The desert is the country of madness....it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out to 'wander in dry places.' Thirst drives man mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence- lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.
- [b]Thomas Merton[/b]

[center][img]https://blurrylens.com/wp-content/uploads/mojave-desert-cadiz-road-mountains-fine-art-landscape.jpg[/img][/center]

[h2]Chapter 1: Dry Places[/h2]

[center][i]You will find bending the world most easy and most dangerous in desert places. Reality is thinnest there.[/i]
-[b]On the Arts Mysterious[/b] by Anys daz Saloth, Archmaster of the Mythrad Arcanum[/center]

He stood alone on a bare, high ridge where the mountains ended, the crimson expanse of the Avanagashan spread out beneath him, immense and silent, baking under the angry sun. The desert was a sea of red rock and sand, broken in places by spines of sandstone rising from the earth like the fins of immense chthonic beasts. 

In the far distance, the dark silhouette of Zar Vorgul interrupted the wasteland's magnificent monotony. He watched the metropolis' jagged crown of spires and domes dance crookedly in the heat shimmer. 

He remained there, looking out towards the city, as the cool gears of his mind turned deliberately over bloodshed looming like a storm.

Word from the Empire was unanimous and clear: His Dread Immanence Giomaht III, Shadow of the Gods Upon Azoth, Shashul and Emperor, was determined to succeed where his many predecessors had for so long failed: to finally crush the Dratha and destroy the Union, adding the cities of the Ashlands to the Salished dominion. The Shashul had called his lords and generals to him, his Forge Priests were offering redoubled sacrifice to their voracious gods, begging for victory in the war to come. Soon all the great power of the Rainlands would fall upon the Union- and, first, upon the Red Desert. Union spies throughout the Empire even spoke of new weapons among the Salished ranks, capable of killing from a great distance and of shattering walls with ease. 

Lying distant from its sister cities, right at the doorstep to the Empire, Zar Vorgul would be the first target of the Shashul, and the first opportunity for Union forces to frustrate His Dread Immanence's plans. If Zar Vorgul could not be saved, it would at least be a city for which the Salished would pay an outrageous price. If all went to plan, it would be a price too high for their conquest to continue.