WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK WORLD BOOK 0109 0109
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Chapter 5: TRAVERSING THE WASTELANDS
just once, then forever lost again to the shifting sands.
All these stories and their tellers share the inability to
find such encounters again or place them on a map, despite marking locations clearly and verifying the same.
The wastelands are a living and breathing thing, churning up bits of the ancient world now and then just to
tantalize its visitors.
• Perhaps they stumbled upon a frontier fortress
brimming over with stashed weapons and gemstones.
• Some tell of a cool, damp cavern hiding a natural
spring bubbling up refreshingly clean water for the
taking.
• The Cactus Gardens are a persistent mystery of this
sort, an oasis of shade and water and sumptuous
fruit and rare food. Many claim they encountered
them in their most desperate moments but forever
lost them the moment they were left behind. Some
place the Cactus Gardens squarely in the midst of
the New Dune Wasteland, while others insist they
are nearer the Krikis Hivelands or as far north as
the equatorial forests. Oddly, all descriptions eerily
match.
• Others that fit these mysterious findings without a
permanent anchor in the shifting sands include the
Canvass Ship and the Tomb of Souls.
Departures in space happen as well—improbable visits to or visions of locations far removed from the wastes
wherein they allegedly transpired. The desert, it seems,
can be a gateway for the body as well as the mind, or so
many of its denizens believe.
• A gibbering madman wanders from the desert,
speaking of fantastical battles among the urshevan-riding Nordor; he cannot possibly have been
upon the iced-over northern steppes . . . yet the
fool’s blackened toes bear the mute evidence of
frostbite.
• Drowned bodies, their lungs still trickling sea water,
have been accurately documented by traders on
the open road,
To those inclined to believe, the deserts can also be a
gateway to the alternate pathways locked away within
a person’s own character. Among the sands are the lives
that men might have but did not live. A subtle shift in
action here, or a different decision there, and a whole
new life emerges within the desert heat for the foolishly adventurous to find and experience. Desert folk
give wide berth to the drooling idiot who babbles in unnatural calmness, having been shown a vivid picture of
another side of himself in some strange play acted out,
presumably, by snake and lizard actors upon a stage of
shifting sands.
Mysteries of Space & Time
Wasteland Wretches
Equally strange are tales of things unknown on Khitus
that have periodically materialized before desert wanderers. These tales are so strange or bizarre that audiences almost universally dismiss the tellers as madmen. They
are not the first to lose their minds to the stinging sands,
and there is no shame in desert madness—only pity in the
loss of another mind to the wastes. Some impossible tales
ring faintly true, however, betraying an odd consistency
or reminding listeners of things once seen or dismissed
in the wastelands themselves.
Departures in time are a common consistency to otherwise impossible desert fables. Millions of memories
linger out there somewhere, some seemingly too strong
to depart this world merely upon the technicality that
their time has passed long ago.
• Crazed storytellers bear witness to long-dead, forgotten armies waging campaigns lost to history.
• Others recount specific events in the lives of historical figures so detailed that they could only be
firsthand accounts from eyewitnesses.
• The few reported visions of a krikis- or Cold Skindominated world are similarly so detailed that they
cannot be coincidence, and some suggest travelers
took a sojourn in time’s opposite direction.
The tale of “the Wretch” is all too common. Hundreds
of ragged characters live out their pathetic lives on the
fringes of the wastelands, begging for scraps and water.
They always seek just enough to rebuild their strength
to plunge into the desert’s depths once again. Their
circumstances and stories are all the same: lives apparently not worth living, yet they trek back into the desert
again and again with light in their eyes and a smile on
their cracked lips. The wastelands hold something for
them, something they cannot attain in the real world,
and something worth returning to again and again.
Wasteland Watchers
While it might seem pointless to many struggling to
survive this harsh new Khitus, there are power players
interested in the wastelands, its wanderers, and their
tales.
• Gare Attessa Watchers: The Gare Attessa keep
skeptical eyes on the wasteland’s fringes, recording
any strange tales of visions allegedly seen out there.
Copies of transcripts with any historical context are
immediately sent to the Siestier and Exhalt at the
Great Library of Atsrath in Wani Chereet.
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