Ironcrown:The Devastation
From Cyradon Wiki
Devastation - The Devastation is a cursed, lifeless region in the heart of Cyradon. The ancient city of Belynar stands in the center of the Devastation. Created approximately five centuries ago, as a result of a magical ritual gone awry, the Devastation has been leeching the life force of Cyradon ever since.
#4300 Cyradon, page 6
The Devastation is not a crater, nor is it a desert in the truest sense of the word. It is truly a lifeless, petrified place; the Devastation is better understood as a curse upon the soil, water, and the air, leeching life directly from the land. The Devastation is more lifeless than even the deserts of the Orsai Empire, where flowers sleep just below the surface waiting for the rain to fall so they may bloom for an instant. When the rain falls upon the Devastation, the red, gritty earth merely dies a little more. But life here is not extinguished; rather it is frozen, petrified, oddly preserved, but no less desolate. At the epicenter of the Devastation, much of Belynar still survives, its ancient stone buildings withstanding the worst fire in creation. The city is built of stone, on and in magicians of old leeched much of their mana directly from its warm heart.
In the immediate area of the epicenter, where the otherworldly fire burned brightest, the earth was scorched, turning the sand into a hard, cracked, glassy surface. The glassy sand is red and sharp, but if true, clean, living water could fall upon it, the soil could be restored. The land was rich once, but it was far from the fertile, coastal elvish city-states of the east. That's probably why the Narsin were allowed to take and keep the city of Belynar for their own.
The desert runs for about 120 miles or more in every direction from Belynar. The sand, finer and sharper than normal sand, lies heavily on the ground. Wind blows this sand easily, sending hot and sharp waves into the faces of travelers. The climate here was once slightly warmer than the coastal plains, but not the overn temperatures of the Orsai deserts. Now, however, the temperature is fiercely hot, day and night, beyond the mountains. The sand retains some of the heat of that magical fire and the sand warms the air. This land is a freakish, unnatural desert, an abomination on an island of abominations.
#4300 Cyradon, page 46
