Abbey Mountains

The Abbey Mountains were a range of peaks in North Faerun between the Tortured Land and the Frozen Forest. They have have been called the Abbey Mountains since the days of Netheril, when worshippers of Selûne built the Abbey of the Moon atop Selûne’s Crest, the highest peak of the range. Once a magnificent building, the site is now a toppled ruin of shattered stone columns, foundations, and monster-haunted cellars.

To the local gnolls of Frozen Flindyke, these mountains are the Rabrae Hyuk (“hyar” is rock or loose stone in the gnoll tongue, “hyukla” is a crag or spire, and “hyuk” is a mountain or range of mountains; “Rabrae” is the name of these mountains, an apparent echo/corruption of “Abbey”).

The range overall is quite frigid and windswept, with only the topmost peaks getting snow caps. Extensive explorations over the ages have found relatively few veins of ore worth mining. One third of the way along the range from its eastern end is Turnback Mountain, which is a distinctively tall peak among other peaks north and south. It's name came from being where an ancient prospector expedition, after finding little of worth but endless creatures wanting them dead, finally got disheartened by their heavy losses and nigh-ceaseless attacks and decided to turn back.

More recent expeditions have reported that there are no less than two dragon lairs and three shattered but extensive ruins—possibly the ruins of fallen Netherese flying cities—hidden away in the deep and rarely visited valleys in the heart of the range.

The foothills along the northern face of the Abbey range are known locally as the “mammothbacks,” and for centuries have been used for the caching of treasure, the entombment of Ride barbarian chieftains, and as natural funnel hunting traps by gnolls to lure rothé and caribou herds to their doom.

A bone chillingly cold river, the Alaphaer Run, flows north out of the western Abbey Mountains and into the nearby Frozen Forest; following the river will lead to the mysterious step pyramid known as the Monument of the Ancients.