Abbey Mountains

The Abbey Mountains were a range of tall peaks in North Faerun located between the Tortured Land and the Frozen Forest.

The range was quite frigid and windswept, with only the topmost peaks getting consistent snow caps.

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

A supernaturally cold river, the Alaphaer Run, flowed north out of the western Abbey Mountains and into the nearby Frozen Forest; following the course of the river led to the mysterious step pyramid known as the Monument of the Ancients.

The Abbey Mountains name came from the 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.

One third of the way along the range from its eastern end was Turnback Mountain, which was a distinctively tall peak among other heights to the 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 took heed from their heavy losses and nigh-ceaseless attacks and decided to turn back. Extensive expeditions over the ages have found relatively few veins of ore worth mining in the range.

More recent adventuring expeditions had reported that there were no less than two dragon lairs and three shattered but extensive ruins (possibly fallen Netherese flying cities) hidden away in the deep and rarely visited valleys at the heart of the range.

To the local gnolls of Frozen Flindyke, these mountains were 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” was the name of these mountains, an apparent echo/corruption of “Abbey”).