Anauroch

Anauroch - The Great Sand Sea

Anauroch is the immense desert that swallows the heart of northern Faerûn, a land of scorching days, killing cold nights, and stark beauty concealing older, darker powers. Once the fertile and sky-borne realm of Netheril, it was blasted into wasteland by the magic of the buried phaerimm. Over centuries the name that first belonged only to the northern High Ice spread to cover the entire expanse: the frozen reaches, the rock-strewn middle, and the southern seas of sand.

Setting and regions

Anauroch is ringed by storied neighbors: the Silver Marches, Savage Frontier, and Evereska to the west; Cormyr and the Dalelands along the south and southeast; the Moonsea and the Ride to the east. Within those borders the desert is usually described in three great belts:

  • The High Ice (north): a realm of broken rock and glacier. Even here the desert shows through—in places like the “Frozen Sea,” a maze of dunes locked in ice that slushes to treacherous mud each brief summer. Heat vents called Smokeholes melt shafts through the ice and harbor strange, fire-loving creatures.

  • The Plain of Standing Stones (center): a gravel ocean where razor winds have sand-blasted pillars and tors into jagged forests of stone. Hidden among them gape infamous chasms such as the Fallen Giant Rift and Helm Rift, and long-dead rivers like Raudilauth have left dry valleys that double as roads and ambush alleys.

  • The Sword (south): the classic sand sea, plastered by siroccos, broken by knife-edged ranges like the Scimitar Spires and Wall of Fallen Djinn, and dotted with oases both natural and conjured. Here dune fields like the Bowl of Loneliness, salt pans such as the Shoal of Thirst, and landmarks like the manticore-haunted Swordpoint decide who lives and who never returns.

Despite the aridity, water shapes life. The River of Gems runs clear from the High Ice to vanish into the vast sinkhole called the Throat, rumored to be carpeted in gemstones. Other courses—Sixstreams, seasonal wadis, and seepage lines—thread out to oases that are the keys to movement, survival, and power. Some springs are ancient and sacred; others are the work of later conquerors. The Zhentarim carved Bhaerlith, Hlaunga, Ma’atar, Olomaa, and Vuerthyl; lamias rule the lush Lion’s Eye; the Well of the Cloven Rock and Well of the Chasm water tribal migrations; minor pools like Yliyl persist mostly as waystones and rumor-magnets.

Peoples and powers

The Bedine. For a millennium after Netheril’s fall, the Bedine—nomadic human clans—were Anauroch’s heartbeat. They travel from water to water, raid and guide, and measure wealth in herds rather than coin. Tribes follow sheiks; elders and place-spirits are respected; and open spellcasting is distrusted at best. Common hunting grounds like the Saiyaddar sit alongside taboo places such as At’ar’s Looking Glass or the Quarter of Emptiness. Some oases shelter outcasts (the Sister of Rains), others pride or peril.

The Zhentarim. Profit drew the Black Network into the Sword to force a caravan artery across the wastes. Northern routes across the High Ice bled garrisons to monsters; southern tracks clashed with Dalelands and Cormyrean interests. The compromise was a string of fortified wells and the Black Road, a hard-won corridor constantly contested by Bedine raids and desert hazards. For all their years of fighting, the Zhentarim held little beyond the ground under their boots.

The Shadovar. The return of Thultanthar—Shade, the floating city of Netherese heirs—reshaped the desert and its politics. Fixated on wiping out the phaerimm and remaking their empire, the Shades melted parts of the High Ice and raised the Shadow Sea over the Shoal of Thirst, moderating temperatures and drawing rain. By the late 1400s, Anauroch briefly resembled an arid steppe: dust-bowl flats broken by new rivers, young forests, and grasslands. Shade crushed rivals, fought and won the Shadowbane War for control of the Black Road, forbade unsanctioned magic among the tribes, and resettled thousands into restored cities—Orofin, Rasilith, Landeth, Oreme—while others remained herders under sullen toleration. Resistance never vanished; open rebellion ignited two years before Shade’s cataclysm at Myth Drannor. In the aftermath, Shadovar remnants and Bedine skirmishing near the Memory Spire woke a dormant phaerimm hive, hastening the land’s re-desertification.

The phaerimm. Beneath the dunes lie the architects of Anauroch’s doom: cone-shaped sorcerers whose life-drain magic once withered Netheril into sand. Long imprisoned by the Sharn Wall, they burst forth in a war that drew Evereska, Evermeet, Heartlands champions, the Chosen, and Shade into a single inferno. Survivors scattered into the deeps—but any disturbance of their hives threatens to start the cycle anew.

Other denizens include the diminutive, sharp-trading D’tarig along the eastern marches; rare nomadic armand; reptilian asabi and stingtails in caves and ruins (often enslaved by stronger powers); and a bestiary suited to stone and sand: blue dragons (especially in the north), manticores, hill giants, verbeeg, ogres, goblin tribes where the Goblin Marches bleed into the Sword, and grim death giants haunting Netherese vaults. Shadovar migrations added krinth from shadow and birthed some shadar-kai among their own.

Places of note

  • Thultanthar (Shade): a mountain-crown ripped upside-down and flown as a city. It hovered northeast of the Shadow Sea until its ruin over Myth Drannor, ending the Second Netherese Empire in all but memory.

  • Hlaungadath: a mostly intact fallen enclave near Ascore, long haunted by lamias and whispered evils.

  • Negarath: crashed flying ruins honeycombing the Standing Stones with caverns.

  • Ularith: sand-buried death-sect complex warded by a lich-lord; its portal web touches crypts from Mulhorand to the Utter East.

  • The Obsidian Chapel: a pillaged black shrine to tyranny, now a bandit and monster magnet.

  • Lundeth, Orofin, Rasilith, Oreme: ancient sites revived—briefly—under Shade before the sands reclaimed their roads.

  • The Black Road: the Zhentarim’s caravan spine, tied to oasis-forts like Vuerthyl (and the emeralds and imprisoned mind flayer hidden there).

A brief history

  • Days of Thunder: The sarrukh empire of Isstosseffifil ruled much of what would become Anauroch. Their attempt to drown phaerimm by rerouting the Narrow Sea shattered their own realm and ecology.

  • Rise and fall of Netheril: Centuries later, phaerimm curses drained the Netherese heartlands. When the great crash came, three enclaves saved by divine grace seeded “Lost Kingdoms” on the fringes, but the sands—and conflict—overtook them.

  • The spreading sands: The desert’s advance was checked for a time when sharns broke the phaerimm’s grip, only to creep again generations later.

  • Return of Shade (1370s): Thultanthar’s reappearance brought climate-warping rituals: the Shadow Sea and glacial melts. Trade, conquest, and exterminations followed.

  • Spellplague and after: The world convulsed; maps changed; portions of the Frozen Sea were marked as the Deep Maw by later chartmakers. By the late 1470s, rains fell and green lines spread—briefly.

  • Rebellion and ruin (1480s): Bedine uprisings grew as Netherese wars abroad overreached. Shade’s fall in 1487 shattered its dominion; fighting near the Memory Spire roused phaerimm that began leeching life again. Within a few years, Anauroch was once more a true desert.

Trade and travel

Even desolation deals in goods. Caravans move dates, salt, and spice out; bring in livestock and timber; and pay dearly for water, guidance, and the right to pass. The safest crossings hug the Black Road and its waystations; the bold or desperate strike across dune seas by star and rumor, steering for beacons like the Swordpoint or the gleam of At’ar’s Looking Glass. Sandstorms routinely erase routes and expose ruins “like old teeth in a buried jaw”—promises of treasure and certain trouble.

Beliefs and taboos

Among the Bedine, worship centers on Elah, Kozah, Beshaba, ancestral and place-spirits such as Rahalat, and the unnameable mights of the wastes. Shrines rise at notable wells and stones; oaths are sworn by winds, dunes, and stars. Shade’s enclave cloaked itself in Shar’s shadow, while many outlanders bring their own gods—and find them silent in the Quarter of Emptiness.

Rumors and tall tales

Desert nights breed stories: that the very first cloud palace lies broken somewhere under the dunes; that a forgotten golem still shovels sand for a master who never returned; that the bottom of the Throat glitters with untold wealth; that Vuerthyl’s emeralds are cursed; that the Well of the Cloven Rock drinks lion blood on moonless nights. Most are lies. Enough are true to keep treasure-hunters coming.

Notable figures

Telamont Tanthul, the Lord of Shade, and his princely sons once ruled the sky-city that sought to raise Netheril again. Among the desert folk, the Bedine Harper Ruha became a name spoken around many fires. And in countless nameless tombs sleep the old lords of Netheril, waiting for the sands to move, the storm to pass, and the curious to pry.