Heart of Oak

Desert Sands

"Fort Klaria was a bustling port town sitting on the edge of the eastern deserts. It was once a Basar military fort they used against the desert kingdoms. After the Basar-Nomadic wars ended, the fort became decommissioned, and despite having a garrison. However, the site had built itself a trading network with the clans and other countries and, from their trade, built a new town and home on the edge of the sands. The part of the desert closest to shore was more clay than fine sand and the orange mesa proved to be a solid enough foundation to support not just a military fort but also permanent housing. With trees being scarce, lumber was a high-priced commodity. People used sandstone, clay, and dried mud brick to make houses instead."

"The founders of Fort Klaria were exclusively human, made from the ship crews and former soldiers who stayed put after retiring. Trade brought in new people from all over the world and even drew out the residents of the sand dunes; Desert-folk, a race of humans with darker skin tones to counter the bright and aggressive sun, dune-ants were a species of insectoid beastfolk that almost exclusively resided in underground cities, and green skins from the wetter regions beyond the sand's growing borders. They survived on a diet of spices and fish, relying on tapping underground springs for freshwater..."

~A Sampling of Civilization Abroad, Written in 1982 of the 5th Era.

Simadger set the book down. Her trip to the desert served multiple purposes. She was to gather information on the other gods and lesser deities, establish a communication network, bring back knowledge as books and spell scrolls, and lastly, find her people. The last goal was a more personal one. She considered Oakengrove and the others to be her family, but something didn't feel complete. She wanted to find her original colony.

The seafaring ship she was on was a larger civilian cruiser designed for traveling the world. It carried three hundred passengers and had five large masts, each with three cloth sails. It was called "Queen Anne" and it flew the flag of Rykensvik, twin crosses, one blue and the other gold, both outlined in white and planted in a dark red background. The ship had armed guards on board and some black powder cannons to deter high seas pirates; something she had heard was pretty common in the far west.

Below deck were several floors with small rooms on them, just large enough to fit a single-person bed, a travel trunk, and a ceiling-mounted oil lamp. The ship was rocking the orange carapaced dune ant to sleep. It was a calming and gentle sway over the open ocean, similar to a hammock she had back home. She continued to read her book to learn something about the place she was visiting, on top of the twelve books she'd already finished in the first week of the trip.

"The eastern desert has a rather rich history spanning across the eras. The first major kingdom that ruled over it belonged to a species of beastfolk that are now long extinct. These beastfolk were very dissimilar to those we see today. They had human bodies and animal heads with a clear separation and distinction between the two where they met. While there is no overarching name for this class of species, several prominent ones are actually ancestors to modern-day beastfolk. Sobekins is one such creature with an alligator head. Horusan features a bird head, usually that of a falcon or eagle. The third most common one known is Setal, which displays a jackal.

"Some historians theorize that the Basar Lamia belongs to the same family of creatures, although the earliest found fossil dates millennia after these creatures went extinct. Others think it is a sibling species as these traits are swapped in modern lamia, centaurs, and satyrs and co-evolved in different geographic locations."

"The City of Ashtu is rumored to be buried deep beneath the sand, but because of the extreme climate and weather patterns that affect the desert, excavation has been near impossible. Ashtu is believed to be the capital city of the ancient desert kingdom and is home to an exorbitant amount of wealth that it plundered during its time. The largest kingdom, known as Menbyhenet, existed along the coastline of the continent. Studies of the text, hieroglyphs, and geology have led researchers to believe the city fell into the ocean during the end of the 2nd era. This study contradicted the previously established theory that the city was buried beneath the sands, which may explain why finding it has been near impossible; archeologists have been digging in the wrong spot. The current running theory behind its disappearance is that when the city fell to green skin hands, the gods of these people displayed their wrath as a tectonic quake which plunged the entire city into the ocean; a slight alteration from being subjected to a city-sized sinkhole in the desert."