North Pent is tundra farther up than you can travel - and then permanently frozen waste. I guess it is not glaciated mainly because most humidity will stop on the Glacier or the Altinelan mountain range.
Beyond the Glacier (which sort of curves northeast from the Ice Sea) there is a ice-covered mountain range, and to the far northeast there is a sea which will have shelf ice where the current of Sramak's River and the wave action from the typhoon area of the world storm is not too strong.
> Also, how far north is the territory of the pentans, and who, if
> anyone, lives north of them?
Hollri do, as well as an ecology of extreme cold monsters. Trolls might roam, but the feeding is not good.
The Pentans follow their herds, and I suppose the horses don't like arctic tundra vegetation.
There might be reindeer folk (those of Darkness Dara Happa, not Uncolings), but they'd have to avoid both Pentans, trolls and cold monsters.
There might be hibernating insects or insectivores, or a culture based on these (yes, that might mean trolls, but might as well be something else).
> (I assume Pentans roam as far north as
> there are grasses to graze on, but I don't know how far north that
> is). I'd assume trolls are likely at some point, but are there also
> tundra-dwelling humans of some sort? I seem to recall reading that
> there are wild herds of caribou/reindeer up that way, but without the
> associated hsunchen. Still, you would think those large herds could
> support some sort of culture....or maybe that culture is the
> aforementioned trolls?
Trolls could be difficult for caribou - remember, they even out-competed the Polar Bear. You might get musk ox herds, too, or mammoths/mastodons (whichever is more suitable).
> Does the same general pattern apply in the Kingdom of Ignorance? That
> is, at some point it becomes tundra, there are ever more trolls, and
> if you somehow go far enough north you get to somewhere else? Or is
> there some other zone along there?
You can stay among trolls while leaving the Kingdom of Ignorance, if you follow the eastern coastline. The Koromondol trolls are arctic fishers and hunters, with little respect to ignorant authorities.
I seem to remember that the continent stretches east north of Kahar's Sea, into some untraveled realm. It would end somewhere north of Vithela, though, maybe in the corner of the former square (why lozenge) of land that was Glorantha. Apart from trolls, how about (other) antigods around here, for a difference? Along with their domestic races brought from their own freezing underworlds. One of the Antigod Strongholds was pretty far north.
The outer northern shore will be a raging current, probably with crushed ice aheaving on the waves. There is likely to be sea-life, and likely also intelligent sea-life. Probably niiads rather than lesser triolini, along with types of whales, seals, fish and crustaceans unknown in other seas, characteristic to the north face of the cube swimming in Sramak's Ocean.
Sendereven sail there. Altinelans don't seem to have a sailing tradition. In the mountains, there might be (elder) giants or dragons in unknown states of dormancy.
For humans to travel through the Winter Waste is close to impossible. They will find neither fuel nor food, and will have a hard time getting ice for melting drinking water. Everything needs to be carried along.
Sleds won't glide well - too little snow, and that so cold that skids get stuck. Touching metal will mean to risk skin. Wagons won't work as the axles freeze fast.
Zombie litter bearers might be the best solution for carriers - they don't tire, and they don't consume food. The Kralori might be able to outfit a sufficiently sized treck of zombies (from their galleys). Getting them (or worse, their load) past trolls and other covetous indigenes won't be easy.
There might be remnants of pre-darkness "civilizations". Antigod strongholds from the Darkness, too. It wasn't always cold in the north. Before the Sky Dome was pushed into rocking, and then spilling heat in the far south while Walind collected cold in the north west, the Ratite Empire roamed North Pent, a Greater Rinliddi. Bird folk, maybe like keets, maybe like humans or nar sylla, or maybe just sentient birds. Apart from antigods, I don't expect any of the hypothetical old dwellers to be alive, but they might manifest as wraiths or similar.
Buildings might be in fissures in the frozen earth. Like the walls of hypothetical Martian canal-canyons. Everything on the plain would have to withstand the storm gales or be weathered away.
Alternatively there might be migratory dunes giving away former structures.
There might be non-artifact treasures in or on the ground. Imagine "splinters of the Sky Dome" (when it crashed north the first time) waiting to be harvested. The soil might be fabulously rich (but, being frozen, still lifeless).
Finally, there may be dead creatures or even deities whose remains might be robbed. Think Oetzi on a divine scale, immense ice mummies.
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