Traders Vaults

Deep in the The Bodmany Wilds, far beyond where the great trade route disappears and long before it reappears, lay a series of intricately hidden vaults used by traders to store their surplus items, valuables, and supplies for building and repairing their caravans. 
The difficult terrain, and featureless landscape, make the vaults' location an exceedingly sheltered place without any obvious changes by human hands; the undending banded rocky hills, the shifting sands surrounding them, and the lack of any discernible landmarks makes it nigh impossible to locate the vaults save for those who put them there. 


The traders of Aberval have been using the vaults since time immemorial, setting up a large yet seemingly innocuous caravansary in close proximity to the vaults. This giant pavillion is designed to blend into the pattern of the rocks, and serves as both a shelter from the sun, sand and heat, and a trading post for the traders whilst they avail themselves of the supplies stored in the vaults. Over time, this has become somewhat of an annual pilgrimage, where all of the families come together, trade items amongst themselves, celebrating the coming of age of the children by bestowing upon them their own cart to join the caravans. 
It is however, perhaps more by luck than design, that they have not yet had any run-ins with the smugglers who also make use of this unique terrain for their own similar, albeit nefarious reasons; the smugglers are rumoured to have tunnelled all over these hills, often stumbling across long-forgotten hoardes hidden in the hills. Or perhaps it is simply that the ancient rumours perpetuated by the traders themselves, of leaving wrongdoers to the desert or selling them into servitude (neither of which is actually true), that give the smugglers pause enough to avoid such trouble.