The Great Southern Mountains
The
southern reaches of the Lands are entirely covered by a huge, impassable
mountain range, stretching for a thousand miles in all directions. There
are a few scattered evergreens and patches of tough, dry, grass, and the
wolves of the Frozen Waste sometimes wander into eastern edges of the
range, but other than that there is little life in within the high sharp
peaks that thrust up from the broken rocky ground. On the northern edge
of the range, near the central desert, there is an entrance to the Caves,
though it is difficult to find, and dangerous to enter. The Mountains
are the domain of Ember, one of the Elementals,
but though he rules them in name, in actuality he does very little, and
rarely leaves his home in the violently active Volcano
on the far southern edge of the range. Ember's violent anger can be felt
in the harshness and destructiveness of this land; there are frequent
landslides, and avalanches in the east, and the valleys between the mountains
are subject to flash floods, making this land a rather inhospitable area.
No one other than Ember himself lives in the Mountains, and few travel
far into them, rarely further than the Caves.