Thommy H:
Okay, in preparation for the update of my Armies book, I’m going to be adding a new section to the background. In the current Armies books, there are generally a few pages of “Legendary battles”: essentially the narratives of three or four epic conflicts they’ve never mentioned before, just to give players ideas and whet their appetites. It’s also used to give special characters starring roles and cameos, and to present justifications for more unusual match ups. My version of the Chaos Dwarf book will be no different, so I’m going to serialise my efforts here and see what people think.
First:
The Battle of Uzkulak
The great Chaos Dwarf city of Uzkulak has long stood guarding the entrance to the sea tunnel that passes below the plateau of Zorn Uzkul, the Great Skull Land, connecting the River Ruin to the icy Sea of Chaos in the north. From this basalt-walled fortress, the Chaos Dwarfs’ fleet of ironclad warships sallies forth, raiding the costal realms of the Old World at will. Sitting as it does in the midst of the northern lands, its defensive position, high walls and the access it grants to the Dark Lands have been coveted by the Marauder tribesman for centuries. One such tribe lived just a dozen or so leagues up the coast and had suffered slave raids by the Chaos Dwarfs for generations. Their chieftain, a Norse Jarl named Ragnar Ragnarson, grew tired of this and resolved to take Uzkulak. No Marauder tribe had ever dared to attack the Place of the Skull before, and Ragnar’s people were reluctant to join this foolhardy quest, but the Jarl paid proper tribute to the Gods of Chaos, called in ancient oaths from his neighbours, brokered alliances by marrying off the daughters of his loyal Thanes and eventually amassed a great army of Norse warriors, the like of which had never been seen outside of a full Chaos incursion.
As chance would have it, much of the Chaos Dwarf fleet was occupied far to the south in the Sea of Dread, fighting off Lizardmen raiders from the Southlands. Jarl Ragnar was able to sail up the Sea of Chaos with his horde in dozens of dragon-prowed longships virtually unopposed. They landed before the gates of Uzkulak and began their assault. Ragnar quickly realised that it was impossible to besiege the fortress because it had direct access to the sea tunnel and hence Zharr-Naggrund, so he determined that only a direct attack would work. Ragnar summoned his housecarls, his personal bodyguard of elite warriors along with the great mass of young men who had flocked to his banner hoping to make a name for themselves. These warriors had dedicated themselves to the Wolf-God �?" another of the names attributed to Khorne, the Chaos God of war �?" and worked themselves into a savage frenzy before the battle. They were known as the berserkjr and, clad in bloody wolf skins, they hurled themselves at the great walls of Uzkulak. Somehow, their frenzied attack succeeded in overwhelming the sparse defenders and they spilled over the outer defences and overran the first level of the fortress, but at a tremendous cost in lives.
Ragnar and his housecarls opened up the outer gate from the inside and the Norse army surged through, but then found themselves up against the even more formidable defences of Uzkulak’s inner keep. The artillery on the battlements now rained down a constant hail of fire �?" both mundane and Daemonic �?" and the Norse knew they could not batter their way past a second gate. So, dismayed, Ragnar ordered his warriors back to the shore to make camp and consider their next move. He left guards on the outer walls of the city though to ensure it could not be easily taken back and so Uzkulak was divided between the Norse and the small number of Chaos Dwarf defenders. As Ragnar’s Marauder horde began to construct earthwork defences and raise a wooden palisade to protect their camp, the Despot Ghorak Firesoul who commanded Uzkulak sent messengers to Zharr-Naggrund asking for a relief force. There, the news of the great fortress’s potential fall was met with a stony silence in the Conclave of Sorcerers. With the fleet still many hundreds of miles away, there was no way to dispatch a relief force that would reach Uzkulak in time, for surely tales of Ragnar’s success would spread across Norsca, attracting more Marauder tribes to his banner, and the city would eventually fall. There was only one solution: to amass an army of a kind never before seen fighting in the name of the Dawi’Zharr.
Gorduz Backstabber, the mercenary chieftain of the Hobgoblins that served the Chaos Dwarfs was summoned. He quickly used his influence to hammer together a loose confederation of Wolf Rider tribes. These fast moving troops could cross the Great Skull Land and reach Uzkulak in a matter of days, but they would not be enough to break the Norse horde alone, and so they were led by the only troops in the Chaos Dwarf army that would be able to keep pace with them: an awesome phalanx of the mighty Bull Centaurs. No such force of these elite shock troops had been gathered in over a thousand years, and only one creature had the will to lead such an army: Lord Bhaal, Eldest of the Bull Centaurs, the Death of Worlds himself. Bhaal careered across the desolate plateau at the head of this highly unusual force and, as they came through the mountain pass, they looked down upon the massed tribes of Chaos waiting in the valley before the gates of Uzkulak, preparing for the final assault. Ragnar’s force now numbered in the thousands, and the Bull Centaurs were only a few hundred. The treacherous Hobgoblins were already starting to slink away, seeing that the odds were against them, but Lord Bhaal cowed them with a single snarled command. He raised his huge rune-encrusted axe and, staring down balefully at the lines of the Norse army, gave his only order of the battle: “Crush them!“
Ragnar saw the Chaos Dwarf relief force high on the ride as a dark smudge of indistinct shapes and, as their charge threw up a great cloud of what he assumed was dust, he gave orders to form a shieldwall. The Norse slammed their shields together and presented a thousand axe- and sword blades, forming an impenetrable barrier of unyielding steel. Such a defence was enough to repel even the most determined charge, for no cavalry mount could be induced to charge towards such an obstacle, and even a well-trained warhorse would shy away at the last moment. But these were no mere cavalry: they were Bull Centaurs, Hashut’s most favoured sons, and no shieldwall could instil anything but outrage in their furious, hate-filled minds. Roaring their defiance, charging through their own wall �?” not of steel, but of smoke and flame �?” Lord Bhaal and the Bull Centaurs crashed into the Norse lines, setting fire to their shields as they made contact and scattering them almost instantly. As the charge hit home, the hundreds of Norse Marauders that made up that shieldwall immediately quailed in stark terror as their arms and armour were melted by the blast of heat and their fellows in the front rank were simply burned alive. Then the axes began to fall, and the fire turned to blood and gore. The Bull Centaur charge was like a scythe cutting through wheat, and it was not so much a fight as a bloody and terrible massacre. The Norse broke and ran, all the fight beaten out of them within minutes, and only the hard core of the barbarian army continued to fight on, a few hundred of the hardened berserkjrs and housecarls, led by Jarl Ragnar himself.
Ragnar knew he was defeated as the Wolf Riders picked off his fleeing men, but the eyes of his gods were still firmly upon him and he knew he had to die with honour, his axe in his hand, meeting this awesome foe in person. The Jarl stepped forward and bellowed a challenge in his native tongue. Lord Bhaal did not speak the language of the Norsemen, but he recognised what was happening even so and, gesturing for his Bull Centaurs to back off, he galloped towards the Marauder Chieftain, axe raised. Jarl Ragnar was a mighty warrior, blessed by the Dark Gods and a veteran of many battles. Taller than even a tall Norseman, his barrel-like chest was corded with thick muscles and he bore tattoos and scars to the Wolf-God. In his hands was an ancient axe and upon his head a helm in the image of a snarling wolf. The pelt of some mutated hound that Ragnar had slain with his bare hands was across his shoulders and, even as the great form of Lord Bhaal thundered towards him, Ragnar Ragnarson knew no fear. The two great warriors clashed in the centre of that bloody battlefield, surrounded by charred corpses and Jarl Ragnar, to his credit, struck several furious blows upon the Bull Centaur Lord before, with a single mighty swing, Bhaal cleaved him in twain from head to crotch.
The battle had been over with the first charge of the Bull Centaurs, but now that Ragnar had been killed, the few remaining Norse gave up the fight and retreated back to the handful of longships that the Hobgoblins had not set alight. Uzkulak was saved by the timely intervention of a wholly unconventional relief force. When the Chaos Dwarf fleet returned, they scoured the coast and found Ragnar’s kingdom. There, they threw down his palisade, burned his hall to the ground, tortured to death all of the remaining warriors and took the women and children as slaves. The name of Ragnar Ragnarson became a curse amongst the Norse �?" a byword for foolish endeavour.
It is said though that the children of Jarl Ragnar survived the slaughter, for they were grown and fighting in far off lands. His firstborn son, Ulf Ragnarson, also called Ulf the Tall and Ulf the Fearless, heard of the fate of his father and his people and swore revenge against all Chaos Dwarfs and especially the Bull Centaurs and Lord Bhaal. Most laugh at such a hollow threat, for what can any man do against such a monster as the Death of Worlds? But Ulf is wiser than his late father, and will not be taken by surprise as he was. Rumour has it that Jarl Ulf Ragnarson has now returned to his homelands, and he is sharpening his axe and looking at Uzkulak with thoughtful eyes.
Still to come:
“The Youth of Grimgor Ironhide”
“The War of the Automata”
“The Battle of the Slave-takers”