Stale

The country of Stale.
  Located in the region of northern Rethium, this country is mountainous and rugged, with plains of dust and gravel and dying grasses that span for hundreds of miles of the continent's land.
  Stale is home to only a few dozen or so towns and small cities, each of them holding only a few million people, all of them surrounded by the mountain ranges and open, rugged plains that make up the country. Each of those locales are connected by roadways that carve through the hills and through gullies and valleys, but all of them playing host to their own troubles and misfortunes along their lengths. Bandits, loose walls of stones and rocks, dangerous cliffsides and strange, running springs that pierce through the mountainsides as well as many other types of dangers and issues.
  Stale is one of the more dangerous and bleak countries in the realm, and is covered in long, towering ranges of mountains that easily cross from one side of the country to the other, as well as a long range of mountains - one of the longest in Rethium - that crosses the length of the country's border from the edge of Opron to the distant border of Athad, where the mountains split and divide into separated ranges. This particular range of mountains is known as the Hrosthaed-Hred'aes Mountains, which translate to 'Rusted Ridges Mountains' in Common, which is the second-most used language in Rethium. This range of mountains also boast some of the tallest peaks in the realm, their crowns towering over twenty-thousand feet into the sky, where thick grey clouds and rain-clogged masses of clouds fill the air and spill their contents across the realm. Both Stale and Opron as well as Uthesh do receive rain from over these mountains, but the constant wash of rain and melting snow have caused years of erosion over the landscape and have exposed many veins and pockets of iron and other ores and materials which have come to give the mountain range it's name. The range is almost as old as the continent itself, and was formed some three-hundred years after Rethium was fully formed.
  The tallest mountain in Stale is a towering peak that reaches just over twenty-eight thousand feet in height, known as Fealaehr Peak.
  The peak was the home of the first major settlement of the Dwarves of Rethium in their arrival to the mortal realm in the search for a safe place to establish a home and a kingdom of their own. The city was Galgrim-Delae, which was an ancient name from unknown origins that roughly translated to "City Of Strength", and was established sometime between four-hundred and seven-hundred of the First Age of Rethium, by the Dwarven commander Dejidar Gavalt and his legions of accompanying dwarves who had wandered from their home realm and found the mountains of Stale extremely similar to their own, and more than capable of housing their numbers safely underground for centuries.
  The second-most notable trait to the country of Stale is the abundant rivers that can be found flowing from the high peaks of the hundreds of mountain peaks and down into the valleys and lower plains of the country where a majority of the water becomes trapped in pockets and closed-off bowls of floodwater which often submerges hundreds of acres - sometimes even thousands during a season of heavy rain and snow - in floodwater. Many of the towns and cities that lie within those areas of land are known to be evacuated to surrounding cities and towns to allow the land to soak up the water and do the damage until the waters drain away into the surrounding land. For as few patches of land as there are in Stale that are capable of hosting proper crops and other staples, the land that is crop-capable can give birth to very plentiful bounties of wheat, berries, vegetables and the occasional fruit tree or two when they are planted or cultivated properly with the right amount of care.
  Stale is a wide producer of stone products as well as ores and other similar outputs. Their staples usually consist of masonry, statues, armor, soldiers - from the various camps and other training grounds used by the dwarves of the realm - and other forms of decoration, protective gear and whatever other needs can be provided by the vast and expansive pockets and veins of ores and other supplies that can be harvested and collected and forged by the underground race.
  Stale is believed to be sitting on top of a vast region of fractured plates and tectonic fault lines which gives reason to the multitude of mountain ranges that cover the landscape, as well as the near-dozen dormant volcanoes that also dot the country. Most of these volcanoes were active at some point in Rethium's history, but their effects on the surrounding world can mostly be seen in the weather systems as well as the constant earthquakes and other dangerous occurrences in Stale and on the borders of Uthesh and Opron, which play host to the ever-common rainstorm or cold front that will often spill over from the northern country.
  Many plentiful farms thrive from these common weather fronts, which is part of why Opron serves as the biggest producer of common crops more than anywhere else in the continent.
  The last major eruption in Stale took place during the early years of the Third Age, and turned what had once been a towering volcanic peak into a large lake basin filled with floodwaters from the surrounding plains and the few rivers that ran through the country nearby. The eruption took place approximately between the years one-hundred and one-hundred-five of the Third Age.
  The country of Stale is bordered by a massive mountain range that spans hundreds of miles in length from the distant borders of Athad to the West, and meets up with a second mountain range on the eastern side of the country's borders. This first mountain range is known as The Black Mountains, and is crowned by Unione's Peak, the tallest mountain in the range and also one of the tallest mountains on the continent of Rethium.
  It is so named for housing the bodily remains of the revered Unione, the woman who became one of the youngest members of the Pantheon after she had been lost in a sever snowstorm during a group travel across the mountains many thousands of years ago. She is the second youngest member of the Pantheon following the son of Ehione, the Ocean Goddess, who's child's name is Lubum. Lubum was an infant when he passed away, and appears with the body of a toddler or a child below the ages of eleven and ten years old. Unione passed away when she was in her teens or slightly older, around the age of twenty or so. Her remains currently reside inside a cave only a few hundred feet below the summit, the entrance into which has been guarded for centuries by monks and other religious followers who devote their lives to guarding the resting place of the ancient and revered goddess. 
  Within the country of Stale there are eleven aboveground cities that are inhabited by a mixture of the known races of the continent and which vary in their populations. These cities are named as follows: Falo, Ulk, Rok, Dalak, Pun, Elk, Duun, Dirion, Duudlik, Ceido and Mud. They are each a large city in Stale, but none of them have been designated as the country's official capital city. It is thought that a capital city had once existed in the country some time ago, but that at one point it was destroyed in a natural disaster of some kind and had never been rebuilt by the people of the country and belonging to the other cities. There are also believed to be a small number of underground Dwarven cities in Stale that had been founded when the Dwarven race had first entered and inhabited the country after their appearance in the world, but for whatever reason, a majority of these cities have either disappeared from the maps or simply have not been included in any major maps concerning the massive country.
  One of the greatest cities of the Dwarves, called Shefethel, was the largest city in the country at one point, and housed several of the great families of the Dwarven race before they began to spread their influence and members across the country and eventually the rest of the continent. This city has also since fallen or disappeared, and although it had been known as the capital city of Stale during it's time, it was never restored by the Dwarves and was left to fade away. A new capital was never designated afterwards, and forever since, although Stale does not have a capital city, it is still recognized as it's own territorial entity. 
  It borders the Thlea Ocean to the north of Rethium, and borders the Ocean by a region known as the Gravelline Coast, which runs from the westernmost border of Stale and all the way to the country's eastern border with the country of Opron, which lies to the south of Stale as well as a small section of the country of Uthesh that runs between the two territories. The coast itself is called such because of the fact that geologically, a majority of the coastline - roughly sixty-seven percent - is made up of loose, volcanic gravel as well as fragmented stone, pumice, obsidian clumps as well as other types of stone, especially igneous stone. The remaining thirty-three percent of the coastline is made up purely of sand and, very rarely, grass and vegetation. 
  There is an uncharted section of extremely sharp rocks along the coast of the country of Stale, and many shipwrecks have been recorded in this section of the coastline, especially of merchant vessels attempting to land there. This area is known simply as Shipwreck Bar, for it's extending length of sharp rocks and the amount of shipwrecks - numbering several hundred or more - along several miles of the northeastern coastline of the country.
  It is rumored that Unione and her group had come from one of the cities within Stale before making their journey across The Black Mountains, but the truth behind what exactly caused this sudden flight from the safety of their homes is disputed by scientists and historians alike. Some believe it was a massive natural disaster, while others believe that it was their escaping from a massive civil war of some kind between the people of the country. Even more possible was the collapse of many cities after several wars in which races fought for control and land within the country and forced ordinary citizens to evacuate their homes in order to find a home somewhere else either within the borders of the country or further beyond.
  Many pirates also exist around the continent and make their lives especially around the coastlines of Rethium, and one such pirate was renowned for her ship, her crew and the wealth that she had amassed during her time sailing and pillaging the world for it's riches and valuables. Her name was Rorhillid Zhiree, a Psedi from the continent of Vibricanth to the south of Rethium. Her career spans over one-hundred years, and she is one of the only sailors who not only has mastered the dangers of the Shipwreck Bar but can also use it against other pirates and merchant ships that cross her vessel and the sights of her ship's mighty cannons. 
  Much like the country of Opron, Stale possesses a large mountain which stands alone from all the others and towers thousands of meters into the sky, even higher than Unione's Peak in The Black Mountains range that borders Stale and Uthesh to the south. This mountain is simply called the Mountain Of Power, and is supposedly named after the God of the Military, Syther, and is thought to have some connection to the Mountain Of Light, which is located in Opron, near the country's center.  Stale is also extremely mountainous.
  One of the most legendary ranges of mountains in the country is that which is named after the goddess herself Unione. The second range of mountains in Stale, it is also amongst some of the longest mountain ranges on the continent. Unione was once asked if she had come from near this large range, to which she had answered affirmingly, but said that the home she had fled from had been destroyed during the attack. 
  Stale is one of the oldest countries on the continent after Uthesh and Athad, the latter of which was found first when the various races had landed on the continent after their creation, even though Athad had been named and inhabited first after Odis had landed there following his banishment from the heavens by Hosios-Dyn, the supreme god.