BeeZharr:
Hello all, again. Last week I had my first game of Warhammer since the mid-90s against a friend’s Skaven. I’m pleased to report that the Dawi Zharr, led by BeeZharr the Obnoxious, were victorious. This was aided by Thanquol blowing himself up with the fourth dice roll of the game!
I hope to bring you more photos of my army soon, it is growing slowly. I also have an ascended Astragoth conversion in progress. In the meantime, I have written a short story to explain the background of my army and where I feel it fits with the End Times narrative.
I apologise for any spoilers or canon-clashes - I’ve not read any of the End Times books, I’m just going by the jist of things I have picked up. Sorry for the length, I got a bit carried away!
Into The Flames
The great towers and forges of Zharr-Naggrund burned with sulphurous pyre. The glorious stepped Ziggurat raised in honour of almighty Hashut, built upon millennia of blood and bones of the slaves that had been driven into its construction, now fell apart around him razed by their own greatest and cursed creation. His own forges and workshops had not been spared the ransacking, the product of several centuries of battling, scheming and hording smashed to the ground in a matter of a few hours. He did not care though.
He knew this was coming. This was his plan. It was one hundred years since Hashut revealed all things to him. Those visions of the world covered in darkness and madness, the lands of man and elves ablaze with the breath of his god�?Ts nostrils and the grand halls of their deceptive cousins overrun by beasts of all manner of nightmares. The dead freely walked the on the earth and their foul master was returned to drive them forth. And then it all fell apart, collapsing into the abyss, a sea of darkness with only small islands that smelled to their inhabitants of survival and hope.
It was false hope though, as Astragoth saw the full picture. The destruction of the world had all been a game by Hashut�?Ts inferior fellows in the heavens, and its fracturing had left them exhausted and bored. Hashut knew this, he had schemed it so, and when the others removed their gaze and placed it elsewhere he positioned himself as the supreme master of the island realms, the puppet master of those who clung to them, forever enslaved to his service.
Astragoth wanted to laugh at the sheer perfection of the plan and the part he had played in it. The collapse and ruin being wrought in the once glorious city of the slavers was just part of the plan, the last step before its most wondrous culmination. But it had not been easy to find himself in this place and he had to make some foul and disgusting sacrifices to get here. He motioned his fingers, the last vestiges of flesh upon his petrifying arms, and the giant metal frame of his infernal new body burst into motion. He felt the being enchained within its bulk stir, scratching and clawing to escape but ultimately bound to his will and its magmatic blood fuelled the pistons driving the scaffold that now housed him.
The gate to this workshop was breached by rebellious former ogre slaves using the spent casing from a former Hellcannon as a ram. A horde of smaller slaves - goblins, gnoblars and other critters driven wild by the freedom offered by the raiders �?" swept into the workshop and dared to charge towards him. The beast behind him swelled as it sensed his anger brewing and feeding upon it, he in return could feel its essence burn, swelling with malign rage. He smiled, exposing his gnarled tusks at the sea of greenskin runts before him, and allowed the creature�?Ts rage to spill into the chamber hoist under the right shoulder of his artificial body. Bright, ethereal flames burst from his side, illuminating the workshop with reds, and oranges, the shadows dancing like K�?Tdaii as it surged, and it flooding the space where the slaves once stood. When the magma cooled nothing remained of the small greenskins, and the ogres had been pushed back by the intense heat.
�?oGet that gate shut!�?� he barked at BeeZharr, his lieutenant in this plan.
He loathed BeeZharr, everyone did. That is why he was known as BeeZharr the Obnoxious. For a Dawi Zharr to be described as obnoxious was not a surprise in the eyes of the world, but to be truly obnoxious to his own wicked kind was some achievement. The reason he was obnoxious was also the reason he had chosen him. He had a gift, a gift that most considered a curse, in that he was a supreme diplomat, able and willing to converse, trade and make agreements with the slave races. It had allowed him to forge a powerful cartel in the far north of the area of influence of Zharr-Naggrund, in Zorn Uzkul bordering the land of the Chaos tribes. From here he built a powerful slave force, manufactured great war engines and bound fearsome K�?Tdaii, all of which he turned against the lands of men marching them through the High Pass.
No other could have performed the task required in this time. No other could debase themselves to make the pacts that Hashut had warned him had needed to be made. For Astragoth, his personal part of the plan was simple. The eyes of the other gods were turning upon the world like never before, and soon mighty and powerful champions will walk amongst the mortals to oppose the forces of Chaos. In that time everybody would need to choose a side �?" save the world or bring around its destruction �?" but Hashut had shown him another way. The Dawi Zharr would not need to side with anyone if they did not exist.
It was a sublime plan. A plan fitting of his awesome power and intellect. First, he needed to reign in BeeZharr and stop him raiding outside of their borders. A century ago he met the hideous dwarf personally and gifted him a Lamassu, the most powerful of its malign kind. He knew that this creature would exert its influence on the Sorcerer and bend him to Astragoth�?Ts will. He promised him a prominent position in the Ziggurat, workshops and forges under his rule, and influence over whole realm of the Dawi Zharr. After the meeting Astragoth had the ally he required.
BeeZharr expanded his slave hordes, not through force but through schemes, plots and certain arrangements. The hordes were autonomous and would allow him to carry out the will of Zharr-Naggrund at an arm�?Ts length. Most importantly, they could do it anonymously. The slave hordes of Astragoth and BeeZharr carried a message with them as they went �?" they claimed to have razed Zharr-Naggrund and the lands�?T of the Dawi Zharr. It was clear, it was to be as if they had been wiped out. As the century wore on they would pass from the memory of man and it will be as if they had never existed in the first place, squatted from the annals of history like an annoying fly.
What men, and elves, and their former kin, the dwarves, did not know was that they remained. Small, exerting no direct influence on the affairs of the world, but they were there in the background always. It did not go perfectly however, the rivalries of the Sorcerers and their personal pride, ambitions and lust for more powerful meant there were many infractions and rebellions. Krimzuk the Sly managed to secretly supply the legions of Archaon with warmachines bound with daemoncraft for decades before his secret deals were revealed. This event prompted Astragoth to reveal his new body that he had constructed for the calamitous times to come, and he crushed the rebellious Krimzuk in his gigantic new fist and let his personal army to smash his workshops.
None of the rebellions came close to that of Drazhoath the Ashen. Forever an exile from Zharr-Naggrund, Drazhoath had always coveted Astragoth�?Ts position from his realm in the south around the Black Fortress, and mistook the decades of silence from the Ziggurat as a sign that Astragoth�?Ts flame had been extinguished. Drazhoath acted as if unleashed from the chains of Zharr-Naggrund, building himself an empire and exerting his influence far beyond the intentions of Astragoth�?Ts plan. The time of reckoning was too close, and the plan was so soon to come to fruition that he could not allow this upstart Hellsmith to ruin it now.
It was then that BeeZharr betrayed Zharr-Naggrund. Grimgor Ironhide, the most powerful greenskin ever seen had been created centuries before by Astragoth�?Ts very hands in his youth. A Black Orc, he was the first of his kind, created to be the perfect slave but they were created too perfect. Centuries ago they rebelled and nearly brought down Zharr-Naggrund, only the treacherous Hobgoblin tribes saving the Dawi Zharr from his wrath. He yearned to finish the job and BeeZharr used this to buy his services.
BeeZharr met with Grimgor in the land of the giants to the far east of the Ziggurat. The Orc was fresh from smashing the men of the east and the ogre tribes in the mountains. It was only a matter of time before his thirst for war would bring him to the walls of Zharr-Naggrund and this certainly would mark the end of the Dawi Zharr. Astragoth needed time and Grimgor needed a diversion. BeeZharr offered the Orc the Hobgoblins and, when the time came, the Gates of Zharr - in return Grimgor would help Astragoth wipe the Black Fortress off the map, smash the Legions of Azgorh and bring about the demise of Drazhoath the Ashen.
The joint legions of Astragoth, BeeZharr and Grimgor converged in the Howling Wastes, close to the Sentinels, and plotted their invasion of the Black Fortress. Astragoth grinned as he recalled the moment, the gathering of such expansive forces and the smell of the putrid open air after decades sealed within his forges. The excitement of battle was intoxicating and the vigour of his daemonically-infused body raged at the prospect �?" it felt his recollections and responded likewise.
The battle was instigated by the launching of the largest rocket ever forged, standing the height of five of the enslaved giants that followed in its wake. The ground thundered and split as it burst apart in wicked and catastrophic explosions, the foundations of the Black Fortress tumbling into the smouldering chasm left behind. Grimgor could be restrained no more and he led his vast horde into battle, caring not that the artillery of the Dawi Zharr smashed his own forces as much as they did those of Drazhoath.
It was a short, humbling defeat for the Legion of Azgorh as they were brought low by the endless multitudes of Grimgor�?Ts Waagh, and the ferocity of his Immortulz. Atop the ruins of the Black Fortress Astragoth found Drazhoath, his enormous Taurus, Cinderbreath, having abandoned him in the face of the true prophet of Hashut. There was no battle as Astragoth had a different fate to bestow upon this upstart. His powers had swollen to much greater levels than any sorcerer had ever wielded, and he had unlocked the key to halting the curse that Drazhoath had sought his entire life. Astragoth had halted it in his own body, containing it loosely within the heart of Krimzuk the Sly, but he needed a living host to contain it permanently. Pinned down by Astragoth�?Ts iron fist, Drazhoath was fed Krimzuk�?Ts heart and the full curse of the sorcerers overtook his body and instantly turning him to stone. Astragoth crushed his defeated foe under his feet.
With the death of Drazhoath, the Legion of Azgorh was no more and the first payment to Grimgor was made. In the forces that marched from Zharr-Naggrund were the tribes of the Hobgoblins, united under �?~Da Empura�?T and his �?~Funda Worriurz�?T with the aid of BeeZharr. Apart from a handful representing Astragoth�?Ts personal stock, Da Empura�?Ts forces were the entire population of Hobgoblins, and as the Dawi Zharr returned to the Ziggurat they were left behind to the mercies, or otherwise, of Grimgor.
Grimgor Ironhide left then, as agreed, but Astragoth knew it was temporary. A decade had passed in which the Orc had become more powerful than anyone could have imagined, and now he had returned and been allowed passage through the Gates of Zharr. His mere presence was enough to turn the greenskin slaves on their former masters, and the defences of the Ziggurat were laid open for the Orc and his horde. The mighty city, the greatest in the entire world, was cast down, torched and trashed.
Astragoth did not care about the destruction. It was fleeting in the face of the eternity of domination he was about to secure for his god. The slaves deserved nothing more, they were nothing, and much of the Dawi Zharr deserved their extinction also. Soon, only he and a few hundred hand selected followers and slaves would remain to emerge from the wreckage of the End Times, and to build a new Zharr-Naggrund.
He gripped an ogre by its neck, its mutated grey flesh a sign of its origin from one of BeeZharr�?Ts beastly workshops. Slowly he squeezed the life out of the thing, his cruel eyes staring it down as its being left it. Dust fell from the ceiling as thuds rocked the foundations of the earth. It died too easily and he searched for another victim into which to pour his rage, but there were none, the gate sealed by BeeZharr�?Ts warriors.
�?oIt is done,�?� BeeZharr told him flatly.
�?oExcellent. It is time then,�?� Astragoth said, turning to see a circle of burnished brass hanging suspended from the ceiling, a whirlwind of fierce flames swirling around its perimeter. This portal would take them to the appointed place. �?oInto the flames!�?�
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