Low, windswept hills stretching north of the Bellowing Mountains, marking the transition between Gondurak's territory and the broader Dragon's Spine. The Fengruk call them the Hills of Sarrow—an old word meaning grief-that-endures—and they do not settle there, though the land could support them.
The Famine Hills
Before the Sundering, before the Shrapnel Strait existed, the hills were called something else. Fengruk records are unclear on the original name; it was deliberately stricken from the stonescripts. What the records do preserve is the account of what happened when the titans fell.
The World Forge in Sildraz required fuel, labor, and food in quantities that a small dwarven population couldn't provide alone. During the titan era, thousands of workers from other races—humans, halflings, goblinkin, others now forgotten—lived in settlements throughout what are now the Hills of Sarrow, farming the valleys and herding the slopes to feed the forge-workers. The titans organized this system and, in their way, protected it.
When Vorukar fell and the other titans retreated, withdrew, or died, the forge-system collapsed. The Fengruk, never numerous, couldn't maintain the scale of operations the titans had demanded. They retreated to the mountain cities. The support settlements in the hills were abandoned.
What followed was slow starvation. The support populations had been organized around the forge economy—they didn't know how to survive without it. Refugees fled north toward the Dalizi highlands, but the journey was long and the hills offered little sustenance. Thousands died where they walked. The Fengruk, struggling to keep their own cities alive, offered what aid they could. It wasn't enough.
The Fengruk remember this as their great shame. They'd benefited from the titan system; they'd failed those who'd served alongside them when it ended. The name "Sarrow" is their penance—a reminder carved into every map that something unforgivable happened here.
The Boneyards
Mass graves dot the hills, most unmarked, some maintained by Fengruk priests who make pilgrimage from Gondurak. The largest concentration lies along the old road to the Dalizi—a route the refugees followed until they couldn't walk anymore. Fengruk tradition forbids disturbing these sites, but enforcement is difficult across such a wide area.
Grave robbers work the hills occasionally, seeking whatever valuables the dead were carrying when they collapsed. They face spiritual rather than legal consequences—the Fengruk consider the hills cursed, and superstition holds that anything taken from the boneyards brings misfortune. Whether this is actual supernatural effect or simply bad luck finding people who make poor decisions is debated.
Undead are rare but not unknown. The concentration of death, the lingering grief, and the proximity to whatever Force energies still pulse beneath the Shrapnel Strait occasionally animate corpses or spawn spectral manifestations. Fengruk patrols from the northern settlements deal with these when reported, though "dealing with" often means containment rather than destruction. The dead, they say, have suffered enough.
Modern Use
The hills remain largely empty. A few herding families run goats through the western slopes, avoiding the known gravesites. Travelers crossing between Gondurak and the north pass through quickly, camping in designated safe zones that Fengruk patrols maintain. Trade caravans prefer the longer route through the mountain passes rather than risk the hills' reputation.
Occasionally, scholars or treasure hunters petition Gondurak for permission to excavate specific sites—usually seeking artifacts from the titan-era support settlements rather than the later refugees. The Fengruk typically refuse, though exceptions have been made for projects with clear historical value and appropriate ritual observance.
The hills are not forbidden, exactly. They're simply sad. And the Fengruk prefer to let them grieve in peace.