Mountain Men
The Natural Ones who live in the Unbearable Mountains are not quite like Natural Ones found anywhere else. They are larger. Taller. Built on a scale that raises quiet questions nobody dares ask aloud. Some whisper that the infection has warped them over generations, reshaping them the same way it reshaped the creatures that stalk the fog-shrouded peaks.
The Mountain Men are not a formal organization but a loose community of independent families, each living in their own log cabin, most maintaining gardens and trading with neighbors. They dress practically: furs in winter, lighter clothing in summer, sturdy hiking boots and heavy packs for the long treks between homesteads. Their first priority is always survival, personal and familial. A Mountain Man is as likely to help a stranger as to leave one dying in the snow if the math favors it.
Despite stories of Mountain Men wrestling fog creatures bare-handed, most rely on sturdy walls to keep the monsters at bay. The Unbearable Mountains earn their name. Winters are brutal and summers are harsher still, with fog-shrouded things emerging from the mists to test the defenses of every cabin and homestead. When the fog rolls in, even the Mountain Men bar their doors.
They helped the founders of Yellstown Settlement learn the skills needed to survive at altitude, and they trade regularly with the communities that dot the lower slopes. But the Mountain Men remain isolationists at heart. They did not choose the mountains; the mountains chose them, and what the mountains made of them is something the lowlands have learned not to question.
The Mountain Men are not a formal organization but a loose community of independent families, each living in their own log cabin, most maintaining gardens and trading with neighbors. They dress practically: furs in winter, lighter clothing in summer, sturdy hiking boots and heavy packs for the long treks between homesteads. Their first priority is always survival, personal and familial. A Mountain Man is as likely to help a stranger as to leave one dying in the snow if the math favors it.
Despite stories of Mountain Men wrestling fog creatures bare-handed, most rely on sturdy walls to keep the monsters at bay. The Unbearable Mountains earn their name. Winters are brutal and summers are harsher still, with fog-shrouded things emerging from the mists to test the defenses of every cabin and homestead. When the fog rolls in, even the Mountain Men bar their doors.
They helped the founders of Yellstown Settlement learn the skills needed to survive at altitude, and they trade regularly with the communities that dot the lower slopes. But the Mountain Men remain isolationists at heart. They did not choose the mountains; the mountains chose them, and what the mountains made of them is something the lowlands have learned not to question.
