Chapter 29.1. The Good Life of Naggaroth
After a week's sail, the barque arrived at Caronde Carr.
Karonde Karr, the Tower of Despair, also known as the Slave's Gate, stands on the edge of the Frostheart Sea, perpetually battered by strong winds, icy rain, and tsunamis.
What appeared before Daxus was a shocking scene. He used a monocular to see many slaves still writhing on the black walls of the cliff. Dastan Cold Eyes said that these slaves were disobedient and had been cast under a spell by the warlock. They would spend the last few hours of their lives in despair and then become food for the harpies.
Day and night, Karonde Kal echoes with the wails of despair as the city's sorcerers delight in combining the souls and bodies of slaves. Trapped between life and death, these unfortunates wander Karonde Kal's streets, delighting the city with their agonized wails, shudders of lament, and visions of beauty, only to become food for the harpies.
Can you sleep tonight?
Countless harpies nest in the city's spires, circling and swooping across the sky. Superstitious Duruchi believe the harpies are a symbol of good luck for the city, and that if they leave the city, it will fall into enemy hands within ninety days. Duruchi civilians living in the city must walk close to the edge of the road, wary of the harpies who could swoop down at any moment.
There's a reason Karonde Kal is called the Slave Gate, as it's often where Black Ark raiders settle their cargo after completing their raids. Thousands of all races have perished crossing the vast expanse of sea to Karonde Kal, suffocating in the depths of ships or being tortured to death for the Black Ark pirates' amusement. These are the lucky few.
When the slaves were finally unloaded onto the icy dock, their good days had just begun, because Caronde Carr had nowhere to escape!
On the docks, slaves were brutally driven out and whipped, with those who fell being trampled to death. Some unfortunate individuals whose chains fell off were flayed on the spot and thrown into the Frostheart Sea. These entertainments were wildly admired by the onlookers, the Druki, who threw stones to trip the panicked slaves and fanned the flames, hoping to incite the slaves to riot, which they could then charge forward and slaughter.
The slaves who came to the Dark Square would be roughly inspected and divided by age and gender. After being weighed and presented to the Witch King Malekith, 40% of them would be taken away by the slave traders and divided up all the slaves. These slaves were destined to work until death in the Dark Rock of Hag Graef and the gem and gold mines of Gorond, do hard labor in the dungeons and kitchens of various cities in Naggaroth, or be directly bought and sacrificed to Cain.
Overlooking the city, the slavers' mansions are dotted with mansions adorned with the shattered bones of fallen slaves. These white gloves rarely leave the comfort of their mansions, lured only to the dark, rain-soaked squares by valuable news. A captured Asur is so valuable that slavers will trade their fortunes, even their own families, for it to please the nobles behind them.
The city also has auction houses where slavers bargain hard to satisfy the greed of captains and Black Ark admirals, ensuring a tidy profit.
The admiral could return home satisfied, while the captains usually did not get the profits they expected, because they knew that a large number of Khaine assassins were lurking among the people, quietly waiting for the slave traders' commissions. The captains believed that leaving Kalond Kaal with a small bag of sovereign was better than never leaving.
However, everything in this city has nothing to do with Dacus, because the relationship between this city and Clarkalond is not very friendly, and there is competition, especially in animal taming.
Dacuus will not sell his goods here. He will cross the Frostheart Sea, cross the Darklight Tower Strait, enter the Sea of Malice, and return to Clarkarond, which is his home.
It's funny to say that the ships of Clar Kalond and the Black Ark usually don't go to Clar Kalond Kar, but the dignitaries of Clar Kalond Kar have to go to Clar Kalond if they need to order a ship, and they have to go there to repair and maintain the Black Ark. Clar Kalond Kar can only repair ships because it rains all year round and there is no wood to be cut down for ships.
Daxus continued to look at the city curiously through the monocular.
The Kalond Kaal breakwater stretches nearly five kilometers, constructed from stone quarried from the towering mountains surrounding the city. The city's nobles crowdfunded a vast sum of money to hire a group of skilled dwarven slaves to carve the stone at the base of the breakwater into the shapes of slaves, their tense, dying figures rising and falling with the icy tide.
For thousands of years, the breakwater was known as Nela Vol, the Great Lament. When slaves arrived in the city, seeing such lifelike statues, they would lament horribly, believing that this would be their fate.
The nobles never tire of this joke.
"Whose black ark is this?"
Dastan Lengyan didn't even look at it and said directly: "Master, the Tower of the Blessed Evil Party of the Fallen Heart Family."
"What about the smaller one over there?"
"Master, that's the Ultimate Oblivion."
What a great creation!
After the civil war, Malekith's plan to dissolve the Maelstrom of Ulthuan failed, and the magic rebounded back to Nagarythe, causing the earth to shatter and the city of the Hellbane House to be shattered. Malekith and his followers used their remaining magical powers to weather the ensuing storm and magically transformed the crumbling city into sea-going Black Arks. Malekith and his followers then fled Nagarythe, heading northwest across the Great Ocean to the desolate land of Naggaroth.
At the time, there were over twenty Black Arks, five of which washed ashore and became the present-day city of Druki. The Hellish Family's Vicious Temple survived and is still in use today. These massive floating fortresses varied in size, with the longest reaching five kilometers and the smaller at two kilometers.
Capable of carrying tens of thousands of Duruchi warriors and slaves, sorcerers and beastmasters summoned sea beasts from the deep and built fortifications on the Black Ark. According to Daquus, the family's Vicious Temple was equipped with black dragons, war hydras, and abyssal sirens, and could even summon sea dragons to assist when necessary.
Only about half of the Black Ark remains today. After five thousand years of changes, some were damaged and sunk in battle, some were stranded on the coast, and some were pulled into a mysterious space.
The Black Ark factory in Clarkalond was making incredibly slow progress, according to Dakwus. It took eight hundred years to build a two-kilometer-long Black Ark, and the stone needed to build it had to be brought from Hag Graves. But the other Druks disagreed. To them, eight hundred years was a generation.
Dacus suddenly thought of a place where, if possible, black arks could be mass-produced in a short period of time.