The Dwarfen Mountain Holds form the Karaz Ankor. In the period covered by Warhammer: The Old World, their rulers and guilds are looking outward, organizing efforts to recover lost settlements and technologies. The studio describes an opportunity for expansion alongside the dangers posed by Orcs, Goblins and other enemies.[1]
The king and the period[edit]
Alrik Alriksson rules as High King from Karaz-a-Karak. Thorgrim appears as Thorgrim Ulleksson, before becoming the High King known as Grudgebearer. The distinction places these characters at an earlier stage than their later Warhammer Fantasy stories.[1]
Reclaiming lost ground[edit]
The Time of Woes left many holds lost or isolated, but the Old World account emphasizes efforts to reclaim them. The campaign in the 2024 Arcane Journal centres on Khazid Vosk, a former Engineers Guild outpost occupied by Orcs. The expedition reaches and recovers its upper levels. Likewise, a Dwarf marker at Eight Peaks does not imply that every level has been secured.[1]
A reclamation story gives a different perspective from a last stand in an intact hold. The attackers may know what once stood in a place while having only partial control over what survives there. For a narrative game or terrain project, that provides a concrete premise: an occupied workshop, a recovered gate or a disputed route underground.
Royal armies and expeditions[edit]
The designers distinguish the Royal Clan and Expeditionary Force as different expressions of Dwarf society. The former emphasizes established martial tradition; the latter gives greater prominence to experimental engineering. The July 2024 discussion presents them as deliberate contrasts within the faction.[2]
That contrast helps organize a collection. A force built around a lord and retainers can have a different visual emphasis from a column of engineers and machinery. These are background and modelling choices; the composition rules for either army must be checked against the publication and updates being used.
Dwarfs beyond their holds[edit]
Imperial Dwarfs also live and work in human cities. The studio's miniature-history article connects this older background with mercenary models and explains Prince Ulther's Dragon Company as an outcast force seeking to restore its kin's honour.[3] A Dwarf encountered beside Imperial troops therefore need not be a visitor temporarily detached from a mountain stronghold.
Read the Empire of Man overview for the human realm beside the holds. The entries below connect this introduction with individual Dwarf characters and units.
Units
- Dwarf WarriorsBattleline · InfantryThe clan-mustered backbone of every throng: miners, smiths, and brewers who take up axe and shield beside their kin when the hold calls, and hold their ground until the grudge is paid.
- Grudge ThrowerArtillery · War MachineA dwarf stone-thrower whose boulders are carved with the grudges of the hold, so that every crushing impact settles an old score in blood and rubble.
- GyrocopterScout · War MachineThe Engineers Guild's whirring marvel: a steam-driven flying machine that clatters over the peaks to scout the passes and scour the enemy with steam and shot.
- HammerersElite · InfantryThe king's own guard, grim veterans wielding great warhammers who stand as an unbreakable wall between their lord and any who would harm him.
- IronbreakersElite · InfantryGromril-clad guardians of the deep roads, who fight the endless war beneath the hold where no sun has ever reached.
- IrondrakesElite · InfantryElite gunners encased in gromril, who advance behind gouts of searing dragonfire from their drakeguns and melt armour, monster, and man alike.
- LongbeardsElite · InfantryThe eldest warriors of the hold, veterans of centuries of war who have seen it all done properly (and will tell you so) while holding a battle-line steadier than bedrock.
- MinersSpecial · InfantryTough, pick-wielding tunnellers who burrow beneath the battlefield to erupt in the enemy's rear, often heralded by a blast of their own mining charges.
- Organ GunArtillery · War MachineA multi-barrelled dwarf cannon that unleashes a rolling thunder of shot down the length of an enemy formation, engineered to devastate and, usually, to work.
- QuarrellersBattleline · InfantrySteadfast dwarf crossbowmen whose disciplined volleys punch through armour and drop the foe long before he can close to swing a blade.
- SlayersElite · InfantryOrange-crested oath-takers who have given themselves to death: shamed dwarfs seeking redemption in the doom of a mighty foe.
- ThunderersBattleline · InfantryDisciplined dwarf handgunners whose volleys crack across the valley like the mountain clearing its throat: every gun a masterwork, every shot a debt collected.
Characters
- Belegar IronhammerThe Last King of the Eight PeaksThe rightful king of the lost hold of Karak Eight Peaks, who has sworn to reclaim his ancestors' city from goblin and ratman, and to hold it though it cost him everything.
- GrombrindalThe White DwarfA mysterious white-bearded ancestor-hero who appears in the holds' darkest hours to lead the dwarfs to victory, then vanishes without a word once the danger is past.
- Josef BugmanThe Master BrewerThe greatest brewmaster the world has ever known, turned wandering avenger: his brewery burned by greenskins, his legendary ale now shared only with those about to fight.
- Thorek IronbrowThe Last AnvilAn ancient Runelord who carries the sacred Anvil of Doom to war, striking it to unleash the raw power of the ancestor-runes upon the enemies of the dwarfs.
- Thorgrim GrudgebearerThe GrudgebearerHigh King of all dwarfs, borne to war upon the Throne of Power with the Great Book of Grudges open before him: the living reckoning of every wrong ever done to his people.
- Ungrim IronfistThe Slayer KingThe paradox of Karak Kadrin made flesh: a king bound to his throne and a Slayer sworn to his doom, wearing a crown atop a crest of orange hair.
Subfactions
- Barak VarrThe Sea Hold, carved into the cliffs above the Black Gulf: the only dwarf hold with a harbour, and the gate through which the Karaz Ankor trades with the wider world. Its steam-driven ironclads rule the gulf, and its merchant clans are counted worldly, even dangerously broad-minded, by their mountain kin.
- Karak KadrinThe Slayer Keep, iron sentinel of Peak Pass and home to the great Shrine of Grimnir, where doomed dwarfs come to swear the Slayer Oath. Ruled by the Slayer King Ungrim Ironfist, it turns no oath-bound pilgrim from its gates, and so Karak Kadrin marches to war with an army that intends to die well.
- Karaz-a-KarakEverpeak, eldest and mightiest of the holds and capital of the Karaz Ankor, where the High King keeps the Great Book of Grudges beneath the tallest mountain in the world. It has never fallen to any foe, and its halls hold the accumulated treasure, law, and memory of the entire dwarf race.
- ZhufbarThe great engineering hold, built into the walls of a chasm where falling meltwater turns ten thousand wheels day and night. Zhufbar's workshops arm the Karaz Ankor with cannon, handguns, and gyrocopters, and the Engineers Guild counts its forges the finest in the world. Its soot-stained clans are the closest thing dwarfkind has to radicals, which is to say, more conservative than any other race's priests.
Sources & further reading
- Old World Almanack: The Lore of the Dwarfen Mountain Holds. Warhammer Community, , Reclamation, Alrik Alriksson, Thorgrim Ulleksson, Khazid Vosk and relations with the Empire. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- Old World Almanack: How the Dwarfen Mountain Holds Fare in Battle. Warhammer Community, , Studio comparison of the Royal Clan and Expeditionary Force. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
- Old World Almanack: Old Miniatures and New. Warhammer Community, , Prince Ulther, Imperial Dwarfs and their place in human cities. Accessed .Official source checked during the 2026-09-29 assisted audit; whole-page human review pending.
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