The River of Sand

[brian 333]

Between the Northern Westerlies and the Southern Easterlies there is a region where the winds blow gently, if at all. At sea these regions are called doldrums, and sailors avoid them for fear of being becalmed, stuck on the windless deep as fresh water and supplies run low.

Such places are less common on land, but they do occur. The Miradda is such a place, bounded on the East by the Tukkajat, a vast grassland-covered plateau that averages 6000 feet above sea level and on the West by the Serraht Coastal Range, a mostly dormant volcanic chain.

The Miradda is about six hundred miles North to South, and about two hundred miles East to West. It is extremely hot in daylight and extremely cold at night. It is very dry. So much so that very few plants can survive more than fifty miles from its border. If an infrequent rain does scatter a few drops in its parched sand, a bloom of weeds and self pollinating flowers appears almost instantly and after a few days of incredible growth dries up and blows away, to await next century's drizzle.

Standing water does not exist in the Miradda. But about one hundred feet or more beneath the surface there is a river which is unknown except to those who live there. A dozen small towns beneath the sand are built using stone towers that reach up through the sand to the surface and arched plazas around which stone igloos house the tribesmen who survive along the river and its tributaries.

The packed sand is mixed with volcanic ash, and when it gets wet it forms a natural concrete which is somewhat weak by engineering standards, but still strong enough to form tunnels along routes of flowing water. The native tribes use these tunnels to travel the length of the desert in wood-framed hide boats, forming a trade network beneath the sands. Though they prefer to build dome structures of stone for houses and communnal structures, they often create tunnels to access resources and locations by soaking the walls and ceilings as they excavate dry compacted sand.

Fish are their primary food source, but occasionally a sinkhole will form, allowing them to garden fresh vegetables for a time, until the desert sands fill it in.

They harvest wood and wool in the mountains and cotton, leather, and meat on the verge of the plateau, and harvest a variety of roots and tubers on the desert's fringes. At the river's delta along the southern coastline they trade with a small coastal city that appears to be trying to grow beyond its origins as a pirate haven.

The presence of the river is a closely guarded secret. Tribesmen willingly accept a geas to avoid revealing it to outsiders, and outsiders who discover it are either killed or geased into maintaining the secret.

The Tukkaj horsemen tell of a golden city in the heart of the desert where every pleasure is provided. Those who go there, they say, never want to leave. They do not believe their own lie, but they know the tribesmen of the Mirrada routinely cross a desert that kills them, and the few who do survive the attempt claim only that the Mirad tribesmen rescued them.

The swamp-dwelling pirates have never succeeded in venturing very far north of the coastal savannah. To them the tribesmen simply appear laden with trade goods and vanish back into the desert. Those who try to follow them seldom return, though mummified remains are found from time to time.

[brian 333]

In your world the tribesmen may be lizardfolk or humanoids of of one kind or another.

I envision them as offshoots of the mountain dwelling people of the East mixed with the horsemen of the West, but if so perhaps they are also mixed with dragonbloods of the mountains. (This might result in a stronger affiliation with arcane magic.)

Sand traps and quicksand are obvious components of their defenses, and alliances with river monsters is likely.