A frozen, windblasted wasteland in the northwestern Northlands, Anu'Itiklik stretches from the foothills of the Senaveer Mountains in the west to the edges of the Northern Plains in the east. Hundred-mile-per-hour winds are nearly constant across these wastes, and the temperature rarely rises above freezing even in summer.
Geography
Anu'Itiklik is more than cold; it is scoured. The relentless wind strips away anything not rooted or weighted down. Snow doesn't accumulate here; it blows horizontally across the permafrost in a perpetual white blur. Exposed rock is polished smooth. Anything left on the surface for more than a few days will be worn to nothing or buried beneath drifts that form and vanish with the shifting gales.
The region sits in the wind-shadow of no mountains. Air currents from the North Sea and the polar wastes beyond the Nysanna Range converge here, creating a natural wind tunnel hundreds of miles wide. The Atowatowa say the wind here is the breath of the dead, exhaled from Celestia and sweeping south to remind the living that all things pass.
The Atowatowa
Anu'Itiklik is home to the Atowatowa, a confederation of caribou-herding clans who have adapted to this brutal environment over countless generations. Many Atowatowa are born with natural air attunements, allowing them to create pockets of still air around themselves and their herds, the only way to survive in a land where an unshielded face can be flayed raw in minutes.
The Atowatowa are fiercely territorial and deeply suspicious of outsiders. This xenophobia is more than cultural isolationism. They guard secrets they believe are too dangerous for the outside world. The peaks to their northwest, where the planar border between Material and Celestia grows thin, are sacred ground. The mining operations in the Anderegnons represent an existential threat to everything the Atowatowa hold holy.
Their caribou herds follow the lichen across Anu'Itiklik in seasonal migrations, ranging as far as the Senaveer Mountains in spring where special high-altitude lichen grows. Caribou fed on this mountain lichen grow enormous, up to fourteen feet at the shoulder, and are reserved for clan leaders and war-chiefs.
The Wind-Roads
Despite the chaos of the surface winds, the Atowatowa have mapped what they call the Wind-Roads: channels of relatively predictable airflow that snake across Anu'Itiklik. Travelers who know these roads can move faster and more safely than those who fight against the wind. The Wind-Roads shift with the seasons, and keeping track of their current positions is a specialized knowledge passed down within certain families.
Outsiders who enter Anu'Itiklik without guides usually die within days, either frozen, lost, or simply worn down by the wind until they can no longer stand.