Hag Graef the "Black Crag," also known as the "City of Shadows," is a sinister and foreboding place, built at the bottom of a cold, dark canyon and completely surrounded by mountains of bare rock that stretch into the clouds. It is a city permanently in shadow, for no sunlight ever reaches its walls. Hag Graef is a place of twisted and impossible architecture. Its eight black towers rise from the canyon floor like the ossified remains of some loathsome cephalopod. Between the towers are strung walkways, platforms and bridges of every shape and size. Some are fashioned from withered timber and soot-stained bone, others are crafted from jagged stone or woven from the silk of monstrous spiders.[1a]
The larger platforms are so massive as to be towns and villages in their own right, and are supported by gantry-works of iron and stone. It is upon these that the majority of Hag Graef's citizenry dwell, crammed into crooked mansions of cinderbrick and fire-blackened wood; the towers are home only to the city's most powerful Dreadlords. Cramped conditions, combined with the Dark Elves' peremptory nature, ensure that rivalries flare into violence with alarming regularity. Those who do not walk cautiously through Hag Graef's webwork of streets have their throats slit and bodies heaved into the morass of sewage and rotting flesh that covers the canyon floor.[1a]
The rocks below Hag Graef are honeycombed with mines and quarries that are, in turn, threaded through with chain gangs of slaves who claw iron and jet-black stone from the belly of the world. This is the most miserable of existences, toiling far from any natural light, starved on all but the meanest food and chilled to the bone by the piercing wind that howls through the tunnels. Even after death there is no respite - the mines are riddled with veins of warpstone, whose baleful power animates the dead and keeps them labouring until they collapse into piles of worn bones.[1a]
Driven by the wealth of its mines, Hag Graef has risen to become Naggaroth's second city. In fact, it is so prosperous that its armies and influence overshadow even those of Naggarond. So eager are Hag Graef's people to escape their abyssal home that the forced conscription present in other cities is completely unnecessary here. Indeed, over the centuries, Hag Graef has earned a reputation for producing, if not the most disciplined fighters, then certainly the most desperate. The city's mercenary rulers, ever eager for profit, have taken to selling warriors into service elsewhere in Naggaroth, taking with it the opportunity to infiltrate spies.[1a]
The army banner of Had Graef
So rich is Hag Graef in soldiery, slave and coin that were its eight great families ever truly united of purpose, they could doubtless overthrow the Witch King. Naturally, Malekith is aware of this, and spares no effort in keeping the Dark Crag's nobles at one another's throats. He need scarcely bother - with so much wealth at stake, intrigue and betrayal are already rife. Hag Graef's greatest prize is the position of First Dreadlord - he who holds this title is the nominal ruler of the city, and all its domains. The First Dreadlord sets the tariffs that govern the city's trade and is an excellent position to take a cut of the all merchantry. With this wealth comes a life of patronage and grand opulence beyond the dreams of other Elves, but few incumbents survive long in office.[1a]
Indeed, many of Hag Graef's social elite consider the lavish ceremony of ascension to be little more than the official opening of a new round in a particularly deadly game. None of this deters the city's nobles from competing for the First Dreadlord's chains of office. Arrogance is as rife here as it is in any other quarter of Naggaroth, and no Dark Elf believes himself foolish enough to end his rule shot, stabbed, poisoned, garrotted or beheaded - he cannot be persuaded of the danger, even though these things have happened to previous rulers more times than can be counted. Life is scarcely less competitive elsewhere in Hag Graef. The Eight Families constantly vie with one another for the First Dreadlord's favour, even as they plot to have him violently removed from office. Even family ties do not guarantee loyalty - many a brother or daughter has risen to new heights over the corpses of their siblings thanks to a timely use of poison or by pressing enough gold into an Assassin's hand.[1a]
It should, therefore, not be surprising that Khainite Assassin cults flourish nowhere in Naggaroth so well as they do in Hag Graef, where there are always Dreadlords seeking to remove rivals or in need of protection from the machinations of their enemies (or their friends). Even so, there are insufficient hired blades to meet the incredible demand, and an Assassin might well answer to a hundred different masters over the course of a year. As a result, many Assassins sew their mouths closed, sever their own vocal chords or nail their jaws shut to ensure they are no longer physically capable of revealing an employer's identity.[1a]
The City[]
The heraldry of Hag Graef as depicted in Total War: Warhammer III.
The city of Hag Graef stretches across the bottom of a narrow valley like a nauglir crouching over the dam. The wide streets that contributed to the heavy industry that constituted the main source of wealth of the city radiated from the enormous Conquest Square, which extends at the foot of the fortress of the drachau. The fortress, a solid collection of towers topped by spiers, courtyards, and deadly cul-de-sacs, and surrounded by an inner and outer perimeter of high walls, contains not only the homes of various high-ranking Druchii lords and ladies, but also the the city's witch convent and the stables of the frozen guards .[2]
Hag Graef is called the Black Abyss and the City of Shadows for good reason: surrounded by steep mountain slopes, the valley floor only receives direct sunlight for a couple of hours a day, and this only on the rare clear days of the year. summer. For most of the year, Hag Graef remains shrouded in perpetual twilight. In the city itself, you can see the faint, flickering glow of warlock fire globes that twinkle like stars amid streams of caustic night fog that floated through the streets.[2]
Around and under the city itself are the mines and quarries of the Witch King, in which countless slaves excavate in the depths of the world, obtaining the metal and stone to arm their warriors and build the fortresses of the Dark Elves. Slaves live the most miserable existence, chained together, cutting and chipping rock, usually very deep, in narrow tunnels and passageways away from any natural light.[2]
Drachau's Fortress[]
Over hundreds of years, the drachau's fortress — also called Hag by the city's residents — had grown almost like a living being. Dwarf slaves were expensive and relatively scarce, so it could be many years before the opportunity to be presented necessary repairs and additions. When part of the castle fell into ruin, other sections were built on top of and around it, creating an insane maze of chaotic corridors, abandoned towers, and bricked-up courtyards.[2]
What had started out as a relatively small citadel with a single octagonal wall, then covered over two square kilometers and had four concentric defensive walls, each built to surround a new stage of expansion. It is said that no one knows the fortress in its entirety; New servants were often dispatched to run errands within the sprawling citadel, and were not found again for several days, if they were found.[2]
The outbuildings of the vaulkhar and his sons occupied a whole set of towers situated in the eastern wing of the enormous castle and dominated the three mountain entrances to the Eastern Foundry and the wide avenue of ground char that ran north to the caverns of the Way. Underground. Many of the towers belonging to the sons of the Vaulkhar were connected by narrow bridges, allowing the nobles to come and go without bothering to make the long descents to the public levels of the castle and then climb again. That was the theory; in practice, the sons of the vaulkhar viewed bridges as an invitation to murder and scrupulously avoided them.[2]
Underground[]
The black mountains that surround Hag Graef are traversed by countless tunnels and excavations. During these excavations in search of rocks and minerals, the slaves traversed a vein of mineral to find a network of semi-flooded caves and tunnels kilometers long underground. Beneath Naggaroth, the mountains rise and curve so that as their peaks rise skyward, gigantic caverns form beneath the earth. Many were natural formations but others showed signs of being built by mortal hands in the past. The Underground Sea was first discovered by Hag Graef's dark lord, Kaledor Maglen. It is so vast that although the Dark Elves have sailed through this sea and have explored innumerable caves and branches, undoubtedly still hiding many secrets. This series of tunnels allowed the various Dark Elf cities to connect with each other and offered more security than venturing outside.[2]
In the deepest caverns of this underground world, the Dark Elves discovered strange reptilian creatures called Frostbites. Hag Graef's Stables are teeming with these monstrous beasts, and many Dark Elves descend into the depths to hunt them down.[2]
The Burrows[]
Among the extensive underground there is a whole network of caves and grottos of mysterious origin known as the Burrows. According to legend, the burrows had been made several centuries before, when the Hag had begun to be built. One winter, the earth shook under the castle from dusk to dawn. The floor tiles rose and fell, and the towers swayed under the moon. The nobles and slaves brave enough to venture into the cellars of the castle claimed to have heard a slow, deep moan that reverberated through the earth and stone, and said that sometimes clouds of noxious gases emanating through looked the cracks in the ground and poisoned the unwary.[2]
The strange episode ended as abruptly as it had begun, on the first day of spring; late in the summer, a team of workers rebuilding a collapsed tower discovered the first of the tunnels. Almost perfectly round and open in the solid rock, the passageways ran for miles, turning over and over again, as if made by a monstrous worm. No one ever encountered the creature — or creatures — that had opened the tunnels, though over the centuries a multitude of vermin had made the labyrinth their home.[2]
Sources[]
- 1: Warhammer Armies: Dark Elves (8th Edition)
- 1a: pg. 12
- 2: The Demon's Curse (Novel) by Dan Abnett and Mike Lee
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