Are Zharrdron Chaos Dwarfs?

Chaos Dwarf Discussion
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Forgive my lack of fluff knowledge of AoS

My basic understanding is that only a tiny handful of creatures survived the destruction of the old world. Those that did are imbued with god power.

Everyone and everything else was fundamentally created at an atomic level by the respective gods, and then perpetuated through normal reproduction over time.

Meaning practically none of the Zharrdron are actually Chaos Dwarfs. They are fundamentally different.

Or am I mistaken and whole communities of each race survived to continue their species?

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I don’t really follow the lore either so I could be talking rubbish but as the article on Warhammer Community calls them “spiritual successors to the Chaos Dwarfs”, and the only other mention to Chaos Dwarfs in the article is “The iconic Bull Centaurs are as integral now to the Zharrdron as they ever were to the Chaos Dwarfs before them”, I’m of the opinion that they arent Chaos Dwarfs as we knew/know them. I saw Lexicanum is calling them Zharrdron Duardin so they could be a post World That Was offshoot of Duardin like the Kharadron.

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I actually like the whole Lotr elves became orc lore. Thing. I.e. Hashut kidnapped a load of dwarfs and tortured them, to replace the followers he lost :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Short answer: No. They have a lot in common, but they are not the same.

Long answer: The Helsmiths are just a group that came from the Khazalid Empire. That Empire was built by dwarves (aka Duardin©) that had nothing in relation with Chaos Dwarves, and predates most of the Age of Sigmar story.
A few centuries later, the Age of Chaos came, everything was destroyed (End of Times 2.0), but part of this Empire survived, some of them will be known as Fyreslayes and other KOs, but there is a third tribe that instead of fighting demons, the good ol’Hashut taught them how to stuff demons on war machines and guns. That’s how they become the first Zharrdrons (Urak Taar being the first one to catch a demon and use it as a chair, probably). It’s easier to survive a demonic invasion if this demons provide with infinite ammo for your guns.

They think that they are the good guys, they even think that their Empire is exactly at the top of Order. And no, they don’t like Ancestor Gods that abandon their followers.

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Beliman is correct, so just adding on to it.
They likely are not direct ancestors to the Dawi Zharr (seeing how they went down in the end times), but they are the same physically; Chaos corrupted Dwarfs. The Dwarfs in AoS are partially survivors from “the world that was”, and some seemingly created by the Ancestor gods. So you get the same result when chaos corrupts them, with the horns, tusks, and turning to stone with the usage of magic.

The biggest difference is as Beliman points out in their cultural attitude towards chaos. They survived the heyday of chaos in the mortal realms by turning the invading deamons into a source of power and fuel for their society. We don’t know if they still trade with chaos(they do trade with destruction), but we know they consider themselves as paragons of order through their domination of the realms and victory over chaos. Even though in reality they bring chaos and ruin through tyranny and avarice. So as they said in the reveal stream: They are bringers of (a tyrannical)order through chaos.

A very common trope with Chaos in Warhammer is that even if you start to walk the “path of glory” with good intentions it ALWAYS leads to your ruin and corruption. So I can still see them co-operating with Chaos Warriors(Slaves to Darkness) especially, and factions like the Darkoath. These three factions all think they are the ones using chaos, and not the other way around.
But only time will tell if they do vibe with chaos or not! I can only speculate.

We can at least guess that since Hashut was not part of Sigmar’s pantheon -order likely hates them. As they pointed out with the underworlds warband they are obviously completely opposed to Sylvaneth who are spirits of the natural world(which is a big order faction).

Bla bla bla, wall-o-text, I am really intrigued by their lore :smiley:

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I like this. That’s how I always saw the Cds. Dwarfs are resistant to corruption, so of course they would be the ones to think chaos can be “used”, not as an ally but as raw material. They despise chaos followers and use deamons as batteries, but no matter how much they resist they will always be part of chaos. Maybe they cannot see their own corruption anymore. If Hashut turns out to be a renegade dwarf deity, it will add credence to this take on them.

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Preserving the ordered nature of the classic Chaos Dwarf concept is the best part of the above writeups. Interested to see if the battletome is any good (I’ll only be reading it from a lore perspective). The Gitmob launch box version of the Gloomspite book is really beautiful.

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Is the smaller “army box” book typically any shorter than the full book, or is normally the same content?

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No lore. It’s a gaming manual.

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I dont know anything about the AOS Lore, so I can’t say what I like more, the new or the warhammer one.

But, I never like the name “Chaos Dwarfs” for the army, because they had their own god and arent that related to Chaos like the other “Chaos Armies”.

“Hashut Dwarfs” or something similar would be a better name for me, so I’m ok with the new name “Hellsmith of Hashut” sounds great.

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