~The Ember Desert~
~Desert and Badlands, formed into one region of searing heat and scorching dunes~
Searing heat and scorching dunes. Words no description of the Ember Desert could go without. While the village safe from attacks from Illagers, it’s mostly because the villages are all located in the Great Dunes; the desert part of the Ember Desert. While valuable supply lines go through the area, it isn’t worth the effort of expending manpower to take and hold the area, when they could simply just use another river.
The Ember Valley; the badlands part of the Ember Desert is where the Illager’s real interests lie. Once having a mine deep within that they were forced to abandon after villagers armed themselves and forced them out of the region, in the centuries after, the villagers of the region have let their guard down, letting them begin to set plans to retake their mines.
To start this plan, they sunk the Sameria’s Fortune, the flagship of the navy of the dunes. While they haven’t made any grabs for power after that, the people of the sands of the Great Dunes grow worried. Proposals for an armed militia have been thrown around, but who knows what’ll happen.
~Points of Interest~
~Cal Ranus~
~A temple buried in the dunes, recently retrofitted into a fortress~
All written records of this temple were burned when the Pillagers came. What is known is that it was lost to time before they came. The only thing that proved that it existed was a hidden map found within the dunes, hidden by the inhabitents of the Great Dunes before the Pillagers burned down their archives.
Using this map, Cal Ranus was partially excavated and had its TNT carefully disarmed. After this, the people of the Great Dunes decided to retrofit it into a the fortress it is today. It’s main entrances are barred by iron doors and iron bars, with its emergency entrance being a trap door at the top, which is barred by iron bars bars not shown in images since am too lazy to update).
Within the fort is the work site of all of it’s support staff, with some ladders leading up to the entrances on the second floor. While nothing much is up there, it’s typically used as a break room by the staff and guard. On the sides of the main room are the beds and holding cells for captured Pillagers while they wait for a transport from Sameria to come to transfer them to a more permanent jail cells.
Near the front of the room are hallways leading to the other entrances and the fort armory, which the guard is only allowed in. The switches on the wall are to lock the hallway doors in the event Illagers break through. Generally the fort commander stands by the door, ready to order a lockdown if need be.
In the depths of the fortress lies the supply room, with a special guard on duty to ensure nothing is stolen (he fell down when I was making it and lived somehow so I healed him and gave him feather falling boots which arent shown the image). Only he and the fort commander are allowed in this room.
~Sameria~
~The jewel of the Great Dunes~
The first of the two cities of the Great Dunes, it traces back its origins to directly as the Days of Crimson Sand started, as a mere outpost for rebel forces entering the Ember Valley. As the rebellion raged on, the outpost grew to a military base, then to a large town, then into the sandy city that it is today.
Sameria now is the capital of the Great Dunes, once having one of the most majestic sailing ships, the Sameria’s Fortune, a stolen Pillager ship. These shining city was well known around the lands, often using funds from goods that they taxed when they flowed through it to fund their own ventures, becoming wealthier and stronger over the centuries.
Eventually some Samerians decided to split off and form the town of Alvaris, taxing those who tried to use the other river to bypass the Samerian tax. As hated as the two towns are by merchants, they’re well respected in terms of military strength, similarly to the Sacred Way, they never slowed down the growth of their forces, using their funds to retrofit Cal Ranus into the fortress it is today.
~Alvaris~
~The eastern entrance to the Ember Desert~
The second of the two cities of the great dunes, this town mostly exists to taxe any merchants trying to avoid the Samerian tax on goods that flow through it. As a result, this town like Sameria is rather despised by merchants, forcing a detour or a loss in net profit.
Local travelers on the other hand, adore it, as it allows them to restock before making the long and generally very difficult trek through the Ember Desert and due to the taxes providing so much income, they can afford to make prices incredibly low, enticing more tourists to the area.
Due to Alvaris being closer to Cal Ranus and more inland than Sameria, it’s much less paranoid of an attack, as the garrison over at Cal Ranus would just sail over and save them, and even then an attack would go for Sameria, letting Alvaris simply build up defenses before it occured.
~Evoker Alarak’s Mines~
~Long ago, the ancestors of the people of the Great Dunes toiled away in these mines~
These accursed mines were once subject to horrific rituals and brutal working conditions, kidnapped villagers were forced to be the subject of horrific experiments turning many into abominations (F&H type shit, you know you know), some of which led later Illagers to create the Ravager based on the horrors they created.
Those who weren’t chosen for these rituals were instead forced to work grueling hours at the mine, going until they collapsed of exhaustion or malnutrition and being forced back to work when they woke, that is, if they ever did.
The Illagers would keep a vigilant watch, and for nearly 300 years none would escape, until one faithful day when a group managed to make the area that would become the Sacred Way. From there the seeds of a rebellion that would force them out of those damned mines would be born.
While not much is known about the rebellion, known the Days of Crimson Sand (im too lazy to write about it rn lmao), what is known is that it was a mix of an attack by an army of rebel villagers who either escaped or joined to liberate the Embter Desert and a revolt by the miners coordinated by rebels who willingly went in to tell the miners when to rebel.
The mines were abandoned after that, no villager wished to return after putting down the abominations that the villagers had created. So the place was left to rot, occassionally patroled by guards to ensure no Illager returned. For the most part, the place is inhabited by cave spiders, some of which travel to the surface, though patroling guards scares them back in.
Since the sinking of the Sameria’s Fortune, patrols near the area picked up drastically. Occassional skirmishes occur quite often as Illagers attempt to establish a foothold, only to be forced back by the garrison of Cal Ranus and occassional Gar Haran. For now they can hold, but how long will this last?
~The Wreck of Sameria’s Fortune~
~The people of Sameria stole this ship from the Illagers, centuries later, they got revenge~
The Sameria’s Fortune started her life out as the flagship of the Illager navy in the (I’ll think of a name for this sea when I explore it later). During the Days of Crimson Sand, it was used as a mobile base of operations against the rebelling forces, fending off dozens of rebels attempting to land on the southern shores of the Ember Valley.
Eventually though, when the Illagers were forced into retreat, the panic of the fallback allowed some rebels to slip onto the fleets ships and steal them, allowing them to fire on retreating Illagers thinking they were allied, the sheer bloodshed of that day stained the Ember Valley’s southern shores a blood red that took centuries to wash out.
After that, the ship was taken and renamed to the Sameria’s Fortune, and would sail the seas for the next century or so, until one fateful day an Illager fleet challenged the Samerian fleet to a battle, resulting in the Illager fleet being sunk, but taking down the Sameria’s Fortune along with a large portion of it’s fleet.
Most of the ships sunk in this battle were buried under the gravel and sand, or covered by the seagrass, but the Sameria’s Fortune rests above the other wrecks, overgrown, but visible. May those who sailed the seas in this legendary wreck rest in peace,
, im running like the bare minimum rn