Giant's Handprint Desert

A giant of cosmic proportions used the world as a stepping stone as it climbed through the universe, leaving an inhospitable handprint desert in the southwest of the continent. The underground of the desert houses many complex, damp caves which are home to a species of giant sandworm.

The ruins of the ancient city of Qadash lie in the middle of the desert, which was once inhabited by Brass people who could withstand the blazing heat of the desert, although their civilization literally collapsed when the sandworms started to appear in their lands. It is said that the few Qadashians who managed to escape the handprint desert founded the kingdoms of Ashar Nar, the Furlaniya city states and the Nasr Satrapies, although those claims are dubious to say the least.

Even though many scholars think of the sandworms as dumb, mindless creatures, they actually are a somewhat intelligent and social species, who form tribes and clans between each other. The sandworms feed off the mineral-rich underground of the desert and the species that inhabit it, but also cannibalize each other, waging large wars that (literally) shake the sands above them.

Competition among the sandworms is so fierce that very few of them reach adulthood, somewhat keeping the desert confined to its current boundaries.

## Qadash and The Men of Bronze

The tale of the Men of Bronze is linked to the Great Desert. The Giant’s Handprint Desert, also called the Titan’s Palm or the Sea of Sand is a barren, wasted land. It is said that a giant of impossible size once used this land as a stepping stone in its path of climbing the eternal Cosmic Stairway. The incomprehensible pressure of this act not only created the mountain ranges that surround the desert to this day, but also turned the land into a single sheet of glass. As the eons passed, this glass platform was covered in miles of earth, sand and rock, which started cracking the glass, letting more and more elements from an unknown past to get through.

The mountains themselves are some of the highest of Giantstep, and completely surround the desert, blocking it from any rain. This means that the only real source of water in the desert were the glass cracks from within the earth. This water poured from within and creating subterranean lakes and rivers, and it came out in such quantity that the desert was a green pasture, a sea of grass and flowers from one end to the other. We know this from the records in libraries from Azan, Fûrlaniya and Biblion. These telling tales of the beauty of this region, which attracted nearby nomads and farmers in search for land, who considered the treacherous paths of the mountains to be worth the effort of reaching the legendary sea of grass within. The numbers of these groups were never very high, but they were enough to build early cities made out of brick and adobe. However, once the people got in through the mountains, exiting back again was extraordinarily rare, to the point that the region became nearly uncommunicated with the rest of the world. Many cities sprouted, and the land became prosperous, being ruled by independent city-states that produced dozens of pyramids and ziggurats.

This, however, would not last. Due to the diminishing amount of water coming out of the deep each year, the land became dryer and dryer. The grass planes and fields of wheat were reclaimed by the desert, and in less than a single millennia the Giant Handprint’s Desert became once again a land of sand and dust. The population languished, and many of the original cities were abandoned, starved and thirsty, being swallowed by the hungry dunes. There many attempts to keep the land hydrated, such as redirecting rivers from the mountains, but they ultimately failed. However, out of all of the cities, one managed to not only survive this, but also thrive: the City of Qadash.

Qadash was one of the most advanced cities inside of the Handprint, shinning due to its great technological innovations and stunning architecture. Its Queen-Priest, Ish-Shimnash Mahind, recognized the danger that the changes to the region represented, and ordered the creation of great works to preserve water. Great canals were built inside of the city to transport water from the deep, channeling the ever dwindling water to her domains. This caused the rest of the population of the Handprint to migrate to Qadash searching for protection, and soon enough, Qadash had enough resources to easily control the entirety of the region. The Great City of Qadash became rich and prosperous for many decades due to the great works, growing in size and majesty as an oasis of life and civilization in the middle of the desert. Lush gardens covered the new pyramids of the nobility, covered in lush bronze in honor of their gods. They became known as the Men of Bronze, as they believed bronze was a gift from the gods to the worthy and the noble.

This, however, was not the end of Qadash’s troubles. More and more cities were abandoned due to a lack of water, and with the arable lands being lost year after year, it reached a point where feeding the people of Qadash was becoming harder and harder. In desperation, the King-Priest Ish-Shinmesh ordered to build massive dungeons underground in search for water. These tunnels became the only form of water Qadash had access to, and they dug deeper and deeper into the ground in search for it. The underground became an intricate labyrinth of tunnels and pipes, with extraordinarily advanced engines to extract water from the deep, and even mechanical beasts to protect the precious lakes. In their quest for water, they also uncovered great veins of valuable minerals, but all of these became worthless in comparison to the blue gold. It reached a point where the Qadashian’s way of life became nearly completely dependent on the underground, growing fungi and lichen in the damp caverns, much easier to irrigate than the harsh desert. The city of Qadash became sealed to avoid losing any humidity, emptying many buildings to turn them into windowed sealed caverns where the sun could get in but humidity couldn’t get out.

In the end, though, this efforts were ultimately in vain. It is believed that, from the west, an ancient evil arrived at the lands of western Giantstep. Its vileness was so destructive that it signaled the beginning of the end for the Men of Bronze. We do not know if what followed next was part of the ancient evil’s plan, or if it was just a side product, or if the doom of the Men of Bronze lived under the glass the entire time, but the ancient evil’s arrival also coincided with the appearance of the “Lardlardu” or “Great Worms”. These giant sandworms appeared out of nowhere, taking the Qadashians by complete surprise. Their diet of minerals and meat meant that they fed on the pillars that sustained many of the pillars that kept the underground from collapsing, while also hunting the Men of Bronze themselves. The Qadashians fought for centuries against these creatures, but they were driven back time and time again. The last records discovered of the Qadashian civilization date from around 1.000 years BBE, and told the tale of the attempts of the people there to escape the worms and the desert by crossing the mountains. There are rumors that many nearby civilizations have roots from these escaping Qadashians, but there is little to no proof to confirm this.

Today, the desert belongs to the “Lardlardu”, but many legends still tell that some surviving Men of Bronze still fight underground, keeping themselves alive in hermetically sealed systems, having long ago abandoned the light of the sun.