Editing Acrozatarim/Gazetteer (section)

==The Storm Mountains==

The rising Storm Mountains mark the southern boundary of the Drakkath, a mighty wall of peaks reaching for the sky that runs west from the Marble Sea, eventually curving south-west before tapering out in the steppelands; the gap there, between the Sarokean and Storm ranges, is known as the Sarok Expanse.  For much of its length, the Storm range is a relatively narrow band of foothills and mountains, but in the east it billows out southwards into the Kyros Plateau, a broad mass of highlands and peaks that shelters the heartlands of High Kyros and runs down along the coast.  Here, too, it eventually diminishes into lesser hills before finally reducing to nothing in the far southern permafrost.

The Storms are a savage landscape hammered by rough weather; the Roost of Ishrak, as the range is sometimes called, sees brutal storms, howling winds and thick blizzards far more regularly than the lowlands around it.  Meteorothaumaturgists offer a large number of explanations as to the weather systems causing this, but most people accept that the mountain range was the home of Ishrak in the Dawn Age and leave it at that.  A number of dangerous passes wind through the Storms, but the threat of the mountains' inhabitants and the unpredictable weather mean that most would rather take ship down the coast or travel through the Sarok Expanse to reach the southern lands.  The Storms outside of High Kyros are not entirely uninhabited - a few hardy villages cling to the high valleys, mining towns eke out an existence in the shadow of the mountains and the rare township manages to survive - but the area is generally poorly charted.  Travellers have reported various phenomena and strange sights in the Storms - ruined cities built high on mountaintops, immense crackling lightning-towers of the Dawn era that blaze with light during vicious storms, and remote sects of Ishrakite priests  and elemental practitioners perched amidst the peaks.

The mountains play host to plenty of wild beasts and the occasional servitor.  Goblins can be found here, small and hardy clans of survivors that have evaded Kyrosi slavers.  Both they and the local humans speak fearfully of a truly sinister threat in the mountains - strange frost and wind spirits that can weave illusions and glamours with ease, living in palaces carved into the peaks' and toying with mere mortal lives that fall into their clutches.  These predatory, malign spirits can change their shape with ease, but are said to naturally look like hybrids of man (or goblin) and mountain beasts.  They rarely seem to be any sort of danger for High Kyros caravans and travellers, however; presumably, the Frost Council have made a pact or treaty with the beings.  Ogres are also a problem in the region; unlike their kin who were shackled by the Shadowfury's dark magic, the ogre phratries of the Storms still retain a great deal of their ancient culture and traditions, some even maintaining the titles and organisation of actual Elder-era servitor regiments.  These ogre phratries rarely fight amongst themselves, which makes them all the more dangerous; their numbers have been slowly growing during the Zenith Age and they have a knack for violence that makes them a real danger for both the south lands and the Drakkath.