Corten Mountains

	 A long time ago, the lands of highland Nedes – the easternmost of whom would come to father the tribes of Colovia – stretched far into the so-called Deathlands, bordering the people of Old Reach in the north, Abecean city-states in the south and various river-based agricultural societies of the Helkori plains in the west. Although the highlanders often engaged in raids against their neighbours, there was nevertheless a balance between the many peoples in the dry west. This fine balance was not fated to last forever, though, as the region would find out once a new force emerged from across the seas.
	Used to their position as the masters of the highlands, the tribes of the Corten mountains were left completely unprepared for the waves of the Ra’Gada that descended upon Goldmoor and continued inland. The first even that signalled to the tribes that something was wrong were news from lonely travellers. News travelled slowly in the rugged uplands so it was only when the refugees from the Goldmoor – those that did not travel south of the Brena river – were making their way across their lands that the highlanders were aware that things were about to change. Many tribes rallied together in an attempt to fight off the enemy but one after another, their armies fell to the dark-skinned warriors whose fighting techniques could not be matched even by the most powerful of Nedes. The people fleeing from Goldmoor were followed by a new flood of refugees; some would settle around Elinhir, others among the Reachmen and yet another population found their home among their kin in the east, the people of the Colovian highlands. Others stayed put; many were enslaved and those that remained were soon overwhelmed by a new majority, and assimilated.
	The strongest and most fortified among the Corteni tries, however, chose not to abandon their homeland. Instead, they retreated deep into the mountains, hiding in caves and tombs and began a long campaign of skirmishes and raids against the warriors of the Ra’Gada. The latter had mostly finished their conquest in the area by then, moving on further to the east, and the conquered lands were slowly settled by colonists from the west. The border had settled along the Corteni frontier where the mountain remnants had established their forts, inhabiting land unwanted to the Ra’Gada.