Chean

The people of the Chean Empire crossed over the Spine of the World millennia ago
For ages, they were scattered, scraping out an existence in the shadows of the Pillars of Creation, never venturing far into the Dune Sea. They maintained a tense relationship with the Sentinels of Arashin, the aarakocra who call the pillars home.
The Gold Dragon, Aur'il, sought out these hardy people, and taught the elves how to utilize the native bullets to help draw nimble sandships across the expanse of the dunes, and showed them the secret paths set in the stars.
And with Auril at their head, the elves of Chean grew prosperous and numerous. Numerous for dessert elves that is, and have grown to a population of more than 100,000. So numerous in fact that Auril and his people were able to scatter the independent dwarven tribes on the northern slope of Mount Taniyan, the largest active volcano on the face of Stolaria, The land around the volcano was extremely fertile and many of the Chean wanderers choose to settle there.
The people near the volcano prospered and built a great city, which they named Mercuia, after Mercuria Irfan who was the first Chean to be born in the volcano's shadow. The city's people spread the news of this bastion of fertile land and a chance for their people to escape the harsh life of the desert. Many followed, but a group of Cheans decided to stay in the desert, unwilling to give up the freedom that the nomadic life gave them. They called themselves the Rhok'dolar and numbered no more than 15,000, spread throughout the entire Dune Sea in small nomadic bands.
Over time this divide became more concrete in Chean society and the sparse population still in the desert was no longer the driving force of Chean culture. Mercuria became the center of Chean power and culture, The Council of the Searing Sun its guiding hand, and The Rhok'dolar became outcasts within their own people, praised not for their art or insights, but relegated the unofficial protectors of the realm, patrolling the desert and fighting off invaders from the more hostile East.
The Numarian Empire expanded The Great Plains War and began encroaching on the Chean territory. The Rhok'dolar have taken the brunt of the fighting, as their sacred paths stand in the way of the Numarian war machine. While Numaria has made attempts to occupy much of the desert, the Rhok'delar has been extremely successful at stopping their progression into the desert, and advancement of Numerian forcers has slowed to a crawl in the last decade. Unfortunately, the people in the sheltered capital seem mostly unwilling to commit their forces into the desert, as The Council of the Searing Sun answer only to Au'ril. And Au'ril has been missing for nearly a century, which would not be terribly unusual for the Sunshard had disappeared for decades at a time into the dessert, mostly communicating through cryptic patterns in the sand and the occasional Aur'il-Tan, or Sunseeker.
The relatively recent arrival of Numarian general Barak'dor, The Western Wind, has seen the war slowly but surely shift against Rhones Porum, who leads the mostly fractured Rhok'delar. Barkak'dor has begun a strategy that is not focused on territorial gains, but rather eliminating as many of the Rhok'delar combatants her army group can find.