Athas is a desert - sun-scorched and windscoured, parched and endless. From the first moments of dawn until the last twinkling of dusk, the crimson sun shimmers in the olive-tinged sky like a fiery puddle of blood. It climbs toward its zenith and the temperature rises relentlessly: 100 degrees by midmorning, 110 at noon, 130 - sometimes even 150 - by late afternoon. A man cannot drink fast enough to replenish the fluids he loses. As the days drag on, he feels sick and feeble. If he does not have enough water, he grows too weak to move. His mouth becomes dry and bitter, his lips, tongue, and throat grow swollen. Before long, his blood is thick and gummy. His heart must work hard to circulate it. Finally his system overheats, leaving him dead and alone in the sands. The wind does little to help matters. As hot as a forge's breath, it blows up sandstorms that last 50 days at a stretch, speeding the evaporation of water from skin and soil alike. A storm can darken the sky at high noon, carrying so much sand that it reduces visibility to a pace. Breezes on Athas are suffocating and dust-laden, caking everything they touch with yellow-orange silt, spoiling food, and filling a man's eyes with pasty mud. Even still days are perilous. Columns of superheated air can rush upward in terrific whirlwinds, carrying dust, plants, and men to great heights - then suddenly dying away and leaving their reluctant passengers to fall to a horrible death. As dangerous as it is, the wind is merely an inconvenience when compared to the greatest danger of Athas - the lack of water. In most places, it rains no more than once a year. In some places it only rains once in ten years, and the only available water lies in brackish, mineral-crusted oasis ponds. Aside from a handful of streams that trickle less than fifty miles before drying up, there is not a single river on the planet - though I have crossed plenty of ancient bridges and know that rivers were once common. What the world was like in those days, I cannot imagine. l have already noted what the lack of water can mean to a thirsty man, but the dry climate affects Athas in other ways. it allows the sun to shine down unreflected on the barren ground, which is why it grows so hot during the day. At night, the low humidity has the opposite effect. The day's heat escapes into the sky, plunging the temperature to 40 degrees or less - and in the mountains, even to zero. As far I as can tell, all parts of Athas share the blazing sun, the dangerous winds, and the lack of water. Nothing I have seen in my own explorations or heard from the hundreds of travelers I have interviewed points to any other conclusion. Athas is an endless wasteland, spotted by tiny oases of fecundity, inhabited by brutal predators. it is, for all intents and purposes, a land of mortal desolation. Though the picture I have painted so far is of a stark and rugged land, I do not mean to say that Athas is dreary or monotonous. To the contrary, it has a majestic and stark beauty. When first light casts its emerald hues over the Sea of Silt, or when sunset spreads its bloody stain over the Ringing Mountains, there is a certain feral beauty that stirs the untamed heart in all of us. It is a call to take up spear and net, to flee the city, to go and see what lurks out in the barrenness.