High Thay
Also known as the Plateau of Ruthammar or (mistakenly) the Thaymount, High Thay is that portion of the country above the Second Escarpment and below the Thaymount proper. Little is known of this land outside of Thay: Foreigners are not permitted to travel there except under the direct escort of a Red Wizard, and the Red Wizards do not bring outsiders to this portion of their land without very good cause.
While the center of High Thay is dominated by the ice-clad volcanoes of the Thaymount, a ring of cool, fertile highlands surround the smoking mountains. This higher plateau is only a dozen miles wide on its eastern side, but in other places it is a broad, lightly forested highland almost 100 miles across. Like the Plateau of Thay below, the land consists of low mesas separated by broad, rolling plains, but High Thay is cooler and more humid than the lands below and supports pine forests, vineyards, and great orchards of fruit trees. High Thay climbs steeply upward as one travels toward the Thaymount, and the foothills could be called mountains in any other land.
For centuries, High Thay has been the refuge of the land’s masters. Mulan noble families, high clerics of the faiths of Bane, Cyric, or Kossuth, and of course prominent Red Wizards own vast estates on this high plateau. The Thayans do not build great cities here, although a number of well-ordered towns populate the southern and western regions of the plateau. Most of these powerful Thayans are absentee landlords, spending their time in the cities of greater Thay and only retreating to their estates to escape the late-summer heat of the lower plateau.
Portions of High Thay, particularly the foothills and the northerly and eastern reaches downwind of the Thaymount, are quite barren, covered with ash falls from the volcanoes. These lands are unsettled except for the occasional Red Wizard determined to raise a tower in a particularly desolate spot. Wild gnolls, orcs, and other humanoids haunt these lands, mostly because the Red Wizards find them useful stock for their armies and have not made any concerted effort to exterminate them.
