Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale is a geographical region in far northwestern Elleswere. Despite its near-polar climate and less-than-hospitable living conditions, it has been the centre of power for a number of major empires, including the Alagonid Empire and the Ostorian Empire.
The dale is a harsh land, near-uninhabitable outside of the central lakes of Maer Dualdon, Lac Dinneshere, and Redwaters. Its temperatures regularly plunge far below freezing, even in the spring and summer months. Icewind Dale received little sunlight, particularly during its severe winters, and is almost entirely a polar desert. Beyond the sporadic dots of civilization, huddled around the compartively warm lakes region that hosts Ten-Towns, the region is largely inhabited by Reghed tribes, megafauna and small creatures specially adapted to the harsh climate, and terrifying beasts and monsters that prey on both of the former.
Geography and Climate
Icewind Dale is lowland valley centred on three mineral-laden lakes of Maer Dualdon, Lac Dinneshere, and Redwaters. The lakes are fed from the Worldspine Mountains and the Reghed Glacier. Their waters are generally cold enough to kill men who dared to swim across, even during summer, but are large and warm enough to remain unfrozen through the year. Just east of the lakes stands the dale's solitary mountain, Kelvin's Cairn, which offered fresh water to the surrounding lakes when "spring" bloomed every Highsun.
Icewind Dale takes its name from the harsh winds and icy storms that have the ability to destroy buildings and scoured the landscape. The region experiences freezing temperatures for much of the year. While kinder summer months ranged from –12 ℃ to 21 ℃, the temperature of the unforgiving winters dipped as low as -40 ℃. While snowfall was relentless, much of it blew east to the nearby Reghed Glacier.
The region is usually defined as being bounded by the Worldspine to the south, the Sea of Moving Ice, the Reghed Glacier the east, and the Shaengarne basin to the west.
History
Sturdy Folk and Great Monsters
The region has histortically been populated by mannish and dwarfish peoples, as well as some pockets of goliaths. The majority of the population is Northmannish, who arrived in the late Caublin Age, and settled around the lakes that make up modern Ten-Towns. Reghed tribes have inhabited the region's wilderness beyond the central lakes for far longer, following herds of elk, mammoth and wooly rhinoceros.
Icewind Dale is also an ancestral home for Giants, particularly Frost Giants. These titans occasionally raid the Reghed tribes or the people of Ten-Towns and make their home in the caverns and valleys in the wilderness of the dale. There, they sometimes clash with the goliaths native to the region.
Beyond the civilized folk, the dale is also home to beasts like reindeer, elk, crag cats, polar bears, and monstrous yetis. Some great monsters, such as the legendary remorhazes and a number of white dragons, are believed to make their home in Icewind Dale.
Ivory Trout and Precious Minerals
The greatest industry of Icewind Dale was the fishing and utilization of Knucklehead Trout. Many of the region's lakeside settlements relied entirely on the trout they fished and the goods they made from their ivory skulls. Knucklehead scrimshaw was the art that few mastered, and skilled scrimshanders were held in high esteem.
Icewind Dale has few trees due to the permafrost of the tundra, so lumber is cut from the slopes of the Worldspine or the depths of the Lonelywood Forest. Stone mined from the hills and valleys surrounding Kelvin's Cairn supplements wood as a building material in Ten-Towns.
Rocky deposits and minerals serve as a lucrative source of trade for those with the means to transport such heavy shipments across the frozen wastes. The hills around Kelvin's Cairn are also mineral-rich, particularly in gemstones and some notable silver deposits. The Silverpine dwarfs that inhabit the slopes of the mountain and the mines east of Termalaine are particularly wealthy.
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