The Stormcrown

Overview

The Stormcrown is the high country above the holds of The Ironspine and the last towns of The Headwater Marches: bare ridges, storm shelves, and high basins where the vanished Upland Colossal Civilization left its terraces, ridge roads, and weather shrines. Headwater folk named it for the storms that gather on its ridges before they come down the valleys. In the holds it is simply the heights, the top storey of the mountain belt, and Dwarves seldom call it anything else. Up there lie giants' tombs that no one has opened, roads too broad for any living builder, and something under the summits that beats like a heart.

No hold claims it, and no lord. Its lower edge is not a line but the place where the holds' gate-watch and the Headwater lords' grants give out and a taboo takes over, so it sits lower on some spurs than others and moves with whoever is willing to climb.

Lay of the Land

The Stormcrown is the crest of the Ironspine, running north to south above the holds as far as the belt is mapped. It is widest above the Headwater Marches on its eastern side, where its terraces step down into the valleys. The Long Tread follows the outer, eastern crest for weeks, and the Weatherline stands on the highest ridges above the Headwater valleys, in sight of Notchfield. Westwards the heights fall to the forest-side holds, and at the belt's southern end they sink with it. Northwards the colossal ridge roads run on past the last hold into the snow, towards the Rimefold, where nobody below has followed them. See The Lay of the Land.

What Happened Here

These heights were the open country of the colossal peoples. Over The Rise of the Upland Colossal Civilization (c. 260,000-c. 195,000 BR) they made the bare heights their home: roads held across ridges, terraces cut against storms, shrines raised where the weather could see them, tombs set high in the stone.

Nobody conquered them. In The Withdrawal of the Upland Colossal World (c. 198,000-c. 160,000 BR) the heights simply stopped repaying a life lived at that scale. The communities drew upward and inward into hidden basins and storm shelves, fell silent, and stopped being met. Their god, Haurûm the Mountain-Father, slept as his people thinned.

No one has settled the Stormcrown since. It is too high, too exposed, and too costly to hold, and the peoples below have long found it wiser to leave what stands up there alone. Not everyone does: every valley has its tale of a climber who went up for the treasure of a giant's grave and came down in the spring thaw.

What Is Known

• Land. Bare rock, thin air, little soil, and weather that turns within the hour.
• The Long Tread. The greatest of the colossal ridge roads runs for days along the outer crest, too broad for any living builder, and it is the one way through the Stormcrown that ordinary travellers know.
• The Weatherline. On the highest ridges a chain of weather shrines of stacked and fitted stone faces the storms rather than any town.
• The sleeping heights. Haurûm is said to lie beneath the highest summits.
• Who comes here. Kindred caravans on their circuits, carrying salvage, news, and danger-warnings along the high roads, and with them the wind-god Corrow the Gale-Runner.

Settlements

Nobody has settled the Stormcrown since the colossal peoples withdrew, and the hidden basins where Giant lines may live are left unmapped. It is watched from below: from the Headwater village of Notchfield, which reads the Weatherline for its weather, and from the gate holds of the Ironspine as far as their own stretches of the Long Tread run.

The People

Nobody is settled in the Stormcrown. In summer Kindred caravans of a few dozen walk the high roads and hold wardens keep their stretches of the Long Tread, and none of them stays the winter. How many Giants live in the hidden basins is left open. Below, Notchfield's thirty households watch the Weatherline.

What Is Not Known

Above the Long Tread and the Kindred circuits, the Stormcrown is left unmapped on purpose. Nobody below knows where its hidden basins lie, how many Giant lines still live in them, or whether any would bargain with smaller peoples, and on what terms. Nobody knows what the colossal peoples called these heights, what the weather shrines once answered, or what lies in the high tombs: grave-gold, colossal arms too heavy for a living hand, or the colossal dead themselves, waiting. Which old obligations still bind its roads and passes, and to whom, is half-remembered at best. And no one can say which summit, if any, the Mountain-Father sleeps beneath.

Tensions

• One terrace higher. The lowest colossal terraces are ploughed, and the Stormcrown begins wherever the Headwater lords' grants and the holds' gate-watch give out and the taboo takes over.
• Goods from the high tombs. Now and then a Kindred caravan brings down worked pieces it says came from a tomb that rockfall had already opened, and its people say they left the place no more dangerous than they found it, as their custom asks.
• Who tends the Weatherline. Upland custom credits the shrines' long survival to the sleeping god.