The New World
The northern New World, known as Naggaroth, has been dominated for millennia by the Dark Elves, but they are hardly the only residents of this continent, and there are certainly other realms that are worthy of note.
Maps
Click the above map for access to a much higher-resolution image, with locational notes.
Realms
Kalterhafen
The Dragon Brethren
| Dates |
2518 IC - present |
| Principal Inhabitants |
Mixed, but a Human majority |
| Flag / Arms |
|
| Capital |
Kalterhafen |
| Language |
Reikspiel (official)
Battle Tongue (official)
|
| Religion |
No one state church. Only worship of the Ruinous Powers is banned. The Old World and Asur pantheons are both supported. |
| Government |
Stratocracy |
| Ruler |
Uhlrik Gunderit |
| History |
2518 IC - Clar Karond razed, renamed Kalterhafen. |
| Currency |
not established |
The mighty Dark Elf city of Clar Karond once stood here, but it has been sacked and destroyed, its proud black towers tumbled to the earth. What of its populace was not destroyed has fled to other cities or to the surrounding countryside to lick its wounds. In the darksome city's place, the Dragon Brethren have hastily erected a fort and renamed the place Kalterhafen (meaning Chill Harbor). This fort is the first territory to be taken and held by the Dragon Brethren for their own dominion, and so it and its immediate environs are the germ of their future state.
Kalterhafen, though it is under the control of the Dragon Brethren, is surrounded on most sides by the territory of an implacable and ancient enemy. While the attack that led to the sack and razing of Clar Karond was hardly a suprise to the Dark Elf lords, they had anticipated merely a strong raid, a feint in preparation for a greater attack against Karond Kar rather than a determined attempt to actually take the city. This is the first time that Malekith's forces have ever actually lost a city within Naggaroth itself and the ancient, hidebound leaders of the Druchii appear to still be in a certain degree of outraged shock over the affair.
When Schloß Drache departed Kalterhafen to reinforce the Blighted Isle against Chaotic forces, a significant portion of their strength (including their entire navy) remained behind to hold this place. Most of the surviving former slaves of Clar Karond remained behind as well to establish a free home for themselves and joined the Black Dragons' forces. Vanye Waverider, as the Dragons' admiral, has been tasked with leading this combined effort of establishing a firm hold on this place and training the hordes of new recruits.
Word of the Black Dragons' drastic transformation has not yet reached Vanye or his highly diverse forces, and indeed what condition they will be found in is uncertain.
Naggaroth
| Dates |
-2723 IC to present (2519 IC) |
| Principal Inhabitants |
Druchii |
| Flag / Arms |
|
| Capital |
Naggarond |
| Language |
Druhir (known as Dhar-Elthàrin by the Asur) |
| Religion |
Khaine (official)
Slaanesh (banned but prominent)
|
| Government |
Despotism |
| Witch-King |
Malekith |
| History |
-2751 IC: Malekith fails to become Phoenix King
-2723IC: The Sundering. Foundation of Naggaroth
-238 IC: Black Way discovered.
176 IC: Watchtowers built
1783 IC: Underworld route to ARnhelm discovered
2301 IC: Great Chaos Incursion. Battle of Finuval Plain
2423 IC: Eltharion raids Naggarond
2518 IC: Fall of Clar Karond
|
| Currency |
|
Warhammer Wiki Page on Naggaroth (from which a fair amount of the text on this page is derived)
Ghrond, the North Tower, stands upon the very borders of the Witch King's realm. To the north, only a thin line of watchtowers guard against incursions by the forces of Chaos. To the east loom the Spiteful Peaks, perhaps the most inhospitable mountain range in the known world, infested by fearsome manticores, tribes of savage orcs and warped beastmen, and even worse dangers. West is the desolate wasteland known as the Black Plain, where sleeps the ageless evil of the Altar of Ultimate Darkness. Only to the south is there any safety, for that way runs the Witch King's highway, paved with the skulls of his foes, leading to the gates of his own city of Naggarond.
Ghrond lies in the bitterly cold north of the Witch King's domain. In shape it is like the great city of Naggarond, yet in size it is far smaller, a fortress to be garrisoned rather than a place in which to dwell. Its single massive tower, grim, black, and slender like a spear, rises from its mountain spur.
From this tower sorceresses watch over the ever shifting Realm of Chaos, place of gods and source of all magical power for good and ill alike. Within the Realm of Chaos the lands seethe with energy, rising like the sea, whilst the air is bathed in competing colours of sorcery, turning and twisting, howling and crying like the wind. The sorceresses observe the changes in the Realm of Chaos, for it is said that the patterns of change hold the secrets to the future, and that all secrets are contained therein for those who dare to look.
Every day dark clad riders gallop away from the tower of Ghrond bearing the reports of its guardians to Naggarond. These foretell of things to come, of auspicious moments when the Witch King's armies may meet with success, or of the growing power of his enemies. From these observations the Witch King plots his strategies and launches his armies upon the World.
Ghrond serves as a bastion against the hordes of Chaos. It has a large garrison, quite capable of putting down small to major invasions from the Wastes.
The Druchii city of Karond Kar...
The great Temple of Khaine here is the largest in the whole of Naggaroth. As well as the main temple building itself, a full third of the citadel is under the direct control of the hags. Barracks, assembly fields, and training rooms enough for a sizeable military force can be found there as well as the more usual reliquaries, meditation chambers, and holding pens for sacrificial victims. Witch elves and assassins, dozens of smaller yet no less martial cults devoted to Khaine's many aspects are also barracked within the temple grounds.
Rulership of the citadel was long ago granted to the noble House of Rakanthis, but the true power has always lain with Crone Hellebron. Since the mysterious death of the last city lord, she has ruled har Ganeth alone. Even when the crone resides in Naggarond at the court of Malekith, the city is left under the command of the hags rather than in the hands of the nobility. All important posts in the Har Ganeth city legion, the city's own military force (as opposed to the smaller forces maintained by the noble houses), are filled by Hellebron's appointees.
Here are the ruins of the dwelling, playground and workshop of the insane heretic priest and master artificer, Hotek. The column has been broken down, but even its ruins maintain a geometry that has only the most tangential relationship with the physical world of men and elves.
A once-great shrine, the center of the Dark Elves' corrupted version of the worship of Vaul. The Black Dragons have desecrated the place and massacred its priests, but old wounds often fester.
Arnhelm
The Asur colony of Arnhelm, known to Imperial cartographers as "Arnheim" has been in High Elf hands since before recorded human history. Its capital shares the name of the whole colony, and is the only large city in the realm though there are a number of smaller cities along the coast...
- Shining Hill - This is the district of the city of Arnhelm where Rainbow Hall (the chancellor's palace) and much of the administration are.
Chaos Wasteland
The Shadowlands, the Umbra Chaotica or whatever name one prefers for it simply fail to do this place justice. It is a vast swathe of literal Hell on earth, where reality can melt and run like wax and Daemons can roam freely...
Peoples
Druchii
The Dark Elves of Naggaroth refer to themselves as the Druchii...
Autarii
The independent, wilderness-dwelling Autarii are clans of Dark Elves that reside in the woods, mountains and wildernesses of Naggaroth rather than huddling in massive fortified cities or plantations. Better known as Shades, these nomad cut-throats take mercenary employment from highborn Druchii, but do not consider themselves direct subjects of the lords of Naggaroth.
Slaves
For many centuries, the Dark Elves have relied upon slavery and plunder as the primary driving forces of their economy. They have roved the world over in search of victims and treasure, and accordingly the slave-pens, cities and fields of the Druchii are filled with living beings from across the globe. Asur are their most prized victims, but hardly the most numerous. The greatest proportion of the Dark Elves’ slaves is drawn instead from the teeming ranks of Humanity. Old Worlders are chained next to Hung and Ikadians (New Worlders), and men from Cathay and Nippon must labor alongside Arabs. Most common are representatives from those lands closest to Naggaroth: the tribes of the Northern Wastes, the New World and the peoples of the Old World. With the discovery of the connections between the Underworld Sea and the west a few centuries ago, an ever-greater influx of slaves from Nippon and Cathay has begun to alter the mix. Naturally, many lifelong slaves are of mixed ancestry. There are also representatives of nearly all of the world’s major nonhuman races, especially Goblins.
This sorry mass of slavery must live, work and die at the pleasure of its masters, and families and social groups are often divided merely out of spite. Though many of the slaves keep to their own ethnic and linguistic group as much as possible, they frequently have little choice in the matter. Accordingly, the slaves of the Dark Elves have developed a wide range of pidgin and creole languages to allow them to communicate amongst themselves. Most of these are built with Druhir (the language of the Druchii) as their superstrate, since that is the one tongue that most slaves at least share a rudimentary knowledge of. Substrates for these mixed tongues are of course the dominant tongues of the lands from which most of a given area’s slave population is drawn.
Larger populations of slaves such as the huge workforce kept at the logging fields of Clar Karond tend to develop reasonably stable creoles among their principal groups, reinforced when new slaves are born and raised with these as their first languages. The Druchii derisively refer to these mixed languages collectively as Fechàrin, “slave-talk,” and take their existence as evidence that their slaves are inferior by virtue of their failure to completely adopt Druhir, never mind that few Dark Elves would bother to provide proper tuition to a slave. Slaves with a reasonable grasp of one of these tongues, however, should be able to communicate on at least a rudimentary level with any other group of longtime slaves that they should be shuffled into, and to pick up the local dialect before long.
Hung
While the Kurgan are the Chaos Marauders best known to Old Worlders, it is the Hung that throw themselves violently from the North against not only Cathay but Naggaroth. Where the Kurgan are tall and dark, the Hung are short, squat and wide-faced. They live in the saddles of their tough, sturdy ponies. The Hung are constantly in a state of war, whether among themselves, against the Kurgan, against Beastmen, in raids against Greenskins or the peoples to the South of their homelands. The hung are known as a savage, sly and cunning people with a taste for treachery.
Ikadians
The copper-skinned humans of the New World...
Asur
The High Elves have a strong presence in the New World, specifically in its southern regions around their fortress-city of Arnhelm. They claim the lands south of the Doom Glades, though they do share them with the Ikadian tribes...
Greenskins
The degenerate Goblinoid races exist pretty much everywhere in the Warhammer World, and the New World is certainly no exception. In Naggaroth, there are many Goblin slaves toiling under Dark Elf whips. To the West the Black Spine mountains are stiff with all varieties of Greenskins, which pour down from time to time to war against the Elves. Tribes of greenskins rage against the Hung to the North and infest the Petrified Forest to the South.
Beastmen
The Beastmen are found in considerable numbers throughout the northern parts of the world, and Naggaroth is no exception. One interesting quirk of the area is that, liker other parts of the world, the beastmen of these lands reflect the nightmares and imagination of the sentient peoples of the region to a certain degree. While Gors and Bray are in evidence, there is also a sizable population of beastmen that are at least partially reptilian in appearance, and in some cases can even be mistaken for Lizardmen on casual observation...
Links
Druchii.net is the home of a considerable amount of Dark Elf resources.
Warhammer Wiki entry on Dark Elves.
Wikipedia Dark Elves entry.
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