Eris

The land known as Eris is a vast desert located in the southwestern corner of the plateau of Markania. Eris is a forbidding wasteland where only the strong survive.

The Geography of Eris

The plains of Eris are located between the Loka Loka mountain range and a smaller range of ridges to the southwest. It is a high desert region that receives barely enough rain throughout the year to support human life. The terrain is rough, strewn with rocks and boulders, cut by badlands and ravines, and punctuated by rocky outcroppings, mesas, buttes, and dry impact craters.

The Garza river descends from the Loka Lokas to the northeast, crosses the desert terrain, and cascades through a massive canyon complex before it tumbles over the Falls of Kanos into the valley of Ragana. Along the banks of the river grow forests of thorny trees and giant man-eating trapacti, which resembles a normal cactus on the surface but the slightest contact with which causes spiny  arms to snap closed, coiling around a target’s limb and dragging the target underground  where it is digested by powerful acids.

Notable Locations

Acik-Sehir
The largest city in Eris is the free city of Acik-Sehir. Acik-Sehir is an ancient dakazi city located on the banks of the Garza river, below the Loka Loka mountains but above the Falls of Kanos. At one time, it was the farthest outpost of the ancient empire of Ragana. Today, it is the only dakazi city open to outsiders. On the west bank of the river is the Old City, accessible only to dakazi, with its ancient temples and walled compounds. Law here is strict and the punishments severe. On the east bank is the Free City, built in the last hundred years. The Free City accepts all races, cultures, and political factions equally: human and dakazi, imperial and rebel, pirate and merchant, outlaw and colonist, spy and soldier. The Free City is a place of opportunity and sin, where anything can be obtained for a price. It is also a free-wheeling frontier town filled with vice and crime, where intrigue is a way of life. 

Settlements
Refugees from Demetria and settlers from other Cydorian regions have built villages along the Garza river, but keeping the banks clear of the hostile flora can prove difficult. The villages not located along the river face a precarious existence as they need to import all the food and water necessary to survive. Most are supplied by regular air-transports from back east.

The typical Erisian settlement consists of a circular walled compound, a water tower connected to a deep well and pump located within a fortified stockade, a airship mooring station, a few outlying farms and ranches, and a few businesses. On top of the battle just to survive the hostile environment, these villages also face raids from nomadic barbarians, bandit gangs, and attacks from the subterranean dakazi known as the Tintazi.

Imperial Prison Camps
The Vrildarian Empire has established several prison camps in Eris, away from the river and deep in the desert. The prison camps are built away from sources of water. All food and water must be imported by airship. No settlement may be built within a day’s walk of the prison camp. Each camp generally holds approximately ten thousand men or women prisoners guarded by a staff of between one and two thousand depending on the security level of the prison.

Once a prisoner has served their sentence, they are released with enough water and food to reach the nearest village, usually a day’s hike across the desert. Most become lost and die of dehydration or exposure. Those that are able to find the village are faced with several choices. Some exiles are able to integrate into the local villages and become farmers, ranchers, or tradesmen. A few sell themselves into slavery for a few years as indentured miners, trying to earn enough money to start a homestead or travel back to Cydoria. Some keep travelling, hoping someday to return to their homeland. Most fail to integrate and fall in with the bandits and outlaws that plague the region, or become itinerant mercenaries hired by the towns to fight the bandits.

Around Eris

Eris is situated on the frontier between many cultures. To the immediate east lie the great dusty plains populated by barbarians. Beyond that, on the far eastern edge of the Markanian plateau, are found the City States of Cydoria and the domain of the technologically sophisticated Vrildarian empire. To the southwest lies the dakazi Kingdom of Ragana to the southwest. The barbarian Kingdom of Otar occupies the mountains to the north. The great sandy desert kingdom of Narvus stretches to the horizon to the northwest. Eris is a no-man’s land. Its location in between several civilizations makes it an ideal destination for criminals and exiles.

The Desert Kingdom of Otar
North of Eris lies the land of Otar. Otar is covered in drifting sand dunes as far as the eye can see, marred only by the occasional rocky outcropping and sand-filled crater. The human kingdom maintains a precarious existence living in walled stone cities and castles clinging to the western slope of the Loka Loka mountain range.

Narvus and the Desert City of Daza
The desert of Narvus, located northeast of Eris, is a vast trackless plain of dust and sand with little life of any kind save the occasional giant vulture or sand-lizard. The primitive dakazi kingdom of Daza is located inside a large dry impact crater in the middle of the desert, hundreds of miles from anything. The city of dome-shaped structures of various sizes built of mud brick fill the crater’s interior. The Dazi live a semi-subterranean existence, alternating between roaming the countryside hunting for small game and gathering crops cultivated in pits, or harvesting water from an underground water cistern they jealously control. The Dazi offer sacrifices to Uzon, the dragon god of the desert. The Dazi are extremely xenophobic and will immediately capture all strangers for sacrifice to their god.

The Dakazi Kingdom of Ragana
The valley of Ragana lies below the Falls of Kanos where the Garza river plunges over the edge of the Erisian plateau. The valley is fertile by western Markanian standards, with fruit orchards and cultivated fields tended by dakazi farmers.

The Burning Wastes of Agnia
The desolate volcanic wasteland of Agnia is nearly intolerable to human life. The mountains here are in constant eruption. Gaping wounds in the terrain ooze scabrous lava and belch noxious gases. Ash falls from the burning sky like choking snow. This terrain remains, for obvious reasons, unexplored and few venture far into its caustic interior.

Floating Mountains of Magatama 
 The region north of Agnia and Otar and south of Bansya is known as Magatama. Magatama is a cold, dry, wind-swept plain covered in tough grass. Across the plain can be found massive bowl-shaped craters.

Within the craters float massive stone monoliths rich in veins of the exotic anti-gravity element known as anemoi. Many of these so-called floating mountains have broken free and hover like giant stone icebergs, constantly crashing against other drifting mountains. Eventually, the heavier stones keeping these floating mountains down will weather away and release the anemoi to float forever along the currents of the magnetic fields.

The floating mountains are home to many types of wildlife, the most notable including giant insects and birds of prey and climbing go-atans capable of scaling sheer cliffs with their spider-like limbs and hooked feet.

Many of the larger floating mountains found on the Magatama plain are home to a species of intelligent avians called vorats. Vorats capture and raise human children to serve as slave laborers to carve beautiful structures into the stone of the mountains.

The so-called aeries of the vorats consist of finely carved cities, temples, colonnades, observatories, and arcades carved into the tops and sides of the mountains.

The Rhakadians mine the Magatamas for valuable anemoi. This has brought them into conflict with the vorat natives.

The Underworld 
 Uruta, the original home world of humanity, is an incredibly ancient world. The ruins of lost aeons, some thousands of years old, some millions, lie buried beneath much of the world. Labyrinthine tunnels, chambers, and passages, forming complexes the size of cities, can be found below ground, some just under the surface and others miles beneath. Most of these complexes are simply abandoned and forgotten. Many are inhabited by strange subterranean life forms. A few contain sealed vaults of treasure, hidden away by long lost cultures and protected by traps arcane wards.