Shayol Ghul

Shayol Ghul is named in the catechism that says the Dark One lies bound there until the end of time. It is a mountain in the Blasted Lands, the dead country beyond the Great Blight in the far north of the world, ringed by the Mountains of Dhoom and reachable only through land that kills. There the barrier between the world and the Dark One's prison wears thinnest, and there the Shadow's power gathers. Whole armies have died merely fighting the Blight that lies before it, and the watch the Borderland nations keep is a watch against what comes out of that country, never a road toward it. The oldest accounts add a bitter note: in the Age of Legends, before the Bore was drilled, Shayol Ghul was an island in a cool sea, a place people visited for pleasure.