Torvaldsland, in the northern area of Gor, is a wild, rugged land, a place of ice and snow in the long winter and pleasant but all-too-short, and too few, days of summer. It is a mountainous region, harsh and difficult to farm. There are clusters of communities along the coast, as this also affords the opportunity to fish – and of course, in times of hardship, to raid. The people are strong, proud, and tall . . . very tall. In fact, bothmen and women tend to stand a head taller than their southern counterparts, making them striking to behold. They live in their small communities under the leadership of their Jarl, to whom men swear allegiance and women look for protection. Further north still lie the lands of the Red Hunters, the tundra-likeregion of Gor, even harsher to exist in than Torvaldsland. The polar basin that makes up these lands is thousands of pasangs wide. Winters are bitingly cold; cold enough for Thassa to freeze around the coasts for about six months of the year, forming huge icebergs that float in the constant darkness of this season. In contrast, the six months of summer are all daylight. The land is soft and spongy, covered in mosses,lichens and small shrubs. Red Hunters are a nomadic people, shorter and heavier than the average Gorean, helping them conserve heat. They live in widely scattered, isolated communities, in camps separated by several days’ journey. They tend not to leave the polar region and are, therefore, something of a mystery to the majority of Goreans. These two regions, Torvaldsland and the Polar Basin, are separated bya range of two mountain chains known as the Hrimgar Mountains. There are numerous passes running through the mountains between the two regions, the Tancred Pass being the most famous, named after the herd oftabuk that use it as a migratory route annually from one area to the other. As is often the case with remote areas, myths and legends build up over years, and stories are passed down through the peoples and cultures. One such tells of a hall high in the mountains along one of these passes, supposedly built by the gods, but long since abandoned because of a lack of honour in the lands they had created. This fabled hall is set, supposedly, on one of the biggest treasures in Gor. Should one hike into the mountains for several days, and should the mists in the Mjolnir Valr clear a little around the lofty peaks, there might be the flicker of a shadow in the clouds, large and majestic, showing fleetingly on the ground below before disappearing again. But, it is more likely to be simply your imagination, isn’t it?
Posted on: Sun, 21 Jul 2013 06:32:09 +0000
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