Chaha Ris

A desert of burning red-gold sand that stretches from horizon to horizon. A place of barren emptiness that was once home to a civilisation lost centuries past, leaving only ruins behind in what might have once been fertile oases and river valleys. A ragged coastline to the north and east of this desert land where two river deltas meet the ocean, and where great stone-built cities stand above the desert and above the sea and house teeming hordes of humanity beneath autocratic rulers.   Two rivers that feed those deltas snaking through the desert, through rocky valleys and through low marshlands. Here and there along the fertile shores are villages and other settlements where hardy clans live their lives and defy the harsh conditions.   Small tribes of nomadic people, proud and independent, moving from oasis to oasis, trading where they can, raiding where they can, in an eternal series of feuds against their neighbours and rivals, scorning the rising power of the city states.   Mountains rising higher than the mind can comprehend, hard and strong as iron, the home of secretive folk who guard their borders jealously and slay intruders without mercy.