Giantspines

The low, rocky mountain range that protrudes from the sea around which the Maethian Arm is formed makes up the centre of the arm. Nearly impassable to the average traveller, they split the Arm in two. For the most part the lands of the arm are no more than craggy hills but the Giantspines change altitude and gradient dramatically and suddenly like some towering natural wall of ruddy brown stone. To the north of the Giantspines the land is in the hands of a few groups of giants such as those led by Sobh and Daga, all allied to the Noi, while to the south the lands is shared by men and goblyns. Little or nothing can traverse these mountains, and even the giants must go around to pass this sheer natural wall.

Rumours about the Giantspines are common. Some say that they are what remains of the body of Ettin after Koroth took his hide. The bleached bones jutting half buried from the earth, turned slowly to stone over the years. Rumours amongst the goblyns speak of the Undercity, a great settlement of thousands and thousands of deep-goblyns dwelling below the mountains. Others say that it is a city of giants, the entry to the underworld of their mines where they toil eternally to undermine the world. Stories of caves opening overnight and then sealing up again at daybreak, never to be found again, and of arms emerging from great fissures to grasp the unsuspecting and haul them down are all too common to put down to mere folk lore, and the people of Maethas, man and goblyn alike, stay clear of the Giantspines in all but the greatest necessity. Giants have no such fear of the place, and those who come to trade their unnaturally large livestock with the goblyns often graze in these mountain’s shadows. Rumours of roughriders desperate or foolish enough to rustle a giant’s herd laying in wait in the Giantspines have recently begun to arise, though it is hard to imagine how even the dour roughriders might survive in this place, and no one reports having encountered any such men.

In the heart of the Giantspines is a narrow pass controlled by a small party of the most elite members of the goblyns of the usually nomadic Death Mist. At the heart of this pass are the so-called Yurgish Tablets, a bare granite cliff face where pictographs depicting the Yurgish Secrets are carved over the whole cliff face. While only Yurga can make sense of these carvings, they are never the less a greatly revered and sacred place for all goblyns, and no goblyn dares make war here.