The Lost Sea

The Lost Sea is a vast desert region beyond the Western Mountains that was once a land-locked sea and is now no more than a vast desert region comprised mostly of sun-cracked clay dust.
Nearly uninhabited, the area is primarily home to smaller species that have adapted to life in the region.

Geography

The Lost Sea is an arid dustbowl most of the year, with periods of heavy rains and flooding.
The landscape is mostly comprised of hard-packed dust that is baked to a hard shell by the sun until cracks begin to break it apart. Strong winds pick up any bits of dust it can and scours the region, stirring up massive dust storms and creating dust devils and tornadoes that criss cross most of the region, making travel particularly difficult during the seasons when such storms are most active.

Ecosystem

Flora:

Plant life in the region is scattered and mostly comprised of tumbleweeds, cholla cactus, mesquite trees, and a kind of grass that can be found scattered across the region.

Fauna:

Jackalopes

With sleek builds and powerful long legs, these desert kin to rabbits are sure-footed, swift, and agile. Jackalopes also sport a pair of deer-like antlers that resemble those of white-tail deer. There are three distinct types of jackalope that have so far been identified:
Tiny These small sized jackalopes are about the size of a door mouse and race across the desert at great speed in search of seeds and insects to feast on, finding shelter in piles or rocks or burrows during the heat of the day.
Small The size of an average rabbit, these are the most common to encounter. These jackalopes are fierce fighters for their size and are not afraid to stand their ground against similarly sized predators.
Large What is believed to be the rarest of the jackalopes, or at least the rarest of the kinds that are known about, is the tall deer-sized variety. Standing the same height as an average reindeer, these massive jackalopes have been known to be tamed by some hauflin to be used for sled pullers across the desert.

Ecosystem Cycles

It rains in the winter months, leaving some small echo of what had once been in the area as the flat desert is transformed for a brief time into a shallow puddle that stretches across the desert area, broken by islands where the ground is a bit higher or rocks have gathered.
As winter fades to spring and then to summer the ground begins to dry out, returning to the familiar cracked dust clay bed.

Localized Phenomena

Tornados The landscape has a season when these phenomena are more active than other times of the year, and most people try not to travel at that time.
Dust Storms In the summer months massive dust storms are stirred up from time to time, blocking out the sun and scouring the landscape with howling winds that carry along particles of dust that would feel like fine grit sandpaper to anyone foolish enough to be trapped out in one.
Living Rocks - maybe? This is a phenomena that is unique to this area and puzzles a lot of hauflin. There are rocks that seem to move when no one is looking. The rocks leave trails behind them, so the hauflin know the things moved, but the hauflin can not yet figure out how. One theory is that the rocks are actually alive, but any efforts so far to examine the stones have resulted in "it is just a rock" determinations. A laws have been passed in the hauflin settlements that are around the region that alternately forbid anyone from going near the rocks, protect the rocks as an endangered species, or have bounties out for anyone that can either kill the stones or prove they are alive. The Temple of Justice has declared the rocks to be the work of demons, and anyone known to have approached a rock is suspected of being possessed by the demon that had been moving the stone. Some scholars, considered insane by others, are trying to determine if the rocks are in fact some clock-work mechanism that charts the seasons and controls the entire world.

History

The region was once a vast inland sea, but after some ancient disaster (volcano eruption? glacier melting?) the sea drained out into the valley to the west and created the Great Rift that runs the length of the nothern border of the Kingdom of the North.

Inhabiting Species

• Jackalop - small size