Taebur
"Taebur" is said to mean "Homeland" in one of the ancient languages of the Old World. It is a region that spans a roughly square area many hundreds of kilometres across. The great White River marks its eastern border, the aptly named Western Mountains its western border. Its northern extent is marked by the Yellow River Canyon and its south by the Grand Canyon.
Its largest settlement is the ruined metropolis, the City of Cartoons, which sits at the confluence of the Red, White, and Blue Rivers. However, while that city may have once housed millions in the Old World, today it is sparsely populated only by the rich and powerful. The vast majority of people in Taebur are spread out across the southern plains in small communities, many of them nomadic.
Geography
Most of northern Taebur is desert--the eastern extent of the vast desert that spans most of the north of the continent. The desert has been growing for all of living memory, extending southwards a mile or two every year.
Southern Taebur is mostly dry, rocky plains that are seeing shorter and shorter rainy seasons every year. There are areas that remain somewhat arable, and it is in these places that most communities form. However, even in these places, farming the land is a gruelling and unrewarding task. Crops grown are mostly wheat, cotton, sugarcane, and peanuts, though there is a smattering of other crops as well.
There are few sources of water, and most of those are either poisoned by radiation or toxic waste, or are the homes of mutated monstrosities--often both. Most communities have to rely on deep wells, more and more of which are drying up every year.
The remains of ancient roads and highways criss-cross southern and eastern Taebur, but only those near the City of Cartoons have been restored to usability. Throughout the rest of the region, these roads are too broken to travel along for more than short distances. However, newer trails often run parallel to these ancient highways.
Ecosystem Cycles
According to the elderly, the southern plains used to have a rainy season every year that lasted four to five months. Now, the rainy season lasts three months at most and continues to get shorter. Even during the rainy season, rainfall is uncommon; it's just not totally non-existent like it is during the rest of the year.
Temperatures during the day are high all year round, but reach their highest at the end of the dry season. During the night, temperatures drop considerably. This is more pronounced in the desert, but is true in the plains as well. The change is enough that unprepared travellers sometimes freeze to death during the night.
Localized Phenomena
Amongst the most dangerous things (other than the creatures that wander the wilderness) in Taebur are sandstorms. While more of a problem in the desert, these storms sometimes sweep out of the desert and into the southern plains.
Even more dangerous than the sandstorms, however, are nanite storms. Left over from the Final Wars, these are giant swarms of nanites that sweep across the land. From a distance, a nanite swarm looks little different from a sandstorm; however, keen-eyed observers will note that a nanite swarm is smaller than a typical sandstorm, with much more defined boundaries to the cloud. There is virtually no defence against a nanite storm other than to get out of its way. The nanites within will devour any living thing in their path. They leave behind no trace of the creatures and people they consume, but leave buildings and other structures intact and undamaged. Entire communities have been wiped out by nanite storms, with just ghost towns left in their wake.
In almost the exact centre of Taebur lies a region called the MedLab Radiation Fields. Covering an area roughly 50 km in diameter, it is a region (as its name suggests) of intense radiation. Strangely, the radiation never spreads beyond the region's edge. The land within is cracked and broken (not at all the fields its name suggests), with a radioactive black sludge seeping out of many of the rents in the earth. It is said an ancient complex sits at the exact centre of the Radiation Fields. Stories vary on what exactly this place was, though most say it was a medical research centre that was repurposed into weapons research in the last years before the Final Wars. Something went wrong and the Radiation Fields came into being. Some stories say that this disaster was the spark that started the Final Wars. But those are probably just stories.
Fauna & Flora
The most common domesticated animals in Taebur are dogs, cattle, sheep, and camels. As well as just being companions, dogs assist in hunting and herding of sheep. Cattle serve both as beasts of burden and food animals. Similarly, sheep supply wool while also being food animals. Camels are used for riding and/or carrying supplies over long distances. Occasionally, people use horses for travel, but horses are not best suited for the climate. The few horses in the region are left over from outsiders who died while crossing through Taebur.
Most communities have several cats as well, but people view cats with a great deal of suspicion. On the one hand, cats help keep down the population of rats and mice. On the other hand, some of these cats are actually Bastin, a species of intelligent, mutant cats that seek to destroy all of humanity.
A few communities have tamed some of the varieties of giant lazzars that live in the region. They use the lizards as both beasts of burden and riding animals.
Wildlife includes lions, elephants, rhinoceroses, and monkeys, as well as some birds. Few of these animals are unmutated, however. All kinds of unusual and/or unique creatures live in the desert, the plains, or the rare sources of water in the region.
The desert supports almost no plant life. In the plains, there is mainly just grasses and scrub. Near the City of Cartoons and along the White River, one can find intermittent woodlands.
Natural Resources
There are many ancient mines dotting the landscape. Every now and them, someone gets the idea to try to reopen one. Sometimes, they manage to extract some copper, iron, silver, or gold from these old mines before disturbing strange creatures living deep in the mines or stumbling into a radioactive area. More often, they do one of those two things before extracting anything of value at all.
It is said the people of the Old World used to extract a black sludge from deep below the earth here (perhaps a non-radioactive version of the same sludge that seeps from the ground in the MedLab Radioactive Fields). This sludge was used to create fuel for the technological devices of Precursor and Gene Ages. It was the desire to possess this sludge that led to so many of the wars in the region. Perhaps more of this substance still lies below the ground here, but the local residents want nothing to do with it ever again.
History
The Taebur lands knew war long before the Final Wars. The near-constant warfare throughout the Precursor Age slowly destroyed the land, turning it into a toxic wasteland and leaving behind uncountable containers, hills, and pools of residue which could--and did--unleash extreme mutations. However, at the peak of the Noetic Age, governments from across the world decided to clean up the landscape with geological and biomedical nanites that made the poisoned lands fertile again. It took decades, but eventually the meadows blossomed as farmers gently cared for the new lands. For a short time, it was a utopia.
Then came the Final Wars.
Maps
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Taebur
Alternative Name(s)
The Badlands, The Sand Wastes, The Chosen Lands
Included Locations
Related Reports (Primary)
