The foothills clamber up like knuckles against the behemoth Jagged Reaches, their peaks shrouded in a perpetual cowl of mist. They are weathered and cracked hills, adorned with a ragged mane of stunted trees and spiky bushes. Here, the green is bruised, a sickly emerald clinging to life amongst the omnipresent grey of scree and exposed rock, and caves gape like toothless maws in the cliff faces.
Rumor has it nomadic people live in these hills, their skin is the color of lichen, their eyes like chips of smoky quartz, reflecting the ever-shifting moods of the sky. They move with the wind, fleet-footed and silent, their homes woven from twisted branches and animal hides, dismantled and carried on their backs as easily as a hawk carries a feather.
Others tell of large cave bats, and the skittering of rockrats, their eyes like pinpricks of malice in the perpetual twilight, of peregrine falcons scream defiance from their eyries, of Stone Eaters, hulking monstrosities said to lurk in the deepest pits, and of Mist Folk, wraiths that rise from the swirling vapors, seeking warmth and life in the bodies of the unwary. Though the latter are often discounted in civilized society as old-hag-tales.