The Parallax

Size

By the best estimates available, the Parallax Desert spans roughly 1,980 miles from west to east and 1,190 miles from north to south, including the coastal wastes and forests along its western edge. These figures should be taken with caution. Chaladonian survey teams sent into the region in years past never returned with two maps that agreed, and some never returned at all. The edges of the desert are well enough known, bounded by the Chaladonia Highlands to the north, the Miden Mountains to the south, the Crystal Mountains to the east, and the O'Lennon Ocean to the west. What lies between them, and how far it truly stretches, remains a matter of dispute.

Climate

The heart of the Parallax is a sea of pale sand that almost shines with a hint of metal, scorched by day and bitterly cold by night. Rain is rare, and when it does come, the dry ground drinks it so quickly that travelers swear it never fell at all. Winds sweep down from the Chaladonia Highlands and the Crystal Mountains, shifting the dunes so constantly that a path walked one week may not exist the next.

Toward the west, the sand gives way to dry grassland and the withered forests of the Ruithael Wastes and the Forest of Regret, where the trees stand dead but refuse to fall. Along the coast and among the scattered islands of the Shattered Lands, the air turns damp and the land green, offering the region's only reliably livable ground. The coastal waters are another matter entirely, home to the maelstrom of Killian's Pit and the wrecks of ships that ventured too close.

Peoples of the Region

The villages of the Parallax are the towns of the forgotten. Ruithvael, Pael, and Kalm were hastily raised by Chaladonia to support its outposts, and when the soldiers left some fifty years ago, the townsfolk were left to fend for themselves. They struggle still. No roads connect them, yet the villages work together as best they can, sharing what little they have when they are able.

The people of these settlements, mostly human, carry a burden few other places in Chalcephera know. Roughly one in three lies in the Dark Paralysis, one of the highest ratios of sleepers to waking anywhere on the continent. Every family tends to someone who will not wake, and every village plans its labor around the hands it has lost.

A few of the older folk still call themselves Chaladonians. Most do not. Ask a villager where they are from, and they will name their town, not the nation that forgot them. For those born after the Chaladonians left, there is no other answer to give. Home is the village, and family is the only kingdom they have known.

In the far northwest, the goblins of Gul'Goma tell a different story. They came down from the mountains seeking friendship with the human towns and were never truly welcomed. Undeterred, they built a village of their own, modeled as closely as they could manage on the towns that turned them away, and the imitation is earnest, if not always accurate. Gul'Goma has since grown into a modestly thriving settlement, and despite the cool reception, its goblins trade regularly with the human villages, which have come to need that trade more than they would care to admit. Few of Gul'Goma's goblins lie in the Dark Paralysis, a fact the human villages notice and seldom speak of. Stranger still, the goblins proudly call themselves Chaladonians, clinging to the name of a kingdom that never claimed them, while the people it abandoned have long since cast it aside.

A Brief History

The Parallax was not always forgotten. Long before the Great Magic War, the region was home to cities whose names survive only on the crumbling stones of Dulma, Nalhalla, Altoma, and the countless other ruins swallowed by the sand. What these peoples were, and how they fell, none can say with certainty.

Chaladonia came south seeking two things: the fertile land its growing population desperately needed, and the scattered heritage of the old Nor'Ovan Empire, whose heartland Chaladonia already holds and whose remnants it has long sought to reclaim. Under the banner of the Crown and the blessing of the Church of Chaladonia, fortified outposts such as Chalice Watch and Stonewatch were raised along the desert's edges, and villages were hastily built to supply them.

The venture proved costlier than the Crown had ever imagined. Patrols vanished into the sand. Those who returned often came back changed, and the cost of their care, along with the endless burden of supplying outposts that could not be reliably reached, drained the treasury year after year. At home, the Dark Paralysis claimed more Chaladonians than any other nation's people, and each new wave of the Awakening strained the kingdom further. Some fifty years ago, the Crown declared the southern holdings beyond its means and recalled its soldiers. The villages were told help would return when the kingdom recovered. It never did.

That, at least, is the official account. Those who lived through the withdrawal remember it differently. The recall came suddenly, they say, not as a slow retreat but as an order to leave at once. Officers would not speak of why. Records were sealed, and the few soldiers who spoke too freely afterward found themselves reassigned to distant posts or not heard from again. In the years since, Chaladonia has grown ever more guarded. A withdrawal, it seems, was not enough. When the King and the Crown Prince both fell into the Dark Paralysis, the kingdom's unease turned to outright suspicion, and Chaladonia has now closed its borders to other nations entirely. Whatever the Crown found in the Parallax, or whatever found the Crown, it has never been spoken of openly.

Accounts of the Parallax

No two travelers describe the Parallax alike, and no account can be trusted to agree with the next. What follows are the words of those who entered the desert and returned, set down as they were told.

"It's the sand. Look at it in the sun, it shines like filings off a smith's wheel. Put a compass near enough metal and of course the needle wanders. There's no curse in it, only iron."
— A Chaladonian scholar, writing before the withdrawal

"My compass didn't wander. It pointed true, the whole way. It's the desert that moved."
— A trader from Kalm

"We walked toward the sunrise for three days. On the fourth morning, the sun rose behind us. No one could say when we'd turned."
— A survivor of a Chaladonian patrol

"Found the oasis. Palms, clear water, cool shade. Drank till I near burst, and it saved my life. Went back twice with a full map. Nothing but dunes."
— A goblin of Gul'Goma

"There's no water out there. The men who say they drank from an oasis drank sand, and they died believing it was water."
— A villager of Pael

"The red mountain smokes at night. You can see the glow of it from the deep dunes, like a forge left burning."
— Unknown traveler

"It isn't a mountain. Mountains don't have windows."
— A sleeper of Ruithvael, upon waking from the Dark Paralysis

"I saw the red mountain three times, in three different places. Each time it was closer."
— Sergeant-at-Arms Berrick Hollen, retired

Whether the Parallax deceives the eyes, the mind, or the land itself, none can say. Those who claim to understand it rarely return a second time.

Points of Interest

The Lone Tower

Every traveler who has entered the Parallax claims to have seen it, and not one has ever reached it. The Lone Tower rises from the heart of the desert, and its top is lost to the sky. Some say it has no top at all, only more tower, climbing forever. Walk toward it, and it never draws closer. Turn away, and it waits on the new horizon. No matter which direction a traveler faces, the tower is somehow there.

Folklore has long tied the tower to Zodo, though no two tellings agree on how. Stranger still are the words of the Awakened, those who have returned from the Dark Paralysis. They speak of the same tower standing in the dream world, and there, they say, it is no mirage. It belongs to the one they call Taal Zodo.

The Pyramids

How many pyramids stand in the Parallax? One, two, or three? No one can agree. One explorer found a pyramid and named it Pyros. Another found one and named it Ignatoma. A third sighted one from the highlands, marked it on his map as Secorius, and returned the next day to find nothing but sand. Whether these are three structures, two, or a single pyramid seen from three deceiving angles, the desert has never said.

The Lost Estate

Once a great manor, or so it is believed. Those who stumble upon it find it fully furnished, as though its owners stepped out only moments before. None who have found it have ever found it a second time.

Turnkey Prison

An abandoned Chaladonian prison along the northern edge of the desert, said to hold a terrible secret. Rumor has it that deep within, the cells become coffins, and those who died there have never left. Darker still is the whisper that when Chaladonia withdrew, it did not empty Turnkey. Whatever was held within was left behind.

The Abandoned Outposts

Chalice Watch, Stonewatch, and the other forts Chaladonia raised along the desert's edges still stand tall and empty. They are monuments to an ambition long abandoned, and a reminder to the villages that Chaladonia was once here.

The Weeping Dome

A ruin of the First Era near the western coast. Those who pass by swear they hear someone crying within. No one has ever found who.

The Dome of the Lost

Another First Era ruin, standing among the dead trees of the Forest of Regret. It is said that those who enter it never return.

The Floating Graveyard

Even at sea, the Parallax never seems to let go. Countless Chaladonian vessels have wrecked among the Shattered Lands, and not one bore a survivor. Their broken hulls drift and settle along the coast, and the villagers bring their own dead here, adding them to the roster of the sleeping dead.

Trismegitus's Folly

The wreck of a ship whose captain, Trismegitus, was undone by his own pride. His folly cost him his life and the life of every soul aboard.

Killian's Pit

A monstrous whirlpool off the northern coast. It is said that when Xerxes fell, his body was cast into the sea, and there something awoke. The waters have churned ever since.

The Lost City of Aureas

A city of the Late First Era, lost beneath the sea. On some days, only the tops of its tallest buildings break the surface. On others, far more of the old city can be seen, as though the sea itself cannot decide how much to reveal.