Geography

The region called Elara lies in the southernmost part of the great continent of Kore, far from the rest of the civilized world. A range of tall mountains called the Spears divide Elara into east and west provinces.

• To the east of the Spears was once a vast desert called the Sea of Sand. Once home to a handful of nomadic tribes, the great desert suddenly vanished beneath the ocean almost twenty years ago, to form a shallow inland sea. To this day it is still called the Sea of Sand, although the only sand to be found lies thirty feet below the waves.
  
• To the south stretch the Wastes, an expanse of barren plateaus and hills strewn with rocks and riddled with sinkholes. The ground here is treacherous, and it's almost impossible to tell if your next step will open up a new sinkhole to swallow you whole. Desert plants thrive in the oppressive heat, but there is little game apart from sand devils and pit lizards. The Wastes meet the Sea of Sighs to the south, at jagged cliffs that plunge hundreds of feet to the roiling waters below. Storms constantly batter the ragged coast, and winter hurricanes are not uncommon.
  
• The Sea of Sighs is named for the countless wives and children who lost their husbands and fathers to its deep waters. The weather here is violent and unpredictable; storms will appear in the blink of an eye and vanish in a heartbeat, dragging ships and souls alike to a watery grave. Many times larger than Kore, the Sea of Sighs seems to stretch on forever. No ships have ever sailed farther than the Fishwives, a cluster of small islands twenty leagues from the coast, and returned to tell of it.
  
• North of the Spears lay the hundreds of leagues of forests, swamps, plains and mountains that make up the rest of Kore. A hundred kingdoms once sprawled across these fertile lands, stretching from the tropics just north of the Spears all the way to the wintry tundra of Glacier Point at the northernmost tip of the continent. After the Collapse, this place that was once home to thousands became known only as the Ashlands. The air here is thick with ash and toxic fumes, and nothing can survive on the surface for more than two or three days.
  
• The Great Plains sweep west of the Spears for a dozen leagues or more. Though not as hot and arid as the Wastes, the soil here is thin and poor. Trees are scarce, and only goats can stomach the scraggly weeds that serve for plains grass. There is copper in the soil, though, and iron if you dig deep enough. Hundreds of feet below the surface, ancient lava tubes twine their way to the Spears. Dig too deeply, and you might fall into one. Venture in too far, and you might never venture out again.
  
• At the center of the Spears, one mountain towers above all the rest. Magi Saar dominates the landscape throughout Elara, its flat summit and ashen plume visible from anywhere in the region. The most fertile farmland in all of Elara rests on Magi Saar's volcanic slopes. The volcano is active, and has smoked and rumbled as if about to erupt for as long as any man can remember, but Magi Saar has not erupted for more than five-thousand years. Dragons who live and hunt in southern Kore make their home in the heart of Magi Saar, and it is they who keep the mountain's fiery temper in check. For millennia the dragons have kept their presence in Magi Saar a secret, lest the humans lay siege to their mountain home.