The Frostcrown

The coastal snow-giant of a mountain north-east of the Vale — Korl sacred ground above the snowline, a hero peak with no other range to explain it.

It stands alone where no other range explains it: a coastal horn of rock climbing out of open water, low country falling away on every side until only the sea is left below it. A traveller can walk to its foot on a land saddle from the south-west, but the climb from there is real — the air thins, the snow never breaks, and the exposed upper flank is Korl ground in a way no map marks. The Korl do not call it theirs the way a house calls a keep theirs; they call it a grave, and say the highest dead in the world are laid closest to the sky so the weight of the years doesn't reach them. Lowlanders who have gone up and come back call it The Frostcrown for the permanent ice-band that caps it above the snowline. Whether it connects, underfoot or over sea, toward the far cold country the Korl themselves come from is a question no settled person has answered.