This is an overview of the land we are leaving behind to focus on the west.
Dulsharna is classed as one of the vassal kingdoms but in truth it has not paid tribute to Urighem for centuries if not millennia. It has remained independent and largely peaceful, defended by a fine army most impressively equipped in all the bronze its kings have been able to dig out of the earth, until trouble began ten years ago. The rivers began to run dryer and dryer, the sands to the south and east encroached on the lands, and the water table of the salt sea in the north at the same time began rising -- an ecological onslaught from the forces of Chaos, Apep the Serpent and Tiamat the Dragon.
In happier times Dulsharna was known for its fruit and nut orchards, whose produce it exported across the Notch pass, funding a lucrative trade route of which Alakran was the first beneficiary. Abundant grain and flax, too, was harvested mostly for domestic consumption. Carefully tended forests of cedar mid-kingdom provided timber as needed for construction. This wealth and the strength of its army allowed its nobles to enjoy several golden ages of patronage of the arts: song, storytelling, sculpture, and the elaboration of jewels. The one weakness of the upper class was a disdain for magic, which left them blind and vulnerable to the metaphysical storms brewing.
Dulsha attire is brightly dyed, with wraps and gold fringes, and even the wealthy peasants wear tunics of linen. Hair is curled or braided, but shorter than Wahatti style, and the current women's fashion is to make a towering nest of braids atop the head. The shock troops are (or were) many and they go about in long coats of bronze scales affixed to a leather undercoat, or in collared cuirasses that cover the breast and back. Both foot and chariot troops tend to be armored. Dulsharna has its own language, softer to the ear than Wahatti dialect, but many people still speak the Trade Tongue especially in the west.
Today, much of southern and eastern Dulsharna is a desert, its town covered in sand and its inhabitants fled. After years of the ravages of hyena-heads, goblins, and lizard-folk, and the madness ensuing as demon-cults sprang up from the people to appease and join in the general bloodshed, the Dragon Queen Oholibah, high priestess of Tiamat, has declared her rule in the capital, Dulshamar, and established a harsh regime in the central river valley which now extends its grip towards Hamatti and Delzuna in the west, and eventually to Shasari, the last intact province.
Few know that Oholibah is herself an ancient green dragon in human form. Her great current project, aided by the young red dragon Azig, is to rebuild a ziggurat of weird green stones in the city that once stood when wicked kings worshipped the Dragon. Only seven stones are needed to complete the edifice, lost when the ziggurat was last torn down. When it is ready, it is said, the adult black and sand* dragons Ninthusulag and Kishuba, who now dwell to the east, will be convinced of her might, and Tiamat herself will appear and bless the great project of Chaos. Her agents scour the lands and beyond looking for the lost building blocks.
In the meantime, Oholibah has three young green dragon children -- one, Ushumgallu, who is kept hidden in the ancient Tomb of Dragotha; one, Kulugallu, hidden in the southern hills known as the Folded Lands; and one, Itrigallu,being raised by cultists in a sand-swallowed town of the east. When they are mature she will let them contend, lethally, to survive and become her inheritor.
* A variant of the white dragon adapted to hot climates, with a sandblasting breath
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