The Oilök

This article is a work in progress!

The lucky survive, the brave perish, and the wise turn back before it's too late.

_{Molghö Tangul Hakch Rim}

Geography

The title of deadliest place on the planet may be expected to be rewarded to a violent location—somewhere with beasts, monsters, or volatile climate. This, however, is not the case. The Oilök is not a place of violence. Mostly, it's still. There are occasional sandstorms, though none are as harsh as the tropical storms you'll find elsewhere. The Oilök kills gradually, though by no means slowly. Its danger lies in its stillness—in its unwavering inhabitability. The desert's main weapons are heat and aridity which measure peaks and averages that dwarf any others on Lanoa. Tangul Hakch Rim, the 40th Molghö wrote of the Oilök: "The complete lack of moisture makes the air positively coarse in the throat. The terrain consists of dunes of dark sand, massive as cities, with a texture so that your feet sink and your gait is shortened. The sun feels as if it's landed on the planet on account of how markedly its rays pierce the skin." Despite its widely known inhospitability, there's a long, pervasive history of people attempting visits to the area. Whether is be due to challenge, curiosity, or necessity, few manage successful trips.

Localized Phenomena

One of the main reasons for braving the Oilök is a most mysterious phenomenon: the Mirage Ruins. It is said that people who've travelled the desert and survived tend to encounter enormous, vacant structures buried in the sand. There are accounts of towers, houses, staircases, walls, and statues—often incomprehensible in size and with odd architectural quirks. Openings in walls may be numerous or absent, round, triangular, square or with any other number of corners. Discerning a door from a window is impossible. The structures may protrude at leaning angles from the sand or cluster in organized patterns, but they are always at least partially submerged. The building material has been described as hard, often surprisingly smooth, rock of some kind. The descriptions of color vary slightly though agreed upon is that the rock is desaturated and lighter than the surrounding sand. There are no traces of other materials or supplies—no wood, food, fossils, or other remains of civilization. A few accounts report abstract engravings. Strangest of all are the claims of gravity-breaking architecture—floating platforms and huge, unsupported overhangs.
No single recounting of the ruins is substantiated by any physical evidence, though due to sightings being recorded by diverse sources across time they cannot with easy be written off as a hoax. Some retain this opinion, non-the-less. They explain the ruins as hallucinations wrought on by the ruthless desert landscape. Others believe the ruins to be of an ancient civilization. In this camp, some take a cautious approach and say that the perceived illogical aspects of the structures are a result of errors in memory, while others talk of of shape-shifting sorcerers. The last major group of theorists are of the opinion that the structures are inorganic growths sprouting from the planet's crust. Some believe the ruins are a consequence of construction, while others maintain it's a natural or magical process.

Type

Desert

Location under

Padvasj