Dwarf Berserkers

Dwarven Berserker – Fists of Karn

As Tharnûl of Karz-Morûn, I watched them from the other side of the tunnel with a scowl. They were the escort for Karn-Vâruk's envoy, and everything about them was an insult to tradition. Ten dwarves, barely armed with leather harnesses and pieces of metal, like gladiators ready for the pit. Their appearance was a walking rejection of the Murnazdruld's discipline, a mockery of the heavy armor that represented the ancestral order.

I recognized a few of them. A lad whose clan had been struck from the records two generations ago; a forge-apprentice whose guild had been dissolved by internal disputes. They were the dispossessed, the youth who had grown up under the shadow of a failed empire and now found purpose in the feverish gaze of their new prophet. They were not soldiers; they were converts.

The alarm rang out then, a deep gong announcing an orc breach in the lower levels. My company formed the shield wall, the slow, heavy, and honorable response of our ancestors. We held them, but we were losing ground, step by step.

That was when they moved.

Without order, without formation, they surged through our ranks like a torrent. Their only war cry was not for the stone, nor for the clan, but a name they roared with savage devotion: "Karn! Karn-Dûrinûl!".

They fought with a violent joy that chilled my blood. Where we parried, they dodged. Where we protected ourselves, they broke through to sink an axe. It was not the discipline of a soldier; it was the blind faith of a fanatic forged into a weapon. The orc horde, which had pushed us veterans back, dissolved before them in a wash of blood and confusion.

When the last greenskin fell, they stopped, panting, their eyes fixed on me. In their silence, there was both a question and an answer. They were living proof that the future would no longer be written with the slow wisdom of the stone, but with the speed and fury of an unbreakable faith in a single man.

They were the Fists of Karn. And I understood that they had not come to negotiate. They had come to show us how their master's echo resonated