Wednesday 8 February 2023

Hex Crawl 23 #39: A Fateful Mud Playa

 Three hexes north, one northeast of Alakran.

 

Like hex #37, this one features a dry lake bed or playa that only holds appreciable amounts of water in the winter rains. It is close enough to the menace of Gheenatru to recall a couple of episodes in the travels of the Band of Bronze, for this mud-flat lay across their habitual route northward to the besieged province of Shasari, and sometimes provided a handy camping place.

One night, they hid in the depression as the ghostly lights of the chariots of Gheenatru, driven by fiery-eyed corpses and pulled by funereal white scimitar oryxes, passed by on a night patrol.

Another time, they found fresh bare footprints in the playa's dust, and traced them to a ragged and terrified man, a refugee from the orchards of Gheenatru where he had been forced to work picking fruit alongside the living dead. This Awat, a sandal maker from Khaikalli in Dulsharna, was settled eventually in Alakran.

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