The Everdunes

The Everdunes, also known as the Living Desert, is an extremely harsh desert ever-expanding from a giant, stationary sandstorm in its center, created by the legendary Jalethran Sunspear, the elemental artifact of both air and fire. Constantly threatening its surrounding regions with its unstoppable advance, the Everdunes are the biggest natural threat of the Verdant realm, at least to the knowledge of the societies of the Continent.

History

In ancient times, the Dwarves fought a war against a magically gifted race that worshiped the elements, just as they did. However, the magi of this now extinct race, known as the Albassir, dabbled too deeply into elemental magic and subsequently caused a number of violent elemental disruptions throughout the Continent, summoning a host of elemental creatures and maladies upon themselves and their dwarven enemies. The Dwarves, retreating to their own territories in order to defend them, have tasked the greatest smith of his generation, the half-elf half-dwarf Velathras Redfinger, to use the ancient technique of stormforging in order to create vessels that could trap these vicious elemental forces - and so he created the eight Elemental Ingots, which the Dwarves and Albassir used together to trap the elemental power of each of the elements, saving the ravaged Continent from utter destruction.
However, before the ingots could even cool down, the mortals already started bickering over the powerful artifacts, trading unbound elemental rage for a purposeful destruction orchestrated by mortal vice. Eventually, the guardians tasked with keeping the ingots were defeated despite their best efforts and the ingots all fell into mortal hands, or were lost, if Fortune deemed so.
The next century was the most turbulent in the Continent's history, with entire kingdoms turned to ash, flooded, ground into sand by savage winds or consumed by wild, ravenous growth. Over this century of unparalleled destruction, the artifacts forged from the ingots would be all destroyed or lost, with the exception of the Jalethran Sunspear, wielded by the Albassir monarch, Osser Alabharan the Singed, who found himself under siege by a coalition of surviving kingdoms and domains, demanding the destruction of the spear. Refusing to do so, he would use the Sunspear to conjure a sandstorm outside of his dwelling, overpowering the spellbreakers of the attackers and forcing them to retreat.
His own people, however, grew weary and bitter over the catastrophes that have befallen them and were turning against their ruler, who saw his now unique elemental power as a means of conquering the world. When finally confronted by his squire, Sakarim Hakaan, he escalated the argument into a fight, where he wanted to kill Hakaan in a way that would strike fear into any other rebellious subjects who might think of defying him - heating the tip of the spear to a temperature so high that it singed his hands and blinded anyone not looking in the other direction, he plunged the weapon into his squire's chest, seeking to kill him in unbelievable agony. What happened, however, was far from anything he ever anticipated.
The spear point became so hot that it started to melt and when Osser sank it into his squire's chest, it welded itself onto his bones and became stuck in his body. Unable to wrangle it out, Osser had to let the spear go and back away, singed and half-blind, before he would burn to death. Hakaan, on the other hand, seemed to stay alive, screaming in a voice that chilled everyone in his vicinity to the bone despite the scorching heat enveloping the palace. As the hot metal was tempered anew, this time by Albassir blood, one of the most potent magical substances on the Continent, the elemental power contained within became so strong it broke free of the metal's bonds and exploded, instantly obliterating the entire Albassir capital and unleashing a giant sandstorm that would consume the entire kingdom in a few weeks' time, effectively making the Albassir extinct.
In the next few millennia, the storm would slowly expand, consuming more kingdoms and driving widescale population movements, shaping a lot of the Continent's history for dozens of generations.
Its southward expansion was eventually stopped by on opposing force of nature called the Evergrowth, which was supposedly unleashed by the legendary Feranor using the reforged elemental artifact of life, Dal'Caeran. Its expansion to the west, north and northeast, however, is still ongoing and nobody knows how to put an end to it, forcing people to move away from its ravenous borders to this day.

Manifestation

The Everdunes, despite being called the Living desert, are completely lifeless - the pure elemental power of scorching air grinds everything into hot sand and sends waves of heat, sand and glass in all directions, forcing the mages of the Continent to erect costly sand-barriers to protect their kingdoms from the desert's far reaching hand. Nobody has ever ventured far enough into the desert to peer at the giant maelstrom in its center, the source of the entire cataclysm, let alone at its eye, protecting the ruined Albassir capital of Aldaghira within its domain. If an adventurer ever gazed upon the terrifying storm, they would see something surprising - the storm itself is colorful, made up of not only the characteristic beige of the desert sands, but also of the ember-like, fiery color of melted sand and the prismatic shine of numerous glass particles, created at the foot of the storm itself by intense pressure and heat. In fact, the entirety of the ground below the storm is made of these glass particles, constantly supplying the calamity with its glittery substance.

Type

Metaphysical, Elemental