Table of Contents
Arabia
“Arabia remembers more gods than any land, all buried beneath the sand…”
Arabia is one of the oldest lands still named by mortals, a region whose history stretches back beyond crowns, nations, and even recorded belief. Long before The Meteor, this was a cradle of prophets, conquerors, and sacred wars. In the centuries since, it has become something harsher: a land where myth, ruin, and belief itself have taken physical form. Every dune hides a story. Every ruin is watched by something that remembers when it was worshipped.
Today, Arabia endures only along its coasts. Beyond the magically-shielded coastal metropoles, the interior is considered functionally uninhabitable. Dust storms scour the land for weeks at a time, reshaping borders and uncovering ruins thought lost forever. Monsters born of ancient belief stalk the wastes, and the ground itself is threaded with forgotten sanctums, catacombs, and relic vaults older than modern history. Arabia is not empty. It is abandoned. What remains does not wish to be disturbed.
Arabia is feared, skirted, and whispered about by empires. It is easier to go around than through. But for those who survive its sands, Arabia does not let go. It marks them. And long after they leave, the desert remembers their names.
A Nation Held at the Edge
Arabia is less a unified nation than a tenuous survival pact between its remaining city-states. Authority is practical, defensive, and coastal. Power is measured not in territory, but in how far a city’s shields extend into the desert beyond its walls. The interior belongs to no crown, no army, and no living map.
Governance is centralized in Mombasa, though its authority is symbolic beyond the range of its protection. Laws are enforced within the domes, contracts honored in trade cities, and beyond that, survival is left to faith, firepower, or folly. Arabia does not project power inland. It contains what it can, seals what it cannot, and sells what is brought back alive.
The Shard-Domes of Arabia
The cities of Arabia survive only through the use of colossal arcane constructs known as Shard-Domes. Powered by immense refined Shardisite Caronas, these generators project translucent emerald shields over entire metropolitan districts. When storms rise, the domes awaken. Streets empty. Markets shutter. Life retreats indoors as the desert howls outside for days or weeks at a time. Sand, heat, and monstrosities born within the interior hellscape batter the shields relentlessly, clawing at the veil until the winds finally subside.
Within the shield-domes of the Arabian great cities, life is opulent, tense, and theatrical. Wealth flows freely, fueled by relics and ancient treasure, pulled from the sands and sold to the highest bidder. Theaters, galleries, and arenas celebrate survival as spectacle. Failure is public. Success is legendary.
Outside the shields, life is nigh impossible and oftentimes very brief. Caravans and expeditions vanish into the sands. Adventurers return hollow-eyed or not at all. Would be guides sell the same route twice, knowing the desert will decide which survives. Every step beyond the domes is a gamble against the elements, against monsters, and against the fury of the earth itself.
The domes are among the most advanced arcanotech marvels in the world, maintained by tightly controlled guilds of artificers and wardens. Failure is unthinkable. Even a momentary collapse would mean annihilation.
Places of Note
| Location | Summary |
|---|---|
| Mombasa | Capital of Arabia and jewel of the western coast. A city of spectacle, decadence, and wealth sealed beneath a vast shard-dome. Its economy thrives on relic-hunting, monster bounties, and the sale of legends reclaimed from the wastes. |
| Dubai | A free port and trade nexus known as the City of Contracts. Corporations, guilds, and foreign powers operate here beyond the reach of state taxation. Every deal is binding, every promise enforced by coin, magic, or consequence. |
| The Sinai Wastes | A poisoned southern desert where storms never fully abate. Maps are unreliable, and compasses fail. Those who enter rarely return unchanged — if they return at all. |
| The Sahara Mountains | Jagged eastern peaks sheltering monastic orders known as Stormwalkers. They are said to traverse the storms themselves, though none outside the orders can confirm how — or why. |
| Djibouti | A drowned necropolis along the southern coast. Its flooded markets and vaults are hunted by salvage crews and monstrous shard-mutated predators alike. |
Ruins, Myths, and Monsters
Arabia’s interior is a graveyard of civilizations layered one atop another.
Ancient cities lie buried beneath dunes: Cairo, Alexandria, Riyadh, Makkah, Jerusalem. Some are said to remain intact beneath the sands, their relics untouched, their guardians very much awake. Pilgrims speak of glowing sanctums still burning below the desert, and of voices that answer prayers long thought forgotten.
The wastes are alive with beings shaped by belief itself. Djinn coil through dust storms, offering bargains that unravel sanity. Ifrit stride from fissures of heat and stone, embodiments of wrath and dominion. Ghul haunt ruined cities, feeding on the unburied dead. Shard-mutated beasts roam freely — lions with obsidian claws, crystal-plated mammoths, carrion birds that blink in in out of the sky.
Each storm reshapes the land. When the sands settle, new ruins are revealed, old paths erased, and fresh horrors awakened. Arabia never looks the same twice.