An excerpt from the journal of Soizic d'Karak, a Questing Knight:
Gaily now does my pen dance across your pages dear diary, for grand is the banquet laid out before us. For once I speak in plain, without metaphor, for the halflings have chosen to gift the Undumgi with a feast of sorts after our morning training was concluded. A... brunch? As they call it, a second breakfast made possible only by the recent bounty reaped from our fields; the pride with which each morsel was prepared was evident. But truly, the halflings have enshrined in their divine a truth embraced by all good races: that food tastes best without a rush to consume and move.
Eggs! Glorious eggs, from the first chickens raised in the Karak. Scrambles, poached, over easy on fresh peasant bread, in omelets with cheese, perhaps even a souffle if I can convey the recipe! Such things had been rare and precious, for no farmer was willing to let chickens run about lest they eat the very seeds that were planted for harvest in the east valley, but nor were they willing to fence and carry feed to the small valleys that separate our three peaks. Some dwarven genius, I know not who, is rumored to have asked upon being told this, 'why don't you just use the citadel? It's already got walls and it is right there, all you would have to do is keep them from leaving by the gate...' He was (almost) completely correct, as the plumage of its new inhabitants attests, but not quite: every morn I see a patrol of the youngest of those wishing to be field wardens (is such a name to be retained in the Karak? Valley-wardens seems truer to the land and the deeds done) rousting the few chicken that had escaped over the walls, chasing them down and tossing them back through the gates. They tell me that children shall take up the task in the future, both corralling the birds to protect our precious seed, and hunting down those obscured nooks and dugout dustbaths where eggs are deposited.
Sarah tells me (and dear diary, you may know much of Sarah, for she alone (besides me) had read of your pages, even if t'was only to win a bet 'gainst her smirking face. I have too eaten an octopus! Ha!) that cattle have been brought to the valley of the Ulrikadrin, and cheese is even now ripening. She is a good source for such news; for all she seeks gossip from amongst my ranks like a hound seeking a stag, she pays in the same currency.
Ah, I twitter on. This sacred repast, enforced is quite a good time for writing, I must admit, but matters of import draw my thoughts once more. For Hubert has shared with me the rumors of the rangers he has been working with these last months. (As unhappy as he has been with scouting work, my sympathies are with him. To see the enemies of our kingdom go about their days within bowshot unmolested would burn the blood of any sworn knight. I am thankful that such dwarves exist as will do this work, as a commander and a strategist, for I am honest enough with myself to know that I would not be any good at all at their role, and they bring their customary diligence to the work.)
Are our homes and fields safe? Will fire and terrible poison sweep over what we have built? It is odd, dear diary, that when I could still look at Karagil as the nearest threat I could almost put the others out if my head. Now, I look to the south and wonder what dark thing lurks in the mountain beyond the trolls, or what manner of rat might have a reputation as assassins. Or what terrors remain yet to be uncovered, for after months of caution probing and sneaking about, much is still hidden.
May the Lady protect me and shelter mine people, keep me from dishonorable death in the dark, and always guide my feet onwards to the greatest of glory---------
---the roar of a dragon is unmistakable. My Lady, I beg of you, forgive my foolish words above, for this foe is great and I fear for those who shelter under my shield.
My life for theirs, not their lives for my glory, this I swear to you.
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We were ordered to hold the citadel.
It was perhaps the easiest fight against greenskins that I have ever heard of (for it was over afore we even set foot on the walls!), and I would here express my thankfulness for those steel gates and proud stone towers, as well the halflings and siege train that sent this group packing.
They churned out of Karag Rhyn like spoiled butter, goblins and orcs alike, and swept across the still-burnt caldera to smash against the Citadel, then broke under the rain of arrows and sling-stones. I saw only their cowardly retreat.
Foolish creatures. They came for fortifications with handaxes and elan, but who fights dwarves who does not know better? Well, dwarves who have had time to prepare... We hear the gunshots from Karagil, and see the rising clouds of powder. Leaning out from the ramparts of the gate to the caldera lets me see only as far as the endless pit, and the fighting is closer to the mountain than that.
The dragon is missing. None I speak to know anything about it, save that it climbed back inside Karag Ziflin. It was the worst of rumors from the rangers confirmed, and now fear is rippling through my ranks as the other dreadful whispers that had been laughed off were reassessed. What lurks in Mhonar, the Shadow Mountain? We watch, and worry for our compatriots.
All that is visible to us here are battles of which I cheer for both sides to lose; Karag Ziflin's gates sparkle with madness-tinged lightning while Karag Yar merely swallows all who enter, and only the sound of faint screams returns.
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Dear Diary I return to your pages in a surfeit of nervous energy that I dare not show to my soldiers for a general must be steadfast in the face of uncertainty just as much as terror. More than an hour has passed since the last futile blow was struck against the gates and the last of the orcs has slunk back into their dank holes from whence they came and we wait.
And wonder.
Is this to be like the battle of Karagil, where the whole of our enemies declined to show themselves until we dug them out? Or will it be like the battles in the valley, where waves unending were broken only by magic and cannon? (Oh, we undumgi held, but without the wrath of the heavens called down t'would have been a sadly different denoument.) I look across the caldera and see nothing. I look nervously to the south, where the trolls dwell, and see nothing. I look behind me and see stalwart expressions and polished arms and trust, so very much trust, in me.
Six thousand under the watchtower banner, ranged on the walls in half-plate and pike, a standardization months in the making and the pride of the quartermaster corps. Five thousand halflings behind us, the only victors yet known this morning.
The tunnels below are quiet.
Hark! The rangers return. I go now to council. Dear diary, wish us luck.
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A moment's pause, finally, as the last trolls between our chokepoints burn on the floor. I write by their light.
My Lady, thank you for your foresight and providence, that you sent me months of learning how best to fight trolls before today was given unto us.
The war council was interesting- apparently Dame Weber has been accepted as overall commander while the King is out of the hold? I suppose a Thane title for her would not carry the same oaths and obligations as it would for Franceso, as she does not seem interested in a House and heirs, but to see it in practice was truely inspiring, a human ordering dwarves about and almost having them smile for it. (Or terrifying? The Ranaldite knight has stolen a kingdom in this crisis and sends it to war, for us all to smile and march at her words. It would be grating were it not such obviously good sense? And so by her honor I cannot truely bring myself to suspicion, even with the god I know to be at her side.) All these years of careful reticence? All those threats lurking about us that we chiseled at carefully, one measured stroke and or defensive shift at a time?
Done. Now we strike. Broader in scope, and harder than any stroke let fall since the first days of reclamation: our enemies are at war with one another, and their bellies are bared in ignorance of our strength. Three thrusts we make into the dark, a lightning war from a dragon's roar.
(But where is the dragon?)
Angrund, Izor, and Brazanga's men were to dive straight down, charging past the spiders into the rats, and with luck securing the labyrinth as far as the Underways. Azul, Huzkul, and the lately-come mercenaries from the border so-called Princedoms are to fall upon the rats below Karagil, purging and fortifying. And we Undumgi were commanded to take Kvinn-Wyr, and hold as much of it as we could. Alone. In that, it more than made up for the hit to our pride that being relegated to what was, in the suddenly larger picture of things, guarding the flank of the advance.
Glorious, to be so trusted, for in this I have no doubts. The Undumgi will prevail! This sapphire shall return to the crown by human hands.
Allow me to sketch out the situation as we found it upon entry- behind us the ballista were being stripped from the towers and sent in part with us and in part to other battles, in front of us was the entrance to the main through-fare of the Karag, gaping empty. Rangers told us that the middle levels were cleared as of a recent mass migration of trolls to the east, though numbers of them remained at the peak and in the aquifer. (Dear diary, please spare a moment of reflection on the difficulties of fighting something that will not die unless it is burned, while swimming.)
From the bottom then- the aquifer is not a single chamber, as one versed in castles might expect. Rather, it is a catchment for an underground river that flows from south to north: it plunges underground in a box canyon surrounded by glaciers a few miles south as old legend would have it, then north through Kvinn-Wyr and on through the formation known as the King's Arch, that the dwarves should even now be painting with the blood of the skaven. There it plunges to the depths and is lost. Here, about seven levels below as the dwarves ken things, there are five main chambers. Lakes where the water pools broad enough to not visibly flow, linked by a network of tunnels, these dug by the river as it slipped deeper beneath the surface with each ancient millennium. At their highest point the oldest and largest of these river-tunnels intersects the main avenue, and the carve'd tunnel road becomes a bridge arching over a void, from which comes the sound of running water. And bellows in the deep. All filtered through a worm's nest of dry creeks and sudden boreholes. On each side the bridge is flanked by broad stairs descending perpendicular to the avenue, wide enough for ten to march abreast. Here is where we have chosen to stand against the river trolls, where the broad spaces and clear sightlines allow best use of our pike.
Above those, in the middle of the mountain (to the best of my knowledge, for t'would take more than an average dwarf to give me an elevation inside the mountain with reference to the outside) is the main avenue, whose name in dwarfish is lost upon me. Here is a sprawl of rooms and tunnels largely arranged such that a cart may roll from one to the next, broader and denser in their construction towards the east valley. Whatever was once in these rooms has long since fed the idle curiosity of trollish hunger, and I may only guess from their arrangement that barracks and armories were not least among them.
Dozens of hidden exits and firing platforms were found overlooking the bridge and approach to the east gate, a terrible shock to those of us who marched under them without care or notice these last months. What a fortress this must have been in its noontime! But trolls know not the use of such things and even to make one stand sentry is far beyond any mortal.
Above, the construction becomes more traditional with many stairs and chambers cut without reference to each other, our human sense of 'levels' confused that these were not built upon the flat ground. We found vast empty storehouses, mighty mechanisms rusted beyond identification, and over and over the chisel-marks that show dwarfish haste in expansion and re-purposing. Most of these stairs wound their way upwards to a temple, perhaps of Valaya (if I read the remains correctly). It is this once-holy space we have chosen as our front line against the twisted beasts of warpstone and stupidity that lurk above.
Perhaps two thirds of the Karak by volume is held, though only a third of the trolls who had remained have been slain. Siege weapons now dominate the approaches to the bridge and the former temple, and the secondary tunnels have been collapsed to limit ambushes. Something that we learned to do after painful experience, with few tunnel-fighters amidst our numbers, and hungry trolls surging up through the maze below us.
Oh my Lady, grant peace to those who have fallen, and let not their glory go unsung on this of all days, for the sacrifice of honest warriors deserves praise even in the shadow of greater deeds.
Have I mentioned, dear diary, the exquisite agony it is to fight a troll soaking wet, whilst out of formation?
Entering the Karak we moved as lightning, sweeping through the rooms and tunnels that make up the main level with hardly a pause, all the way to the far side of the peak, where the underway once more dives down on its way to Karag Mhonar. Trolls, such as there were, were isolated and easy prey to groups of pikemen; we scattered from our massed blocks and ran circles around them, two-dozen pikes pinning into them from every angle until not even their terrible strength could so much as turn their heads. Then we burned them, and exulted in their diminishing bellows.
Those same bellows called to the deep, however, and though we massed in response, it was not the push up the stairs that hurt us. It was the lack of experience, MY lack of experience, that allowed dozens to sneak up through small passages and fall upon us from behind.
The first moments of their counterattack were bloody, vomit covering our back ranks before we noticed the threat, and perhaps a hundred or more lay dying, screaming as their flesh melted from their bone a'fore orders to disperse made it through. Back ranks were to disperse and lure the trolls away from the main formation, separating them enough to surround them and bring them down as wolves do, while the front ranks were to hold and let the trolls below try their luck against an unmoving wall of silversteel until they lost interest.
The light by which I write grows dim, and the twitches of the corpses have long since ceased. I go now to check the wounded and strengthen our front lines, to keep my mind from the gambles even now playing out on the larger stages to our north. Dear diary, wish us ALL luck.
They want the benefits, they join up.)
