"After the shadows of Karag-dar, you may find even the Reiksfang prison a comforting sight. "
- —Brunner to Bruno Brega.[1]
Brunner The Bounty Hunter fights the goblins in the tunnels of the fortress of Karag-Dar
Karag-Dar was a Dwarven citadel located in the mountains of The Vaults. In times past, it was a great fortress of the Eternal Kingdom. But it fell, like so many of the great dwarven cities, by fire, earthquakes, and goblins thousands of years ago.[1]
Its importance was due to the fact that, due to the absence of mountain passes in The Vaults, Karag-Dar served as an entrance to an underground route through the Underground Path that connected Tilea with The Empire , in a journey that could last at least seven days. Currently, only a few Dwarves continue to use this path, because it is long and dangerous, full of numerous threats.[1]
The entrance to this path is a colossal and imposing gate that puts the grandiose gates in the Altdorf walls to shame. About fifty feet wide and similar in height, the massive entrance is supported by gigantic granite columns, twenty feet in diameter at the top. base. The entire length of the columns is carved and sculpted. Scrolls and runes had been worked with consummate art in the hard ancient stone. Long ago, figures had been carved on the sides of the columns, formed in rows like a silent company of guardians, but all had been disfigured and smashed with crude symbols painted with blood and other crude pigments daubed on them, which strip them even more. of their dignity.[1]
Around this entrance, you can see that the terrain is strewn with rocks, stone mounds and ruins are witnesses to the previous existence of the buildings, walls and outer towers that made up the once outer citadel of Karag-Dar.[1]
Right on the other side of the grandiose entrance is a gigantic chamber. Tall rectangular columns rise toward the mountain, each topped by a bearded dwarf, whose outstretched arms and arched back supported the ceiling, set high above. The twenty pillars are decorated in this way, but no two statues are; each one is meticulously sculpted to preserve the appearance of some ancient lord who had died prior to the founding of Karag-Dar.[1]
In other times, this had been a kind of trading post, where the dwarves traded weapons of steel for grain and meat, with the primitive tribes that would one day become the Tilean people. In those days, steel doors were raised at the entrance to protect the room from any invaders. But these gates are currently broken and dismantled, and the steel had been looted by goblins and orcs to forge their crude weapons.[1]
The ruins of the inner citadel extend several kilometers below the mountains, but today many of them are inhabited by mutant beasts and goblin tribes fighting each other.[1]
The Black Fangs and the Sharp Nose goblin tribes fight for the supremacy in the fortress's tunnels.[1]
Sources[]
- 1: Brunner the Bounty Hunter - Omnibus C. L. Werner (Novel)