Gnawdwell gestured at the map. ‘The Great Uprising goes on. Tilea is destroyed!’ He swept aside a collection of model towns carved from wood. ‘Estalia followed, then Bretonnia.’ He nodded in approval. ‘All man-lands, all dead. All ready to accept their new masters.’ Many other castles, fleets and cities clattered onto the floor.
Thorgrim thought on the horrors that afflicted his people.
Karak Azul overthrown.
Karak Eight Peaks lost a second time.
Zhufbar swarmed by an endless tide of vermin.
Barak Varr pouring smoke from its great dock gates, the pride of the dwarf fleet broken in the sea before it.
The holds of the Grey Mountains overcome and lost in three horrific nights of bloodshed.
Karak Kadrin poisoned.
Karaz-a-Karak besieged for years now, cut off on all sides above and below. The streams of refugees pouring into the dwarf capital from other kingdoms had given Thorgrim much anguish. At a time when he thought his dream might be fulfilled, that the lost realms of the Karaz Ankor would be reclaimed, it had all come to nothing. The fleeing dwarfs brought with them tales of proud strongholds cast down, and not only in dwarf lands. Many dwarfs of the diaspora had fled back to their ancestral homeland from human cities – their habits and speech strange; some of them even trimmed their beards! – telling of similar woes beyond the mountains. But what was more horrifying than the incoming flood and the dire tidings they brought was that it had stopped. No dwarf had come into Everpeak for months.
Tilea, Estalia and Bretonnia ashes. The Empire devastated. The moon cracked in the sky, invasion from the north, and ratmen swarming from everywhere.