Forged Mountains

Sky Peaks: The tallest mountains in the range, perpetually snow-capped and often wrapped in snowstorms that seem to.   Ice Stone Pass: The only safe overland crossing that gives access to traverse the entire mountain range, but even then, traveling across it is still filled with dangers, despite being crossable, as changes in weather and wildlife can easily take one's life if they are not too careful.   Burning Ridge: A chain of volcanic vents and lava-tubes; home to rare metals, and is dangerous to be near as fumes can strip one's breath and lava flows can melt you away if you get too close to it.   The Fissure: A canyon so deep that no matter what you throw into it, you won't hear it hit the bottom, that goes on for miles as a wound in the earth itself.   The Deep : A labyrinthine network of caverns and tunnels, some natural, some dwarven-made, some even made by the long extinct Wyrm that once burrowed deep below the earth.

Blizzards: Storms are common high up in the mountains and can be dangerous to the inexperienced, as the cold can easily take you or cause you to be blinded and easily fall off a cliff if you're not careful.   Earthquakes: At times, the earth rumbles beneath, tearing apart the surface and the ground below if they are strong enough to bring about much destruction in its wake.   Magma Ruptures: Now and then, lava from the cracks in the earth will spew out, causing untold destruction to the surface, yet bringing forth new metals and minerals once they harden with time.

Even before the Awakening: The Binding of Magic, the mountains have always been known for their cold climate with freezing temperatures and constant snowfall that covers most of the region all year round.

Age of Stone

  In the times of old, when there were only two races that lived on Dageth, the Trolls were once the rulers of the mountains and lived in a primitive society, hiding away from the sun that turned them to stone, and the Dwarves that lived in the valleys and hills below that learned the ways the earth through the fissures found there. Only when night came did the Trolls emerge from their caves to hunt for their next meals, both races having stayed apart for centuries, creating an uneasy peace. It was not until the Trolls discovered that the Dwarves had access to The Deep that they began hunting the Dwarves as food and sport, despising them greatly for trespassing on what they considered their birthright. The long and bloody Troll Wars ensued, which saw both sides find themselves in a stalemate until the Dwarves finally made their way into the mountains and built their first Stronghold, Durz'Yulk, and created the first forge to create metal weapons and armor to finally drive the Trolls out and claim the mountains as their own. Bring about what would be the rise of Dwarven supremacy on Dageth in centuries to come.   The Dwarves would expand across the mountains in only a few decades and form the Dwarven Mountain Kingdoms, and only grow in power unopposed by any other threats on the surface. The bonds of kinship are only growing stronger with cooperation and unity as they expand across the entirety of the Forged Mountains, and there they would stay. Yet these Mountain Dwarves would see the mountains not only as their home but also as sacred, beginning to see them as deities and founding the Faith of Mountain and Stone, which remains prevalent to this day. The Dwarves would continue to thrive until the Dragon Wars, which saw much of the mountain kingdoms engulfed in dragon fire, to the point that it split some of them open, leaving cracks and scars on the mountains that are still visible in some places if one were to look closely enough. Yet even the mountains could not withstand what was to come when magic was unleashed upon the continent.  

The Awakened Mountains

  When the Awakening struck, the Forged Mountains were reshaped in ways no dwarf alive or entombed could ever have foreseen. Magma surged from the deep places of the world, boiling upward through ancient caverns and forgotten tunnels. Entire holds were drowned in fire, their halls choked with ash as centuries of craft and memory vanished beneath molten stone. A convulsion of the earth tore open the range itself. A single, world-rending quake split the mountains as if by some colossal blade, creating the yawning chasm that would come to be known as The Fissure. Once-dormant volcanoes awakened in unison, vomiting fire into the heavens and shrouding the sky for years behind a curtain of ash and cinders.   Nearly everything the dwarves had known was unmade as raw magic bled into stone, soil, and magma alike, warping the very nature of their homeland. The calamity was immortalized in their chronicles as the Time of the Bleeding Earth, a name spoken with equal parts reverence and dread. When the chaos at last subsided, the Forged Mountains emerged as something wholly new. The bedrock itself had shifted, veins of ore torn apart and reforged by pressure, flame, and wild arcane energies. In the ruins of their shattered realm, the dwarves discovered mineral deposits both natural and impossibly magical, scattered like treasure through the wounded mountains. New mines opened, new prospects glittered, and though their world had changed beyond recognition, the Mountain Kingdoms began the long, stubborn work of rebuilding, Dwarves against a world remade.

Very few people other than Dwarves come to reach the Dwarven Kingdoms through the mountains, along with a few High Elves and Snow Elves that come to trade with them from time to time.