The Living Mountains
Seen from above, the Vorrathspine range forms the unmistakable silhouette of a coiled serpentine dragon. The entire northern edge of Argos. Storms form against the peaks constantly. The mountains are alive in a way that most living things are not.
The Mountain Wolves are not the same species as the Fenrir Wilds wolves. They are something older — creatures so large and so ancient that their bodies became indistinguishable from the terrain over time. Some peaks are sleeping Mountain Wolves. Some are dead ones. Geologists who have studied the range report that certain rock formations have heartbeats.
The Throat
The only known pass through the mountains is called The Throat — a narrow canyon that the Dragon Sovereign controls access to. Dragon emissaries descend through The Throat to reach Death City. The passage takes three days.
No permanent human settlement exists above the foothills. The Dragon Continent begins at the mountain crest. Dracos minting facilities exist just inside the Dragon Continent side of the pass — which means every coin that funds Argos's economy passes through geography the Dragon Sovereign controls.
The Destabilizers
Two of the Nine Destabilizers — Dragon's Ember and Wyrmwood Root — are anchored somewhere in this range. The Dragon Sovereign knows this. They have known since before Omega Star built the containment system. Their agreement to leave the objects undisturbed is the oldest treaty obligation in the region.
The Dragon Sovereign maintains a direct diplomatic channel with Omega Star that predates the current Dragon Continent's government by at least two administrations. The relationship is not warm — dragons and humans operate on fundamentally different time scales — but it is reliable.