The Tasgusun Hills lie to the west of the Great Gorge and stretch, in fits and starts, nearly the whole distance to the Shgudulus River, a very lengthy journey to the west. They are not, for the most part, especially impressive summits. None would call them mountains. Of all the peaks, I do not believe even one rises a full thousand meters above the surrounding steppe, and most are less than half this height, with much soft rolling character. They differ from the surrounding, broadly flat, grassland in their continually contoured nature. From a distance, the hills give off the feel of a vast felt blanket, scrunched up and matted.
Due to this pattern, the hills retain winter snow, and this additional moisture combines with the shelter of the slopes from the howling winds to allow patches of forest to develop beneath the shelter of the ridges. These stands of trees are still dry, their population comprised of cypress, pine, and juniper, with each trunk well spaced from its fellows and rarely tall. I counted no more than a handful of trees in those hills greater than five times my own height. The understory remains grassy, with only the occasional shrub, and is kept clear by a combination of grazing and fire. It is never plowed and the soil is often churned by endless roots. However, the abundance, limited though it is, of timber, changes the nature of life here. The Kharal largely keep to the edges of these hills. They graze the borders where grass remains abundant. Further in, the land is largely empty. Great hunts are held here, but otherwise this land hosts only scattered tribes of Bahab, few in number.
The presence of these people, who rely upon the forests for food and game, helps to preserve the hills from the hungry axes of both Kharal and Nikkad, ever peoples with a desire for timber and fuel. Even so, many slopes are deliberately planted and minded carefully, granted as allotments to those nearby for charcoal production, an absolute necessity for the production of iron. Small trees make for weak beams, but excellent coals. The Bahab are highly skilled charcoal burners and may produce in excess of their needs. This is traded to nearby Nikkad settlements in return for good they cannot produce themselves, mostly medicines.
Game is highly abundant in these hills, supported by the fruits of the forest and the flowering of summer growth on the exposed ridges and summits. Important game animals include red deer, argali sheep, ibex, and the strange goat-antelope known as the markhor. The latter is an extravagantly maned creature whose grand horns rise from the head and twist about like the plane of a screw or a serpent wrapped about a stave. It is a most curious creature, though now elusive for the horns are highly prized by alchemists for use in both the treatment of snake venom and the manufacture of poisons from the same. The Bahab follow the guidance of their shamans in limiting the take of these majestic animals in order to preserve their numbers, but bandits, cultists, and agents of the Obsidian Order all defy such dictates. Boar is also found in the hills, though their numbers are kept in check by aggressive hunting and trapping, with pork a common feature of Bahab feasts. As to small game, squirrel, marmot, and pheasant are abundant, and valued for fur and feather in addition to meat. So too are wolves, an animal highly valued by the Bahab. Wolf pelts are traded out from the hills, with an emphasis on those animals hunted in winter, when their coats are a pleasing pale gray shade.
Winter travel through the hills is, as may be expected, very difficult. Persistent snow covers everything. Its thickness may vary immensely as it wraps about tree trunks, covers troughs, and hides buried stones. Walking without making use of wide boots is very challenging, and even a horse can become cast in deep snow. Herds of deer and sheep carve trails through the snow, which the enterprising traveler can follow, but these are also known to the wolves and their presence adds considerable hazard to such paths. Thankfully, the great fanged bears found in the true mountains of Shdustu are not known to lair in the hills, and the smaller bears that are found here sleep their way through the winter in hidden dens, leaving humans untroubled.
The resident Bahab, being widely scattered and few in number, are not easily located. Their villages, dependent upon good hunting, relocate every few years. Such small vegetable plots that they do plant are hidden between trees or lodged in forgotten valleys out of the view of outsiders. Berry bushes and fruit trees are also encouraged to grow near small streams, and harvested heavily. Grain is largely unknown to these people, though they will on rare occasions sow small measures of barley. Greater plantings are not undertaken, since even if the land could be cleared, they would simply be taken by the Kharal.
While the present residents are few and scattered, the hills hide an ancient legacy of greater fortune. The Bahab expanded here from their heartland in the mountains to the north, while Kharal and Nikkad surround the region and make use of its borders. All are relatively recent arrivals and their presence lies light upon the land. Instead, the hills are host to a legacy older and considerably more terrible than the nature of those who dwell there now, especially in the eastern portion near the Great Gorge. This region holds ruins that are centuries, or perhaps even a millennium, old. They come from the time before the Enlightened Revelation reached Shdustu, before the proper arrival of the Kharal, though there are no sources to properly date this period.
In that lost age the Tasgusun Hills represented the core of the Black Jasper Dominion, a tyrannical kingdom ruled by wizards.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Ominous as that sounds, it is somewhat exaggerated. Kingdom is a reasonable term, for the old tales speak of a lineage of wizard rulers who claimed the royal prerogative, but in truth they ruled little. The population of the hills could not have been large in those days, nor were there any grand cities. Only small villages spread across the valleys beneath the shadows of hilltop fortresses controlled by petty masters through their frightful mastery of the distortive powers of their practice. The reinforced bricks they used to build can still be found marking out foundations on certain hilltops, but they are small, compacted things. In the empire of today they would barely qualify as watchtowers. At an estimate, based on ruin and legend, the dominion never held more than a few dozen wizards at once, and it is doubtful if they controlled much more than fifty thousand lives in the whole of their territory.
Despite this, the dominion of these wizards lacked any strong presence upon the steppe to challenge their authority. In the era prior to the Falcon Khagan, they persisted for centuries. Turnover, for conflict within their ranks was doubtless constant as it is among wizards today, therefore spilled their artifacts out across the whole of the hills. Most notably, these tyrants left behind their tombs. They were loyal to heretical beliefs and sought, in either ignorance or denial, to isolate their bodies from the cycle of the Divines and find a path towards some form of return from death rather than emergence as new life. A curious and oddly ignorant obsession. Rebirth is clear and easily comprehended. How could the dead return to life in the same flesh?
In this manner, rather than commemorate monuments to their names or deeds, they produced tombs to house their physical remains. These were hewn out of hillsides and cliff faces at the bottom of valleys and ravines, just above the flood line, forming artificial caves. Bodies were dried and stored in stone coffins, a measure that served to greatly slow decay to the point that bones from some of these ancient dead yet remain intact, a thousand years gone. A grim impediment to rebirth, though in the case of ancient tyrants I suspect a thousand years is not enough to satisfy the demands of the Lord of Death in recompense for their mistakes.
Such lost legacies are of great interest to the Redbone Explorers and all who share their predilections. While such men will seek treasure anywhere it might be found, they have a particular zeal to recover and secure pre-revelation heresy so that it might not corrupt the unwary. Those who traveled with the expedition were very eager to seek out the tombs in the hills, believing they held great riches and profane relics alike. Certainly this was true, for the abundant gold of Shdustu was no less well known in ancient times, and the wizards were avaricious in death, seeking to have their remains surrounded by as much of their wealth as the tomb could possibly hold. Gold, silver, and other precious metals and gems are also easily severed from their settings and readily melted down, retaining value perfectly well even after the stain of heresy and wizardry is eliminated. This is the general approach to treasures from long ago, though certain carvings of animals and mystic beasts are considered to hold no theological weight and are in some cases highly appreciated by collectors.
Such vast riches were not left unguarded by long dead wizards. As they did not trust their living followers, a common trait of tyrants, they turned instead to their mystic arts for protection in death and fashioned puppets of stone. These hulking, vaguely humanoid creatures were empowered to smash and crush any and all who dared to disturb the stone chambers. Such creatures, which are also called golems, are among the most basic creations of the distorted mystic power of wizardry. They have long since been abandoned for use in battle, for such mindless brutes are easily overcome in the open by harassing tactics and careful strikes using mauls. In the narrow confines of a burial vault this approach is impossible and these long dormant minions the size of a great bear and many times heavier with strength to match are terrifyingly dangerous. A single blow can easily kill, shattering dozen of bones upon impact.
The puppets are also incredibly persistent, able to endure within the darkness of their tombs for centuries or even millennia. Though this sounds impossible, and I doubted it at first, it is true, for I saw these monsters lumber into motion from stillness myself. The Lady Indili explained how this was so, as a difference in the use of energy. A golem, unlike a living being, expends energy only to utilize its senses and move its limbs. Sitting perfectly still in total darkness, it uses almost nothing, drawing upon reserves only when disturbed. Just as a snake might eat but once a month while a cat of the same weight requires a mouse every day, the puppet constructs can endure privation upon the scale of stone. If roused, however, and forced into battle, their reserves expire swiftly indeed.
Many treasure hunters seeking the wealth hidden beneath the Tasgusun Hills have fallen to such guardians. The Redbone Explorers knew these monsters well, for wizards create such puppets even to this very day and they are found haunting many abandoned places. They also know means to defeat them effectively. Iron rods driven into the joints binds their motions and turns the great strength of these stone bodies against their own frame until they tear themselves apart, but such measures are not easily deployed in light-less confined spaces. Unfortunately, events sometimes flushed these puppets into the wild, for the churn of ice and snow, over endless turning of the seasons, breaks down even stone vaults. Burrowing action by animals and plant roots also contributes to cracking open that which was once sealed. A puppet, bound by simple orders to attack all intruders, for their mindless nature can accomplish nothing more complex, may chase a beast for hours and rampage through any village or encampment it happens to encounter.
In order to mitigate such difficulties, the Bahab sought out the services of Lady Indili, for the powers of a master of essence sorcery are ideal to probe empty tombs and discover which puppets remained active and which had decayed through the passage of time. This service, which promised great riches, drew her, the Redbone Explorers, and myself deep into the Tasgusun Hills.