Ashkandhar – The Desert that Already Died
Ashkandhar – The Desert that Already Died
Official Name:
Ashkandhar (in the ancient tongue: “The Ashes Where the Dragon Sleeps”).
To its inhabitants it is simply “the Desert,” or, spoken in awe and dread, “the Place That Has Already Died.”
Place in the World
Ashkandhar dominates the entire southwestern quadrant of the main continent. It is hemmed in by the shattered peaks of Vyrkandor to the north, the Salt Inland Sea to the east, the Ocean of Eternal Storms to the south, and to the west… nothing. Only an endless horizon of black glass. No neighboring kingdom claims a true border; all draw imaginary lines hundreds of miles away and label the rest “accursed waste.”
The Founding Cataclysm – The Eternal Burn
3,812 years ago (by the current reckoning of Zarfah-Khal’s archivists), the primal dragon Zarash’ak, Devourer of Suns, awoke from his eons-long slumber beneath what was once a verdant savanna.
No chronicle agrees on why he woke in rage. Some say his hoard was plundered while he dreamed; others claim he simply finished his dream and hated the waking world.
For seven days and seven nights he unleashed a single, unbroken exhalation of black fire that consumed not only flesh and stone but the very weave of magic itself. Forests flash-crystallized into quartz; rivers boiled away forever; the fertile earth fused into razor-sharp glass dust.
When the breath finally ended, Zarash’ak himself was spent. His titanic body cracked like cooling obsidian and collapsed, carving the 800-kilometer wound now called the Abysm of the Broken Dragon. A fragment of his soul still burns in the heavens as a second, smaller, blood-red sun.
Magic in Ashkandhar is now abundant yet fractured. Spells strike harder here, but reality itself is cracked; wild magic surges are commonplace, and the land remembers its own death.
Present Geography
- The Black Glass Sea: the dead heart—an infinite plain of mirror-smooth obsidian that reflects a bleeding sky.
- The Singing Dunes: rust-red dunes in the north whose winds produce mournful, vision-granting tones.
- The Range of a Thousand Lances: melted elven spires frozen into basalt spears that accuse the heavens.
- The Abysm of the Broken Dragon: the fossilized corpse of Zarash’ak, still radiating draconic mutation.
- The Dead Crystal Forest: petrified quartz trees that chime like funeral bells in the wind.
- Ghost Oases: mirage wells that appear only to the dying; their water heals… or overwrites your memories with those of the long-dead.
Climate & Phenomena
Daytime 50–60 °C, nights plunging to –15 °C.
Living Ash Storms, Mana Tempests, and the Dragonwinds that carry Zarash’ak’s dying whispers on sulfurous breath.
Peoples Who Endure
- Ashkari: bronze-skinned human nomads tattooed with sacred ash, riding giant kraith lizards.
- Shamyr (Dune Elves): near-albino elves who drink no water, drawing moisture from night air through their skin.
- Sszera Ashborn: pureblood yuan-ti who claim to be Zarash’ak’s true children.
- Exiled Ifritim: fire genasi banished from the Elemental Planes.
- Ferroborne: dwarves dwelling inside steam-powered walking fortresses.
- The Forgotten: sentient undead who built entire cities beneath the sands.
- Kheprim Scarab-Kin: obsidian-shelled thri-kreen guardians of the trade routes.
- Mirage Weavers: shapeshifting beings of living sand and illusion.
Cities & Places of Legend
- Zarfah-Khal: the only permanent city, built around the sole true oasis; ruled by nine immortal merchants who traded their shadows for eternal life.
- Kraith’zul: a living coliseum of colossal kraith bones where victors drink the Dragon’s Blood.
- The Library of Ashes: subterranean archive whose books are written on obsidian blades; read too much and become a glass statue.
- The Tomb of the Broken Dragon: a megadungeon inside Zarash’ak’s fossilized corpse—his heart is said to beat once every hundred years.
- The Red Eye: an active volcano where the Sszera sacrifice worlds to hasten their father’s return.
Faiths & Philosophies
- Cult of the Sleeping Dragon: every kill is a prayer.
- Path of Eternal Ashes (Shamyr): all things must burn to be reborn stronger.
- The Silent: a sect that cuts out its own tongues to better hear the ruins whisper.
- Brotherhood of Broken Glass: mad dreamers who believe the world can be mended by collecting every shard of shattered reality.
Secrets Known Only to the Mad and the Dead
The red sun is growing. In 177 years it will equal the true sun.
Zarash’ak never truly died—he merely returned to sleep inside the desert itself.
Collect the seven soul-shards scattered across the greatest ruins and one may become the new Devourer of Suns… or awaken the old one forever.
Ashkandhar is not a place to live.
It is a place to be reborn—or to become another layer of ash carried on the wind until the end of days.