The Crimson Desert
Where War Gods are made.
At a Glance
| Location | The heart of the Continent, the great red waste that divides the western powers from the kingdoms of the center and east |
|---|---|
| The Desert Sect | The ancient ascetic order seated at the desert's center, keeper of the War Games |
| Leader | The Patriarch |
| Founded | The First Yuga, for reasons long since forgotten, even to the Sect itself |
| Age | Near seventeen thousand Continental years, across all three known Yugas; among the oldest institutions ever raised, and perhaps the oldest of all |
| The Prize | Victory in the War Games crowns a War God and grants three reality-altering wishes |
Overview
The Crimson Desert is the burning heart of the Continent, a vast and deadly waste that holds the powers of the west apart from the kingdoms of the center and the east, and few not born to it cross it and live. Yet for all its emptiness, the desert holds the seat of one of the oldest and most consequential institutions the Continent has ever known: the Desert Sect.
The Sect is an order of ascetics devoted to martial and magical discipline, and it is the keeper of the War Games, the trial by which the mightiest of every age are measured and by which the Continent's very War Gods are crowned. To the sands of the Crimson Desert come the strongest warriors alive, seeking the recognition of a War Candidate, or the world-altering prize of a War God.
Geography
The Crimson Desert lies at the center of the Continent, within the old Vanir Expanses, a red and trackless waste of sand and ruin ringed by the great powers it holds apart. The western realms lie beyond its far edge, the kingdoms of the heart and the east beyond its near one, and between them the desert stretches, as fatal a barrier as any wall, crossed only by the desperate, the doomed, and those bound for the Sect at its center.
The Desert Sect
The Desert Sect is an order of ascetics devoted to the arts of war and of magic, bound to a discipline so severe that it has held apart from the politics of the Continent for the whole of its long life. It is led by the Patriarch. Though it keeps, in principle, to the courtly view of women common to the east, in practice it is very nearly even-handed: near two in five of its number are women, and it has always weighed worth by strength and discipline far more than by sex, much in the manner of Mangholstadt's own Sisterhood. What sets it above every rival is what it holds: the War Games, and the making of War Candidates and War Gods.
The War Games
The War Games are a trial by combat, a battle-royale of War Candidates, the SSS-ranked living weapons a nation may reckon worth a whole army. To be named a War Candidate is itself a terrible distinction; to win the Games is far more. The victor is crowned a War God and granted three wishes, boons that can reshape nations, alter bloodlines, and bend the very order of the world.
It was not always so exalted a thing. In the Second Yuga the Games were the Agnivansha's blood-sport, run for the amusement of a ruling race that watched the lesser peoples tear at one another as an older world watched cocks in a pit. A victor was always promised, to drive the fighters harder, but none was ever meant to win; on the rare occasion one did, the Agnivansha officer presiding burned the champion to death with Dragonfire and struck the victory from the record.
History
Origins
The Desert Sect was founded in the deep past of the First Yuga, and no one, not even the Sect itself, has ever known why; that founding purpose is lost entirely to time. What is certain is only its astonishing endurance, near seventeen thousand years of continuous life across all three of the known Yugas, which makes it among the oldest institutions the Continent has ever raised, and perhaps the very oldest of them all.
The Coming of Solon
Everything the War Games are, they became through one man. In the Second Yuga, after strange travels no chronicle records, Solon returned to the Continent and entered the Games, and he won. By the custom of that age he was to be burned like every champion before him; instead he called down Storm Magic and killed the Agnivansha overseers where they stood, and the Continent named him the Stormbringer and reckoned him its First War God. When at last he broke the Agnivansha in his Rebellion, Solon gave the Sect the trophies of his victories and set down clear and lasting rules for the Games, the three wishes and all the law that governs them still. From that day the Sect's power only grew, until there was no warrior on the Continent who did not dream of standing in the Crimson Desert to be named, at the least, a Candidate, and at the most, a god.