Shifting Dunes
Found within the Demusei Desert, the Shifting Dunes is a massive erg consisting of a sand sea top layer and a rocky bottom layer riddled with vast kearei deposits. It's best known for the sections of the sand sea that constantly shift around like water.
The Shifting Dunes are typically avoided due to the many dangers found throughout. The drifting sand dunes can quickly collapse on top of a person, suffocating them. Venomous bugs live in the sand's surface, ready to strike at unsuspecting victims. The crude kearei is hazardous as both underground oil and natural gas vapors—extremely harmful to the body when consumed or inhaled. The weather itself is dangerous, reaching record-breaking highs during the day and freezing lows during the night. Add onto all of this the lack of water, and the Shifting Dunes are unanimously seen as best avoided.
Geography
Top Layer
The top layer of the Shifting Dunes is completely sand, going roughly 25 feet deep. It mainly consists of quarts, iron, feldspar, and limestone. Many of the dunes don't remain in the same place for very long, moving around like liquid, because they float on the denser kearei deposits found underneath.
Bottom Layer
The bottom layer of the shifting dunes is a rocky sandstone composite, mostly quarts, limestone, and feldspar, with massive crude kearei and iron desposits. Natural gas is almost exclusively found in deeper kearei deposits, as the limestone touching the top layer is not strong enough to keep it from escaping.
Higher kearei deposits move the top layer with convection currents. The heat from deep underground warms the bottom of the deposit, causing the hot kearei to rise. It cools off near the sand before sinking back to the bottom, only to be heated again.
Localized Phenomena
In the north-central area of the Shifting Dunes, fulgerites are commonly formed due to frequent lightning storms. Many of the fulgerites are small enough to hold or carry, and can be found on the surface when naturally unearthed or after digging around under the sand. The older fulgerites, referred to as the Demusei Towers, appear as massive black spires in a grid-like pattern. They reach into the skies, towering so high that the air becomes hard to breath near the tops. They formed when the erg was much taller and consisted of more iron sand.
Climate
As part of a hot desert, the Shifting Dunes are incredibly hot during the day and freezing at night. The sands can cause burns during the day if stood on for too long.
Fauna & Flora
Very few plants live in the Shifting Dunes, mostly in bottom layer caves or on the Demusei Towers. This is also where most animals can be found, though small insects can be found throughout the top layer.
Natural Resources
The sand in the Shifting Dunes is almost ideal for glassmaking, besides the high iron content. In the bottom layer, crude kearei and iron are abundant in massive deposits, though difficult to collect. The obsidian-like material in the Demusei Towers can be cleaned and polished to become highly reflective, a good material for simple mirrors.
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