Grizzly Hills

The Grizzly Hills is a small region of Northrend, home to the capital city of the Iron Dwarves and the cultural centre of the Furbolg world. This region, once the site of bloody battles between Horde and Alliance forces vying for its natural resources, has been left to its own devices in the aftermath of the War Against the Lich King - something the Furbolgs, Taunka, and surviving Drakkari have been keen to exploit.

Geography
The overall characteristic of the Hills is its namesake; a vast expanse of hills building on each other and leaving many fertile valleys between them. In the South, however, the region is dominated by towering snow-capped mountains and by the sharp cliffs along the East Coast. The land slopes gently towards the coast, building higher and higher as one turns West until one reaches the Blue Sky River, which has carved a precipitious drop, dividing the Hills into two. The river flows West to the Dragonspine River, and both the Blue Sky and the Dragonspine empty into the brackish waters of Venture Bay.

Climate
The Hills have a surprisingly mild climate for their northern locale. Though the winters are snowy and bitter cold, the summers are warm and welcoming, with spring and summer together long enough to farm and to leave the region a brisk, chilly green for much of the year. The cold winds from the Storm Peaks that howl down through Zul'drak chill the northern Hills, however, and it is only the Southern Mountains that preserve the Howling Fjord from that win.

Plant Life
Home to vast forests of pine and cedar, the Grizzly Hills is easily mistaken for unending sea of towering conifers - and it is this great expanse of timber that brought the interest of the Venture Company. But the plant life of the region does not end at great trees useful only for timber. The Hills are home to a number of highly distinctive plant species, foremost among which must be the Amberpine and the Blackroot.

Along the forest floor are many edible species of mushroom and vegetation, providing sustenance to both the Taunka and the early human settlers of the region. Wild carrots, sweetroots, maygrass and morels all grow in sufficient abundance to provide for both the local animals and the higher beings. However, gathering these plants is not without risks, as a number of easily mistaken poisonous plants are also abundant - wolfsbane, nightshade, water hemlock - and quite exceptionally toxic.

Animal Life
The warmth and abundance of the region has fostered an environment in which countless species of beast thrive. In great schools off the coast, predatory fangtoothed herring swarm larger fish and unfortunate sea birds, competing with the other fish common to Northrend. Inland, great wolves stalk through the Western Forest preying on White Tail Deer, bears hunt the rivers for the great salmon flocks, and squirrels fight amongst each other for the rights to lair in Amberpine boughs.

Where farming fails, hunting ad foraging is a viable alternative, and this has been the preferred option for the largely carnivorous Furbolgs of Grizzlemaw for centuries - and, when times are harsh, for the Taunka of Camp Oneqwah.