Chaos Dwarf

"We will remake the world into our domain, a land of cinder-ash and the blackened bones of our enemies, until only we remain and those broken bodies that cower at our feet."

- Lord Astragoth Ironhand

Malign, dark-souled and merciless, the Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr, Dawi Zharr, or Chaos Dwarfs as they are known in legend to the other peoples of the world, are a warrior race of Daemon-smiths and craftsmen, slavers and brutal killers that dominate the northern reaches of the Dark Lands and have done so for thousands of years. Their history is an ancient and terrible one, a saga of a great and hardy people whose nobility would become warped into utter malice, and whose stubborn refusal to die would lead them down a dark and bitter path to damnation.

The shadowed past
The story of the Chaos Dwarfs begins many thousands of years ago, during the great expansion of the Dwarf race northwards, long before the rise of Man. The Dwarfs, cleaving to those lands where metal and gems could be found, and firm rock could be delved, principally followed the track of what is now known as the World's Edge Mountains. Here they excavated and expanded an underground realm of mighty subterranean fortress-cities linked by countless miles of mine workings and passageways. Eventually this slow but steady expansion led one group of Dwarfs to the uplands in the far north of the World's Edge Mountains range, which they came to know as "Zorn Uzkul" or the "Great Skull Land". It was a vast and inhospitable plateau where the air was frigid and thin, and the dusty ground littered with the wind-scoured bones of the ancient dead. The mineral wealth was rich here, but the earth and stone to some seemed tainted and unclean. Many Dwarfs called the place accursed and turned aside from it, either retreating to the most established holds or, if of more adventurous character, choosing to strike out into far Norsca or undertake the journey first east and then south to the rich lodes recently discovered in the Mountains of Mourn. Some however, refusing to be baulked, chose to remain in the Great Skull Land come what may.

At first these distant Dwarf kindreds retained close ties of kinship and trade, but as the world darkened and foul things crawled from its depths to sunder the Dwarf-realm, contact between the far flung Dwarf holds became erratic and infrequent, as each looked to their own survival and defence. When the Great Time of Chaos descended to sunder the world, these most forlorn of Dwarf kingdoms were lost to their kinfolk in the World's Edge Mountains, and were given up for dead as a tide of horror spilled across the land. The Dwarfs of the West could not have been more mistaken, for the ravages of Chaos did not destroy the hardy, determined Dwarfs of Zorn Uzkul, but instead it worked a dreadful change upon them.

It is impossible to say with any certainty exactly when the Dwarfs of the East became the malevolent entities now known as the Chaos Dwarfs, as the changes wrought to their bodies and spirits were slow and inexorable. Not even they themselves know the full saga of the dark times of their origins, save for that they were almost utterly destroyed, and it was only by their stubborn refusal to surrender in the face of unspeakable horror and death that they endured - endured and came to know a new patron god, Hashut, Father of Darkness. Slowly they began to increase again in number and restore themselves in power and dark majesty, now barely recognisable from what they had been before.

The Dwarf race is unusually resilient to the warping influence of Chaos - a reflection of natural Dwarf stubborness perhaps. Nonetheless the Dwarfs who live in the shadow of the Mountains of Mourn have changed slowly but inexorably over time, and become twisted in both body and mind. Though they superficially resemble other Dwarfs, in all important respects they are easily distinguished. Chaos Dwarfs often possess protruding tusks that lend them a brutal, savage expression, and they are commonly grey-fleshed and red of eye. Many have small horns that jut from their forehead and some even have cloven hooves and worse - although such extreme mutations are rare amongst ordinary Chaos Dwarfs and common only amongst sorcerers and those that have the most direct contact with the stuff of Chaos.

If the influence of Chaos has worked terrifying changes upon the bodies of the Chaos Dwarfs, this is as nothing compared to the transmutation of their hardy Dwarf minds. The traditional Dwarf values of stubborn determination, craftmanship and industry have been twisted into a perverted mockery in the hearts of the Chaos Dwarfs. They became pitiless, macabre and cold-hearted creatures, devoid of mercy and consumed by a need to enslave and dominate everyone and everything they came into contact with, and from this need grew their empire. Year upon year, decade upon decade and then century upon century, with malevolent intent and monstrous patience the dominion of the Chaos Dwarfs has slowly grown. Down the centuries, their culture became as corrupted as their minds at every level, from their language and rune-craft, to the structure of their clans and their worship - all tainted by Chaos and poisoned by malice, but they are still uniquely Dwarfen in many aspects: oath and loyalty, grudge and kinship stand as solid as iron, but mercy and weakness are intolerable flaws to be contemptuously destroyed. Not for them the howling anarchy, slaughter and ravening madness of Chaos' human followers, the unthinking savagery of the Beastmen or even the desperate, labyrinthine intrigues and vicious aggression of the Skaven. Instead, they are consumed with grim, cold cruelty and calculated brutality.

An empire of smoke, blood, and ash
Chaos Dwarfs are irredeemably evil, bitter and self-centered creatures, caring nothing for the life of others and directing all their labours to the construction of their great city - Mingol-Zharr-Naggrund, the Tower of Fire and Desolation, and the slow expansion of their power and influence in the world. To this end the Chaos Dwarf armies scour the Dark Lands and the deadly realms beyond for slaves to fill their city and labour deep beneath the earth in pits that surround it, and to provide sacrifices for the furnace fires dedicated to their dark god Hashut.

Their empire has come to encompass the fire-scorched volcanic Plain of Zharrduk at the heart of which Zharr-Naggrund sits, and like a black iceberg, its true extent lies not above with its armoured ziggurats and fire-lanced temples, but below the surface in countless miles of magma-lit delvings, cavernous chambers and vaulted mines which resound to the cries of tortured slaves and the ringing of hammers in an untold number of diabolic forges. For many miles around it, the Plain of Zharrduk has succumbed to the hand of the Chaos Dwarfs. It is littered with the scars of vast open mines, fiery rivers of magma, ash dunes and stagnant pools of foaming yellow and blood red - noxious with toxic spoil and fortified workings and watch posts which line the great machine-crushed roads upon which countless slaves haul ore and plunder to feed the ever hungry city of the Chaos Dwarfs.

Beyond their heartland in the Plain of Zharrduk, they have risen great fortress-citadels and towers to establish their dominion throughout the far flung and perilous Dark Lands, although no force, even one as brutal as the Chaos Dwarfs can lay claim to true sovereignity over this vast realm of accursed, monster-filled, shifting ash-deserts. At the edges of the Dark Lands, the outposts and black-iron watch-towers of the Chaos Dwarfs extend as far as the great Desolation of Azgorh and the coastline of the Sea of Dread to the south and the High Pass to the north, while Uzkulak - the Place of the Skull, seat of the ancient Dwarf hold before the Time of Chaos, is still populated but is a strange, secretive place, and the bustling workings of its slave-port and anchorage hide an ancient inner-city that is little more than a heavily garrisoned tomb. The forbidden, lower levels of Uzkulak are shunned, even by its masters and to be consigned to its depths is a punishment reserved for oath-breakers and blasphemers as the worst fate the Chaos Dwarfs can bestow. A fact which, given the malevolent inventiveness of the Daemonsmiths in such matters, speaks much of the horrors which must abide there.

The plans of the Chaos Dwarfs are the result of the intrincate workings of their malign intelligence, deep paranoia and cold cruelty. They see no need to ravage the world in fury in a desperate bid to crush all before them, only to fall overextended and spent, as so many throngs of human marauders and hosts of Greenskin savages have done in the past. Instead they hoard their might slowly and rip from the Dark Lands the mineral wealth they contain in abundance. They venture forth foremost to harvest slaves but also to punish those that would oppose them directly, and sunder any creature or force that might wax powerful in the Dark Lands before it can become a threat. More rarely do they travel further afield, mounting expeditions into distant lands in search of strange plunder whose worth they have seen in the fires of Hashut's altars, avenging some slight or merely for callously testing their weapons against the powers of the world. As a result of this policy, to many the Chaos Dwarfs are at best a dark legend, until, that is, they have the misfortune to encounter the dreadful truth for themselves.

The dominion of the Chaos Dwarfs is a slowly expanding power, which has with grinding, calculated savagery carved itself a realm from one of the most deadly lands conceivable and its masters' dreams of conquest are things of brooding hatred and bitter perseverance. They are content to see their plans unfold over the course of centuries, perhaps even millennia until one day all of the world lies a blasted plain in which the Chaos Dwarfs stand unopposed and alone, save for their cowering slaves and the ashen bones of the dead.

Slavery and slaughter
Even though their numbers have shown a slow but steady increase down the long centuries in which they have carved their empire from the Dark Lands, the Chaos Dwarfs are still few, and are far outnumbered in their realm by those over who they claim dominion by virtue of might and cruelty - their slaves. The Chaos Dwarfs consider all life other than that of their own kind to have value only as raw resource and fitting sacrifice, and to them the muscle and sinew, and even the souls of those that bow and scrape at a gesture of their iron-shod hands and cringe before the stroke of their steel-barbed whips are no more than a commodity to be amassed, exploited and spent. Without slaves Zharr-Naggrund would not have been built and its vast industries could not be maintained, and even now the need for fresh blood and labour only increases with each passing year and the desolate empire always hungers for more.

If the Chaos Dwarfs' grand and sepulchral plans bow to any pressure for speed in their execution, it is this increasing need for fresh slaves that is the cause. Should the levels of 'livestock' falter through disaster or over-use, and are required at the commissioning of any grand new design, the Chaos Dwarf war host is gathered and a suitable target selected for despoil, while simultaneously iron-masked emissaries go out to the tribes of dark-hearted men, Ogres and even Orcs to barter razored steel for lives. This in turn can trigger fresh assaults and ravages far beyond the Dark Lands to meet the Chaos Dwarfs' tally, and captives taken in distant lands can eventually find their life's end drudging in the slave pits of the Plain of Zharrduk or slaughtered upon its burning altars. The Chaos Dwarfs also raid to the north, attacking the fierce horse-riding human tribes of the northern highlands, but these are distant conquests for them and the horse tribes often flee rather than fight. The furthest west the Chaos Dwarf armies have reached to date is the verdant valleys of Farside, the province of Kislev which lies to the eastern foothills of the World's Edge Mountains. Smaller bands of Chaos Dwarfs have penetrated as far as the lands around Death Pass, where they have encountered the many tribes of Goblins that live in the western part of the Dark Lands.

Unfortunate wretches of many races toil amid the poisoned air and burning ash of Zharrduk, and like the craftsmen they are, the Chaos Dwarfs prefer, when possible, to select the right tool for the right job - from mutilated Elves flayed and bled to provide alchemical unguents to fettered and broken Chaos beasts from the Northern Wastes harnessed for their immense strength and tolerance for injury. By far the most common slaves in the Chaos Dwarf realm are Orcs and Goblins, and this is not simply because they are native to the Dark Lands and its bordering mountains, but also because they are hardy creatures who will often last the longest in the noxious fumes and murderous conditions under which they are made to labour. Of these, the Hobgoblins have a unique and favoured place - as much as a slave might be favoured by such cruel and callous masters. Perhaps the most distrusted, vicious and above all treacherous of Goblin kind, the Chaos Dwarfs seldom reduce the Hobgoblins to base toil but rather employ them as slave-overseers, lackeys and even as troops, providing utterly disposable reinforcements for their own forces, enabling a larger enemy army to be weakened without cost in Chaos Dwarf lives before they themselves move in for the kill. Hated by the other Greenskins who would happily murder them if they could, the Hobgoblins of the Dark Lands have come to rely on the Chaos Dwarfs for patronage and protection. While they are so treacherously eager to betray each other for advancement, they are quite incapable of fomenting any cohesive rebellion against their brutal masters as they cannot even trust each other! Making them in some ways the perfect slaves.

Humans too have their place among the slaves of the Chaos Dwarfs, as they are adaptable and quick-witted if though less durable than Greenskins and considerably more unpredictable. As do Ogres, who are valued for their raw power but always present a danger as their primitive, violent spirits can never be fully broken. Skaven are never taken alive unless to be worked almost immediately to death or used as paltry mass sacrifices, as they are simply too devious and the Chaos Dwarfs have learned from bitter experience that any group taken might well conceal untold spies, saboteurs and even deliberately infected plague-carriers placed in their midst. But of all the races to fall into the hands of the masters of Zharr-Naggrund, the darkest fate awaits their kin, the Dwarfs of the West. The fruits of the bitter malice of long, brooding millennia are reserved for the Dwari, and of all sacrifices to Hashut, none are more favoured than those loyal to the treacherous Ancestor Gods.

Black Orcs
Certain arcane lore and blasphemous histories state apocriphally that many centuries ago the dark arts of the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers sought to create a new breed of slave by means of blood magic and infernal power. They already of course possessed tens of thousands of Orc and Goblin slaves, but at best they were unruly, fractious and inefficient. lacking the useful intelligence of humans or the sheer stamina of Ogres. The new breed were to be powerful warriors in battle and able workers in the most hostile parts of their benighted realm, inferior to their masters and obedient to their will, but superior in every regard from the common Orc stock from which they were created. The great experiment worked at first, but the Chaos Dwarfs soon came to realise that their new Orc breed, dark-hued and hulking, while both far tougher and stronger than their slave stock, were also far too independently minded to make good slaves. Indeed their steadiness of will and brutal clarity of purpose compared to common Orcs was itself a dire cause for concern, and not long after their numbers swelled and spread, these 'Black Orcs' began to revolt, and even organise other Greenskins into obeying their will rather than that of their Chaos Dwarf masters. Some believe that in 'refining' the Black Orcs, the Chaos Dwarfs had also unwittingly concentrated the Orcs' own bellicose nature and love of battle to untameable heights, while some suggest that something of the arrogant desire to dominate and destroy that festered in the hearts of the Chaos Dwarfs themselves had somehow transferred and taken root in their progeny. In any case, the Chaos Dwarfs were soon troubled by revolt after revolt, and were beset on all sides by a powerful and deadly enemy of their own creation. In the greatest and final revolt, near-civil war broke out, the Chaos Dwarfs were besieged with their own weapons and Zharr-Naggrund itself became a battleground. The Dhrazh-Zharr hovered on the precipice of destruction, until aided by the perfidious treachery of the Hobgoblins against their kin, the Black Orcs were finally defeated and cast out and driven from the Chaos Dwarf empire at great cost. The experiment has never been repeated.

Many Black Orcs escaped into the Mountains of Mourn where their descendants remain to this day, while others undertook the long journey to the west and eventually reached the Old World. The Chaos Dwarfs destroyed many Black Orcs, but they left some tribes free to roam the mountains so that they could recruit them as troops into their armies.

Hobgoblins
During the height of the largest and most savage Black Orc rebellion the Chaos Dwarfs were almost overcome. Vastly outnumbered by their former slaves, they were driven upwards through the layers of their city, fighting for each level, ascending ever closer to the Temple of Hashut itself. At the final hour, the city was saved by the treachery of the Hobgoblins, who, having rebelled with the Black Orcs, switched their allegiance once more and turned the tide against the Orc rebels. In doing so, they earned the enmity of all the other Greenskins, who deeply distrust them to this day.

The Hobgoblins enjoy the favour of the Chaos Dwarfs and care little what other Greenskins think of them. Unlike the Chaos Dwarfs’ other slaves, they are not made to work in the pits and workshops, but are used as warriors. They are a sneaky, evil-minded race, who remain as dishonest and cowardly in the service of the Chaos Dwarfs as they were when fighting for the Black Orcs. Other Greenskins despise them and would certainly kill them were it not for the power they enjoy amongst the Chaos Dwarfs.

Hobgoblins are distinctive in appearance. They look much like Goblins, but are taller, though nowhere near as burly as Orcs. In fact their whole appearance is thin and sneaky, with narrow eyes and sneering mouths full of pointy teeth. They ride giant wolves, and often carry bows to shoot the enemy from a distance. The Chaos Dwarfs utilise many Hobgoblins in their armies but don't really trust them. They know that the Hobgoblins are despised by the other Greenskins, and need the protection of the Chaos Dwarfs to survive.

Society
There are relatively few Chaos Dwarfs. The vast numbers of slaves who toil in the Tower of Zharr-Naggrund and in the Plain of Zharrduk outnumber them many times over. All the Chaos Dwarfs belong to one of the Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers, they are his subjects and also his kinsmen, bonded by ties of blood-loyalty which all the Chaos Dwarfs deem unbreakable. Bands of Chaos Dwarfs scour the Dark Lands searching for captives to bring back to Zharr-Naggrund to work in the mines and forges, or to sacrifice in the Temple of Hashut.

Timeline
The history of the Chaos Dwarfs is obscured by time and the harsh Dark Lands that separate their empire from the Old World. Few have travelled through this barren, inhospitable wasteland and even fewer have escaped to speak of the horrors they have witnessed. Only through their relentless search for slaves to work in the foul mines and furnaces that litter the Plain of Zharrduk are Chaos Dwarfs forced into contact with the outside world.


 * -4500 IC - The time of the Ancestor Gods. No records of these times survive, but legend tells of the gradual colonisation of the World's Edge Mountains by Dwarfs.


 * -4300 - The most adventurous of Dwarfs journey across the barren upland regions north of the World's Edge Mountains which they name "Zorn Uzkul" (the Great Skull Land) into the Plain of Zharrduk.


 * -4000 - Great Catastrophe. Contact is lost between Dwarfs of the World's Edge Mountains and Dwarf settlements in the Dark Lands and Zorn Uzkul. The Dwarfs of the west believe their eastern kin have perished, destroyed by the tides of Chaos from the north.


 * -3500 - Abandoned by their gods, Dwarfs of the Dark Lands turn to the worship of the evil god Hashut, the Father of Darkness.


 * -2700 - Legend tells how the mighty ziggurat Mingol-Zharr-Naggrund (Tower of Fire and Desolation) was raised from dark iron and black obsidian by the most powerful Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers.


 * -2600 - Enslavement of Orc and Goblin tribes throughout the Dark Lands and the Mountains of Mourn.


 * -2130 - Ogre Tyrant Argut Skullcrusher and Bloodthirster Baaltor battle in the Darklands, fighting for 40 days and nights. The Bloodthirster was eventually entombed in a great pillar of rock by the mortally wounded Ogre. That pillar was from then on known as the Daemon's Stump, and some time later it was turned into a fortress by the Chaos Dwarfs.


 * -150 - Experiments on captive Orcs and Goblins by Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers result in the creation of the Black Orcs.


 * -100 - The Black Orcs prove unruly and difficult to control. After leading an armed revolt that ravages the lower levels of Zharr-Naggrund, they are purged from the ziggurat. Fleeing Black Orcs escape to the World's Edge Mountains and the Mountains of Mourn.


 * 500 - Rich volcanic deposits first mined at Gorgoth.


 * 1000 - To fuel the ever increasing demand for slaves, the Chaos Dwarf fleet cruises the River Ruin and Sea of Dread, enslaving those unfortunate enough to cross its path. A great sea canal is constructed underground linking the Falls of Doom with the Sea of Chaos, giving the fleet an exit in the north.


 * 2493 - Battle of Anurell's Tomb. A Chaos Dwarf slaving expedition encounters a High Elf army south of the Plain of Bones.

The Dark Lands
The Chaos Dwarf empire is sited amidst the Mountains of Mourn and the adjoining eastern part of the Dark Lands. It is a stark and cheerless place, where nature has rent the ground and burst the mountains apart. Amongst the peaks volcanoes spew black smoke into the filthy sky. In the plains the stench of tar pits and oil pools hangs heavily in the air. Steaming lava from beneath the earth's crust covers the ash wastes with a blanket of bubbling magma.

Almost nothing can grow in the Dark Lands. The dim light and choking air combine to ensure that the land remains devoid of vegetation, except for a few straggly black thorns. The volcanoes and gaping pits bring up all kinds of minerals and gems from beneath the earth: gold and silver, iron and copper, diamonds and sapphires, as well as sulphur, oil and tar. It is a land rich in the materials that Dwarfs especially covet.

Known fortresses of the Chaos Dwarfs

 * Mingol-Zharr-Naggrund.


 * Uzkulak.


 * Daemon's Stump.


 * Tower of Gorgoth.


 * Black Fortress.

Military
Chaos Dwarfs are master craftsmen, and their armouries produce an endless stream of armour and weapons, dark devices and works of Daemon-fused occult engineering. Much of this wargear, the lesser products of their craft - blades and steel whose quality still outmatches any mere human craftsmanship is traded northwards to the warring Chaos-touched tribes and eastward to the Ogre Kingdoms in return for slaves, for which the Chaos Dwarfs have an unending demand, rare metals and gems, and to slake whatever strange desires the Sorcerer-Prophet's experiments might require. By this trade blood is spilled across the world by their weapons, and in doing so the Chaos Dwarfs both enrich themselves and sow destruction in Hashut's name, and moreover they spread their insidious influence further, gather intelligence in regards to their enemies and so bring their dreams of dominion closer, one drop of blood at a time.

The greater works of their hell-forges and the spawn of the dark intellect of their sorcerers, however, they guard jealously for themselves and it is on the bedrock of these malevolent engines, savage weapons and brutal sorcery that the Chaos Dwarfs' true power is founded. Chaos Dwarf warriors are themselves equipped to the highest standard and every Sorcerer Lord arms and outfits their soldiers to their own design and in their own distinctive livery. The majority of their troops are armed with masterfully crafted axes, vicious stabbing blades and barbed war-picks, and protected by heavy scale corselets of rune-hardened iron or bronze, tall helmets and heavy, metal-clad shields. The most potent wear so-called blackshard armour, forged with hellfire and blood, stronger than mere steel and phenomenally resistant to the effects of fire and heat. A significant number of troops are armed with firearms, from intricate Wheelock pistols to the heavy, bladed fireglaive repeating guns. But the hailshot blunderbuss - a powerful, short-ranged weapon whose murderous fire is amplified when used in ranked fusillade - is the most common and iconic. This last weapon was developed to combat the near-limitless Orc and Goblin hordes that abound in the lands around the Chaos Dwarfs domain and has become the terror of the Greenskins in battle, able to blunt even their crushing charges and slaughter scores of howling Goblins in a single, thunderous blast from the warriors' ranks.

It is though for their war machines that the Chaos Dwarfs have become most infamous and dreaded on the battlefield. Unfettered by the usual Dwarf reliance on tradition and resistance to change, they have combined their intellect and sophisticated understanding of steam power and mechanism with the hellish lore of Hashut to produce a nightmarish array of weapons. These range from cannons that fire burning gouts of magma, to steam-driven reapers, to fortress-shattering mortars and colossal siege engines of glittering brass. The most terrible of these war machines are bound with hungering Daemons in their fabric, granting them both an unholy semblance of life and unmatched killing power. The might and bloodlust of these hell-forged artefacts cannot be denied and they are perilous even to their masters should their occult bindings shake loose. As a result of their unpredictability and the difficulty of their construction, hell-bound war engines are used and fashioned more sparingly than more conventional (although no less deadly) designs in the Chaos Dwarf arsenal. Such weapons are often 'tested' in battle by a pact of alliance with the Chaos Warriors of the north, so long as it serves the Dhrazh-Zharr's purpose, and it is not uncommon to see small contingents of dreaded Chaos Dwarf war machines amid the ranks of the war bands and hordes of the Chaos Wastes, lending them their immense destructive power.

War machines of the Chaos Dwarfs
It is for their nightmarishly powerful engines of war that the Chaos Dwarfs are most infamous and rightly feared. The arsenals of Zharr-Naggrund are replete with terrifying weapons that only the febrile imaginings of a madman could conceive of - let alone be able to construct. Alongside these stand a host of more conventional arms and siege weapons fashioned to exacting specifications of power and durability, as only a Dwarf would make them. The war machines of the Chaos Dwarfs run the gamut from simple armoured siege mantlets and bolt throwers, through to mighty black powder mortars, petards and cannon. Not content with these ordinary weapons, their skills are set to creating shoulder fired rocket bombs, the esoteric horrors of the corpse-fuelled Hellcannon, and great steam-clanking colossus the size of tower-houses, half-machine and half-daemonic beasts, whose tred shakes the earth and from whose fortified fighting platforms a score of Chaos Dwarf Warriors can let fly lethal volleys from their swivel guns.

The Chaos Dwarfs have no equal in the world in the creation of arms and diabolical engines of destruction, save perhaps for the Skaven of Clan Skryre. Aside however from their desire to create ever more powerful devices, the approach and means to an end for the Chaos Dwarfs and the Skaven could not be further apart. Where the Chaos Dwarfs favour craftmanship and reliability over mere speed of creation, the Skaven care not for such considerations in favour of raw power and getting the device in operation as quickly as possible, however unpredictable the result or potentially fatal it is for the crew. To this end the Skaven favour the use of the treacherous and potent warpstone in their works, which while not unknown to the Chaos Dwarfs, they favour the arcane binding of Daemons through the sorcerous lore of Hashut in their most powerful devices instead. The end result can sometimes be no less dangerous to the Hell-smith or crewman called upon to direct such a weapon, but to the minds of the Chaos Dwarfs, such calamity that may result will be caused by the result of weakness or ill-discipline by the operator, or the will of Hashut, rather than chance volatibility or shoddy workmanship. This is not to say that one side has not kept a wary eye on the inventions of the other, or indeed sought to steal their secrets from the wreckage strewn on the battlefield, but such are the idiosyncrasies and inherent dangers in the two entirely alien approaches, that seldom has more than disaster and madness resulted from the attempts on either side. More cataclysmic still is when the war machines and infernal devices of both the Chaos Dwarfs and the Skaven meet each other in open battle, as happened during the infamous 'Nightmare of Drakenmoor' in the year 2037 IC.

Heroes

 * Chaos Dwarf Sorcerers (Sorcerer-Prophets and Daemonsmiths).


 * Chaos Dwarf Lords (Lords, Infernal Castellans and Bull Centaur Taur'ruk).


 * Hobgoblin Khans.

Core Units

 * Chaos Dwarf Warriors.


 * Infernal Guard.


 * Hobgoblin Cutthroats.

Special Units

 * Infernal Ironsworn.


 * Bull Centaur Renders.


 * K'daai Fireborn.


 * Magma Cannon.


 * Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher.


 * Iron Daemon War Engine.

Rare Units

 * Hobgoblin Wolf Raiders.


 * Dreadquake Mortar.


 * K'daai Destroyer.


 * Hellcannon.


 * Chaos Siege Giant.

Notable Chaos Dwarfs

 * Astragoth Ironhand - Oldest Sorcerer-Prophet of Zharr-Naggrund.


 * Ghorth the Cruel - Current most potent Sorcerer-Prophet. Probably second in power only to Lord Astragoth.


 * Zhatan the Black - Commander of the Tower of Zharr, vassal to Sorcerer Ghorth.


 * Drazhoath the Ashen - Sorcerer-Prophet in charge of the Black Fortress. Leader of the Legion of Azgorh and the Infernal Guard.


 * Bazherak the Cruel - Castellan-commander of the Tower of Gorgoth during the wars against ancient Nehekhara.