Ithara
in Ogygian TalesThink of: Eberron; Amonkhet; Kaladesh; Chult; Athas; Monster Hunter; early Final Fantasy; Prince of Persia; mythology of North Africa, Mesopotamia, and India
Rolling sand dunes; blazing sunlight; crumbling plateaus; bleached bones. Ithara is an unforgiving, magical desert stretching from coast to coast. While a natural desert may be caused by mountain ranges cutting off rainfall to lowlands, Ithara was created by untamed magical energy, or aether, erupting from the earth and swirling through the air. Viewed as the energy of nature and wildness itself, aether is an unpredictable force that can warp creatures into new species, instill consciousness in plants, and even reverse gravity itself. Aether lingers in everything, but at a moment's notice, it can swirl into a storm of untamed magical energy. It is these storms that have turned Ithara's landscape into rock, sand, and death, and turned normal creatures into magic-infused monsters. Kingdoms rise around lush oases, only for the earth to reclaim the stone and marble they were built with in a crackling maelstrom.
And yet, this magical chaos creates just as much beauty and life as it does devastation and danger. Determined survivors have learned to harness the aether around them with ingenious fusions of technology and magic, and the more traditional arts of elemental sorcery and transmutation are considered to have been founded by Itharan magicians. Concentrations of aether ascend wild animals into humanoid beastfolk, who carve out life in the wilderness among their own or find tentative acceptance in larger human settlements.
This fickle balance between life and death is exemplified in the goddess the land was named after, said to live on a towering plateau in an endless labyrinth of sand. Any who reach the garden at the top are said to want for nothing, but the garden is forbidden to all but Ithara herself. She is said to control the land's aether, and there are tales of a brave few who have climbed the plateau and been found worthy of her blessing. But no such garden of the goddess has been found, nor the goddess herself.