Badlands

The Badlands are a chaotic desert frontier east of the Emerald Sea, defined by its brutal climate, fractured terrain, and strange interactions with arcane forces. This is not a place of dunes but of jagged stone, wind-carved buttes, deep ravines, and constantly shifting topography. Earthquakes are frequent—especially in the central region known as the Dusts—filling the air with choking particulates and revealing ancient sinkholes and crevices. The southern border brushes against a magical forest that appears to draw moisture from the land itself, skewing weather patterns and deepening the region’s dryness.
Two rivers descend from the eastern mountains, vanishing into underground cave systems before resurfacing briefly on their way to Gorvan’s Reach in the north and the Emerald Sea in the south. These rivers, though vital, are unpredictable and hard to follow, limiting agriculture and reliable settlement. Most who live here do so for one reason: mining. The Red Reaches, in particular, lure risk-takers with rich iron veins and hidden caves—shelters for both fugitives and forgotten things.
The Tatharian Empire has claimed a foothold at Westrock, a colony on the desert’s western edge, but the land as a whole remains outside imperial control. Frontier towns strike uneasy pacts for survival, and travel between them is dangerous. Maps are always outdated, and storms often erase trails overnight.
The Badlands endure, not as a border, but as a crucible—where the land doesn’t just resist being known. It fights back.

Geography

The Badlands stretch east of the Emerald Sea, past the reach of the Tatharian Empire, forming a vast and rugged expanse that defies easy passage or habitation. The terrain is a chaotic patchwork of sunbaked stone, jagged formations, wind-carved ridges, and sudden voids. Centuries of tectonic unrest, mineral erosion, and sporadic magical fallout have sculpted the Badlands into a place of natural splendor and relentless danger.

The Dusts

At the heart of the Badlands lies a particularly unstable zone known as The Dusts. This region is prone to frequent seismic activity, causing tremors that kick up massive clouds of fine particulate. The dust can linger in the air for days, dimming the sun to a dull orange glow and choking anything that breathes without protection. Though seemingly barren, the Dusts hide deep crevasses, ancient sinkholes, and, some say, entire ruins swallowed by the land. Visibility can drop to near-zero in minutes. Locals know better than to travel through it without a guide or a strong wind at their back.

The Red Reaches

To the southeast, the desert blends into a zone of iron-rich foothills known as the Red Reaches. Here, red clay and rust-colored stone dominate the landscape. Low, thorny shrubs cling to survival, giving the region a rugged scrubland appearance. The Red Reaches are notorious for their labyrinthine cave systems—some natural, others expanded by centuries of Human and non-human hands. These caves have become a haven for outlaws, rebels, and those who wish to remain unseen. Narrow passes and hidden paths crisscross the area, making pursuit difficult and ambush easy.

The Rivers Below

Two rivers descend from the eastern mountains, feeding the region in slow, winding arcs. For more than half their course, these rivers flow underground, carving through stone and vanishing into caverns before resurfacing sporadically in hidden pools and brief above-ground runs. The northern river twists toward Gorvan's Reach, a modest forest nestled in the highlands—verdant and misty, a strange outlier in the dry expanse. The southern river eventually spills into the Emerald Sea, just north of Westrock, the Empire’s far-flung colonial foothold. Both rivers are lifelines for those who dwell here, but difficult to trace or tame.

Topography

The Badlands are marked by dramatic geological features: towering buttes, crumbling mesas, narrow slots, and weathered hoodoos that resemble petrified sentinels. Alluvial fans, sloping ravines, and cracked plateaus add complexity to the terrain, making every journey a navigation puzzle. Rockfalls are common, and flash floods can pour through narrow gullies with little warning. The constant shift of dust, stone, and wind ensures that no map stays accurate for long. Many regions remain unmapped—not due to size, but because explorers simply don’t return.
Despite its harshness, the Badlands support life—tough, hidden, and territorial. Small mining towns huddle near exposed veins of ore, and strange beasts roam the high flats and dry basins. Though claimed by no sovereign banner, the Badlands are far from empty.

Ecosystem

The Badlands, though unforgiving, host a mosaic of interlocking ecosystems shaped by scarcity, subterrestrial water, and sheer geological chaos. Life persists here not in spite of the land, but in hard-edged symbiosis with it. What appears barren to the outsider is in fact a tense and ancient balance of predator and prey, root and stone, dust and water.

Subterranean Rivers and the Cave Biomes

Much of the region’s biological richness centers around the underground rivers, which carve paths through limestone and ancient volcanic rock. In these cool, dark corridors thrive bioluminescent fungi, blind lizards, and pale insect colonies that feed on fungal networks. Aquatic life such as silver-scaled cavefish and spring-backed amphibians cluster in subterranean pools, while surface dwellers—like rock-hares, cave drakes, and tunnel wasps—descend into the cool depths to nest, drink, or hunt. Root systems from the surface punch through cracks in the stone, absorbing the moisture and transporting it back to scrub above.
These cave systems, particularly those beneath the Red Reaches, are sometimes linked by massive, forgotten tunnels from civilizations past. Many local species navigate these with uncanny precision, giving them an edge over surface-dwellers.

Scrublands of the Red Reaches

Above the caves, the Red Reaches form a unique zone where limited vegetation clings to rocky soil. The red hue of the iron-rich clay warms quickly under the sun, encouraging thermophilic plants to sprout in seasonal bursts. Thorned succulents, burrowing root-fronds, and dust-grapes form the base of the food chain. Grazers such as stone-antelope and dusk-eaters browse here in lean herds, watched always by sharp-eyed carrion falcons and ridgecats.
The presence of caves provides not just shelter, but a climate buffer—some animals disappear underground during daylight heat or nightly chill. This creates vertical migration patterns, where small ecosystems rise and fall with the sun.

The Dusts – Ephemeral Life and Ambush Ecology

The central region, known as The Dusts, is less a habitat than a test. Here, the constant motion of earth and air has given rise to hardy, elusive species adapted to sensory chaos. Burrowing creatures such as dust eels and tremor beetles detect seismic vibrations as a means of communication and navigation.
Predators such as siltstalkers—a six-legged, sand-colored reptilian ambusher—use stillness and dust camouflage to lie in wait for passing prey. Some life here emerges only seasonally, laying eggs or spores during the rare calm weeks and disappearing entirely for months.
Dust-sweeping plants with deep taproots and silken fronds collect airborne moisture and funnel it below. During quakes, these often snap and scatter seed-pods in the wind, spreading life like shrapnel across the dry fields.

Peripheral Ecosystems

Gorvan’s Reach and Westrock’s Fringe

Where the northern river feeds Gorvan’s Reach, a small forest thrives in defiance of the Badlands. Mist-fed and shaded, it supports a contrasting biosphere: dense moss, nightflowers, creaking seedwood trees, and bright-plumed birds that migrate in and out of the Badlands with uncanny timing. Some species—like the barkdrakes—move between forest canopy and southern caves, acting as biological messengers between worlds.
To the southwest, near Westrock, the land transitions again. Coastal salt flats mix with sunbaked scrub. Here, salt-hardy plants and lichen crusts form patchy meadows, feeding tough scavengers and burrowing reptiles. Colonists introduce goats and hardy birds for subsistence, and though many perish, a few breeds have already adapted to the Badlands’ strange rhythm.

Interactions and Anomalies

Despite the harsh boundaries between zones, movement between them is constant. Seeds ride dust storms, insects crawl through forgotten tunnels, and birds carry pollens across leagues of inhospitable stone. Larger predators sometimes migrate in erratic circuits—led not by weather, but by the tremors themselves, as if following a rhythm older than reason.
There are rumors of creatures or plants that exist only in transition zones: hybrids that can only survive where one biome touches another. These include the singing scorpions of the Red Reaches’ upper canyons and phosphorescent moss that grows only near air shafts above underground rivers.
In the Badlands, no niche goes unchallenged for long. Every adaptation is a gamble, every oasis a contested prize.

Climate

The Badlands are harsh by any measure, shaped by volatile weather patterns and long-term instability. Though technically a desert, the region's climate is more varied and punishing than that term suggests. Moisture is rare, temperatures swing violently, and seasons pass with little regularity. Even the wind seems to conspire against comfort.

Temperature and Seasons

Days in the Badlands are often blisteringly hot, with temperatures soaring above what most would consider survivable without shade or water. Nights bring the opposite—rapid drops in heat that turn the air icy, especially in low basins or cave mouths. These extremes are not limited to any single season. While midsummer can dry blood in moments, even spring brings heat spikes and cold snaps that make planning nearly impossible.
The region experiences a loose pattern of seasons, though they’re more conceptual than consistent.

The Drywake (roughly spring to mid-summer) sees the least cloud cover. The sun dominates, rivers shrink back into their underground channels, and dust storms become frequent.

Redfall (late summer into autumn) is when rare rains may occur—usually violent, short, and localized. These storms feed the rivers for a time and trigger dangerous flash floods.

Longdusk (early to mid-winter) stretches the twilight hours, lowering the sun’s arc and holding cold longer in the valleys.

Quakewatch (late winter into early spring) is named for the frequency of minor tremors that begin again after the cold loosens the ground. Seismic activity intensifies, particularly in The Dusts, and locals pay close attention to animals and other signs for early warning.

Precipitation and Wind

Rain is scarce and unreliable. When it comes, it arrives suddenly—walls of water driven by furious winds, hammering the terrain for minutes or hours before vanishing. These downpours leave behind temporary pools and brief green shoots, but the land reclaims its aridity fast. Snow is extremely rare, but sleet and ice storms have been known to lash the Red Reaches during Longdusk.
Wind is nearly constant in the Badlands. It moves with an uneven rhythm—sometimes whispering low through the canyons, other times howling with grit that flays skin and blinds the unprotected. It sculpts the hoodoos, shifts dry sands and dust, and carries tales from one corner of the desert to another. In the Dusts, a sudden wind is often a harbinger of seismic activity, stirring dust before the land quakes.
To the south, the presence of a magical forest distorts weather patterns in ways not fully understood. The forest seems to draw moisture from the Badlands, as though exhaling a silent enchantment that siphons humidity and rainfall toward itself. Cloud formations that might offer relief to the desert often veer southward and vanish into the forest’s emerald canopy, further deepening the aridity of the surrounding lands.

Microclimates

The Dusts tend to be drier and hotter than the rest of the Badlands, with seismic activity contributing to constant air and ground shifts. The dust in the air traps heat, and sunlight filters through in a reddish haze.

The Red Reaches experience slightly more moisture due to their elevation and the presence of dense mineral-rich soil. That same soil can trap cool night air, creating sudden frost pockets even in the dry season.

Gorvan’s Reach, though not part of the desert proper, influences local weather patterns. It exhales cool mist and can alter wind direction in subtle ways, providing temporary relief or causing sudden temperature inversions nearby.

Underground River Zones offer isolated humidity, supporting moss, fungi, and cave-dwelling creatures that depend on condensation and runoff.

Weather-Related Hazards

The climate of the Badlands generates a host of dangers:

Flash Floods can tear through otherwise dry gulches with no warning.

Heatbursts—a phenomenon where superheated air descends rapidly—can strike travelers with a suffocating wall of heat.

Dust Chokes occur when fine particulates saturate the air during seismic activity, capable of causing suffocation in minutes.

Windshave—sustained gusts over sharpened rock—can strip flesh from bone and has carved the strange shapes seen in exposed cliff faces.

Despite the hostility, some thrive here. The climate favors those who know its signs, who can smell a coming quake or read wind off a stone. For them, the Badlands are not lifeless—they are alive, awake, and watching.

Table of Contents

Type

Desert

Location under

Eoperax

Included Locations

• Westrock