Dust Pre-history, Arak's Rage

It is said a thousand years ago there were several world-spanning cultures living on Dust, for it was a verdant place. A place of lush jungles and steaming swamps more akin to the shard of Frontier. Then the night skies changed and the shard became locked in an eternal summer. Within a generation most of the shard had been changed beyond recognition. Entire civilisations were destroyed and the very earth was scorched.

This time has become known as Arak’s Rage.

Dust Modern History

Once a fertile land, so legends say, it was scorched dry and turned into a desolate arid waste under the God Arak's unrelenting insane fury. After this, Dust was a dry and sun blasted land. Boasting sand aplenty, with arid mountain ranges poking through the deserts and a few clusters of oases, holding the precious water of life.

Before Arak’s Rage the area now known as the Oasis of the Caliph, or the Thousand Tears of Nia, was supposedly a swamp. Neighbouring nations flocked to this area as their own lands began to dry out. The mighty swamp also dried out but left behind many small oases. It was around these oases that the Survivors clustered and fought hundreds of skirmishes to protect their claims. Dozens of cultures combined into the society we see today.

After the Shards fused to form the new world, Arak died. With Arak dead, his temples sacked and his wealth redistributed to those strong enough to hold it. A political storm driven by commerce has washed over the populated towns found clustered around the oases. Dust, along with all of the Shards was changed forever, but with the sands only now beginning to settle, how far those changes go on Dust have yet to be seen.

New lands have been found as mountain passes opened up, where once only a portal could get you to Dust, now ships have found its coast.

Along with lands, new political struggles are starting. Dust’s culture is much in flux, the return of lost religions and the spreading of new ones create even more complications. Some good news, however, is that the army of undead that was surrounding the populated Oasis seem to have retreated and are only now found in the area that leads to the Deep Desert to the West. 

Towards the end of AU13 a man Magi called Al-Fulani came to prominence, feared by the other Magi he acquired a vast estate which ran from the Oracles old tower in the west of Dust out into the Deep Desert. Survivors from settlements he had acquired say that the inhabitants were killed or captured and then Al-Fulani's men appeared to be digging in the sands as if looking for something. However towards the end of AU 14 The great evil magi Al-Fulani was killed.