North of the mountains the conifer forest gives way to grasslands and frozen tundra and deepening snow fields. The lands are commonly referred to as the Wastelands. This refers both to the fact that little grows here and to the ‘waste’ of the glacial till and drift that tumbles ahead of the slow moving mountains of ice.
Here lie a string of poor, but tough, Independent Kingdoms and clans of semi nomadic Barbarians. They eek out a living along the forest edges and by trading ores, gems and minerals that are spewed out of the leading edges of the oncoming glaciers and hunting reindeer, musk ox and the great mammoths that feed off the grasses and forest verge.