Mountain clans whose law, ancestry and borders are recited from peaks across the Crownspines rather than drawn on paper.
Overview
Harthane territory is defined by sightlines. A clan holds the valleys visible from its named summit, with disputes settled by climbing to the relevant peak and reciting the horizon.
Their halls are cut into warm stone above the snow line. Family, craft and military obligation overlap; a bridge builder is also expected to defend the bridge and remember every oath sworn upon it.
History
The clans predate southern records and claim descent from people who sheltered inside the mountains during Earin's Shattering. They alternately fought and guided the early Orc migrations.
Gizmagrad secured trade through contracts rather than conquest, paying individual clans for each road. When the mountains were breached during the Drowning, several clans lost both ancestral peaks and entire lines of legal memory.
The present record
The Harthane control the safest high passages and many deep mines. They participate in northern politics reluctantly and reject treaties whose borders cannot be viewed from a single physical place.
Young climbers are naming new islands formed from drowned summits, an act that may create more clans than the old councils are prepared to recognise.
Notes and record
This article combines campaign record, spoken lore and the mythic account preserved in the Earin archive.