Assail and environs
Mantle and the Iceblood Holdings
The Salt Mountains of northern Assail were also known as the Salt Peaks, the Salt Range, and the Blood Range. They were divided into two regions known as the East and West Salt Ranges. At the centre of the range were the Bare Rock Peaks surrounded by a great Ice Plain. On their lower slopes were the Greathalls of the Iceblood clans.
While largely uninhabited, the Salt Mountains were the home of a community of Forkrul Assail. The Assail did not make their presence known except when their territory was trespassed upon.[1] The legendary Sayer claimed to have met the matriarch of the Iceblood people in the mountains' heights.[2]
In Assail[]
During one of the Jaghut Wars over thirty-four thousand years before the dawn of the Malazan Empire, a Jaghut woman fled Ut'el Anag and his band of T'lan Imass into the mountains. There, she led them to the caves of the Forkrul Assail and escaped during the resulting carnage.[3] Afterwards, she made her home in the mountains' heights.[4][5]
In the present day, the Forkrul Assail community was once again disturbed by the conflict between the matriarch and the T'lan Imass. Two Assail, Arbiter and Penance, met with the intruding Silverfox, Kilava Onass, Pran Chole, Orman, Kyle, Fisher kel Tath, and Jethiss to forge a new peace of the founding races.[6]