WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0104 0104
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Cacti
The Khitan wastelands boast wide varieties of cacti,
each one defended by imposing arrangements of painful needles.
• The farush or “emperor cactus” sends several stalks
up from a central root over a solid-rock base. Beneath its near-black shafts, this plant exudes a
stone-dissolving acid that slowly carves out space
for roots, eventually crafting a rock-encased subterranean cistern beneath its many spikes.
• The fedethu or “barrel cactus” is especially thick
and grows taller than most humans. They split open
when they die but remain standing for many years,
making a field of them an ideal place to hide or lie
in ambush.
• The narrow and especially dense wurya or “stone
cactus” grows roughly nine feet tall and is a pale
grey color rather than a variety of green. Any broken pieces remain jagged and sharp, and many
desert wanderers use them for impromptu weapons
or permanently affix them to pikes or spears.
• For an imbibing wanderer, liquor made from yeltoor cactus rind is very strong, a pungent favorite
among the wanderers. Many favor this drink due to
its simplicity—it ferments merely by being placed
inside a near-empty water skin and exposed to the
sun every day for two weeks—though distillation of
the same can make vastly better spirits.
Succulents
These plants have thicker, fleshier parts in which they
store water to survive, but each has its own way to protect that moisture from those who would devour it.
• The fruquar or “gray blossom” is a skull-sized plant
with a thick, fibrous shell difficult to penetrate
without a machete and a strong arm.
• The meno kwish or “stink plant” is similarly sized
with a thin shell, but cracking it sprays foul-smelling oil that resists efforts to clean it off of any it
sprays.
• Tiny roushes are fist-sized succulents that withdraw
into the ground when touched, requiring someone
to dig them out of often difficult, rocky terrain.
Metal Scarcity
Khitan miners know the depths of their world well.
Their Classic Age forebears delved deep beneath the
mountains to dig out gold, silver, copper, and tin. Smiths
forged these ores into all manner of metal tools, weap102
ons, and ornaments. By the middle to late Classic Age,
they mastered all-purpose bronze, the alloy that served
the world ’s many nations well for a thousand years until
the advent of iron. From those forges sparked the beginnings of Khitus’s present-day manufacture of steel, the
metal that equips her armies, shoes her beasts, and girds
her architecture.
In modern times, however, steel grows scarce, fetching more than three times its typical price, those costs
increasing even more depending on locations and demand. In truth, steel is nearly unaffordable today, making many common folk turn back to the use of easily
worked and readily available bronze, despite its inferiority to iron and steel. Hoarders keep close eyes on any
steel weapons and tools they have left, ever watchful for
thieves or other threats.
Steel grows scarce on Khitus for two disparate reasons:
the keepers of the Black Fortress are buying it up for
their mysterious and never-explained purposes; and an
odd rust-like affliction runs rampant across the world, a
plague that weakens or destroys the very iron it infects.
The Iron Virus
The iron virus affects all iron and steel, ruining it slowly
once affected. The virus acts like rust with no apparent
“agent” needed to activate it. Sanding or scraping its
white residue from a metal surface slows its progress, but
eventually the entire piece will succumb and crumble to
pale powder. The virus transfers readily by touch—battling foes with afflicted blades almost certainly contaminates any weapons or armor involved. However, even
proximity or exposure to air can bring the disease.
Most lock away their valuable steel items to protect
them, but even these may be found half consumed anyway. Affected items gradually weaken, becoming brittle
in a matter of days and turning to useless dust in short
weeks. A master blacksmith can rework the iron or steel
if it has not completely disintegrated, but the process is
difficult and not guaranteed to succeed.
Affected iron or steel is no longer magnetic; that is the
test often applied by wary buyers to ensure their purchase
is not already afflicted steel. Agents of the Black Fortress,
the Pale Ones, or Bev al-Khim, carry graphite filings with
them to test any metal for its magnetism. They are especially wary of iron and steel, testing it carefully so it does
not touch and infect their stores.
Iron and steel are the only metals so affected by this
new affliction. Platinum and electrum exist on Khitus,
and they can be forged as hard and reliable as steel, but
both are rare and inherently expensive. Eventually, the
relative value of steel will rise to meet that of platinum
