A map detailing the Middle Mountains
Karaz Ghumzul was a short lived Dwarf realm in the Middle Mountains during their Golden Age.[1a][2a][3a]
History[]
The Middle Mountains dominate the southwest of Ostland. Claimed by all the lands surrounding them (Ostland, Hochland, Middenland, and even Nordland), the Middle Mountains are dominated by none.[1a] The earliest accounts of the Middle Mountains come from the Dwarfs who settled there during the expansion of the Golden Age. They called this realm Karaz Ghumzul.[3a]
These Dwarfs broke away from the Dwarf Empire, Karaz Ankor, during the war against the Elves (-2000 to -1600 IC).[1a] The reasons for this are disputed: some scholars (mainly Elven and Human) claim that the Dwarfs of Karaz Ghumzul were uncomfortably aware of their isolated position and their proximity to the Elven community of the Laurelorn Forest. The Dwarfs themselves maintain that they had larger concerns than a quarrel between two distant kings, for their prospectors had discovered a Chaos gate beneath the mountains, and the realm needed all its strength to contain it. In addition to these dangers, the mountains did not yield the expected mineral wealth.[3a]
Soon after, the Greenskins and Skaven fell on the Dwarf Empire and ravaged it. When they assaulted the Middle Mountains, the Dwarfs of Karaz Ghumzul abandoned their holds and fled to return to the Worlds Edge Mountains. They sealed the doors, buried them under rock, and destroyed the roads that led to it.[1a][3a]
To this day, the Dwarfs will not say what drove their people from Karaz Ghumzul, but, as they left the mountains near where Castle Lenkster now stands, the Dwarf priests pronounced a curse on the mountains and everything within them.[1a][2a][3a]
Since then, many prospectors and adventurers have searched for the lost Dwarf mines, but none have succeeded, unless they are among those who have never returned.[1a][2a][3a]
When Karaz Ghumzul was abandoned, the Brothers of Grimnir were the only Dwarfs who remained behind. These Dwarfen Slayer-Monks became the guardians of the Keep of the First Slayer, honouring his ancient vow to guard the gate leading into the Realm of Chaos that lay beneath it.[3a]
Keep of the First Slayer[]
The Keep of the First Slayer lies beneath the Nordberg, the tallest peak in the Middle Mountains. Part fortress and part temple, it is home to the Brothers of Grimnir, an elite order of Dwarfen Slayer-monks.[3b]
When the Dwarfs of Karaz Ghumzul abandoned the mountains, the Slayers remained behind, fulfilling their founder's oath to guard the gate into the Realm of Chaos that opened beneath the mountain at the time of the Great Catastrophe almost eight thousand years before, when Chaos first entered the mortal world.[3b]
The Brothers of Grimnir take little interest in the outside world, and are not known for their hospitality to outsiders. The only regular visitors are Slayers who make a pilgrimage to the keep in the hope of being found worthy to join the Brotherhood and finding the redemption they seek at the hands of some abomination of Chaos.[3b]
Other Remnants of Karaz Ghumzul[]
Sealed beneath heavy rock falls, their great gates rune-locked, and the roads leading to them destroyed, the lost holds of Karaz Ghumzul have long fascinated Human and Dwarfen scholars alike. Although the Dwarfen chronicles of the time are very clear that everything of value was packed up and taken away when the holds were abandoned, they still exert a powerful fascination for historians and treasure-hunters.[3b]
No doubt, part of this allure is the fact that all the maps and records of Karaz Ghumzul — even their Books of Grudges — were deliberately destroyed as part of the curse the Dwarf priests placed upon their former realm when the holds were abandoned. Of all those who returned to Karaz Ankor in the Time of Woe, not one would speak the name of their hold, or speak of its history or inhabitants, or tell why the realm was abandoned. For a race of such meticulous record-keepers as the Dwarfs, this deliberate attempt to erase the history of an entire realm was completely unprecedented, and still runs counter to every Dwarfen value and social norm.[3b]
No Dwarf living today will admit to knowing anything about Karaz Ghumzul, beyond the fact that it existed once, but was abandoned. Those Dwarfen scholars who study the lost holds do so secretly, under cover of some other research that just happens to take them into the Middle Mountains.[3b]
One such lost hold of Karaz Ghumzul is Karak Skygg.[3b]