Southern Vanduneez

Southern Vanduneez

The continent of Southern Vandunêz is geographically dominated by a huge desert, collectively known as the Deserts of Ul, and in the First Era, socially by the Lûxun people whose homeland are the Sea Throne Islands off the south coast, but the lands are widely unsettled and the peoples scattered without cohesive central governments. Whether speaking of the Korô Nomads of the Deserts Ul-Œñerô and Ul-Lâñeru (who thrive around the Sunddestogu River) or the Horse-Born Ûvî of the Ûvœzjûn Plains, the largest human populations of this continent are primarily tribal. The exceptions are the Korômon, the northern cousins of the Korô, who develop into a feudal society with scattered kings early in the First Era and the geographically separated Œvin Klîn, who tend toward decentralized forms of government as they both develop into civilizations centered around independent city-states.

The Lûxuns, human-like with some seemingly avian characteristics, on the other hand are arguably the first empire to develop in the First Era with a strong central government based on the Island of Lûxêu. This people expands rapidly in the confusion following the forgetting with their ships settling both Southern Vandunêz and Molo by 50 F.E. With sea-going vessels traversing the world they are often considered the most influential people of the first thousand years of the Age of Stability.

The massive desert is broken into three regions: Ul-Œñernô, Ul-Lâneru and the Ôkôtô Badlands. Ul-Œñernô and Ul-Lâneru are separated by one of the longest rivers in the world, the Sunddestogu, while the Ôkôtô Badlands vaguely begin as you leave the dunes and flatlands of Ul-Lâneru for a rougher, rockier region that lacks the massive blowing dunes of the other regions. Ul-Œñernô and Ul-Lâneru are home to the Korô Nomads (a human people) who believe that they belong to the desert rather than vice versa, which is a basic acknowledgement that life in these lands is dominated by the fight to survive rather than to conquer. The Ôkôtô Badlands are often traversed but never inhabited by any “civilized” people as both the climate, terrain and creatures of this region make even migrating through the area treacherous.

The other dominating features of the continent are the mountain ranges, the most western of which spans the west coast and is nearly as long as the Sunddestogu River. These mountains too are broken into three regions, the Hen-Mokar and Hen-Gyîn, which border the desert, and the Ôlôvrek Mountains in the north. The two Hen Chains are home to the Kôlkân dwarven nations while the Ôlôvrek are claimed and mined by the Korômon, who must resist the trespasses of the Kôlkân as well as defend their mines from a troglodyte creature known as the Es-Zêmê. West of these mountains lies a strip of fertile land settled by the Totohoku, an amphibian seafaring folk who colonize both the beaches and shallow coastal waters.

The range east of the Ôkôtô Badlands is known as the Motokôtô Mountains, and this is the pre-Forgetting homeland of the Kôlkân, whose ancient tunnels are collapsed or overrun by a vicious being called the Bokœ, who forced the Kôlkân from their caverns early in the Age of Warlords.