Connects to: 14.27, 15.28, 19.31.02 and 29.14.36.
Overview
The most powerful Nekh tribe builds its rookies in the center of the Singing Wastes, atop the sand-blasted spires near the Breath of the Earth. The Breath of the Earth is the Shrouded Lands’ only charted leyline of air. Gnome geomancers assert that it begins deep beneath Thring and winds south until it surfaces in the massive sinkhole that gives it its name. The Breath of the Earth blows a constant, warm wind that the Nekh use to soar high above the desert. The sinkhole is at least a mile deep - even on the brightest days, it is rarely possible to see the bottom. The wind carries the modicum of moisture that allows cacti and scrub to survive.
The Breath of the Earth is far more than a mile deep and none has ever seen the bottom for no such bottom exists. Instead, those who peer over the edge of this vast sinkhole can see the perambulations of strange stars and the feeble gleams of a thousand dying earths.
The hot wind that blows out of this hole in the world is laden with the grey dust of corroded planets and the lifeless ash of decayed hells. For miles in every direction the proper yellow sand of the Singing Wastes is overlaid with a thick layer of blasphemous grey that slowly spreads outwards year by year.
This dust nurtures a forest of cacti and stranger things beside, known as the Forest of Abominations.
Hooks
- A wizened Nekh sorceress, Shnutu, dwells atop the desert’s highest spiral. Rumor says she was a mentor to both Severard of the Seven Circles (13.08) and Yaegha Six-Kidneys (25.18). She knows the languages of every flying thing, and the many winds. Those who survive the climb to her rookery may learn her secrets. Are these rumors true?
- As proud as they are, the Nekh fear the things that lurk in the Breath’s shadows. Clawed, armored beasts scour the rocks at night, mutilating any creature they can overwhelm. Many ghosts, benign and terrible, escape the underworld through the cave mouth. Where do they come from?
