Eton Nir

Eton Nir is the highest of the Eternal Isle’s iconic granite mountains, the Calinan Mountains, which split the island north-to-south down the middle. The high peaks of the cloud-piercing mountains get snowfall for most of the year, and the early Aldmer who settled here found natural hardships beyond those of anywhere else in the isles, and so the mountain tribes of the Aldmer were the hardiest and most insular of their kind. The mountain-elves herded wanaku, much like their cousins on the island’s lower slopes, and hunted windfish, a peculiar flying creature native to the cool highland reaches of Summerset. Other tribes in the highlands survived by settling in the highlands and riding down rivers to raid villages-- a way of life that has returned in the new era of chaos, much to the embarrassment of the so-called high-cultured people. The harsh environs of the mountains would probably have pushed the elves away long ago if it weren’t for their strong sense of piety, their drive to tame the earth, and eye for the high arts: the mountains had a spiritual draw to the elves, perhaps because they, too, reached towards the heavens. Many of the steep mountains have been carved away to create grand altars to elven gods, whose colossal forms and visages emerge from the sides of granite cliffs. Many mountains have been hollowed out and filled with monasteries, and many more have had their faces chipped away into staircases up to isolated peak-shrines.  The grandest monastery of the region is built into the peak of Eton Nir, the Fane of the Holy Mountain Mother, whose Maraite monks are known to grant their revered wisdom to the nearby palace-city of Cloudrest. The city, so named because it seems to sit on an eternal covering of clouds, is notable for the starkest contrast between class life of any city in Summerset: the palatial neighborhoods of the city’s mountain ridges sit above ancient, decrepit coral towers in the dark, foggy trenches, kept invisible to the upper classes by the thick cloud cover. Beneath the city are ancient complexes of lost Aldmeri tombs and buried Sload towers, infested by foul creatures which occasionally make their way to the surface to terrorize the peasants by night. Beyond Cloudrest, most of the region’s settlements, like Terim and Maladiil, are either trading or herding villages, usually built near some point of spiritual significance, such as a grotto-heaven or a high peak. Others are simply compounds built around monasteries, such as the forbidden city of Ald Fell, the only other large settlement in the region, which grew around the Oghmio-Xarxite monastery of Xerayan.