The Hulderhorns

The High Range

The Hulderhorns crown the northwest of Maer’thalas Ridge. Their peaks keep snow all year, and the wind strips the faces to bare stone. Weather turns fast. A clear morning can end in whiteout by midday. Avalanches cut new lines each winter and bury waymarks without warning. Long seams of green-veined slate mark where ley pressure meets the surface. After storms these seams show a pale shine that helps climbers find solid ground. Sound carries strangely in the high bowls. Stone drums rolled by giants can be heard across valleys when the air is still, yet a shouted warning may vanish around a single buttress. The Wardens of Rootwatch record these quirks on bark slates and keep the boards updated at the foothill shelters. They also hang storm ribbons on cairns to warn of recent slides. The Lake-Wardens do not patrol this far, but their weather boards in Naath often predict fog banks and pressure dips that mean bad days in the Hulderhorns.

The range divides into a web of saddles, shelves, and ice-scoured ravines. Old routes survive with help from iron pins hammered into the walls at steady intervals. A few giant-cut stairs cross the higher spurs; their steps are long and uneven but safer than loose scree. Many of the shrines that dot the passes predate Naath. Stacked stones, carved hands, simple rings, and star marks show where offerings are welcome and where a traveler should keep distance. Lorekeepers teach a rule that holds true here: move slow, read the stones, and match your pace to the mountain. Spellwork is possible but must be careful. Casting over a cracked seam can twist the effect or push it into a companion. A bronze pin and thread test shows whether a seam is stable. If the thread trembles, wait. The Hulderhorns give nothing for free, but they set clear terms for those who pay attention.

Giants and the Old Order

The Hulderhorns still belong to giant-kin. Hill giants range the lower shelves in loose bands, hunting goat and elk and breaking camps that trespass on their game lines. Many are quick to anger and slow to forgive. They claim what they can carry and mark it with ash and bone, then dare anyone to take it back. Yet even the roughest bands keep certain rules around shrines and burial sites. Seasonal gatherings at marked cairns pause feuds, settle small disputes, and pass down stories that hold their bands together. Frost giants keep higher ground. They follow herds across frozen rivers and return to known halls when winter deepens. Their leaders set hunts by the old drums, counting the days by ice melt on cliff rings. Most will not talk with strangers. Some will bargain if approached with clear hands, salted meat, and iron offered without trickery. Stone giants are rare now. Those few that remain avoid open paths and spend their strength tending memory halls and repairing old murals. Fire giant work lies in ruin, yet their slag beds still draw scavengers. Cloud and storm giants no longer rule the air here, but their weather posts remain, and their marks still align to the sky at certain hours.

All of these peoples carry a long anger toward the Skeliri of the Varnhollow Peaks. Skeliri bands have raided giant shrines, cut bridge ropes, and snared scouts with silk lines across black openings. They have taken younglings, poisoned kill sites, and left mock offerings that defile the stone. Giants remember these acts and often see all elves as the same. This is a constant danger for Naath. Wardens use fixed signs to avoid confusion: white sashes tied to the belt and a palm-mark drawn on a flat stone near a meeting place. When parley is needed, it is done in the open with no cloaks and no hoods. The Naath Council recognizes that most giants here are dangerous and that many are evil by law and deed, yet it also keeps protocols for talk when talk can prevent blood. Offerings that matter are simple: salt, iron nails, good bread, and a tool left with no claim. Words that matter are short. Do not boast. Do not bargain twice. If a giant says no, it is no. The Seekers carry copies of these rules in waxed packets, and fines are heavy when they ignore them.

Despite the hatred for Skeliri, some giants will guard an elven patrol that has earned their trust or accept a warning about a ley surge that could break a cornice. A few hill giant elders still remember a treaty from two lifetimes back that traded passage at a certain saddle for the repair of a drum ring. In hard years, even proud hunters will set a spear in a cairn to show peace for a day so a caravan can pass. These chances are rare and never safe, but they never come if the Wardens abandon the ground.

Sites of Stone, Ice, and Sky

The Stonebreath Halls sit in a cliff face above a wind channel. The first chambers open onto ledges scarred by old campfires. Deeper rooms turn smooth and carry careful reliefs of hunts, feasts, births, and quiet hours. Each hall has a purpose. One holds counsel with benches worked into the wall. One is kept for silence and is shaped to catch a single tone if a visitor breathes too loud. In the furthest chambers, murals of unknown scenes fold around the curve of the rock. The stone giants who built this place did not use it for war. It is a record. Even now, new tool marks show that a careful hand returns from time to time to clear dust from a face or add a single line to a border. Wardens and Seekers map only the outer rings and do not carve their own marks inside. The Lorekeepers advise the same restraint. Those who breach a sealed door invite a rockfall and the anger of any giant who still comes to tend the place.

Thurm-Gar’s Cairn rises from a lower ridgeline like a squat tower built of river boulders. Hill giants keep it as a site of memory for Thurm-Gar Bonebreaker, a war-leader who united rival bands long ago. The cairn is ringed by a trampled court where food is shared and strength contests prove youth ready for the next season. Fights end before blood falls on the stone. When bands meet here, they hold their grudges outside the ring and speak a common oath that binds them only for the day. Travelers are not welcome during gatherings but are sometimes ignored if they keep moving along the outer trail. The cairn serves a clear use beyond memory. It is neutral ground for quick arbitration. Two bands can settle a border walk with words and turn to face a shared threat without delay. Wardens plan patrols to avoid these days. The Merchant Guild posts a reminder in Trailhome: “Do not bring trade to the cairn. Pay respect. Pass on.”

Glasrim Hold is a frost giant redoubt built into an ice-scarred ravine. In late autumn, the holds fill slowly. Hunters arrive with sleds of dried meat, hides, and bone. Trophies hang from stone hooks outside: horns, tusks, and carved markers naming kills. Inside, the main hall echoes with slow speech and iron striking the anvils that repair spearheads and boot studs. Caverns cut off the hall serve as stores and as a council room when bands gather to choose a winter leader. Names are carved into a frost-coated entry wall in long lines, each mark placed with a gloved hand so it will hold. In spring, the hold is bare. Yet messages remain etched into the ice, and packs that pass through in summer add signs for others. These records carry weight. False marks are a grave insult, and a Seeker caught scratching a trick into the wall may not leave the ravine.

The Embervault Crater is the scar of a fire giant forge complex. A basin roof collapsed centuries ago, and the outer slopes glazed in lava that cooled to black glass veined with trapped metal. Even now, deep channels hold trace heat. Salvagers chip out old slag, pry free weapon halves, and cut ingots from fused ore. Gas vents open without warning, and rim stones slide if stepped on wrong. The Guild issues recovery scrip for this site and requires full logs of finds. The Seekers take contracts to guard crews and to retrieve those who misread the ground. Tools used here are simple and safe: iron spikes, long tongs, masks soaked in vinegar, and sleds that can take a bad haul over sharp glass. The crater gives one of the few sources of true fire giant metal outside buried strongholds. That fact draws risk and greed in equal measure.

The Windstep Monolith stands where the ridge meets the cloudline. Giant-cut stairs wind up the slope in long strides. At the top, a single stone pillar bears weather sigils, wind markers, and alignment cuts that match the sun at turning points. Cloud giants once kept watch here to read the sky and write the season’s first storms into their records. Now the post sees only quiet use by Wardens and a few Lorekeepers who trust the outlook. From this point, one can follow the lines of valleys and see icefields that remain hidden from below. It is a clear vantage for ropes thrown across hard crossings and for warning fires set in the dusk. The marks are still true. New cuts are made at the base—small and neat—to show current wind shifts for those who cannot stay to watch a full day.

Skystake Summit is a flat crown in the upper range. Storm giants set a ring of green-veined obelisks here to track lightning and the movement of cold fronts above the peaks. The stone faces carry tallies of strikes and simple symbols for wind shear, frost rime, and cloud depth. The ring still hums a little under heavy weather. Wardens post seasonal readings in the crack between two tilted stones where frost does not cling. Seekers use the summit as a navigation point when crossing the high saddle to reach the northern shelves. The place holds no comfort, but it anchors maps and gives the high traveler a fixed truth in a land that hides its shape.