moon tribe would get the smaller four mountain halls, the Silver-Station, and all the underground tunnels and mines. Unbeknown to the Bloody Sun Boyz, they got the short end of the stick as the realm underground of the vast mines and tunnels was many times larger than the above-ground holdings.
Skarsnik made the hall of Karag Rhyn, the first hall to fall to the night goblins, his seat of power; it was renamed the Hall of the Moon. The Bloody Sun Boyz never completely trusting the Crooked Moon tribe planted their fiercest warriors in between the two portions of the night goblin mountain realm – Kvinn-Wyr was given to the Black Orcs of the Bloody Sun Boyz, an ever watchful thorn in the side of the night goblins.

Karak Eight Peaks – Temples of Gork and Mork

Under the stone edifices of Karag Lhune and Karag Zilfin lay the grand halls of the dwarves, or rather what were once the grand halls of the dwarves. Each mountain was an individual stronghold, connected to the other seven karags via tunnels and passages, and within each mountain was a grand hall – the pride of the artisans of that Karag. Beneath each Hall the complex expanded into a vast network of tunnels, housing compounds, mines, smithies, and the works. It can easily be said that the hall of each Karag was its heart. In the north laid the halls of Grungi and Valaya, the prior a smithy renowned for producing fantastic axes light as a child’s toy, and the later a temple dedicated to the healing arts. Between the two lay the great Library of Karak Eight Peaks, a repository of ancient histories, grudges, and secrets of crafting trades.
And then the greenskins came. The story is known and it would be cruel to keep repeating it. Every dwarf knows of the most recent wound cut into the flesh of Karak Ankor. The greenskins were quick to topple the halls dedicated to the two mighty deities of the dwarven pantheon. The Hall of Grungi was renamed the Temple of Gork; its foundries and smithies destroyed and out of the rubble arose grim skulls grinning with sadistic pleasure – altars of Gork. Here the goblin shamans carried out spectacles and sacrifices to appease their mysterious god as an eerie green light flooded the hall emanating from a pit full of thick green slime known simply as ‘Gork’s Stuff”.
The books of the library were consumed in a massive sacrificial bonfire with heat so intense the carvings of the chamber were twisted and melted. The orcs being of little intellect and not using a written language left the hall to the goblins, and so the goblins tried to imitate the intellect of the dwarves and construct a library of their own. Animal hides were sewn together with rough images drawn and hand-prints stamped everywhere in a poor attempt to record the glorious rise of the Bloody Sun Boyz; the fallacy of this plan revealed when every goblin interpreted each picture and drawing his own way creating his own history to those he ‘read’ to. It is said that the library contains the magics of Gork and Mork…
The Hall of Valaya was renamed the Temple of Mork and taken over by the orcs who deemed that this mighty temple of the dwarves should be their own, and not the gobbo’s. Effigies of Mork arose in the place of the statues of Valaya. Light dances around the hall as fires burn night and day, eliminating any notion of time in the hall. The orcs perform mysterious rituals to appease their god, rituals that must be stopped.

Karak Eight Peaks – Bloody Sun Basin

What was once known as Eight Peaks Valley, is now known to the greenskins as the Bloody Sun Basin. The vast valley was once crowned by the Ironhold, a mighty dwarven fortress overlooking the massive gates of the city, acting as a second line of defense. When the valley floor was stormed the Ironhold held out the longest, naturally. The sheer strength of numbers the greenskins could muster could not overcome the defenses of the Ironhold. The crude simple siege equipment of the greenskins could not batter down the walls and were demolished by the cannon batteries of the Ironhold. Wave after wave of greenskins eventually produced the one access to the Ironhold that the dwarves could not counter, a ramp of the dead and wounded reaching the height of the walls. Nothing could be done against against this, and soon the greenskin hordes were pouring into the Ironhold and slaughtering its defenders. Over the skeleton and ruins of the Ironhold a greenskin fort took shape, under the new command of the Bloody Sun Boyz, and so it was known as the Bloody Sun Fort.
Before the Ironhold even fell the greenskins made short work of destroying the other buildings and their defenders in the Eight Peaks Valley. Snorri’s Tavern was converted into a siege workshop for the construction of rock lobbas, and the Inns of Valaya were turned into a target range for the lobba crews. Around the Merchants Square a crude arena arose, its intricate diagrams cursed to soak up the ichor of the greenskins. This arena would be known as the Blood Pit and here the champions of the greenskins would vie for the position of the Bestest.

Karak Eight Peaks – Git Villages

The most visible scar on Karak Eight Peaks is on the surface of the mountains. What took centuries of stonemasons to carve, the greenskins defaced in a matter of days. Monumental statues of bygone kings were toppled and in their place crude effigies to the dual gods of the greenskins, Gork and Mork, rose. Clinging to the sides of the mountains creaking ramps and staircases scale the mountainsides creaking with the slightest wind giving indication of shoddy craftsmanship and stressed joints. Intricate stone edifices, balconies, and plazas were defaced and in the shadows of the once-glorious works of the dwarves arose hundreds upon hundreds of crude dwellings. Attached to every scrap of rock was a greenskin hut, perhaps some towers and alters, and connecting all these rickety platforms were equally rickety bridges. The whole area surrounding Karak Eight Peaks was deforested as the dwellings sprang up like mushrooms. Dozens of villages lay claim to different portions of the mountains, ever vying for greater control of a particular mountain.
What was once the grand wall of Karak Eight Peaks connecting eight grand towers on the peaks of the mountains is now but a reminder of a bygone past. To the greenskins whose simple mentality states that sheer strength in numbers will overwhelm any force, with the exception of a fortified position, the fortifications of Karak Eight Peaks are nothing but relics of the dwarves and destroying them would prevent the dwarves from ever establishing a foothold in these lands again. Instead of maintaining and fortifying the walls, the greenskins officially let the walls decay; the goblins were encouraged to take stones from the walls to build their crude dwellings. The towers fell into decay, taken over by petty chiefs and turned into strongholds dominating the villages. The craftsmanship of the dwarves however proved to be the most enduring factor of the grand wall and its bastions. The greenskins were too lazy to pry apart the massive stones of the walls. Instead time and the elements slowly took their toll as certain sections were swept away in mudslides or collapsed under strain and a lack of maintenance; in the place of these missing sections simple crude replacements arose from swinging rope-bridges to piles of logs and rubble.
The only section of Karak Eight Peaks devoid of greenskin shanties are the Wyvern Cliffs, the inward sections of Karag Yar and Karag Mhonar which the Bloody Sun Boyz demanded be left to the massive beasts of prey so they could have winged mounts. Any git foolish enough to wander to this section of the mountains is bound to end up as dinner.

Karak Eight Peaks – Introduction

Karak Eight Peaks, the newest addition in the Great Book of Grudges. Seized by Skarsnik and his horde of Night Goblins, the defenders were finally overwhelmed by the arrival of the Bloody Sun Boyz. A greenskin tribe with no previous reputation, suddenly accelerated to the most dangerous horde in the known world by mysterious gifts which empowered its two leaders, the Bloody Sun Boyz pushed into Karak Eight Peaks and slaughtered the last dwarven defenders in the citadel and pushed the skaven back deep under the city. Now the city lies firmly in the hands of the greenskin hordes and the Bloody Sun Boyz with the aid of Malekith have set their eyes on Karaz-a-Karak. The Oathbearers have been formed to counter this threat and avenge the great grudge of the fall of Karak Eight Peaks.
Once one of the mightiest Holds of the southern Holds along the World’s Edge Mountains, Karak Eight Peaks was a great center of commerce. It gained its name from the eight mountains that formed a natural amphitheater; Karag Lhune, Karag Rhyn, Karag Nar, and Kvinn-Wyr (also known as the White Lady) in the west, and Karag Zilfin, Karag Yar, Karag Mhonar, and Karagril (also known as Silverhorn) in the east. To the south a great flat granite monolith lay between the two southernmost massive mountains known as ‘the Anvil’. From the amphitheater a great entrance lead into the halls of each mountain. Behind the massive gates of Karak Eight Peaks a massive fortress lay as a second line of defense. Within the valley itself there was a tavern, inns, and a market square – all to facilitate trade and commerce. The pinnacle of  each mountain crowned by a massive bastion forming the very crenelations of the grand wall that circled the dwarven stronghold. The defenses were so impregnable that it was sworn that Karak Eight Peaks will never fall. That was until the mines were breached…
The massive fortress Hold was overly prepared for an attack from above ground, but underground, they never expected anything. And then new tunnels began to open, mines began to collapse from being undermined. Then the skaven and greenskins began to pour into the tunnels and mines. The Hold was under attack from within – the impregnable defenses on the mountains proved useless against this threat. Hall by hall, mountain by mountain, Karak Eight Peaks was overrun by children of Chaos. The last defenders barricaded themselves in the Kings hall in Karagril, the Citadel of Karak Eight Peaks. The Night Goblins of Skarsnik could not break the defenses, and then the Bloody Sun Boyz came and through sheer strength in numbers overwhelmed the defenders and slaughtered them all. After but a few decades the dwarven architecture was defaced and destroyed and ramshackle villages sprang up clinging to every possible column, mountain, and flat piece of ground. Now the Oathbears march back with eyes of vengeance. Karak Eight Peaks will be reclaimed. The tides of greenskin will be turned back. Karak Ankor will shine once more!