Groz Zorn
Groz Zorn is big meadow in Khazalid, the language of the Dwarfs.
It is also the site of a lost upper deep of the Grey Mountain dwarfs. Lost more than 20 years ago to greenskins, it is rumored by the priestesses of Valaya in Helmgart, that a lost tome of healing can be found at Groz Zorn.
The yellowed pages of charcoal burner Reinfried Kohl's journal describes Groz Zorn:
Our timber cutting in the high steppes of the Grey Mountains offered us little leisure time. But with the timber cut and the charcoal furnaces burning, Vorin and I climbed the stairs carved in the sheer cliff. Vorin spoke of a story his father told of Groz Zorn. A verdant meadow in the otherwise grey surroundings of the mountains.
The craftsmanship of the stairs was such that if your vision lost focus, they would disappear into the sheer wall. The path of tightly fitted slabs of rock was interrupted by small arches that passed over vertical crevices that swallowed light. The pitch black of the cracks in the cliff walls howled when gusts of wind would pass over the face of the mountain.
As Vorin and I neared the top of the stair, the edge of the Groz Zorn seemingly dissected the sky over us between grey and blue. There was a smile on Vorin's face and I exhaled at the expectation of a respite from the climb.
Vorin's face dropped as he got his first full look of the Groz Zorn. He almost dropped to his knees, blocking my approach to the top. I had to push him forward so that he would stand on the "meadow" and I could pass to stand next to him.
Groz Zorn was not the verdant plain of grass and finely crafted columns of rock that decorated the approach to the entrance of the upper deep. Vorin had spoke at length on our climb of his father's memory and stories. Tempered them with the lost of the deep to bands of greenskins. We instead saw a grey, wind stripped plain of rock. Patches of tall, brown grass clung to the ground behind the tumbled forms of columns long pushed down. A hole in the wall of rock nearly two snotling fields away suggested the entrance to the deep. Its facade carved from the rock. The heavy stone doors two slabs of grey irregularly tilted on small boulders beneath them. The black hole of the entrance howled as a gust of wind blew over us, its hollow groan heard even at this distance.
Vorin spit bile. I picked up a rock to toss it, but stopped as a hulking figure in black iron exited the deep's entrance. Greenskin! I almost cried out in terror, if not for Vorin yanking me to the ground at that instant. The greenskin carried a bucket and poured its contents on a growing pile of rubbish just outside the deep's entrance. It turned to go back in.
Vorin and I creeped back to the stair, and on our knees, crept down til we were below the Groz Zorn. Then, hurriedly, with near abandoned caution, raced down the sheer stair back to our camp and fellows.
What really happened at the Groz Zorn?
Until recently, the story told has always been one that greenskins overran the beginnings of the deep and its priests and priestess' of Valaya, Dwarf goddess of Home and Healing.
However, the deep itself hints at something far more sinister. A recent expedition to the deep to recover writings of the priesthood discovered a darker possibility. A cult dedicated to the Chaos Dwarf god Hashut, the Father of Darkness.
The bodies of near a hundred dwarfs hung from the ceiling of the main hall. Some fallen to the floor, the ropes rotten 20 years. The temple to Valaya was found defiled and a dark, oily rock, carved in the menacing form of an armored dwarf, stood in at the dais.
The expedition recovered the tome and abandoned further exploration of the deep, leaving the greenskins, or worse, to the darkness of the deep and its darker holds.