Wasted Desert

>Wasted Desert The Wasted Desert is dry and rocky, with the Sea of Tyre to its east where the stones and gritty sand run right down to the sea. To the west, a steep escarpment rises to the high plateau known as the Sacred Table and to the south runs the Zoar River, dropping down from the high mountains and running along a rocky path to the sea, barely moistening the ground along its high banks. Dry streambeds in the desert are prone to flashfloods during violent spring storms, but even when rain comes it evaporates quickly, giving little sustenance to the few plants that grow in this harsh climate. Those that do are tough, twisted, and thorny, and even the spiny cacti that are edible are terribly bitter to the taste.
Oral tradition among the natives of the Malagro Jungle to the south suggests this area was once green and growing. Whether due to a curse or a change in weather patterns, it is now a barren and unpleasant place. However, it has played an important part in the history of the Lost Lands, as three of the crusades for the city of Tircople landed (or attempted to land) in the Wasted Desert to gain a foothold in Libynos.
The most obvious legacy of that history is the great Crusaders’ Road that rises straight from the desert floor to the plateau of the Sacred Table high above. Its surface is smooth (or nearly so) even today, though its edges have become chipped and worn. Four horsemen side by side can ride safely, or eight if they go shoulder to shoulder in a thundering charge. Solid stone supports the road as it climbs higher and higher. Rather than being the creation of any Hyperborean technology, the road was fashioned through the power of great spells worked by the mages of the First Crusade. Calling upon ancient magics, they pulled stone and earth together into a causeway that allowed the crusaders to access the Sacred Table from an unexpected direction and defeat the Huun invaders.
After that crusade, towers were built near the top and bottom of the causeway to guard it. Both were taken briefly in the attacks before the Second Crusade but then stood their duty nearly 200 years before the fortifications were destroyed in the events that precipitated the Third Crusade. From the vantage of the desert floor, the high Tower of the Scarlet Hand appears heartbreakingly intact but is in fact a broken shell, and nothing but a circle of rubble on the desert remains of the Fortress of Parvalim that once guarded the lower extent of the road.