The Empty Quarter

The Empty Quarter is a a large area of harsh desert that comprises most of the large peninsula between the Sea of Jars and the Great Ocean. Although four of the Eleven Cities - Oluz, Halumay, Elpaloz and Andymalon exist in the narrow strips of fertile land to on the northern and southern coasts of the peninsula, the land quickly becomes untenable more than a few kilometres from the sea. The mostly high-lying land is arid and rugged, making travel arduous and hazardous; almost anybody wishing to get from one coast to another will sail around it via the Sea of Jars rather than risk the overland trip. As a result much of the Quarter's inland geography is unmapped, despite the presence of thriving centres of civilisation around its edges.

Geography

Most of the Empty Quarter is taken up by a large ovoid plateau. All around the peninsula, roughly 10-15 miles from the coast, fertile marly plains abruptly give way to broken, rocky hill country which supports only a few species of hardy plants which are of limited use to humanity. The rocky highlands continue, for the most part, to the opposite coast, though the land in this plateau is broken by innumerable fissures, hollows, escarpments and ridges, making travel through the area frustratingly difficult, especially if the traveller wishes to bring animals and carts with them. Travelling through this terrain has been described as being akin to travelling unguided through a thick forest, since the broken ground often completely blocks the way, requiring the traveller to retrace their steps for miles to find a way around the obstacle. Given the lack of wholesome water sources in the region, this is a serious issue; few expeditions can carry the provisions required to sustain themselves on such circuitous routes. Small expeditions that hope to surmount such obstacles by climbing them have more luck, but cannot hope to find any route that any commercial traffic might use. Such expeditions also find themselves at risk from treacherous stretches of sand, scree and gravel and crumbly rock formations that may give way if too much weight is placed on them, sending climbers plummeting into canyons and defiles.

Climate

In contrast to the rainy Alluvial plain the Empty Quarter is noted for its punishing dry heat. Temperatures in the area are consistently high, even at night, and those who seek to travel there find themselves quickly afflicted with powerful thirst. The aridity of the area compounds this. Rainfall on the plateau is virtually nil. Although freshwater springs are plentiful in the foothills of the plateau - giving expeditions ample opportunity to stock up their water supplies before heading into the interior - those streams flow downhill, creating the damp fertile coastal areas that support the peninsula cities. Once a traveller summits the plateau finding watering holes becomes a chancy and frustrating exercise.
All told, therefore, travel in the Empty Quarter is absurdly difficult, and few choose to visit the area when sailing around the peninsula is easier and, for the most part, quicker. No particularly reliable map of the interior exists. Even properly-qualified guides are hard to come by since mountaineering is a rare skill in the Eleven Cities and the region is generally considered to be unlucky and dangerous.

Ecology

Although inhospitable to human life the Empty Quarter does support a desert ecosystem based on various species of scrub and cactus. The cacti harbour substantial internal reservoirs of water, though most species poison this water, making it difficult for a traveller to use them as opportunities to replenish their own supplies. There are also several species of tough, spiny, fruiting shrub in the region, most of which produce small, extremely tart berries. It is possible to survive on these berries, though doing so is distinctly unpleasant. It is also dangerous since the scrubland is also thickly grown with other species of berry which are poisonous. No reliable work has yet been done to determine which is which.
A handful of animal species are also endemic to the region. Breeds of hairless mice and rats are present in scrubby areas, while various species of lizard and snake are present, particularly in the uplands. Most of the reptiles are venomous, the snakes especially so. The most characteristic species of animal in the area, however, is the Corpse Cormorant, a singularly disagreeable species of carnivorous bird noted by those who venture into the Quarter as provoking a seemingly preternatural sense of loathing from humans. Like most of the animal life in the Quarter the birds have no fear of humanity and their pestilential attacks can be genuinely dangerous.

Thaumatological interest

The hostility of the Empty Quarter to life, and especially human life, has long struck observers as preternatural. Rainclouds do traverse the region but will not rain there; the shift in temperature on the plateau does not make sense, and the lack of hospitality from the flora and fauna borders on the genuinely malicious. While all these factors serve to discourage casual or commercial exploration they also encourage purely academic interest, and over the years researchers have, through many travails, developed a body of evidence pointing to a sinister explanation for the dangers of the region.
Elpalozian researcher Harwaj Karnaphan began this avenue of inquiry via his investigations into the nature of corpse cormorants. He sought nesting sites for the birds and, by carefully coordinating a series of short expeditions, was able to map a route a considerable distance into the southwestern Quarter, which culminated in his discovery of a substantial ruined city in the area. Although the ruins were infested with cormorants, the city itself swiftly supplanted the birds as the subject of his research. Over the remainder of his career Karnaphan made numerous expeditions to the city and claimed to have been able to decipher many of the complicated pictograms and sinister pictorial art he found there. The city was, he claimed, the capital of a lost civilisation he referred to has the Shroud Kings. Although Karnaphan never claimed to be able to work out specifics, he did publish research describing the basic history of the Shroud Kings as he understood it. He described a culture ruled by a series of semi-independent wizard-kings, each operating from his or her own temple-city, who developed a method of extracting magical energy from living bodies. In their haste to harness this magical technique, they began looting and pillaging their surrounding environment and, eventually, their subjects, creating the riven and depopulated wasteland around their cities.
Karnaphan wrote a number of essays and books on this subject, stemming from several visits to the ruined city he discovered, which he claimed was called Vyx Hechaalk'Rephayn. He returned from one such visit to find himself suffering the early stages of Wizard Rot, succumbing to the illness less than a month later. His research was taken up by his pupil Halleryne Orbestta, who by following his notes (which he kept in an idioglossic code) rediscovered Vyx Hechaalk'Repahyn and two more similar temple-cities in the quarter, Vyx Shulor-Kanquevl and Vyx Xoncorl'Kek'Orlbelox, demonstrating that the area was some sort of hotbed of activity for these people. Orbestta did further research on these cities, eventually advancing the controversial theory that the pre-Wesmodian god Ajqyod was in fact one of the Shroud Kings, but eventually went the way of her mentor several years later, leaving only fragmentary records of where these cities could be found.
The Pholyan thaumatologist Yran Qobryod is of a differing opinion. Following Karnaphan's lead, he investigated two sets of ruins in the quarter, one of which he managed to substantiate as Vyx Shulor-Kanquevl; the other was apparently unknown to the Epalozian researchers. Qobryod, a member of the Lunar Society of Pholyos admitted that the Epalozian hypothesis made sense but argued that the Empty Quarter was also of interest to a still older human civilisation, the Navigators, who probably predated the Shroud Kings by millennia. In contrast to the prevailing opinion that the corpse cormorants are a distasteful legacy of the Shroud Kings, he argued that they are in fact a downstream consequence of Navigator activity, which was probably also detrimental to the ecological balance of the Empty Quarter and thus a contributing factor to its current state. Qobryod avoided the fate of Karnaphan and Orbestta, living to a respectable age.