The Giantshield Mountains
The highest peaks in the Free Kingdoms are on its far eastern half, bordered on either side by the Kingdom of Ironwall, and the Borderlands to the east. The mountains are the original homeland of the dwarfs.
Lay of the Land
- Remote and Hostile: The dwarfs maintain the roads, but the cold and lack of game makes camping difficult and foraging impossible.
- Realm of Dwarf-Kind: All the venerable dwarven clans of the Free Kingdoms call these Mountains their ancestral home, whether or not they still live here now. They have defended them for millennia with blood and axe.
- The Slumbering Mountain-Queen: Baeraphast the red wyrm served as a mercenary to the dwarfs of Krimhold during the Elveswar. She quickly turned on her patrons and destroyed the city, claiming its hoard of dwarven loot for herself. Elven wizards cast her into a thousand-year slumber, four-hundred years of which have already passed…
- Goblin Raiders: Goblins from the Borderlands make impermanent settlements in the mountains. They ally with ogres and other such brutish mountain-dwellers.
- Wind-Doom: The weather of the higher peaks is deadly. The cold is the real enemy, but powerful winds can easily blow climbers off of cliffs and mountain faces.
- Wyverns: Though the mountains are home to many dangerous beasts, few are as deadly as the legendary wyverns. They are cousins to dragons, far less intelligent, although twice as aggressive.
- Clans of the Dwarfholds : The dwarfs' well-guarded fortress-cities offer protection from the dangers of the Mountains, but they are scarcely welcoming of outsiders (which, aside from the few odd-merchants of Ironwall, are quite rare).
- Stone Giants: The stone giants are a reserved and contemplative sort, living an almost ascetic lifestyle of meditation. However, they can be unpredictable, as they believe the entire world outside of their caves is a dream. The dwarfs have had a few run-ins with their kind.
- The Ruins of Glimm: Even though the gnomes are long-dead, legend holds their vast treasures and intricate clockwork marvels are still kept somewhere within the ruins of their grand city…
- The Bald King: One of the tallest mountains in the range was the site of Krimhold, the jewel of the Dwarfholds, until it was taken over by Baeraphast the Mountain-Queen. In the lowest depths of the abandoned fortress-city lay both the red dragon, and her massive hoard. Even in slumber, her influence can be felt here -- the ruins are strangely warm, owing to the fire-dragon's presence, and the face of the mountain repels the winter snow, giving the peak its name.
- The Deep-Roads: The Dwarfholds are connected by a series of mine tunnels between different parts of the region, which the dwarfs use as trade routes during the winter months. Many lead to the Lands Below, and are full of monsters.
- A bunch of frozen corpses tell the story of a group of dwarf prospectors struggling to build a fire in the frigid winter.
- A set of bare footprints in the snow, but if they are a stone giant’s, it would be a truly enormous specimen.
Type
Mountain Range
Included Locations
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