General Geography of Athas

The description that follows is what, over the years, I have pieced together about the geography of our world. There are many omissions, and no doubt dozens of errors, for my information is gathered from travelers, merchants, and explorers - some of whom no doubt felt that it was in their best interest to mislead me wherever possible. Nevertheless, certain broad outlines do emerge. Athas, or at least the explored portion, consists of about one million square miles of desert. In its center, covering an area of about 120,000 square miles, is a vast, dust-filled basin that I call the Sea of Silt. Because of travel difficulties to be discussed later, the Sea of Silt remains almost entirely unexplored. Surrounding this dry sea is a band of Tablelands, ranging from as much as 400 miles wide to as little as 50. The Tablelands consist of many types of terrain: golden dunes, stony barrens, dust sinks, white salt flats, rocky badlands, and plains of yellow-green scrub-brush. This is where civilization - if you can call it that - still lingers. Scattered across these flatlands are tiny oases of life where a few acres of fertile land supports a grain field, sometimes even a forest. Clinging to these oases are the disorderly jumbles of buildings and people that we know as cities. Though each city reflects the personality of the king that rules it, all are precariously balanced at the edge of starvation, barely scratching enough food from their small plots of land to support their populations. The Tablelands are encircled by the various ranges of the Ringing Mountains. These ranges all run north and south. To the east and west of the Sea of Silt, the mountains form solid walls separating the tablelands from the unknown regions beyond. To the north and south of the dusty sea, they form a series of parallel ribs. The deep valleys between the ridges lead away from central Athas like a series of long (and hazardous) corridors. In every direction, beyond the mountains lie the Hinterlands. We have little knowledge of what abides there. Many men have set out to explore the depths of this unknown region, but I have never met one who returned. During the one journey that I undertook to view just the edge of the Hinterland, an invisible braxat carried off my companions, a tribe of halflings tried to eat me, and a silk wyrm hounded my trail for over a week. It is a wonder that I returned at all. Although Athas is a wasteland, it is not an empty wasteland. The world is fairly crawling with humans, demihumans and humanoids. Every group has found a different way to survive in this barren and harsh environment. In general, I have found that all cultures seem to fall into one of seven basic categories. There are city dwellers, villagers, merchant caravan dynasties, herdsmen, raiders, hunter-gatherers, and hermits. The cities, surrounded by golden fields of crops, stand at sizable oases. They are bustling enclaves of humanity stinking of garbage and ringing with the supplications of beggars. Their tawny towers of fired brick rise from behind thick stone ramparts designed to lock the residents inside as well as keep strangers out. In the center of every city, a powerful sorcerer-king lives inside a secure fortress, ruling his subjects through a sophisticated hierarchy of bureaucrats, nobles, and rapacious clergymen. Each city is a state unto itself, its king wielding absolute authority over every living thing inside its walls and crawling through its fields. Villages are no more than clusters of mud-brick shelters erected at-minor oases in various forlorn places, such as the edge of a salt flat or in the shelter of a rocky overhang. Depending on their nature, they are ruled by officious bureaucrats, minor despots, or, occasionally, even democratic councils. At best, they are semipermanent. Sooner or later, the dragon comes calling, the oasis dries up, or a tribe of raiders sweeps out of the wastes. Within a few years of such an event, all traces of the village are buried beneath a massive sand dune or carried away by the howling wind. The dynastic merchant houses are sophisticated trading companies with networks extending many hundreds of miles, transcending political boundaries, and spanning all social classes. Their trading posts are found on bleak peninsulas jutting into the Sea of Silt, or in box canyons located high in the Ringing Mountains. A sporadic stream of cargo runs from these outposts to the cities, carrying the goods with which the houses stock their vast bargaining emporiums. Each house may have facilities in a number of cities. Most are owned by single families and passed on from generation to generation. Nomadic herdsmen wander the scrub plains, stony barrens, and sand dunes, pausing for a week or two wherever there is pasture enough for their flocks to graze. Their bands are usually small, consisting of five to ten extended families (50-150 individuals), for their harsh way of life will not support large populations. Most herdsman have fiercely independent spirits, governing themselves through a council of elders. Usually, a magic wielding patriarch serves as the leader of this council. Wherever something is worth stealing, there are raiding tribes. These bands of despicable cutthroats live by pillaging caravans, poaching nomad flocks, and plundering helpless villages. They are cowards who make their homes in desolate places protected by wide expanses of salt flats or great tracts of rocky badlands. Their warlords are ruthless and tough, taking and holding their positions through violence and treachery. The primitive hunting and gathering clans have the most versatile cultures. You'll encounter them anywhere: hunting snakes in the salt flats, gathering roots in the stony barrens, even stealing eggs from nests perched high atop mountainous crags. They live in small groups of three or four immediate families, usually numbering no more than twenty individuals. Hermits have withdrawn from a society, either by choice or through coercion. They are peculiar individuals who reside at isolated oases and scratch out a meager living, either by subsistence farming or through limited hunting. Hermits live in all parts of Athas, though you won't meet many because they avoid contact with most strangers.