The Vogtland is not only a geographical term but also a historical and political one that encompasses the imperial fiefdom of the bailiffs from the ancestral house of Weida. Only in the south, towards the Bohemian border, does it take on the character of low mountain ranges. This makes it the only slightly elevated link between the Erzgebirge, Fichtelgebirge, Franconian Forest, and Thuringian Slate Mountains. Towards the north, it gently slopes down to a gently undulating, sloping area. The overall course of the larger rivers, such as the Weisse Elster, Göltzsch, and Trieb, is also northerly. To the southeast, the Elstergebirge mountains drop steeply 250 meters to the Eger basin. Individual hills rise slightly above the flat undulating plateau as ridges or crests over phyllite. The elongated narrow cliffs with roughly north-south strikes from Erlbach to Auerbach consist of Ordovician greywacke quartzite. These rock formations are known as "stones," and some of them are protected. A striking feature of the landscape of central Vogtland are the wooded diabase hilltops known as "Pöhle" or "Hübel." These mostly rounded, individual hardened hilltops and ridges rise from the surrounding softer phyllites, which form extensive plateaus. The diabase ridges and hilltops are often cut by valleys, some of which form steeply sloping valleys, such as the Trieb, Göltzsch, and Elster valleys, and it is these valleys that create the mountain character and scenic beauty. The Vogtland Variscan granite plutons of Kirchberg, Bergen, Eibenstock, and the part of the Fichtelgebirge granite near Bad Brambach with their contact farms are further morphological units and also appear as ore producers. The contact halos around the granites weather more heavily and therefore form a ring-shaped wall around the cleared granite basins. The granites intruded in the higher Upper Carboniferous between Westfal and Stefan.