The bleak, cold landscape of Naggaroth
Map of Naggaroth
Naggaroth, the Land of Chill, is a bleak and forbidding continent that is as unforgiving as the Dark Elves who have it their home. Its northern plains are barren and windswept expanses, broken only by jutting outcrops of rock and magic-stained rivers, their waters sluggish and black, crisscross the ice fields, carving elaborate canyons and deep ravines in the frozen ground. Further south, the thin soil is more fertile, allowing sparse pine forests to grow. Here, the Dark Elves have huge plantations to feed the cities by slaves who labour until they drop dead, their bodies left to nourish the barren soil.[1a]
The Dark Elves live in six heavily fortified cities, their innumerable towers built from black stone, rising like sinister pinnacles into the dark storm clouds. All of these cities are evil places, steeped in death and agony. Their lightless dungeons are crammed with captives whose wailings fill the air and whose moans seep through the thick walls of the high towers, saturating the soul with pain and misery. From the tips of the high towers, above the filth and smog of sacrificial fires, the Sorceresses cast their malign magic over the world.[1a]
Notable Location
- Naggarond - Naggarond, the Tower of Cold or the City of Cold, is the oldest and largest of the Dark Elves' cities, and quite likely the most malevolent place in the world. Its outer walls form an imposing circlet of black stone, in no place less than a hundred feet tall. About the ramparts are set a hundred towers, each rising as high above the battlements as the walls rise above the bare rock.
- Ghrond - Ghrond, the Tower of Prophecy is the domain of Malekith's mother, the beautiful seeress Morathi. From Ghrond's pinnacle, Sorceresses of the Dark Convent can see through the snowstorms that whip about the ever-shifting Realm of Chaos. It is said that the patterns of change therein hold the secrets of fate and that all the mysteries of the world are laid bared to she who dares look.
- Karond Kar - Karond Kar, the the Tower of Despair, also known as Slaver's Gate can be counted the bleakest of all refuges. The citadel stands sentinel on the edge of the Sea of Chill, perpetually battered by gale-force winds, icy rain and tidal waves the size of mountains.
- Har Ganeth - Har Ganeth, the City of Executioners or the City of Khaine, is a cursed place dedicated to the worship of the Bloody-Handed God.
- Hag Graef - Hag Graef the Black Crag is a sinister and foreboding place, built at the bottom of a cold, dark canyon and completely surrounded by mountains of bare rock that stretch into the clouds. It is a city permanently in shadow, for no sunlight ever reaches its walls.
- Clar Karond - Clar Karond, the Tower of Doom, serves as the Witch King's chief shipyard, for it is here that the keels are laid for many thousands of raiding vessels. This is a more sprawling city than others in Naggaroth, stretching from the banks of the Redvenom River up into the trackless pine forests of the Duskridge.