Zarkania

Zarkania, a region best known for its peculiar climes. This northwestern most part of the Aetherian continent stands as a mixture between dry arid deserts and damp jungles. This extreme disparity in the landscape comes from the many hills and the mineral rich southern mountains, which see the deserts regularly flooded with rivers.
When these mineral rich floods spread through the lands like life veins, it allowed the shrubbery to flourish and thrive underneath the hot desert sun. Granting shadows and refuge to one of the most mystic ecosystems within all of Equilibrium.

The Bountiful Coasts

Within Zarkania, the most populated areas of both flora and fauna happen to be the coastal parts of the region.
From the sea, the shores could easily be mistaken as the foliage of a vast rainforest, what with the sprawling palms, giant sized flowers and bushes along with a myriad of other plants and woods.
Due to the surplus of resources around the sea, it also happens to be the home of a variety of herbivores feeding from the fruits and leaves within. Causing it to be a near paradise for the local Zarkanic communities that make it their home.

Desert of Plenty

Beyond the green shrubbery shores, most of Zarkania is covered in coarse sand, hills and dry brown mountains. Though among these heights, there is no shortage of waterfalls pouring down chasms of rivers into the otherwise dry landscape.
The result is a wide array of cacti and bushes growing even in the most forbidding spots of the desert, while a plethora of trees can be found seemingly defying the laws of physics as they grow out of the slopes and walls of the heights.

Earthen Hills

In the southmost part of Zarkania, the range of Mt. Maisha covers a good part of the landscape from the treacherous sands. The myriad of rivers pouring down having since long coated the earth in a mineral rich sludge that hardened into a ripe farmable strip of land.
While its coast lacks in shrubbery in comparison to the other shores, many farms and villages hide among the hills with some communities even existing among the mountains.

The Forbidding Border

On the eastmost side of the region, the life-bringing hilltops part for a more coarse badland mesa. This is where Zarkania borders with the larger Aetherian continent as well as the homeland of a myriad beastfolk tribes.
Thanks to the harsh climates with a lack of water and resources, along with a surplus of apex predators, this lifeless part of the region makes up around fifteen percent of Zarkania and is known as a natural wall that makes it hard for the vicious beastkin warchiefs to gain any foothold into the territory.

Beasts of Zarkania

While most creatures within the region are smaller critters, such as desert dwelling rodents, birds and reptiles, it is also home to some of the most massive beasts to exist within Aetheria.
A good example of these are the Zarkanic Elephants, Griffins, Jaculus and the feared Grootslang. Though none of them as legendary as the mighty Zark from which the land got its name.
Most of these creatures also happen to be colourful of feathers or skin. A trait believed to have a correlation with the many vivid blossoms and fruits on which they feed.

Writing by Tonarus
Art AI generated with Midjourney

If one was to describe magic within the frames of artwork, I would show them the shores of Zarkania.
-Omar the Enlightened

Freezing nights? No, these ain't the golden dunes. Come, witness the star-lit sky instead.
-Zarkanian local to a distressed Peregonic traveler