Over the Mountains, Over the Seas

A planet, about the same size as ours, with all the land clustered in the Northern Hemisphere. An empire expands through the hot deserts, and city states dot the coast of an island sprinkled ocean, where nomads live on boats and trade thrives globally, stopped only by the harsh southern ocean. The world is large and complex, with city states and countries and empires, all of whom have tangled relationships with one another, but all agree on two things: first, if you try to sail out into the southern sea, you will die. Second, no one knows what lies over the northern mountains.   There is a ring of mountains surrounding the north pole. They are high and impassable, and theories about what lays beyond them vary wildly. Some say it's hell, some say it's the land of the gods, and yet others claim it's just some tundra, mostly devoid of life.   The truth? On the other side of those mountains, there is an entire culture. And they thrive on magic. Magic is something out of myth and story south of the mountains, but north of them it is a reality, woven so heavily into the fabric of their lives that Northern people cannot comprehend reality without it.   No one has ever crossed the mountains, until one day a young Northern girl gets lost and finds herself in a desert trading port. This will change the world, both south and North of the mountains, for the rest of history.