Cold Goddess Mountains

The Cold Goddess Mountains stretch over 2000 miles north to south, to the west of the most settled areas in my 'known lands' setting. They are characterised by steep mountain slopes and dense, lush forest, as well as bleaker colder landscapes in places of higher elevation. This region is dotted with both recent and ancient dwarf mines, as well as more recent human mines. 

The Cold Goddess moutnains are reputed to be haunted, and are home to a number on non-human peoples.

A small number of dwarves roam the region, the last vestiges of their dwindling population. They sell their skills where they can and try to avoid places they might be enslaved. 

There are elves.  Specifically two warring races, the Sidhe (pronounced 'Shee'), who arrived here with the last wave human migrants and the Manavargr, a northern race who are hostile to humans and Sidhe alike. 

Blue Jar hobgoblin folk trade here, both above and below ground and maintain positive relations with most of their neighbouring nations, though even they struggle with some of them. 

There are occasional incursions from the troeg, troglodytes who live in warrens beneath the mountains and see all their neighbours as food or resources. These are actually the main species in the region, possibly aside from humans. Numbers are unclear on both sides. But the troeg live in great numbers beneath the mountains, in tunnels they cut themselves, when their race were slaves. They raid the surface for slaves themselves, now, and for food and raw materials such as hides and wood and human hair.

Carcajou are present in the region and various attempts have been made to constrain them with treaties, but they are a disparate and diverse folk and while a single group or tribe might be bound by the terms of a treaty, others often don't feel the same way.

Rivers flow east to the sea and south, from the Cold Goddess range. Along these arteries of trade and colonisation travel humans, in boats or on horses along their banks. Those who cannot settle the fertile floodplains of these rivers, either through lack of resources or lack of interest or will, may travel beyond the settled lands and find themselves in the shadow of the Cold Goddess. Here, they often become hunters or trappers, traders to the few and far between settlements and outposts, loggers, or else are lured by the rumours of lost dwarven treasure beneath the cold and unforgiving mountains. Most find the going hard, the climate treacherous, the terrain difficult, and the isolation close to unbearable. No small number find it impossible to bear and succumb, in one form or another, to despair. They might turn to the dark idols said to be found in the high, windswept ruins that dot the region, or else become killers, when hunger overwhelms their humanity. Or else they give in to the dark and silent calling that some claim to hear, echoing from the high valleys and the deep gorges and which some say is the sound of the Cold Goddes herself, weeping they say, at the fragility of humankind. Or, say others, laughing.

For those for whom it is all too much, there is something else, beyond despair. The Calling, as it is known, becomes too much to resist and they give into it, running off into the night to give themselves to chaos. The darkness, it is said, finds a way inside and they are changed by it. Some end up mutilating themselves, others seem to change by no means known to them. They might bear a mark, such as eyes without whites, or overlarge teeth, a taste for human flesh or blood. Such people are known as Goblin Men, though there are women among them, and they gather in the lost and distant places of the forest at the mountains' foot, or on its high, rocky shoulder, or in its pits, and sing to the moon or other less fathomable things, or to the Cold Goddess herself, and wait for a chance to feast on their erstwhile fellows. For only human flesh, it is said, will ever make them feel warm again.