The land that makes up the Iskaldur Peninsula was once the northern heartland of the dread empire Zuno’olos, a fertile (if chilly) place of gently sloping plains and coniferous forests. During the Perdition near the end of the Godswar, the landscape was shattered, the ground heaving and rising thousands of feet into the air before it cracked, the northern half of the empire shoved dozens of miles away from the southern half, as the sea flooded into the crevasse left behind. The central corridor of the empire, a vast swathe of territory stretching east-west across the empire, sunk down below sea level as well, resulting in the creation of the Skarren Gulf.
Worse than the geographic destruction, though, a slow but pernicious curse of unlife settled on much of the area, killing crops and grass and allowing precious topsoil to flow down to the sea. The Skaldings still have myths of when the rivers ran black with the blood of the land, before the Time Of Hunger in the aftermath of the Godswar, and the jaggedly vertical, inhospitable land that was left has defined Iskaldur ever since. Though the ice has carved fjords out of many of the valleys over the last few millennia and the worst of the mountains have been weathered into more soil, the land is still harsh and uninviting.
The northwestern portion of the nation is in contact with the Endless White, a vast field of glaciers covering the north pole. There are a few mountains that rise up out of the ice, but otherwise it is a flat expanse of cracked and groaning frost, haunted by monsters both above and within the glaciers. Hunters traverse the ice in search of prey, bragging rights, and the persistent rumors of Zu’unolosi ruins filled with treasure. The Skalding tendency towards taking great risks in pursuit of great rewards is at its greatest in these Snow-Farers, who are viewed as half-mad at best, even by other Skaldings.
Iskaldur territory sub-pages