Nagashizzar, which means "Glory of Nagash" in High Nehekharan, known also as the "Cursed Pit," is one of the mightiest fortresses the world of Mallus has ever seen, built by the Great Necromancer, the Liche Lord Nagash. Built by the tireless labour of countless Undead, the castle rises nearly half a mile over the desert.[1a]
It was excavated from the living rock of Cripple Peak in the southern Worlds Edge Mountains and the mountain top is its highest spire. Hundreds of other great towers bristle from the mountainside. By night, terrible green witchlights burn in their windows.[1a]
Layout[]
Nagashizzar has essentially been carved out of a fortified mountain known as Cripple Peak. It has been pierced by countless leagues of corridors. Within thousands of chambers, hundreds of Undead things wait ready to answer their lord's every command. Vast as this great army is, it is but a tiny fraction of the legions who once served the Great Necromancer.
Four mighty gates guard the approaches to Nagashizzar, each watched over by great war machines of the most dangerous type -- animated Golems of bone, bolt throwers that fire the thigh bones of Giants, catapults that throw screaming skulls and worse. The gates themselves are made from some nameless black metal which shines like burning obsidian and is ten times harder than steel.[1a]
The pits beneath Nagashizzar extend down almost twice the height of the mountain, forming a huge honeycomb of galleries and mines where once Undead and Skaven toiled to mine the vast veins of warpstone that lay in the bowels of the mountain. These corridors are patrolled by untiring sentries from Nagash's Undead legions, who must be eternally vigilant in case the ratmen should ever return.[1a]
Within his audience chamber at the height of the peak, the husk that is the Liche Lord Nagash sits on his throne of skulls. He has brooded here for over a millennium, waiting and planning, guiding his agents by the power of his thoughts.[1a]
The only living things within this vast fortress are the disciples of Nagash. These mortal madmen worship Nagash as a god and lead his cult until the day he re-emerges from his citadel to conquer the world of Mallus. Now infused by the power of the Dark Magic that has surged through the world since the Great War Against Chaos, Nagash is almost ready to strike back at the world of the living.[1a]