Sahra' Alsinyan

An area of harsh wasteland, long held to be cursed by a magical disaster a thousand years ago.

Geography

Sahra' Alsinyan is the center of a massive desert stretching between the Qanuni capital of Jawharat Alsahra', and the Khemetine capital of Tjedemu. Most of the desert is navigable, even habitable; near the Grand Wall of Shun Hui, it is a relatively fertile delta along the Dumue Khalila River. However, as the desert stretches west, it becomes drier. Even in this band, some life can flourish: bulettes, ankhegs, sand drakes and other monsters who thrive in these hot arid climates are often spotted among the rolling dunes or gathered at the sparse oases, making trade routes treacherous. But it is in the center of the desert that its moniker begins to truly show; as the desert stretches from one hemisphere to another, there is an area in the middle where nothing lives, and the sun is not even visible most of the time.
Here, the sand is not a healthy golden color, but a pale, white salt. This stretch of the desert is entirely flat, and seems to go on forever in every direction. The danger of this part of the desert is not from any type of creature, but from the sheer unpredictability of it. Some days there may be earthquakes and sinkholes; other days there may be flash floods and hurricane force winds whipping the ashy, dead sands into the air; still other days there may be absolutely nothing at all, neither wind nor rain, veritable Doldroms on land. Those who are unprepared to travel through this desert, especially those who do not know the way, are consigned to oblivion one way or another: whether they succumb to madness, die of exposure, or are killed by one of the natural disasters which occur in the desert with regularity.

Localized Phenomena

Often, magical storms brew in the clouded skies above the Desert of Oblivion. The eldritch lightning which arcs across the purple-tinted clouds is raw chaos magic. It crackles across the sky, painting murals of insanity, and occasionally shooting down into the ground. Here, the lightning that touches down fuses and vitrifies the sand through a combination of regular superheating and chaos magic. The resulting rock structures, known to the Qanuni as Eizam Albarq- Lightning Bones in the Common Tongue- are treated with a mix of fascination and trepidation: if these rock structures are cut into, the gems inside of them are unequaled in both their beauty, and their value as magical catalysts. However, Qanuni legends claim that all who have possessed a fragment of this magical gem- Nukhae Albarq, in Qanuni, but more colloquially as Lightning Marrow- have met with terrible fates. Most Qanuni traders insist that touching or even looking at them is dangerous, and if they see a member of their caravan attempting to harvest one, will threaten them with abandonment.
Though the desert is prone to flash floods, it is not water that falls upon Sahra 'Alsinyan. A greasy, black, cloying liquid pours from the darkened skies. This liquid is debilitatingly cold, sucking the life from anyone it touches. Nor is it potable- anyone who is foolish or desperate enough to ingest this liquid will have their organs liquified, and die a horrible seizing death as their body is eaten away from the inside.
Even the very ground reacts to the chaos magic that permeates this area, shifting and rearranging on a whim to build shapes and stuctures that the human mind can barely conceive of. The creation of these structures dramatically alters the landscape from which they emerge. Any person or creature unfortunate enough to be next to one of these structures during their creation is likely to be swept into the structure itself, or to fall into sinkholes where the sand used to be. When these eldritch structures collapse, violent sandstorms can bury a caravan in seconds, and so most sensible Qanuni traders stay far away from them.

Climate

The Desert of Oblivion is infuriatingly temperate. It is too cold to dress in the fashion which a Qanuni trader would dress for a voyage through the rest of the desert, but it is too hot to dress warmly and remain comfortable. It also seems as though the desert literally responds to whomever is travelling through it: if they find themselves too cold, and bundle up, the air will heat up and become sweltering. If the person is too hot, and removes clothing or otherwise attempts to cool down, the desert will drop to almost freezing temperatures.

Fauna & Flora

Nothing can live in the Desert of Oblivion for very long. Qanuni traders make every effort to not spend more than three days and nights there.

Natural Resources

Only the Lightning Marrow are of any value to those who travel through the Desert of Oblivion, but even those are taboo by Qanuni customs. The only other thing one can find there is death and despair.

History

A thousand years ago, when the Khemetine empire was at its height, an evil vizier by the name of Ther'unn Zan threatened the peace of the kingdom with his dabbling in dark magic. He was cast out of the kingdom, but soon returned even stronger. A single event led to the creation of the Desert of Oblivion, and the almost total destruction of the Khemetine empire: in a magical duel between Ther'unn and Bastiir -the Imperial Magician of Pharaoh Khamentep III- the clash between opposing polarities of magic created a rift in time and space, between the Material Plane and The Void. This rift spread quickly and violently, sucking all of the physical matter from the Material Plane into The Void, erasing the titanic monuments of the great Khemetine capital of Nekheben from the face of Terrathria. Only those Khemetines away on campaign or trading in far-off lands survived this cataclysm. These remnants rebuilt their civilization far to the west of this cursed site, and attempted to match the granduer their kingdom once had, but the Khemetine people were never the same, marked by this event for all time.
It took many years for Khemetine people to attempt to cross this desert, to search for any trace of their ancient temples and monuments, but to no avail. It is within the past hundred years, since the incorporation of the Qanuni Empire, that people have begun making attempts to cross it.

Alternative Name(s)

The Desert of Oblivion, The Qanuni Wastes

Type

Desert