encircled mountains

South of the shores of the Inner Sea, surrounded by the vast miles of the rebel forest, the many peaks of the encircled mounains rise up to the sky, ice and snow glittering in the sunlight. The mountains are a lonely place where few venture. To high is the risk and to small any goal that might be achieved by journeying there.

Besides many animals, only the lawless live there. They make their living by stalking the honest travellers and traders that venture along the trading route along the northern outcrops of the mountains.

Many tales are there of stranger and rarer things living deep in the mountains, but those are just stories. The very mountains themselves and with them the valleys and peaks and the caves and ravines - empty as they are - have ever been a place to put the fair and terrible creatures of myth and tale.

Geography

The mountains themselves are barely 100 miles wide but strech almost 300 miles north to south. While the valleys are covered in thick forests, the higher mountains slopes grow quickly bare and soon there is nothing but rock and some few grasses left. The high peaks are seen from afar, on many days even from the upper windows of the houses of the rich in Calormenos.
From the steep mountain sides many springs fall down, following the valleys out of the mountains to all directions. The water is clear in these streams as few creatures ever set foot in them before they pass from mountains to rolling hills and flats and to the sea.

History

There is little to say about these mountains nor about the woods that grow in a vast circle around them and cover the valley floors. Remains of a trade route that was never finished seem to proove that even in the ancient days, the mountains where not of major importance.

Tourism

As the woods are thick with trees and bandits, there is little traffic through the mountains themselves. The northern road passes through the outskirts of the forest for a number of miles, offering the quickest route on land between the Riverlands and the lands west of the mountains. But altough the route is well trafficked and well guarded, the passage through the forest it too long to be perfectly safe. Highway robbery is a common trade here as the mountains in the south offer great hiding places.

Type

Mountain Range