The Chaos Dwarfs March To War
Total War: Warhammer III is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Sega. It is part of the Total War series, and the third to be set in Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy fictional universe (following 2016's Total War: Warhammer and 2017's Total War: Warhammer II). The game was announced on February 3, 2021 and was released on February 17, 2022.[2][3][1] It received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for the British Academy Games Award for British Game at the 19th British Academy Games Awards.[4]
"They wish to make the world a place of smoky darkness where hope and cheer are crimes punishable by immediate slavery and slow torture. Theirs is an endless greed that neither time nor wealth can ever abate. They committed blasphemy by turning away from the Ancestor Gods and practicing magic. Magic, I tell you! They are our greatest shame and they will be dealt with, in time."
—Cranneg Enlagsson, Dwarf Lorekeeper[3a]
The Bull of Hashut is a holy icon and unifying symbol of all the "Sons of Hashut," as the Chaos Dwarfs sometimes refer to themselves.
The Chaos Dwarfs, known in their own tongue as Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr[2b] or the Dawi-Zharr (literally "Fire-Dwarfs" in Khazalid), and among themselves sometimes as the "Sons of Hashut," are an industrious, dark-souled and merciless warrior race of Dwarf Daemonsmiths, slavers and brutal killers that dominate the dark and cheerless landscape of the Dark Lands to the east of the Old World. At the heart of the Dark Lands lies a region filled with innumerable blackened factories, of hellish forges and massive armouries, a dark, heartless and nightmarish industrial empire the likes of which surpasses all others in the Known World. Long separated from their fading kin of the west, the Chaos Dwarfs have given themselves over to their dark master, the minor Chaos God Hashut, god of fire, greed and tyranny, and the energies of Chaos have worked subtle mutations upon their bodies.[2a]
The Chaos Dwarfs are the worst traits -- the greed, violent hatreds and evil obsessions -- of the Dwarf race given physical form, as exposure to the power of Chaos slowly mutates even the notoriously resilient Dwarfen physiology, inflicting twisted terrors on their minds and souls so that they have become a spite-filled and calculatingly cruel reflection of what they once were.[2a]
Unlike other Dwarfs, the Chaos Dwarfs are deeply learned in the sorcerous arts, and have become obsessed with the control of hellish forces and the fires of the deep earth, combining the dark lore they have gleaned with an artisanship and skill for metalwork and industry undimmed from their ancient past.[2a]
The Dawi-Zharr build the greatest and most infernal warmachines the mortal world will ever know, hulking cannons the size of houses or shrieking rockets that could obliterate entire villages into ruins. From their massive, mile-spanning hell-factories deep within the Dark Lands, shielded by deadly mountain ranges and set amid desolations of industrial waste and the haunts of monstrous beasts, the empire of the Chaos Dwarfs has faded into legend to many in the Old World, but those forced to confront their implacable, black-iron clad armies and savage war engines know the truth.[2a]
The day may yet come when the armies of dread Zharr-Naggrund march forth once more, bringing their infernal warmachines to sow misery and mayhem to all four corners of the mortal world.[2a]