Dragonfang Mountains

Eventhough Nandaahr is still wild - the dragonfangs are a different type of wild. Uppon leaving a towns safe gates the daring traveller exposes himself to a million threats, from bandits over diseases to wild animals. But you will in most places find a settlement at some point and most beasts avoid the buisier roads, the same goes for most bandits. Civilisation is allways far in Nandaahr, yet reachable. Uppon entering the dragonfangs you leave all civilisation behind. The dwarfs with their subterran cities hide their entrances with perfection. And even if you find one, it will be blocked and heavily guarded. The dwarfs do traded with the other races, but hardly anyone ever gets invited underneath their mountains.  

Geography

The dragonfangs are by far Nandaahrs highest mountains. Scholars are still debating which one s the highest since its hard to figure that out in such an unaccesible landscape - but the average hight is around 7 kilometers. The mountaintops are allways covered in thick layers of snow and ice above five kilometers. During the peak of winter the snow even goes down to two kilometers and blocks even the low road in the east along lake sunmirror. The treeline is mostly around 3.5 and 4.5 kilometers, between there and the ice you will only find alpine meadows and some specialised trees here and there.
  There are still a lot of uncharted places in the dragonfangs - if the dwarfs wouldnt hold on to their maps so tight, we could maybe clear many of them, but eventhough they sell their weapons and armor nowadays, no dwarvish map will ever go to elvish or human hands.
  The Dragonfangs nearly completly seperate Nandaahr in a northern and a southern half. When first trying to get south of the mountains, elvish explorers were relieved, when they found out, that there was a passage between the mountains and the sea. Between the sunken forest, the cadaver bogs (at this point only called "the bogs") and the hills south of the bogs a small strip of land was quite well suited to be covered by a road. But when they started to build the road, it became obvious that they were just setting up a buffet for all the monsters, that were lurking in the forest and the hills and the evil spirits of the bogs. Since elves are pretty stubborn, they finished the road - sometimes called "the red road" or "bone path", just to more or less abandon it, since on top of all the monsters, the demons werent pleased at all when they discovered the nearly finished elvish road. So in the end the road pretty much disappered underneath the growing forest and the reeds of the bogs. Later, after the first battle at the bogs, the now notorious undead elves and demons were added to the bogs, which made it even more dangerous to use the road - especially since there was no use to it. In the south the demons would murder everything that came down and in the north the elves would shoot everything that came up from the south.
  It was in the third era, when Murkwater harbor was founded, that the road was brought to new life. It was still dangerous, but traders from the new growing city paid mercenaries and lumbers to drive the forest and reeds away from the road and make it possible to at least travel somewhat safe to Olim and Svedero in the north. At the time this happened, piracy was a big thing in the gulf of battles, so the still dangerous land route was more promissing than entering the storm and pirate infested waters of the gulf with ships full of valuable goods.
  Nowadays, this road is returning more and more to its state in the middle of the second era, Nandaahrs nature claims it back.   Since today there is a more or less stable peace and trade agreements with the dwarfs, humans now rather cross the mountains than use the road along the bogs. There are, as I allready mentioned, the low road in the eastern part of the mountains, where the mountains arent that high. And we got the middle or western road. This one leads right through the highest part of the mountains and is only accessible from late spring to late summer. but its the only way for traders from Bregen to get to Crows Rock without paying guards for their wagons AND the high toll the ferry between Nodden and Moss Harbor cost today.
  In the end both roads are dangerous, but still safer as the most eastern road along the bogs.  

Wildlife

But enough of the roads. Gigantism seems to apply to many creatures of these mountains. If you dare to enter the mountains you will find many species that resemble other species you know, just that they are larger and bulkier. Scholars think it is their way to deal with the cold, since bigger, more muscular bodies seem to cope better with the extreme temperatures of the higher altitudes. And way more animals here adopted an carnivorous or omnivorous lifestyle. So be aware that even harmeless animals like goats sometimes developed quit sharp fangs and a nasty appetite.
You now may ask "Ok, the mountains sure does look like pointy fangs, but my granny allways told me dragons are just a myth to scare children and that some drunken turds made them up." Well I can assure you, the dragons that gave these mountains their name are very much alive. Like the Leviathan in the depths of the oceans, on Land and in the sky there are no beasts that can defeat them. But I will talk more about the dragons on another occasion, you came for the mountains and mountains you shall have. There are other terifying beasts you should be way more afraid of. Dragons are super rare and you must really have a boatload of bad luck to encounter one. That doesnt go for the giant esgelladas. What is an esgellada? Now, an esgellada is one big as ape. Did I say one? No, they most of the time come in packs of around ten, lead by an alpha male - you´ll recognise it by its golden back fur. They are around five meters tall and eat mostly grass and roots supprisingly. Allthough they will eat everything that is alive or dead that they can get a hold of. They are just as strong as they are fast, have excellent eyesight and are quite intelligent. Most caravans that dissapear, go on their account. Luckily you can scare them of with fire. But you will need magic or burning crossbow-bolts, some torches will just fuel their anger.
  Still dangerous, but not as much as the esgelladas are the Bargzes, as the dwarfs call them. Imagine a bird without wings, around one and a half meters tall, but what he lacks in wings, he makes up for with his enormous beak. Basicly an eagle without wings, but an oversized beak on long legs. They are mostly solitary, but sometimes come in pairs or small groups of three or four. They dont bluntly attack caravans like the esgelladas, so if you stick together and watch the horses you should be safe from them. But if someone strolls too far to take a dump or anything, he might have a nasty encounter with of these things. They often follow caravans without beeing noticed and wait for their chance to strike and run. But I could go on for hours about the animals, I will tell you about some more common ones, when we get to the important spots in the mountains. But first the vegetation...  

Vegetation

Trees are just trees and meadows arent that spectacular - I couldnt diagree more, but to keep it short I will skip most of the plants. But what you definetly should know about are the giant mammoth trees that grow high up in the mountains. These coniferous trees can easily outgrow a hundret meters or more and are capable of reaching diameters of around 20 meters. Thoose trees are massive and seem to keep growing their whole existance, which, according to the dwarfs can be up to forever.
  Most of them are found in the goat valley, the high cliffs and around the higher western parts of the mountains. The dwarfs even build a small settlement in a group of mammoth trees at the high cliffs to have a safe place to sleep for their farmers. Or at least safer than a settlement on the ground.  

Special locations

The dragonfangs, as the spectacular mountains they are, host some even more strange places, some of the known ones I will go into further here.  

The valley of the deadly mist

This valley is the most weird and dangerous place in the mountains. It consists of a giant, difficult to access volcano that is more or less dead. The volcano hasnt erupted in eons, still there is enough heat to keep the temperatures tropical all year long in the lower parts of the valley, but not melting the glaciers that encase the volcano.
  The lower parts reach from the northern west to the south, the eastern south is covered by hot tar lakes, boiling mud pools, fumaroles and is covered in volcanic lava from the small eruptions that only affect their immidiate sourroundings. So basicly a small volcanic desert, partly covered in poisenous volcanic gasses. The Northern part is highly elevated and seperated from the rest by high cliffs. The west is covered in a thick, lush rainforest, only devided by a river that springs out of the mountains somewhere in the northern part of the valley. The elevated north is covered in some small coniferous forest islands in an ocean of alpine meadows.
  But that doesnt make the valley so dangerous - what makes the valley dangerous are the diseases from the forest, the nasty creatures and the two different species of cannibalistic humanoids that populate the valley and have butchered everyone so far who was dumb enough to enter the valley. So far that is all you need to know, but if you want to hear the gruesome details, I can tell you some more about the valley of the deadly mist.  

Dragon´s Throat

The Dragons throat, refferd to by some more - well - wildmannered folks as the dragons anus, is one of the very few active volcanoes of the dragonfang mountains and by far the biggest. Sadly it happens to sit right next to the middle road which it tends to cover with streams of lava that leads to the road beeing blocked for weeks multiple times a year. Due to this the dwarves have set up a small town with 3 taverns to accomodate the stuck traders while they clear the road as soon as the lava cooled down. For a hefty fee of course. Some traders claim with all the gold they pay there, the dwarves could just seal the volcano... There are some tales going around that you can find all kinds of jewels or other treasures in the always changing volconic tunnels in and around the volcano, but you have to be beyond stupid to enter this ever shifting maze. Most likely this adventure would end with burning in a pool of lava or starving in the tunnels far beneath the mountains. What also adds to the charm of the place is, that the most dragonsightings are made around the volcano. Some think the dragons use the heat to hatch their eggs, some say they just enjoy the heat, but nobody knows for sure.  

Goat Valley

The goat valley seems to be a pretty peaceful and beatiful place - on first sight. But said goats developed a purely carnivorous diet in these parts of the mountains and grew to the size of a horse. Their fur and horns are of great value to the dwarves, but hunting them is everything but easy and staying in that valley for long has proven to be very bad for ones health. Thats why the dwarves fortified one of the giant mammoth trees and made it into an aboreal castle. Quite a stunnig place, but getting there is pretty tough if you cant use the underground tunnels of the dwarves.
But the goats being so dangerous has one advantage, they drove out most other predators, so as long as you keep either burning frankicence or burning dragon dung with you, you wont be bothered by them. (Dont ask me why they are so afraid of frankicence, I have no idea) Sadly frankicence is expensive and dragon dung, yeah, I guess you can figure out on your own, that it is pretty hard to get a hold on dragon dung... The only other threat here are the eagles that roam the skies of the mountains. Most of them are no threat, but as you can imagine, since everything in these mountains tend to grow big, there are some giant eagles too. And they love to prey on the goats. In the dense forests of the valley they have no chance of getting them, but the eagles patrole the rivers, lakes and meadows of the valley. Over the millenia they learned to fear the dwarvish crossbows, but thanks to their good eyesight and intelligence, if they dont see you in a group of at minimum 5 people and you dont visibly carry longbows or crossbows you should really watch the skies.  

Lake Sunmirror

The by far biggest lake of the dragonfangs and the second largest lake of Nandaahr (and one of the biggest lakes in the known world). It was carved deep into the roots of the mountains over eons by the massive glaciers that still cover the higher altitudes of the mountains. The waters of the lake are crytal clear and on sunny days you can look down at least thirty meters into the lake. Not that this would be much use, the whole lake is preety damn deep - the deepest spot is around 600 meters deep. Only when it rained a lot or it was very hot and a lot snow has molten, the waters will become white and murky from the material the water brings down from the glacier into the lake. This lake is home to a lot of delicious fish, sadly it also is a home for a bunch of hungry monsters too. The most prominent, luckily quite rare one is the "big toothed pike". As the name suggests, this fish seems to be closely related to pikes, just nobody told them, that they should stop growing after reaching around two meters. The biggest one ever seen was supposed to be around 9 meters, but most seem to range around 5 to 6 meters. They have a snout full of pointy needle like teeth that pierce into their prey and catch it like a beartrap. The nasty side effect is, that most victims tend to bleed out within minutes. I once even saw one catching a big eagle that was trying to grab an elk near th shore - but that was also the only time I saw one.
During moonless nights the water wraiths come out, according to local lore they are the souls of the starved wives of fishermen who died on the lake. When they couldnt beg enough to get through the winter these widows would go into the waters of the lake to join their husbands. But when they allready passed into the next realm they will become wraiths, allways searching for warm bodies - even on land in moonless nights. Thats why you should watch the moons when you can see the shores of lake sunmirror. If there are none, then make a big, and I mean big, fire to keep them away or walk quite a bit inland to avoid them. If you know a bit about undeads you will agree that its quite hard to fend of wraiths and its way safer to just avoid them.
  Along the shore you will find some villages, but the inhabitants are more than just a bit supersticious. The only people who live here are either dwarfs who were kicked out for various reasons or other outcasts from other societies (there are even some elves living here). These multiple supersticious slowly came around over the time, most of the people settling here were driven away by their original folks because they followed some more dark gods or were members of some odd cults. That mixed with the dwarves that the other dwarves kicked out for similar reasons was a good nursing ground for various supersticions. And the water wraiths for example didnt helped to stop that either (these wraith are actually real, ket me tell you...).
During high season the people here are oddbut harmless. They know, that if they act up and try to mug the traders and travellers, the dwarves, who are interested in keeping the trade alive will leave their subterran halls in a heartbeat and make fire rain uppon them. But if you pass through here during winter.... boi, you gotta watch out. Most of the villages regularly sacrifice to their gods or the water wraiths... And I´m not talking about sacrificing some corn or fish here. That sacrifices have to be virgins or kids is nonesense made up by twisted grannies that want to scare their kids, but its true that the sacrifices here are human. And eventhough they dont like to sacrifice their own, they do it regularly during the winter - unless they can get a hold on some pittyful unknowing traveller. A human sacrifice is a human sacrifice in the end, it doesnt matter if its a local from the village or from far away...  

High cliffs and frozen falls

The high cliffs and frozen falls are pretty much the heart of the mountains. The cliffs are a deep, broad valley, carved out by glaciers eons ago. The south-western wall of the valley is what gave it its name. The whole flank of the valley here consists of nearly 90° cliffs between 100 meters and nearly two kilometers. Its quite a sight really. Over the millenia rain has carved multiple holes, tunnels and caves into the cliffs, especially in the upper part of the valley which makes it a prime nesting ground for the giant eagles. But luckily they are pretty rare and mostly prey on the giant goats and other animals that are unluky enough not to have crossbows at hand. In the valley you will find many of the giant mammoth trees - just like in the goat valley. And just like there too, dwarvish farmers have build treehouse towns in these forests. The Valley is the only real dwarvish town on the surface that actually deserves this name. The population fluktuates highly over the seasons, but on average you will find around 2 000 dwarves here, scattered over the forest. Most of them farm wheat and other plants that dont grow underground. You might imagine a bunch of folks in dirty clothes scratching in the dirt - but due to the, lets say "hostile" fauna around here it looks more like a battle. Just as its typical for dwarves to nearly allways wear armor, these farmer arent just armed, they are also covered in weapons up to their teeth. And most of them also carry small bolt throwers (Crossbows on wheels) with them - sometimes the eagles get adventurous or the goats come over from their main valley.   But the real highlight are the frozen walls at the end of the valley, over lake sunmirror. The falls cascade down over multiple terasses until the water finally finds its way into the lake. When you unfortunately cross the dragonfangs during winter, you will at least get to see the most magnificent sight these mountains have to offer. Once the winter really settled in in the mountains, the falls will freeze over completly - a shimmering cascade of ice winding down from the mountains - some say it looks like a stairway to the heavens, some other, less poetic folks say it looks like quicksilver pouring out of the mountains. Whatever you wanna call it - this sight makes you forget about all the nasty ways to die winter has in stock for the one crossing the mountains during winter.  

Dragons vale

This secluded volcanic valley (there hasnt been an eruption in multiple thousand years) is home to maybe the best known dragon of Nandaahr. He goes by "Firetooth" for the humans and "Flarzdek" for the dwarfs. The dragon is extremly old, nobody really knows how old - the dwarfs have the first written mention of him which is around 600 years old. He allways lived in a cave in the upper part of one of the mountains in the valley and mostly hunts whatever he finds in the valley. Sometimes he lurks along the road and feasts on the horses of travelers. It seems that he doesnt really like armors, most of the time he either just kills humans or dwarfs or ignores them completly. But that doesnt happens too often so anyone just tries to ignore him and hopes to never meet him. But about 200 hundret years ago it became somewhat of a "test" that young dwarfs tried to kill him. I think its not surprising, that none of these fools ever returned. At some point our scaled friend was fed up and started piling up the burned carcasses at the entrance to his valley. This really killed the spirit of most dragonhunters and the tradition nearly died out today. You can still see the pile of bodies though. The smell of the dragon that still clings to the corpses seems to be enough to keep scavengers away.   

The elves ascend

The elves ascend is an old stairway that a tribe of woodelves carved into the mountains that leads to a high plateau and eventually to the eastern road. The elves use it during summer to colect all kinds of healing sprouts and other plants and beeries and as long as you dont provoke them they will let you use it too. But nowadys the way that leads to it from the road to murkwaterharbor has pretty much disappeared underneath the thick foliage of the sunken forest, so the elves ascend became hard to reach for forreigners.   

The sunken forest

The sunken - or drowned - forest really deserves its name. Thanks to the rain loaded clouds comming from the gulf of battles, that are forced up in the mountains it rains a lot on the eastern flank of the mountains. And I mean A LOT. I wont discuss the whole forest here (look for the specific article), but I can say so much, that the lines between terrestric and marine realms blend together here. There were allways tales about terestrial krakens haunting the forest, shifting in size from tale to tale, but there is enough lore to say that there must be some sort of thruth behind this. And on top of the beasts we have a few tribes of woodelves that settle in the forest and dont really like foreigners. Most of them (I say MOST) wont shoot you on first sight, but dont be too sure about that. Other than their highelve ancestors they live a very basic life close to their surrounding forest. They build small tents or threehouses (some rarly ever leave the treetops), that depends on the tribe. And even if they only wear sparse (some say too revealing) rugs and use simple bows and blowpipes to hunt, you shouldnt underestimate them. They still hold the ethernal youth of their ancestors and know more than most of the shortliving humans have ever known. (I dont wanna shit on my fellow humans here - even though they have quite a short lifespann they accomplished many hings beyond believe!) When it comes to hunting, reading tracks or healing plants woodelves are the ones you want to ask.  

The cadaver bogs

The cadaver bogs. The godforsaken damned bogs. Really. I dont know what exactly went wrong there. Ok, I do, but thats a story for another time. If you want to take the road alongside the forest and the forest doesnt scare you, the bogs definitly should. Countless small and big battles have been fought here and each time, every unfortunate soldier who died here was dragged into the bogs by the undead and evil spirits. This is probably Aars most undeadinfested place. At least there is nothing I know of that comes close to the bogs. By day it looks quite peaceful on first sight. Just normal bogs, the occasional flower, a lot of water, some trees here and there. Nothing special. But at night. At night the undeads come out from underneath the water and will wander the bogs searching for warmblooded beings (thats why there are onl fish, amphibians, reptiles and insects survive here), their ways illuminated by the wicked lights of wisps.  

The western plains

There must be something peaceful around the dragonfangs you must think. And you are partly correct. Other than the gruesome eastern rim of the mountains the western plains are - compared to the east pretty tame. Giant mammals grazing in the plains in the warm winds coming down from the mountains. But where you find big herbivors, the carnivors arent far. And big carnivors you will find. You got the typical sabercats and direwolfs, but one terror can be found here that doesnt originates in Nandaahr. Tazpoks Curse he and his kin are called by the locals Tyrannosaurus imperialis by the scholars. Not as big as dragons and thankfully not able to fly, these bipedal beasts roam the plains in search for anything that moves. Why Tazpoks Curse you ask? Tazpok was the original founder of Crows Rock (called Tazpoks meadow at the time). He thought it would be a good idea to bring some of these reptiles from the demons homeland and use them as war mounts and to frighten his enemies. That obviously worked well. Until the point after the cataclysmic war that drove the demons out of Nandaahr. As a final goodbye Tazpoks heirs left these beasts behind - they really enjoyed their new freedom and now happily chew through everybody who they come across. But apart from that the plains are a really nice place. As long as you dont get into a thunderstorm. Or meet the local orc tribe. But thats a story for another time.