The Dark Elves of Naggaroth

Not every elf is fair of heart. In the frozen north of the New World, across the ocean from the temple-cities of Lustria, lies Naggaroth, the Land of Chill — a bleak realm of black mountains, monster-haunted forests, and a bitter cold that never breaks. Here dwell the druchii, the Dark Elves: as beautiful and gifted as any of their kind, and as cruel as any race the world has produced. They are elves who chose spite over serenity, and they have spent long ages nursing a single overriding hatred — for the kin who cast them out, and for the throne they still believe is theirs by right.

The Land of Chill

Naggaroth is a hard cradle for a hard people. Its skies are grey, its winters endless, and its wilderness prowled by cold ones, hydras, and worse beasts that the druchii capture and break to their will. It is no natural home for elves, who were born to gentler climes, and the druchii have never forgiven their exile to it. From the sanctuary of this frozen land they look ever eastward, across the Sea of Malice, toward the beautiful island-continent from which they were driven — and they build their whole savage civilisation around the promise of return and revenge.

The Witch King

The absolute master of Naggaroth is Malekith, the Witch King — the oldest and most formidable of all living elves. He is the son of Aenarion, the first and greatest of the ancient elven kings, and Malekith believes utterly that his father's throne is his by blood and right. In his pride he once dared to walk through the sacred flame of the elven gods to prove his claim, and the fire found him wanting: it burned him almost to death, and he survives only encased in a suit of black adamant armour, fused to his ruined flesh and heated eternally to keep him alive. Ages of agony have only hardened his resolve. He is patient beyond mortal reckoning, and he has never once abandoned his claim to rule all elvenkind.

The Sundering

The druchii were not always a separate people. Their exile was born of the great civil war the elves call the Sundering — a catastrophe in which Malekith and his followers turned upon their own kin in a bid to seize the throne of all the elves. They lost. Driven from the island-realm of the High Elf Realms after a war of terrible bitterness, Malekith and his people fled across the ocean and raised a new and darker kingdom in the frozen north. The wound of that sundering has never healed. To this day the high elves and the dark elves are locked in an eternal war, each regarding the other as a betrayal of what the elves were meant to be.

Khaine, the Lord of Murder

Where the high elves revere gods of wisdom and the sea, the druchii bow to Khaine, the Lord of Murder — the bloody-handed god of slaughter and strife. His worship is the black heart of their society. The Witch Elves, brides of the murder-god, dance in his temples and drown sacrifices in great cauldrons of blood, and on the most sacred night of their calendar the streets of the dark cities run red with offerings. To the druchii, cruelty is not merely permitted but holy; the infliction of suffering is an act of devotion, and mercy a kind of blasphemy. It is a faith perfectly suited to a people who have made spite their guiding principle and cruelty their highest art.

The Six Cities

Naggaroth is ruled from six great fortress-cities, each a monument to some facet of druchii cruelty. Naggarond, the Tower of Cold, is the Witch King's own black capital. Har Ganeth is the city of executioners, holiest to the cult of Khaine. Ghrond, the North Tower, keeps a ceaseless watch upon the Chaos Wastes that border the druchii lands, its dark convent of sorceresses scrying the future from the churning magic of the north. Hag Graef, the Dark Crag, and Karond Kar, the Tower of Despair, are cities built upon the misery of slaves, while Clar Karond launches the black fleets. Presiding over the sorcery of them all is Morathi, the Witch King's mother — the Hag Sorceress, ancient and beautiful and endlessly manipulative, whose schemes run beneath every event in Naggaroth.

The Trade in Souls

The entire economy of the druchii is built upon slavery. Their monstrous Black Arks — floating fortress-cities of stone that ride the oceans — descend upon coastlines the world over to seize captives by the thousand, while corsair raiders and cold one knights strip the land of everything living. They raid the coasts of the Old World, the jungles of Lustria, and above all the shores of Ulthuan, dragging their wretched prizes back to Naggaroth to labour and die in the cold. The druchii need this endless harvest of misery, for their own kind breeds slowly and their cruelty consumes lives at a fearful rate. Captives who survive the crossing are worked to death in the mines, the pleasure-cults, and the war-fleets, and when they perish there are always more to replace them. Slavery is not merely an institution among the dark elves; it is the very foundation on which the whole of their society stands.

The Endless War

Everything the druchii are bends toward one purpose: the conquest of the homeland that cast them out. Generation upon generation, Malekith launches his armies across the sea against the high elves, and generation upon generation the war grinds on without end, each side too proud and too hateful to yield. The Witch King watches the Realm of Chaos and the Wastes on his northern border with wary eyes, willing at times to treat with the Dark Gods and at others to war upon them, bending even Chaos toward his own ancient ambition. He has waited longer than any mortal kingdom has existed, and he is prepared to wait longer still. For the Witch King means to sit upon his father's throne before the end — and he has all the patience of the deathless to see it done.