The Desert
The desert is a vast expanse of rolling dunes and blustery wind, while overhead, storms swirl and rage. These dust devils spin the rolling landscape into tornadoes and sandstorms, blasting unwary travellers until the air is unbreathable. Only those who must pass through the unmarked interior of the great desert do so, and even those merchants who travel the eastern trade route through the edge of the desert carry tents equipped with snorkels, to hide from the rampant sandstorms. These storms often bring lightning, especially over the part of the desert where the Gysegr-lân Dywod Dywodfryniau lies, leaving a vast forest of bent glass structures where the lightning has struck ground. Gysegr-lân Dywod Dywodfryniau is a place where glass trees and ancient petrified wood co-exist, hidden deep away within the depths of the desert. Once a great forest, the land beneath has long since disappeared into the shifting sands, and only the petrified wood remains. This strange place calls the lightning down, struck far more than any other by the spears of fire.
The temperatures of the desert vary greatly, as daytime is scalding hot, enough so that people will burrow into the sands to escape, while the nights are cool, the temperature dropping until thick cloaks are needed to stay warm. With water scarce, the few oases along the way are of great importance to the trade routes, but they are supplemented by something unusual for a desert: rain. The rain that sweeps the desert is brief but harsh, causing short lived flash floods and then disappearing down into the sands. Experienced travellers set up camp and lay out rain traps when they see a storm approaching, storing the water in case of need later in the journey. There are oases hidden in the depths of the desert, these small, brackish puddles known only to the nomads who journey and live within the shifting sands, eking out an existence from the pitiful growths about their muddy homes.
The desert is a harsh mistress, full of scalding breath and frozen embrace, and even those who only grace her borders pay great attention to her moods, for even at the very edge of her terrain, a sandstorm might well sweep down at a moment's notice. She extends her grasp with every passing year, thin tendrils of sand and dust grasping at the edge of the fertile lands. As centuries pass, she may well bring all of The Four Part Land under her burning clasp.