Senpei Desert

On my long journey from one side of the island to the other, I found myself on the final stretch in the Senpei Desert with far too few resources to support me. In the sweltering heat I trekked on through the dunes, only ever stopping to grab a small swig of water from my flask and to eat and sleep. After four days I thought I was a goner, there was seemingly no end in sight and my resources were low, and worse yet the dunes were growing even larger, even harder to climb with my tired body. I pushed on though, because what else was I going to do? Eventually my strength left me and I fell to the ground, but as I fell I stopped and listened and I heard it, the tide. I'm never going back there, but somehow I have a fondness for the place yet, perhaps those of you that travel there will find something too.

- An excerpt from a book by famous world traveller Gintarou Suzuhara, 10038AC

Geography

Senpei desert is on the Eastern most part of the island, bordered by the ocean and the Hideyoshi mountains on either side, with only a small part of it connecting to the planes close to the Nagaoka river on the desert's South-Western most edge. The only two well used ways into the desert are on the Nagaoka side and through a mountain pass called Tanbun pass further to the North. A few towns and cities can be found in the desert (notably Dejima), but they are few and far between compared to the much more fertile parts of the island. The desert itself has almost no variety in its geography, save for when it borders the mountains and grows significantly rockier and when it borders the sea and the sand gets much more soft. There are a few oases here and there, but the majority of the desert is just endless sand dunes.

Fauna & Flora

Flora Plant life in the sense desert is rather limited, being reserved mostly for various species of cacti and a few other plants with very low water requirements. In oases (which are few and far between) all variety of plants grow wildly including basically anything that exists on the island. These oases might be considered some of the most fertile places on the entire island.
Fauna The desert is largely inhabited by animals who have adapted to survive there over several thousands of years. Most of the inhabitants are nocturnal and many of them burrow into dunes to make their homes. About half are reptiles. Good examples of the roughly 200 species that live here are sand vipers, monitor lizards, camels, and desert foxes (of which there are over 20 species). Most of the fauna of the desert live communal with their own species for survival, but a select few animals survive better on their own, preying on the weak of other species.

Natural Resources

Aside from being the only real source of sand on the island, the Senpei desert has barely any natural resources of value. Because it is a desert, and because of it's location in the world, there is very little reason to establish any infrastructure here. Almost no value can come out of here aside from one key resource that is found exclusively in the desert. Lepethite is the single most valuable substance on the island, and it is made by putting Senpei sand through an extreme filtration process to isolate small flecks of Lepethite, which are then smelted together at high temperatures to make Lepethite spheres, which have a market value of around 600 million sen.

Type

Desert

Included Locations

• Dejima