The Northern Province; Geography

The Northern Province

The Northern Province has several boundaries. 

It is bordered by Seas to the east.  It is bordered by Mountain and Seas to the North.  It is bordered by Mountains and the Gray Elven Nation of Westfolden to the West.  It is bordered by Mountains and the Human Kingdoms to the South.  There are some known ways to traverse these boundaries. 

Ships travel near the coast and routes exist that reach Endeverin, the Gray Elvin City by the sea, far to the northwest.  The Magic City of Tarsus, also to the North.   The Fallen isles To the North-Northeast.  The Pirate Cities of Balora and Lidia, on isles to the north east.  The Sea forts of the Dwarves to the East.  The Kings fort and harbor of Lastholm to the Southeast. And further on to Kias, Freewinds and Vicars burg, all human cities, far to the south, and eventually Tulnimoon and the Horned lands beyond..

The Cold Mountains rise to the west and span the horizon running from deep in the south where they split from the Hard Mountains and ending in a chasm where the river Hale falls into the northern sea and the Blue mountains begin their march east along the northern Border of the Provence.  Roads and passes lead there and through, onto the green kingdom of the Gray Elves, named Westfolden.  The Cold Mountains have ruins from the times when the elves ruled here and it was the seat of Elvin power.  Much of the ruins in the first lowlands that sit at the foot of the Cold mountains are all old elvin ruins of the time of Oovardiis, and the ruins of the dwarves who came before them. 

The great Blue Mountains rise to the north, where much that was the old kingdoms of men exists, and a lone fort past them by the sea called Hardhold.  The mountains are home to many and though snow never melts at the peaks, they are temperate and many live there.  Their start at the River Hale is surely a cataclysm of forgotten gods and magic.  It is as though a sword drew down through the great mountain that once joined the cold and the blue ranges and drained the norther swamp into the northen sea by that deep warm river, pulling the mountains out to sea with it, and making them two separate and distinct ranges and a forest of islands beyond.  The dwarves, the elves, the humans all built in this chasm.  The ruins of towns and lost cities dot the old roads that risk those deapths.  Still, People live there, human, and sundered, the Arakokra City of Orrin sit almost atop the river.

The Coast to the Northeast and east are almost all cliffs.  There are natural harbors and some beaches but they are the exception and not the role.  Old Dwarven sea forts dot the horizon out at sea more directly east and at the limit of the horizon, not much to the southeast.  The Fallen Isle rise where the blue mountains dive into the sea in the Northeast.  The Cities of Lydia and Balora are in the southernmost of the Fallen isles.  Out to sea to the east is nothing that men know, a sea not looked to, a place only where men came from, many hundreds of years ago, and did not look back.

To the South are the Hard Mountains that run almost due west, where after many many days travel they join with the cold mountains to their right and march side by side deep into the great lands, always with the Vasting to the South, the gray Elven Kingdom of westfolden to the north and the First Vally between them.  An Idyllic place held sacred by all and kept as a boundary from real war between elves and men.

The hard Mountains end at the sea in a bench of sorts that looks to exist as the only road from the south and the North.  The cliffs that form there at the bench drop straight to the sea some 300 feet below.  There is no mooring or beach between the Kings fort at the start of the range in the south, up to tenwillows cove where the mountains have ended and the low flat fertile lands of the northern province begin.

This bench is called Chapmans bench by the humans, and the Door by the Gray Elves.  There are many hundred of mounds of buried men her from the last and great war with the Elves when Kign John and all his armies were driven from the lands, and his cities burned, and more than most of his men were killed.  The total time it takes to walk the bench is one week on foot, less by wagon and horse.  No horse can run the bench all the way in one day.  Most take ships from Lastholm to Tenwillows and further up.

The rest of the lands of the northern Province sit as if in this great broken bowl of fertile lands, heavy forests, swamps and rivers.  The land is for the most part flat except when one gets closer to the feet of the Cold and the Blue mountains, where terrain rise toward hill and smaller mountains until the they break and stand with impunity and reach straight up to touch the very sky.  The hard mountains are disastrous, and confusing and there are many peaks and many ruts and dead end canyons and crevasse, and despite reason, are harder to navigate and pass than the impssible heights of the Cold mountain is the west.