This high up, season doesn't matter: spend too long trying to cross these mountains, and the land will find a way to sweep you off the paths carved into the peaks. Try it in the spring, and the glacier run-off flood the valleys and soak the ridges. Summer, and the thawing tundras to the north send their rain and hail, and by autumn the soaked hillsides buckle, shake, and slide. Come winter, and the hills and peaks freeze once again, the storms break the firs at their base, and the lightning shatters the stone.

And those are not the only dangers for residents and travelers. Wolves stalk the forests, bears make their den, and cougars watch the trails. Worse still, bandits hide in the tunnels and caves, waiting out the long winters with what they plunder from the caravans they rob, or, more often, from the rubble they scavenge deep in the valleys, swept off the high roads by the wind. Even they, however, have something to fear: the banshee's screams from the nocturnal forests, the wood specters feasting on those poor souls caught wandering the woods after sundown. Such as it is, no one of the wolves, bears, cougars or bandits make their home among the mountain trees.

Despite all of these, frontiersmen and prospectors always make their seasonal journeys into these Highlands. Nestled among those white-capped peaks are veins of iron, silver, gold, and platinum. Caverns of kaleidoscopic crystals that shine with their own light, tombs of old, forgotten civilizations, and subterranean creatures of the most unimaginable nature, all undiscovered and untouched, await those explorers brave enough to navigate the labyrinth of ice and rock.

Of course, 'brave' is used loosely: the truly courageous know better than to seek out unneeded trouble. No, the bravery of the Highlands is that of the starved and desperate. The iron mines could always use more picks, the mills more axes, and the valleys more skeletons.