The Slate Fields

"Cross the Slate Fields? That's insanity. Which is exactly why we're going to do it."
  -Voss the Destroyer

"Voss had a vastly outnumbered army but he proved that with high morale and a deep understanding of living and thriving in a harsh environment one can turn hopeless defeat into glorious victory."
  -Chom Biitulaay, The Rennon Consolidation Wars, ch 6, p 111

The Slate Fields are a series of interconnected sandy and rocky deserts that stretch for a thousand miles south and east of the Skyclaw Mountains on the continent of Ennostwell. According to Rennon lore they were once a veldt of grasses and dry steppe. Then with the Cataclysm of The Shattered came an age of volcanism that had before been unknown across all of Creation. Black ash and streams of molten rock created a web of destruction that made most of southern Ennostwell uninhabitable for nearly 1000 years. Eventually the winds and rains brought life back to the area and the remaining desert has been called the Slate Fields for centuries.
To say that life has returned to the land is being generous. There are huge expanses of sand dunes interspersed with miles of black and grey slate, like hungry razors waiting to lame a horse and split a cartwheel. The few rivers that cut through the wastes are still choked with gritty black ash torn up from the ancient ground. Plant life is limited to scrabbly brush and stiff grasses. Animal life is a mixture of rodents, rabbits, and shale cats, with an occasional deadly Sand Bat. The only people living within the Slate Fields are huddled around the edges scratching out an existence by quarrying stone and dreaming of elusive diamond veins.
Politically, the Slate Fields are claimed by none of the three city-states on Ennostwell, but are nominally protected by the city of Rainshadow. The people are mostly without hope and have a reputation of being unrulable.  They are collectively referred to as The Unworthy and the rest of Ennostwell is content to let them remain in their desert wastes. The harsh land keeps their population low and therefore the threat minimal. Therefore, in the minds of all Rennon the Slate Fields are best forgotten and ignored.

Type

Desert