Brimstown stood on the river Ignis at the highest point upriver that sea-going vessels could reach. Wharves and then a dock sprang up to save vessels unloading on the bank and then reloading smaller river going craft. Houses sprang up for the dockworkers and the town slowly spread from there. The volume of trade was small, there was not much demand for luxury goods in the Brimstein Heartlands or the harsh environment of the Scablands, but when the Direbrand tribe arrived and began forging metalwork, farm implements and weapons, trade grew as they imported the finest metal from the Duardin of the Vorstargi Mont and exported all manner of high-quality metal goods. As the wealth of the town grew, metalworkers began to have more time for leisure activities and began to fashion jewellery for their wives and loved ones. Some became expert craftsmen and began to earn more money making jewellery than metal implements and soon Brimstown was exporting gold and silver jewellery as well as metal goods.
The docks were an area of squalor, where the dregs of the city congregated like leaf litter around a storm drain. Anything could be bought and sold here, including a man’s life. Don’t ask for a woman to be killed though that was against the unwritten code of the city. “That could be my mum.” would be the reply. “Have another drink matey!” and half an hour later the Freeguild Guards would find your body face down on the docks. “Must have had too much to drink” would be the reply to any enquiries.
When Khorghus Khul swept through the Brimstein Heartlands and captured Fort Ignis, much of the populace fled. Those that remained, many of them old or sick, believed that Sigmar would protect them. Unfortunately, they were wrong. In an orgy of violence, the Chaos forces slaughtered those too old to join them, piling their skulls in a huge heap in the centre of the city. Those who could walk and hold a weapon were given a simple choice, join the feast of human flesh that took place each day or become the feast. Many chose to join the Chaos forces, swelling Khul’s army and reinforcing his garrison.
With the beginnings of the Realmgate Wars, the first target was the capture of the Enthalpic Realmgate in the Brimstone Peninsular, which was taken by the Hammerhands Stormhost, the first to be forged. The Realmgate Wars raged across the mortal Realms with the forces of Chaos being forced back on all fronts. Brimstown was the nearest to the Enthalpic Gate and it was reinforced and renamed Fort Ignis. The fort had grown during the initial days of the Age of Sigmar as the Stormhosts developed their beachhead around the realmgate and was a staging and resupply post in the initial years of the war. As the wars moved further into the north, Fort Ignis lost its significance and was now a small sleepy fort used more as a safe resting place for travellers than as a garrison for a huge warrior chamber. The wars moved on from the Brimstone Peninsular and life began to return with first villages and towns, and then cities growing up in the area.
A Chaos warlord named Chartrek Beastamer launched a raid on the Fort and managed to capture it and establish a base for his growing army. The carnage and slaughter that Chartrek brought to the region caused a rift, known as the Penterage Rift, to open linking, Aqshy to the realm of Chaos and allowing Chaos to bleed into the region.
