"We call the Ancestor Gods the Ancestor Gods, because we once had gods who were not our Ancestors," he says in an oddly detached tone as he stares at the fire. "Long ago, far to the south, the old gods were our teachers and our wardens. But their numbers dwindled over time, and when the time was right we escaped, thanks to Grungni and Valaya and Grimnir. But some of those that followed did so not because they desired freedom or venerated our three leaders, but because they mourned their teachers who one day had stopped visiting, and remembered their Names, and knew that such things never truly die and must linger on somewhere. Karag Dum was founded by those who most mistrusted the old gods, and claimed a home with its back to the Chaos Wastes, as Chaos was the only force that could rival the old gods. We watched with suspicion as the Dawi turned their backs on a mountain range that could be mined for a thousand thousand years to spread to all corners of the Old World. Why Ekrund, pinned between the Badlands and the sea? Why Norsca, the shattered remnants of another prison? Why the Middle Mountains, desolate and cursed? Why risk everything to travel across the Dark Lands and the Great Ocean, often never to be heard from again?
"The southern Holds called us paranoid, even as history gave the horrible answers to our other two suspicions: Why Uzkulak? Why Tylos?
"One of the names we remembered was reshaped into Khsar, blowing across the deserts we had once fled across, feeding on the faith of the desert tribes of the Umgi as they built themselves into a great civilization. Then Elgi sorcery in Umgi hands carved corpses from the desert gods to be receptacles for the prayers of the dead, and the name sought refuge across the seas as Kavzar. But there it was betrayed, a betrayal that birthed a race of betrayers, and what was left of it after being thrice ripped from its domains was as close to death as such things can ever be. In pain and madness it found a fourth family in beings as broken as it was, and walked the world as Morghur, a meaningless bleat from the throat of a beast.
"But even after it had forgotten, we remembered its true name. As Chaos crept closer and threatened us with extinction, the founding truth of Karag Dum was reversed. The old gods are the only force that could rival Chaos, so Karag Dum called the least terrible of those known to it. Karag Dum called the being that was Shadowgave, that was city-father, and that was the desert wind, because the first thing it was, was the teacher and warden of the Dawi. So once more it teaches and it wards, and the skulls of Kurgan and the essence of Daemons sink into the sands that it rules.
"Chaos has swallowed Karag Dum, but every step down its gullet will extract a price in blood." He sighs, and glances at the axe he has still not relinquished his hold on. "I couldn't find it in myself to judge whether that was a grim victory to support, or a betrayal to condemn. Nor could I go down the path of the few Elders that still linger in Karag Dum, doing nothing but watching with hollow eyes and still tongues as their grandchildren go about their lives never knowing that their very souls have been reforged into weapons of spite against the Chaos Gods.
