The Burned Frontier

The southwestern United States is a dangerous, lawless land known as the Burned Frontier. Once home to ranchers and miners, worsening climate change pushed the majority of its inhabitants out by 2055. Those that remained in the area would go on to lose everything, including their lives, to violent storms and worsening droughts. Wildfires have destroyed much of the forests within the frontier, and stories claim that some of those fires never died out. Radiation poisoning is a concern as well, due to nuclear bomb testing in the Mojave Desert in the past. The landscape is littered with ghost towns and the remains of human life.
There's a high presence of scrappers in the region as of 2094. They've begun the process of quarantining the Burned Frontier, mostly to prevent travelers from interfering with their research. Travel to and from the area is discouraged, but many corporations have a vested interest in the frontier's natural resources. Some of them have even ventured in and set up mining operations. Despite the warnings of danger, the Burned Frontier sees a lot of travelers. People have traveled from afar due to rumors of buried treasure, while others refuse to believe that the frontier is as bad as it's painted out to be.
The vast majority of travelers to the Burned Frontier are unprepared for the realities they'll face. They perish long before they find anything of value.

Geography

While much of the Burned Frontier is a harsh wasteland, it's not entirely inhospitable to human life. The mountains provide some relief from the desert's intense storms, allowing small communities to prosper in the valleys. Some villages cling to higher elevations, where cooler temperatures and rain provide respite from the otherwise arid landscape. At lower altitudes, the Burned Frontier is much less tolerant. The soil has hardened into cracked, bleak plains that only the hardiest plants can survive. Droughts have reduced the riverbeds to ghostly impressions in the dirt.
Dust storms frequently sweep across the horizon, obscuring the land and choking the air. Summer is the cruelest season. Even the deepest lakes dry up during the hottest months, but see a brief resurgence of life after the spring and autumn rains. The Pacific Ocean reaches beyond the Burned Frontier's eroding coastline. The shoreline once boasted successful fishing communities but has since been destroyed by rising tides and violent thunderstorms. The erosion of the soil has progressed drastically, consuming the ruins of entire settlements. The coastal cliffs are dangerous, with strong gusts and large waves.
Traveling through the frontier is perplexing and ever-changing. Maps serve little use because the roads that once connected settlements are now buried beneath sand. Only weathered street signs remain as reminders of the past. Those navigating the region rely on intuition and expertise rather than obsolete charts. Even despite its brutality, the Burned Frontier holds moments of beauty. Towering mesas rise above the dusty plains, their cliffs painted in deep reds and oranges that mimic a sunset. Cacti blossom in the spring, their brilliant flowers defying the desolate scene around them.
Gnarled, charred forests dot the landscape, presenting stories of survival through even the most intense flames. The Burned Frontier's climate is as unpredictable as the region itself. There is one guarantee, however: the heat. Temperatures can range from "uncomfortable" to "lethal", scorching the earth under an unforgiving sun. The mountain's foggy summits provide some relief, but they're not immune to the drought cycles that define the frontier. These dry spells occur every five to ten years and can last anywhere between a few months to a few decades.

Localized Phenomena

In the west where the Pacific Coast crumbles into the ocean is the Ashen Tide. A result of a deep-sea fissure where volcanic activity has intensified in recent years, the Tide is a toxic fog that rolls in without warning. It turns the air into a suffocating, gray haze and carries in corrosive rains. On very rare occasions, shards of volcanic glass fall from the sky like cursed snow. Despite the risks, the Ashen Tide has become the stuff of legends. Desperate scavengers flock to the coast in search of fortune. Stories say that when the fog recedes, it reveals shipwrecks or ruins of lost cities. While there is some truth to these claims, many scavengers only find death.

Fauna & Flora

Despite its anxiety inducing name, the Burned Frontier is far from lifeless. Nature has reclaimed a majority of the land, slowly erasing the scars of man-made corruption. The remains of humanity's presence has been reduced to crumbling highways and rusty machinery, all overtaken by the wild. Ghost towns are now the domain of rodents, scavenging birds, and feral dogs. Ivy crawls through shattered windows of sun-bleached homes. High in the mountains, life thrives in ways that the lowlands can't support.
The population of bighorn sheep has rebounded in the absence of human presence. They move in small herds along the rocky slopes, grazing on the sparse vegetation the land provides. These sheep serve as a food source themselves for the small villages along the mountain paths. Where there are sheep though, there are predators. Cougars watch for their opportunity to pounce on mountain hares, young sheep, and occasionally on travelers who stray too far from safety. Lower in the desert, one of the region's rarest inhabitants clings to life: the Gila monster.
The once common reptile is now on the brink of extinction. With food sources vanishing, their habitats are dwindling. Most sightings of the Gila monsters occur after storms when they leave their shelter to bask in puddles. They soak up what little moisture the land provides. Starvation has made them unusually aggressive and while their bites aren't fatal, they are venomous and painful. Though sparse, flora adds color and a reminder of nature's resilience in the harsh terrain. The arid soil blossoms with marigolds and primrose, and prickly pear cacti provide shelter to insects and small creatures seeking refuge from the heat.
Juniper and mesquite trees are scattered throughout the frontier, their roots tapping into the earth's last reserves of water. Among the most interesting inhabitants of the Burned Frontier is the Sphinx moth, who's often mistaken for a hummingbird. It darts between flowers in search of nectar and is a vital pollinator. True hummingbirds no longer exist within the stretch of the frontier. The last recorded sight of them in the southwestern United States was in 2042. Their extinction is a somber reminder of environmental collapse fueled by mankind.

Natural Resources

Ranching was a massive industry in the Burned Frontier before it became the land it is today. Sheep were tamed and bred for their meat and horns, the latter being a popular item in southwestern souvenir shops. The region was once rich with minerals, including salt, that were extracted from the salt flats and dried river basins. Almond and pistachios were some of the most economically successful crops, but frequent fires and floods have irreversibly damaged them. The Burned Frontier is full of metals, such as copper and iron. Certain minerals and metals are in high demand, so despite the danger, there are several active mining operations in the region.

Alternative Name(s)

The Boneyard
The Dusty Shores

Type

Desert