Desert of Qadakh

## The Desert of Qadakh

The **Desert of Qadakh** is a natural world wonder covering most of the homonymous nation and even crossing borders to other countries, such as Yazsria and Illumina. It hosts a surprisingly diverse fauna and flora, all while influencing all the cultures that decided to settle on or near it. The growth of the Free City has however set a challenge to the preservation of the endangered desert.

## Extent

The desert of Qadakh is the biggest and the only true desert on the geological sense of the word. The “yellow belt” of which it is part includes the red desert of Alebira, on the northeastern subcontinent of Tetra, and the Tempesta desert on western As’ria.

While most deserts of the world are being at best neglected and at worst transformed into green lands, the very nature of the Desert of Qadakh constitutes the cultural core of the nation, shaping its identity from its very foundation.

## Flora

The desert hosts, according to estimations, 500 species of plants, which is extremely low considering the surface in which they grow. Plants such as acacia, cactus, palm trees and grass have adapted to the most arid inland, while the riversides count also Joshua trees and sugar cane. Lone cypress trees cand be found in semi-desertic regions closer to the mountains.

## Fauna

Camels and goats are both domesticated animals. The camelids have always been tamed by the nomads, due to their known qualities of water sobriety, endurance and speed.

Several yellow scorpion species can be found on the sands of the desert of Qadakh. The Qadakhi fattail scorpion is the most common and its venom is not very dangerous to man. Other species present on the Desert of Qadakh are not lethal. The killer scorpion looks like the fattail but its tail is much larger and its poison much more dangerous, especially for young kids and the elderly.

The viper of the sands, featuring a flat head and somewhat triangular, flees to protect itself and to hunt, sliding through the sand thanks to spiral movements on its column. The horned viper is a close relative to it, but it is less used to the sand and is found mostly on the Ar-Kath mountains.

The fennec fox, also called the sands fox, is found everywhere on the desert. It passes its days on its shadowed shelter; at night, it hunts insects and rodents. Its extremely developed audition allows it to locate its preys quickly thanks to its oddly shaped ears.

The Qadakhi cheetah lives mostly on the foot of the Ar-Kath mountains, but also punctually on the red desert of Alebira. The cheetah avoids the sunny months and prefers to stay under the acacia trees to hunt smaller animals. They are unexpectedly pale, a tonality similar to the sand.

The crocodiles of the Jazeel river dominate the waters. They were first introduced to the region by the Sultanate of Tetra, who had a tradition to sacrifice humans and animals to the sacred crocodiles. Since the fall of the Sultanate, their population drastically decreased but was not erased.

Other species include lizards, rabbits and hyenas, in much smaller numbers.

## History

Numerous traces of early human presence can be found in the desert of Qadakh. Primitive huts, abandoned mineshafts and inhabited caves attest this fact.

The climate of the region has suffered significant shifts during the prehistory of Eldham. In the oasis of Omtar, salt craters are the remanent of the sea that covered Tetra millions of years ago and that retreated to the Sparkling Sea. The genesis of the desertic landscape we have today dates to that era. This geological region is part of a climatic cycle dynamic of green-desertic at each passing of an ice age (every 5000-6000 years).

The last ice age coincided with the first sedentarisation of humans into the region. The southern half of the subcontinent assumed a semi-arid climate, allowing agriculture and pasture in a land that had been long neglected for its dryness. While human settlements were mostly sparse and small, the city of Calea broke the rule, having a considerate population and solid buildings. It was located roughly at the current location of the Free City of Qadakh; notably, the Castrum and the Old Lighthouse are both structures of the city of Calea.

As the ice age came to an end, the societies of Qadakh found refuge in the nomadic lifestyle, while others joined the city of Calea, the last bastion of a climate adapted to agriculture. The nomadic people would bring with them some stone bricks from their abandoned tribes, starting the pebble-herding tradition of the desert. Meanwhile, the city of Calea flourished and dragged the attention of the neighboring Qwe’tsn Empire, who would send a military expedition that would decimate the population.

The Rathniri colonization brought new human waves to Eldham. The most important one settled in the mouth of the Jazeel river. It was the Sultanate of Tetra, having Hesti’a as the capital city. Qadakh was initially built as a secondary city of the realm, but it successfully rebelled against the capital and become independent. As time passed, Qadakh came to be the dominant nation of the subcontinent, eventually ruling over the ruins of Hesti’a and being internationally recognized as a powerful nation.

## Popular culture

The unique atmosphere of the desert has inspired leaders, citizens, poets and foreigners. Indeed, while most deserts of the world are neglected and despised for its incompatibility with the generic medieval architecture, Qadakh embraces the dryness and yellowness of the desert in a unique and remarkable way.

Poets and authors from the five corners of civilization have written works on the vastness, emptiness and flatness of the Desert of Qadakh. The dense Free City, contained behind its walls and flourishing in population and culture, contrasts uniquely with the natural and untouched desert next to it. This allows for paintings that give a unique point of view from the heights of the Ar-Kath mountains. Many immigrants have chosen to settle in the Free City of Qadakh partially thanks to the welcoming view it provided after a lonesome journey across the desert.

## Urbanisation

The Free City of Qadakh is one of the fastest growing cities in the entirety of Eldham. It grew from 22 people in 57 AJC to 52 inhabitants six years later. It has the reputation of being a builders nation, attracting people interested in developing both the city and their skills.

One of the first structures of the city was the wall, delimitating the city to the north. While it had an undeniable defensive function in its foundation, it has mostly served as the border of the newly founded nation the day after the bilateral independence treaty was signed. However, as the old Sultanate of Tetra fell into ruin and Qadakh claimed the entirety of the homonymous desert, the wall lost its border function and became no more than a physical barrier to the exponential urban growth. Thus, the urbanization vector of the city pointed southwards; first towards the rare empty spaces, then towards the Sparkling Sea, mobilizing massive land reclamation projects.

Despite all the efforts to contain the northwards expansion vector, several propositions were done, and debates followed. Before the land reclamation projects started, many citizens and leaders envisioned the city to grow across the city walls, to give the impression to the world of an evergrowing megalopolis truly independent from Tetra. Propositions came from citizen buildings to vineyards and farmlands. When Eldham was popping up with industrial revolutions, a train station was envisioned north of the wall, as a symbol of the conquest of the harsh climate by modernity. When new spices were discovered to be compatible with the desertic climate, a debate followed on whether the Spices Guild should be built on the desert.

Those discussions were not enough to stop some projects from being built. An Olympic arena was built halfway between the main gate and the mountains, partially blocking the view to the desert. While it blended as an “isolated built” and used local resources (sandstone and oak), it broke the wilderness of the desert and created a draft of an urban network on the north of the Free City. It constitutes a barrier to the seasonal migration of the various species of birds, reptiles and insects that live in the desert and reproduce on the mountains or on the urban gardens. The natural aspect of the build, however, is rarely mentioned when urban growth debates rise.

Recently another building artificialized the soils of the desert: the racing track. Covering the entire peninsula of Golam, the build is expected to host a boat racing competition. There have not been, however, any means to compensate the loss of the desert land. It is expected to be dismantled after the end of the competition.

There is however hope for the preservation of the desert. As the ruins of Hesti’a disintegrate into time, the dunes, fauna and flore advance into the old city, enhancing the extent of the desert. On the countryside, forests are being cut and sand is being dispersed in order to extend the biome into regions that were beforehand covered in green.