Cinder Teeth

A small volcanic range between the desert and the jungle: obsidian, sulfur, ash fields, hot springs and the naphtha seeps on which Zarvand's Talodin fire depends. In 622 the Teeth erupted in the largest volcanic event in recorded history, killing the Cinder Folk, dropping ash as far as Hethlend and dimming the sky for a year; the Hizkari are the hardened remnant who lived on the slopes. About nine thousand Hizkari in five clans now hold the range under the Iron Matron, and since 851 they have sold naphtha to the Khaasar for gold at a price that rises every generation. They tell that the Teeth are the broken teeth of a fire-mother who bit the desert, that the naphtha is her blood, and that every Hizkari hearth was lit from the ember a fire-beetle carried through the eruption. Black cinder goats, ash-foxes, vent lizards, bat colonies in the lava tubes, cliff swifts, ash vultures and black vent scorpions live among the ash-grass, cinder ferns, sulfur-flowers and twisted teeth-pines.

See also: Hold of the Iron Matron, The Naphtha Seeps, Slopes of the Five Clans, The Hot Tunnels