The Witch's Tail
This lone mountain rises up out of the grasslands to a snowcapped peak that can be seen from as far away as the Irkainian Desert. Natural philosophers have long pondered how this unusual geographic formation came to be, for there is no reason there should be a mountain here. The Plains do not roll up to it in foothills, there are no mountain ranges nearby that the Witch’s Tail could be an outlier of, and the land lacks any great waterway that could have eroded down hills or mountains around the Tail.
Even before natural philosophers pontificated about the mountain’s origins, the local people had stories to explain it. One tale claimed that a powerful witch lived there. This witch, who tradition says should never be named so that her wrath is never brought down, is said to curse people with illnesses. Those who know her name risk falling sick, but also may use that knowledge to bring her magical powers to themselves. Knowing the witch’s name is a sure sign of complicity in witchcraft, and local witch hunters go to great lengths to see if their suspects know one of the 107 names of the witch of Witch’s Tail.
The folk of Ustran Pazeel believe that the mountain is the product of a battle between two djinn. They fought to raise a mountain into the sky, with one bringing it up and the other bringing it down. As it would be unfair to do this where other mountains could get in the way, they chose the grasslands as a neutral stage. The pair struggled and fought, and the mountain rose up to touch the stars and was dragged down until it was a great hole in the ground. After many years of this, the djinn grew bored with their sport and abandoned the mountain where it was.
To local nomads, the story of the mountain is that it rose up one day out of the grasslands because it wanted to. The spirit of the mountain had lived underground since the world was made and had heard stories from gophers, moles, and other burrowing creatures about the sun. The mountain wanted to see this strange thing, but could not through all the dirt and grass of The Plains. It pushed and pushed, wiggled and jiggled, and after much effort poked through into the sky.
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