The Hills of Varenka & The Lonely Approaches to Barak Varr

Barak Varr, the Dwarfen sea port that rests on the tip of the Black Gulf stood for centuries as a bastion of trade and order amidst the deadly lands of the Border Princes. Placed at the apex of the Badlands, it was assailed by danger but did not bend in all its long existence.

Until the Undead Nation came and a seige became a slaughter, as every one of the stout-bodied inhabitants were shorn in two and cast into the sea.

North of Barak Varr, stretching in a gentle crescent along the coast of the Black Gulf before reaching up toward Malko along the banks of the River Starnek, lie the Varenka Hills. It is in these hills that the Chittering Hordes of the Spider Goblins have their webs. Deep valleys lie completely netted by webs and beneath the upper surface visible to the sky, the ground below is night dark even at noon as thousands of goblins and millions of giant spiders scurry and crawl, plotting the demise of mankind and the source of their next wriggling and screaming meals.

In the long years when Barak Varr remained a bastion of the Dwarfs, the Varenka Hills were free of danger to some extent, the closer they were to the sea, but ever were the woods and valleys home to nasty and devilish things of fur and tooth, that oftentimes had more pairs of hairy spindly legs than was natural.

The Lonely Approaches, as it was named by the Dwarves, was a desolate stretch of rolling hills directly north of Barak Varr and key to their landward defence as the Spider Goblins often sent forays of unsightly inhuman things to strike at them there from that direction. It was almost bereft of folliage or natural beasts of the field, and prone to battering from wind and rain, but Dwarfen Rangers garrisoned the land there in elder days to watch for danger, both from the spiders of the Razor Webs and from the road both north and west.

At the peak of the highest hill lies an ancient set of standing stones, emblazoned with runes of old Dwarfen skill, set there to ward off the evil creatures of the north and to mark tha land as owned by Dwarfen courage.How tragic this landmark seems now as the Dwarfs lie as only fish-pecked bones in the shallows of the Black Gulf and souless undead creatures and black-hearted Spider Goblins bicker over their spoils.

The Lonely Approaches exist now only as a place of war for the unholy creatures of the Border Princes.