Ashad
Work in progress: this page describes the Ashad setting we are building toward, and current game content differs in places.
Ashad is the desert that learned to burn productively. Its cities do not merely survive the heat; they harvest it, refine it, and build with it. Where Souvrael is mythic desert, Ashad is industrial desert: furnace towers, brass pipes, soot-black walls, pressure gauges, glass lenses, ash mills, and caravan engines coughing across the dunes.
Ashad's technology is called AshPunk. It uses ash, pressure, alchemy, scavenged bone-white fuel, desert oils, and heat engines to create wonders that look like machines and behave like spells. A knight from Darkwind sees a forge. An Ashadi engineer sees a prayer with valves.
Furnace cities anchor the domain with stacks, pressure towers, foundries, water vaults, ash mills, and glasswork. Soot roads carry caravans between refinery houses, engineer-priests, furnace families, machinewright orders, and blackened waystations.
Glasswork is everywhere: lenses, warded windows, distillation towers, mirrors, heat traps, and signal lamps. Ashad's beauty is smoky, dangerous, improvised, expensive, and practical.
Areas
| Area | Description |
|---|---|
| Cinderwake | Capital furnace city where noble houses, ash guilds, and refinery cults compete |
| The Glass Dunes | Blinding dunes where heat has fused sand into dangerous sheets and ridges |
| The Brass Yards | Foundry district of engines, lifts, water pumps, armor rigs, and soot workers |
| The Wound Wells | Deep wells where water, ash, and old magic rise together |
| The Soot Caravanserai | Trade fortress for engine caravans crossing the dead interior |
| The Old Kilns | Abandoned industrial ruins where early AshPunk experiments still breathe heat |
| The Pressure Line | Overland engine route that moves water, ore, pilgrims, and contraband |
Ashad rewards preparation. Heat, scarcity, machines, and human ambition all matter. A player feels the desert pressing in from every direction while civilization hisses, clanks, and refuses to die.