The cities of the Bak'Touk peoples have stood for centuries in the unyielding deserts of the Scorchedlands, sustained by the life giving waters flowing deep withing the earth. Though their ancient foundations have crumbled, and the waters of the earth do not visit the surface as often as they once did, great rock cut monuments to forgotten kings still stand, and the cities grow and prosper as centers of trade in every good imaginable.
Some of the most prized of these goods are to be found in the barren wastes of the Chalklands. these Chalklands lie to the west of the Scorchedlands, and are separated by a drop of several hundred feet. In this sunken crater of twisted rock and shifting sediment, life is sustained not by water, but by a substance flowing from the summit of the Cashilima; an edifice said to be the home of a beast of endless age and boundless knowledge. with the Cashilima at their center, the Chalklands spread ever outward, and every year it encroaches further upon the lands to the east. The substance that flows from the Cashilima - called 'Chalk' by those from the eastern lands - sustains a race of beings that do not age as they wander through these sculpted spires in search of their unusual prey. The chalk can imbue an easterner with unknowable knowledge and an unnaturally long life, but it takes flesh as a penance, and those who commune with it may live forever as nothing more than bone.
The Ya'Kachiri of the southern plains want little from the lands of chalk, but have much to gain from the lands of sun. They follow the patterns of the seasons in their yearly migration from the Napsidian Cliffs on the southern tip of the continent to the edge of the Scorchedlands in the north, ensuring that the Joktu on which they ride have tender vegetation to graze upon. they rely on these Joktu for nearly their every need, using their fur to produce cloth, their horns and bone to create all manners of carved items, and their blood to distill a fine wine. they trade these and other things with the merchants of the Scorchedlands, and they exchange finely made cloth sails with the Napsidians for freshly caught fish and woven basketry.
The cliff dwelling Napsidians are exceptional in the art of weaving, and their hanging dwellings are a feat of engineering unfathomable to the scaleless denizens of the north. these dwellings and nearly every object they use in their daily lives are woven from the fibers of reeds that grow along the edges of their cliffs. they are a proud people that have been pushed to the edge of existence, and are wary of outsiders. their ancestors once ruled an empire that encompassed all of the lands south of the Lotharian foothills, the uprising of the Bak'touk spelled its demise, and in the ensuing genocide nearly every sentient reptile on the continent was exterminated or forced into the south. while the Napsidians of today live very differently from their ancestors, they remember the atrocities visited upon them by the peoples they once ruled over, and they long for the heat of those northern lands.
Beyond the heat of the Scorchedlands lie craggy peaks shrouded in mystery to all but the most learned of beings. it is in this country of Lotharia that the most ancient lineages of any entities reside, and the clans that live here can trace their history back thousands of years, to a time long before even the Casilima rose to spread chalk into the lands. In great caverns of purple stone, the Lotharians record tales of magnicifent hunts, ballads of conflict and comprimise, and boast of distant lands they have explored. they are the historians of the land, remembering ledgend as fact and fact as something far greater than fiction. the mountains they live in shelter them from the ravages of the outside world, and within them their ancient ancestors hibernate, waiting for a time when the earth is new once more to rise from their slumber and explore what does not yet exist.
