Hex Crawl 23 #106: Lore Dump 4, The Sandwalkers

Three hexes southeast, three south of Alakran.

The sand dunes resume on the western side of the Scarp here, and recall to us the lore of those who walk them.

Sandwalkers are druids attuned to a dry climate. "Sandwalker" is their own name for their order, but common people sometimes use the less modest term "sandspeaker." They are more an animistic than a strictly religious tradition, revering spirits of the sky, land, plants and animals of the desert. As with druids in greener places, most sandwalkers follow the tradition of the Land, and use their powers to aid agriculture and husbandry of communities in the desert lands and fringes. A few, though, are nightwalkers who follow the Moon, prowling the wastes in the guise of a fierce desert animal, guarding their people from more immediate and pressing threats.

There is no special habit or costume that sandwalkers wear. They dress functionally, fully covered in light-colored cloth, with a veil or scarf that can cover their face from a blinding sandstorm. Thus they look like many nomads or hunters. They have a sign, the Dune Mark, that is two intertwined horizontal S shapes, signifying the shifting sands. This sign might be tattooed on their person, carved on their staff, or stained into a leather amulet around their neck. If seen marked on a stone or plant in nature, the "swelling" side (rising curve of the S) might point to some place of interest, refuge, or supply cache.

The magical powers of sandwalkers come from their attunement with nature. They try to maintain a flow, imposing their will on nature and drawing nature's will into them. Creating water is their most sacred and useful rite. If there is any kind of ceremony presided over by a sandwalker, it will involve anointing, drinking, or spilling magically created water. To reverse the rite and Destroy Water is strictly forbidden, an act that will set the sandwalker down the dark path of being allied to the desert rather than to humanity.

If a sandwalker can summon or turn into an animal, it will be a desert animal, or a creature of dryland watercourses (crocodile, hippopotamus). Their plant powers likewise fit the environment. Their Goodberries are cactus fruits (nopales). If they summon plants to Entangle they will be cacti and thorny bushes. Their Barkskin is cactus skin, and if a hit with a bodily weapon is blocked by this armor, the attacker takes d4 damage that cannot reduce its hp below 1. At higher levels, instead of summoning a Sleet Storm, they summon a Dust Storm, a howling vortex of obscuring winds with the same effects, and their Ice Storm is actually a Sand Storm that does slashing instead of cold damage.

Sandwalkers learn their craft at the side of a teacher who by tradition takes only one apprentice at a time. By nature they are solitary and seek to spread out to do the most good rather than club together and risk complacency or conflict. But each desert region holds an annual conclave of sandwalkers at a natural feature of striking appearance. The local one takes place at the stepped sandstone basin of Kisalma Barim, 125 miles due south of Mu-Asharru, in the hottest part of the year, at the end of Abu the month of the Lion. Attendance is not mandatory, but highly recommended, for few people truly understand sandwalkers except their own kind.