Lost in the Desert

Anauroch

Anauroch (A-NAW-rock) is a barren wasteland that dominates the North, a huge mass of steppeland, rocky wastes, and true desert that runs from the uttermost north almost to the Lake of Dragons.

The Great Desert was not always so huge, and has grown remarkably in the past millennium, driving savages, goblins, and other evil creatures farther south into the lands of humankind. Many human and elven kingdoms were swallowed by the wastes, and their ruins remain buried beneath the sands. Netheril, Asram, Hlondath, Anauria, the city of Orolin, and the great goblin kingdoms now all lie below its shifting dunes.

The area of the Great Desert is in fact a collection of different types of deserts, and includes hot sandy wastes similar to the Dust Desert of Raurin, rocky badlands with very sparse scrub and no available water, basins filled with salt flats and prickly cacti, windswept sandstone mountains carved by the breeze into bizarre shapes, and polar steppes and icy wastes in the north that rival those of Vaasa. In general, it is as inhospitable a place as can be found on the surface of Toril.

Science, at least as it is currently understood, does not explain the reason for this advancing desert, and great magical or godlike powers may be involved. On the positive side, the encroaching desert has forced trade south through the bottleneck the wastes create into the realms of Cormyr, Sembia, and the Dales, making these regions the wealthier for the loss of such great cities as Orolin.

For the longest time, the wastes of the Great Sand Sea were considered to be totally uninhabited. However, Zhentarim activities along the desert's edge (including an attempt to create a cross-Anauroch trade route) have brought to light a number of intelligent people who make the desert their home. The human Bedine are a nomadic race of desert riders and sheikhs, and seem to be the Black Network's chief obstacle in their goals. The D'tarig are a quasi-human, quasi-dwarven race of thieves, spies, and bandits who are (sometimes) allies of the Zhentarim. Races are also said to live beneath the sands in their own Underdark: warrior lizards called laertis, lamias, beholders, illithids, and dark, magical creatures unseen in the South who sit on the buried thrones of the ancient Netheril cities.

[This message has been edited by Taluntain (edited April 10, 2001).]