🛡️ Craterhold — The Bastion in the Scar
The Birth of a Capital
In the aftermath of the Cataclysm that scarred the Draintheim Mountains, the dwarves were left broken and leaderless. Their ancestral halls had crumbled, their mountain kingdoms reduced to fractured clans. When the dust settled, the dwarves chose not to abandon the wound in the world but to claim it as their own.
On the edge of the colossal crater, where stone met void, they built their new capital: Craterhold. What others feared as a cursed abyss, the dwarves transformed into a fortress, declaring to gods and monsters alike that nothing — not even an Elder God’s tomb — would drive them from their mountains.
The Shape of the City
Craterhold is a marvel of dwarven ingenuity, blending fortress, city, and mine into one:
The Ringwall: a titanic barrier around the crater’s lip, embedded with runic artillery and watchtowers that guard against both invaders and whatever might stir below.
The Descending Rings: vast terraces carved into the inner walls of the crater, forming concentric districts linked by bridges, lifts, and tunnels. Each level has its own forges, markets, and halls, stacked down toward the abyss.
The Abyssal Forge: at the lowest tier, the dwarves harness the strange energies that seep from the Scar. Weapons and armor forged here sing with a resonance not found anywhere else — some say the metal itself is alive with whispers.
The Hidden Danger
The dwarves believe they have conquered the Scar, but in truth, they live atop a prison. The Elder God still stirs beneath, bound not by stone but by the broken fragments of Varan’s mind. The signs remain:
stonework runes shift shape overnight, forming symbols no dwarf has carved,
echoes from the depths sometimes answer the clang of hammer on anvil,
miners at the lowest levels disappear, leaving only tools behind, melted as though by dream-fire.
Varan’s Forgotten Vigil
Varan, the warlock who sacrificed his memory to reforge the Elder God’s prison, wanders the world as a hollow man. Drawn back to Craterhold by dreams he cannot explain, he is unknowingly the keystone of its survival. If his memories return within the Scar, the seal will unravel — and the Elder God will rise again, using Varan as its vessel.
A City of Defiance
To the world, Craterhold is a shining beacon of dwarven resilience: a citadel carved into calamity, proof that no doom can uproot the children of stone. Yet beneath its foundations lies a secret that could doom not only the dwarves but the world itself.
The dwarves boast that Craterhold tamed the Scar of Draintheim.
But the Scar has never been tamed — only silenced.