This rugged mountain pass carries the High Trail through the mountains between Ravens Bluff and Sarbreenar. Its reputation has always been one of danger due to frequent rockfalls, hunting stirges, wyverns, and other mountain-dwelling predators, and brigands. More than a dozen narrow ravines, all thickly cloaked in trees, cross the trail. These are home to the bandits, many of the flightless monsters, and, rumor insists, much treasure fallen from the devoured bodies of victims or seized from those robbed on the road. Among the coins and trinkets buried or stuffed into rock crevices in the Pass, legend whispers, are at least two great treasures.

One is the coffin of the long-dead human wizard Naer Tlarra, said to contain his spellbooks, wands, staff, and a twelve-pointed magical crown that allows the wearer to use the powers of all magical rings placed on its spires as if they were worn directly (overcoming the usual limit of two operative rings at one time). The tales say that a ring rests on each point - and at least two of them possess rare and unusual powers. No tale hints that Naer (who lived almost a thousand years ago, in what is now Chessenta) is undead. His ten-foot-long stone coffin is said to be guarded from thieves by several layers of spells and bound guardian creatures and is probably buried (or at least hidden in overgrown by now) as well. It would be far too heavy for wagons or carts capable of negotiating the Pass to carry.

The other great treasure said to be hidden in or near the Pass is the royal treasury of Westgate, stolen from King Glaurauth 'the Great" in the days when that city-state was the northernmost human settlement in the western Inner Sea lands. The thieves were traced by Glaurauth's wizards and hotly pursued. They fled by ship to anchorage at what is now Procampur, and took their spoils hastily north into the mountains, as the spells of the Court Wizards of Westgate slew them one by one. Elite troops from Westgate followed the thieves and caught up with them somewhere in the Pass. The canny thieves set off avalanches and mounted ambushes, but their pursuers outnumbered them thirty to one, and the spells of the wizards made the outcome inevitable. The daring thieves perished or were captured - but the spellhurlings and clash of arms had not gone unnoticed. A thousand orcs streamed out of high caves and the ravines and fell upon the forces from Westgate.

The Pass ran red with blood, and to this day travelers can see a grisly relic of one wizard's last stand: he sacrificed his life to power an everdance spell that whirled a dozen orcs forty feet up into the air and spun them in a circle. The orcs died and their bodies crumbled to bone fragments and powder long ago, but this debris still circles endlessly above a ledge overlooking the midpoint of the Pass.

The forces of Westgate were doomed, but they held out long enough to hide the riches they were about to die for. The few surviving thieves joined forces with their pursuers to help conceal the treasure with all their skill. Unless someone has found the lost regalia since, it still lies somewhere in the Pass. According to the royal auditor's report, there were six large strongchests and almost twenty smaller coffers and hand-chests, containing many necklaces of gems, a collection of fanciful filigreed and jeweled masks, at least four gem-laden crowns, a ceremonial chalice, and a scepter said to have magical powers as well as displaying three rubies all as large as a man's fist.

Oddly enough, a wizard found dead at a party thrown by a visiting Cormyrean noble in Ravens Bluff six winters ago was wearing a gem-adorned mask that sages agree is probably from the court of Westgate. But they all stress that it might not have been part of the stolen royal regalia, as many nobles of Westgate had their own impressive masks made - and with the changing themes and fashions of the festivals, craftsmen were forever tearing apart masks to make up new ones from the same materials. Still, it is possible that someone has discovered the lost treasury and may be removing its more valuable contents a piece at a time to avoid notice.