Lying almost entirely within the permashade, Arathist is a great tundra, rising in the south to join the Weeping Mountains, and occupied by a loose tribal alliance. The tribes are for the most part large chiefdoms or small states of 600-2,000 members, typically a mix of orcs, goblins and bugbears. Most of the population of Arathist remain nomadic, but in the last decade more settled towns have grown up, and three proto-kingdoms have emerged.
There is a
Primeval Wilderness in the foothills of the mountains. It is here that the monarchs of the three kingdoms found their gods, and also here that their representatives meet in the natural amphitheatre known as the Great Bowl. The kingdoms are known as Ice, Sea and Stone, and each has their own methods of choosing a monarch to forge a pact with their god, often in the form of a ritual confrontation.
Aside from Northmoot, the city which has grown up around the Bowl, the only substantial settlement is Dragon's Watch, an imposing fortress and former home of the deceased White Dragon. This is now home to the dragonborn known as the White Watch. This is an insular group, believed to be fulfilling an ancestral charge to protect some treasure of Ifnora the White, but they do trade with the Ice Kingdom. Dragon's Watch is famous for the frostglaives of its defenders, lethal blades of enchanted ice.
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