For me my vision of Sartar is a cross between the Rockies near Taos or Humphrey Peak near Flagstaff with Tirol and Sudtirol. A few fleeting visions:
What about the Highlands of Scotland? No.Heck from my perspective, all of the Scottish “highlands” would be in the lowlands! To be honest very little of Glorantha reminds me of Britain, but YGWV. While the Scottish Highlands do get snow caps in winter – after all they nearly the same latitude as Juneau. But to the best of my knowledge there are no peaks with glaciers, although I think a few do have snowpacks that survive through summer. But it’s not anything like the Rocky Mountains, Sierras, or Cascades.
Now one thing that is often forgotten – or at least sometimes hard to process for some – is that the plains of Prax are just 50 km to the east of the Quivin mountains massif. So the terrain goes: high massif, about 40-50 km of hills and valleys, and then semi-arid grasslands and sagebrush country. So that’s going to have a very different feel to the Highlands (or the Cascades for that matter). The western side of the massif gets more snow and precipitation – which you can see with the woods on that side. The east is drier, and although it gets snow, I suspect it is much drier snow. A shame there is no ski lift in Boldhome, as I imagine it would have made a great resort.
That being said, I’m pretty sure the original conception of the Quivin Hills was Mount Diablo. Then they got higher and the reference point became something more like Mount Humphrey or Wheeler in New Mexico.
Also the Highlands are always by the sea or long lakes that connect to the sea. I think the farthest you can be from the ocean in Scotland is like 65 km. Dragon Pass on the other hand, is surrounded by mountains, desert, grasslands, and high plateaus. It gets quite warm to hot in summer, and cold in winter – much more extreme on both sides than Scotland. Heck the valley Boldhome is in is quite a bit above the top of Ben Nevis (although it’s nothing near Breckinridge or Leadville near me).
As someone who skies a lot and spends their summers hiking around in the Rockies, to me there is a huge difference between the Scottish hill country and the Alps or the Rockies. But your mountain experience might differ!
Worth thinking about the Quivin Mountains as a massif between the lower Storm Mountains and the much higher Rockwoods. The highest of the Rockwoods put the Rockies to shame. Djoh Mith’s Pass is probably something as scary as Loveland or Independence Pass in Colorado.
In Boldhome, we get the following:
- Dark-Early -4/5 4/6 Easterly (Desert Wind) or Northerly 30 cm snow
- Dark-Late -16/2 8/12 Northerly 80 cm of snow
- Storm-Early -12/5 12/20 Northerly 80 cm of snow
- Storm-Late -5/8 12/20 Northerly 50 cm of snow
Which to me means that it can be both cold (a low of -16 in the second four weeks of Dark Season) and surprisingly moderate (8 as the high in the second four weeks of Storm Season). But throughout the winter it bounces between those numbers.