Great Hazari Desert

The Great Hazari Desert is a huge expanse of extremely arid land that spands northern Idiri from the Great Stormy Sea in the west of the continent to the Gulf of Adwa in the east. It is a perilous country and only thinly populated, but numerous trade routes crisscross it from north to south, connecting the two halves of Idiri and conveying both goods and people across the continent. Most of the Idiri provinces of the Sirdabi Caliphate are located within the northern half of the Hazari, but an immense swath of the desert lies beyond any political boundaries or the attempts of human endeavor to claim it.

Geography

The Hazari covers the northern third of Idiri and makes up the continent's entire Adeleantean coast. Although some green and fertile lands can be found very close to the sea, in other places sand and stone come straight up to the water's edge with no more hospitable zone between the two. On its south side the Hazari is bounded by alternating regions of mountains and grasslands -- in the west the stark rise of the jungle-covered slopes surrounding the basin of the Cloud Kingdoms, next the open grassy corridor of the Gilded Plain, then the foothills of the Izendi Highlands, and finally a mix of low arid mountains and open prarie in the transition to the Opone Grasslands.

The desert itself is not at all uniform, and in fact presents a great variety of aspects to the traveler crossing it. Some regions feature huge dune fields that cover the land from horizon to horizon, while other areas are sandy but low, while a great many others are simply flat plains of baked earth or pavement-like gravel. In several places huge stone massifs rise above the desert, visible for miles, while broken bands of mountains create their own islands of scrub and forest that feel like entirely separate worlds. Water is vanishingly scarce throughout, but may be found at precious wells and oases scattered thinly across the desert, as well as at springs in the broken foothills.

People

Only a scattering of people truly call the Hazari home, most of them clustered around wells and oases on the desert plain, or eking out a no less precarious existence in the massifs and mountains that rise above the flatlands. The vast majority of these full-time residents are Tessouare and Razmani, with some others of Bissenke heritage settled along the desert's western fringes, as well as a few Milombo in the northern parts of Nok. Nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoralism is common among the Tessouare, along with limited farming around oases and at higher elevations. The Razmani are most commonly farmers dwelling along canyonsides above springs or seasonal water courses, and also can be found mining for ore, gems, and salt.

Also found in the Hazari Desert are wandering tribes of the Angrosh people, who tend to reside in those places that are commonly considered uninhabitable by humans. Hazari-dwelling Angrosh are expert survivalists who tend to follow a simple lifestyle of hunting and foraging, but they are also known and feared for occasionally carrying out raids on settlements and, most frequently, on caravans passing through the wastes.

Besides those few who call the Hazari home, most people to be found in the desert are associated with these caravans making their perilous way from one side of the waste to the other. Many Sirdabi are involved in this trade, along with Tessouare, Razmani, Bissenke, and Xhalantu from both the north and south of Idiri.