Karak Dağdöven

Karak Dağdöven is a dwarf warrior of the Sürgün Günlükleri ("Exile Chronicles") campaign, the champion of the house of Demirkapı in the city of Gromkar. Old, wealthy and the finest fighter of his house, he is respected by his companions for all three; Lord Balgur Demirkapı said that every man of the house had learned the axe from him.^{1 2}

Rescue beneath Gromkar

When Kemp Corvus, Sarah and Ephorus reached Gromkar, the baron told them that the champion had gone down into the tunnels under the city three days before and had not come back.³

The company found him in an old silver mine, gravely wounded but alive among the bodies of six or seven creatures. While Sarah healed him, a nameless spirit dressed like a plague doctor pointed out his wounds and faded when the healing was done. He woke reaching for his hammer, thanked his rescuers, and chose to walk rather than be carried, letting a companion bear his shield.^{4 5 6}

He believed the creatures that fled had used him as bait, and pointing to the whip marks on their backs he judged that drow masters had driven them up. There were too few dwarves to hold every tunnel, he said, and some passages ought to be blown shut. He wanted to press on at once, but yielded when Sarah asked him to rest, since he owed her his life.^{7 8 9}

By the fire he told them that his king had promised some five years before that the dwarves would protect Gromkar, and that Balgur's wish weighed more with him than anything. He felt that little of his life remained and did not want to die before the threat of the drow house was ended; when Ephorus offered help, Karak answered that only Balgur could accept it.^{10 11}

Blood sibling of Sarah

Because Sarah had saved his life, Karak said, she was bound one day to stand at his funeral and tell his ancestors that she had once found him brave and turned him back. He then offered her blood siblinghood, and she accepted. Before witnesses their hands were joined: he swore to count her friends as his friends and her enemies as his enemies, and she promised him help and witness.^{12 13}

He gave her a small dagger shaped like a letter opener as a token, telling her to say, if anyone questioned it, that he had given it freely. He said he had been married twice, and likened Sarah to a granddaughter.^{14 15}

Among dwarves, keeping one's word and earning respect stand at the heart of the culture; age, wealth and skill bring honour, and a dwarf should never break a promise.¹⁶

Karak also gave Sarah a light mithril shirt to wear beneath other armour.¹⁷

Fighting the drow

Underground, Karak judged that the dwarves could not follow the slaves into the Underdark and free them with the strength they had, and guessed that only five to ten warriors still held the drow's forward post.¹⁸

In the fight there he killed the drow mage, and then, made invisible by Ephorus, broke the legs of a drider and at last tore it apart.^{19 20 21}

He hoped that ending the drow's work on the surface would send a message to the other houses. About four days later he led the company back up to the keep and saw them given clean clothes.^{22 23}

When Ephorus took off his disguise there and showed himself a drow, Karak reached for his hammer before Balgur stopped him. He said he would honour the word he had given Sarah, tried to ease the moment by calling Ephorus a sick elf with bad skin, and counselled Sarah to be careful.^{24 25 26}

Balgur then accepted Ephorus as a friend, on the condition that any crime he committed against the dwarves would be answered for by Sarah, and through her by Karak.²⁷

When Sarah and Ephorus set out on a dangerous mission among the prisoners of a nearby post, Karak saw them off anxiously, warning that he would not let it pass if harm came to either of them.²⁸

Bardin's axe and the ashes

Karak secretly charged Kemp with fetching an object from a sealed dwarven tomb cut into Yaşlıtaş: a sealed, rune-marked metal jar worked with mithril, from the grave of one of the first Demirkapı to come to the surface. The tomb was that of the ancestor Bardin Demirkapı, famed for slaying a great red dragon alone.^{29 30}

The company kept the treasure by right of blood, but agreed to let Bardin's axe and nearly pure mithril shield pass to Karak, who said he would feel the old warrior's might behind him, since dwarves believe their ancestors watch over them.^{31 32}

His house is cut into the stone near the keep, reached by a stair, with wide rooms, guest chambers and a training hall below. A young, short-bearded dwarf squire tends his weapons. There he served his friends a spiced turkey stuffed with pomegranate in lemon sauce, and they joined his morning drill. He told them he had fought in two civil wars and on Victory Day, yet had never faced a dragon.^{33 34 35}

He reported great bands of drow passing beneath Gromkar, and several clashes with their vanguards and with goblin slave troops; he thought they meant to surround the city or cut the deep tunnel road through the fortress of Gazad. Where the baron wanted the defence centred on the city, Karak held that the high tunnels near the surface, dug by his people, could not be given up. He also brought word that an army of the Holy Inquisition, with more than twenty witch hunters and seven or eight hundred zealots under their grand master, was said to be marching on Gromkar.^{36 37 38}

When Balgur broke open the jar and scattered a handful of Bardin's ashes on the city square, and the dwarves mixed them into the soil, Karak proclaimed Gromkar the dwarven land of the kingdom under the mountain: to retreat now would be to leave Bardin's grave to the enemy. He walked the streets with his mithril hammer, and the dwarves, young and old, women among them and the one-legged keeper of the Tahta Bacak inn, gathered on the square with hammers in hand.^{39 40}

Preparing the defence

In the days that followed Karak was often away on patrol underground. The alchemist Vincent Von Reigns said he had long known him as a steady buyer of strength potions, and Karak told his friends that he had once thought of joining the armoured dwarven warriors called belly-rippers, until his mother objected.^{41 42 43}

Over a map at his home he explained that the drow kept safe houses in the empty dwellings cut into the rock, and asked that they be traced quietly, fearing that a large search would warn their spies. From a captured drow he had learned that a route was being secured for a priestess, and he planned to ambush her in the tunnels. He put killing the city's collaborators first, but agreed that the valuable ones might be questioned.^{44 45 46}

He handed his three friends a document signed for Balgur Demirkapı and bearing their names, admitting them under the mountain as friends of the dwarves. If the enemy's true target lay nearer the homeland, he said, the dwarves here would hold for six or seven months and fall back fighting, and he wanted the three to carry the news ahead of him by the surface road. He hoped to teach Sarah the dwarven tongue so that she could sing what had happened to his people in their own language, and reminded them that Balgur's only son was dead, so that this might be the last war of the Demirkapı.^{47 48 49}

Spoiler: A ceremonyRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #35; Starter Setting Guide; Sürgün Günlükleri #37; Sürgün Günlükleri #38 · Say what you have read

After the fall of the lord of the Demirkapı, Karak held a ceremony at his home with two orange-haired dwarves. He laid down his armour and shield and repeated words of prayer and oath while his body was tattooed; then his head was shaved and his beard cut short, washed and dyed, and he wept as it was cut.^{50 51}

He swore to avenge the Demirkapı on those who had killed them and to fight until his own death, never to marry and never to have children. His companions saw in him a man who had lost a close friend and wanted to keep his anger and grief alive.^{52 53}

Dwarves hold the honour of the family name above almost everything, and a long beard is a mark of respect among them.⁵⁴

Before the company left for the deep roads, Karak told them he would take a large force down, build a line of defence and then fall back fighting, and praised the witch hunters as useful against enemy mages. He said he feared dying before he had cleared his name, and wished a friend could witness his death; they promised to make his story known wherever they went.^{55 56}

His orders, from the commander of his fortress and from the High King alike, were to wear the enemy down, spare his own forces and withdraw, holding perhaps a month or two.⁵⁷

Once Sarah's blood siblinghood was confirmed, she could act in his name to close the debt for the priestess recorded in the book of grudges; she showed the deed to Karak's house to prove the bond, and in a tavern sang a song she had written for him.^{58 59 60}

Before the High King

Spoiler: Before the High KingRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #42; Sürgün Günlükleri #44 · Say what you have read

When the High King asked about Karak's cowardice, his friends defended him: everyone had been attacked at once, and he had gone to save the Demirkapı at the first chance but had not been able to. Near Gazad they met him again with embraces. He told them the enemy had fought harder than expected, using great forces as bait while slipping through other passages behind, as though they had come to take something.^{61 62 63}

After a battle Karak sat apart, his axes laid down. A dwarf quietly told the company that only death could free him from his shame, unless a family member or blood sibling took it upon themselves. Sarah did so: with a written document, open-minded dwarven witnesses and a tattooist, her hair was cut and a musical note was tattooed at the side of her neck.^{64 65 66}

The announcement shook Karak. The High King called him to his tent as a commander, and Karak embraced Sarah for joy.^{67 68}

While she bears the shame, held to be for cowardice and for playing the wrong note, Sarah may not own land in the dwarven realm.⁶⁹

Spoiler: The last battleRevealSpoils: Sürgün Günlükleri #50 · Say what you have read

In the final fight Karak offered to hold the door behind his friends against any enemy slipping through, and asked them not to come out whatever they heard below. After the battle he was found sitting on a stone, alive.^{70 71 72}