Towards the roof of the world lies a vast, untamed wilderness of frigid plains, shadowy evergreen forests, forbidding mountains, and gleaming glaciers. This primordial land is home to resilient tribesmen, savage monsters, fading gods, and relics of antediluvian civilizations. The Forlorn North is a huge expanse of permafrost plains and taiga running through the northern hemisphere of the world. The savage land briefly blooms into explosions of color during the short summertime, highlighting that this is a place of both pristine beauty and formidable dangers.
During the long winter months, temperatures can plunge as low as -20° F and rise to 35° F on the warmest of winter days. Summer in the Forlorn North lasts a mere two months, but during this brief thaw, temperatures can rise to almost 80° F for a few hours each day. Winds are far more active in the region than elsewhere, racing and howling out of the northwest year-round, bringing cargos of cold air down from the even icier lands near the pole. Despite the cold of the region, heavy snowstorms are a rarity. Precipitation ranges 2" to 30" annually, most of which falls as rain during the summer months. But when snow does fall in the North, the accumulation lingers for months on end.
Numerous species of plant and animal thrive in the region, in turn supporting the human and humanoid inhabitants that dwell here. Trees are largely coniferous, with spruce, larch, pine, and fir trees predominating. Some deciduous trees - birch, alder, willow, and poplar - survive in areas that escape the worst of the winter freeze. The forests and craggy mountains also support many species of ferns, ramps, mosses, lichens, and berry bushes. Fauna run the gamut from harmless to deadly. Smaller mammals such as beaver, squirrel, hare, and vole serve as prey for the wolves, bears, foxes, lynxes, snow tigers, and wolverines that prowl the forests and meadows. Moose, elk, caribou, and wood bison graze in the woods and fields but towering over all these species is the wooly mammoth, who thunders through the land in migrating herds. Whales, seals, and walruses cavort in the icy oceans, while the streams and rivers teem with fish. Birds are seasonal in the cold lands, only ravens, eagles, buzzards, and other scavengers along with a few seed-eating species survive here year-round. Amphibians and reptiles are nearly non-existent here; only the rare blue snake, ice salamander, frost-death toad, and wood frog endure.