Aldura-Umal

The Scattered Nomad Camps Encircling The Flaming Emerald

Non-Centralized confederation— The Aldura-Umal collective travels the Burning Seas in a great loop, moving from ancient campground to ancient campground, racing their steam rays through the lava sands year round.

The People

Several communities make their homes in the more habitable parts of the Burning Seas. They all identify collectively with the Aldura-Umal confederation, united by a common knowledge of how to survive and even thrive in such a harsh environment. The Aldura-Umal is the oldest known community in all of Ald-Amura, existing in some form since before written records were kept. They are known across the land and deeply respected for their unmatched understanding of the land they have made their home. An old story tells us that even the Kings bent their knees to the sand striders.

Beyond their legendary status, the Aldura-Umal are a people like any other, with over a dozen sub-confederations comprising different ideologies, disciplines, allegiances, backgrounds, and ancestors. These confederations meet several times a year to hash out the gritty work of ensuring their people have whatever they need to continue their journeys across the sands, whatever form that may be.

Most of the Aldura-Umal are nomadic, although unlike most other nomadic groups in Ald-Amura, the Aldura-Umal don’t follow hunting or gathering trails and move for food—the entire of the Burning Seas are a rich wealth of food and water if one knows how to look for it—but to follow the Lava Sands. The practice of riding them astride their Steam Ray comrades is the foundation of Aldura-Umal culture, with much of their art and stories centering the deep trust between the Steam Rays and the Aldura-Umal that makes such a deadly act possible.

On the Steam Rays—their relationship is mythical, a story every child in Ald-Amura knows. The Steam Rays saved the first people of Ald-Amura from certain death and extinction in the desert by showing them how to hunt and find water, and the people who would become the Aldura-Umal swore an unending debt to them. Their relationship is often used as a metaphor for an unbreakable friendship, and the symbol of the Steam Ray represents many confederations even outside of the Burning Seas—such as the Monster Care Squad.

Local Monster

Saëns-Saëns is a gargantuan progenitor of the Steam Rays. Their form dominates the landscape when they surface from the deep sand caverns that they usually reside in. The Monster has been seen only a handful of times in the entire recorded history of the region, so rarely seen that the people have yet to develop a meaningful relationship with Saëns-Saëns, only learning their name in the past decade. This distance has produced a wide array of fascinating and intriguing myths and legends surrounding the Monster; local stories talk of Saëns-Saëns flying to the sun to bring light and heat to the desert, bards croon ballards of Saëns-Saëns’s romance with the beating heart of Ald-Amura deep below the sands, and one notable trope of Aldurian epics puts Saëns-Saëns in the seat of a mentor or quest-giver, unlocking hidden potential and bestowing incredible power upon those who seek them out.

Notable Sublocations

• The Masks—Commonly seen throughout the Burning Sea, these massive masks mark semi-permanent campgrounds along the lava sand trails. Wild and wonderful in their design, they depict mythological beings, heroes, and old gods. The various tribes that make up the confederation take great pride in maintaining these ancient masks—most will dedicate the first day after arriving in a new shelter to cleaning and repairing these masks, then marking their names on the back alongside the names of their ancestors.
• The Lava Sand Trails—It’s impossible to exaggerate how important the extensive network of lava sand rivers are to the Aldura-Umal. Their entire roaming way of life is predicated upon moving from river to river, chasing the most active flows and riding them atop the Steam Rays. The Aldura-Umal have meticulously mapped out the thousands of trails that crisscross the Burning Seas over centuries, and even the children of their confederation can navigate them with a casual ease that would make the most hardened ranger green with envy. The lava sands themselves are, as the name suggests, a sort of gritty magma that flows up from the lava tubes deep underground, perhaps from Saëns-Saëns themselves somehow. Impossibly hot to the touch, and difficult to see if one isn’t looking, the lava sands have claimed many a careless traveller, and more than one irreverent would-be warlord’s army, in times long past.
• The Still Caves—A network of sandstone caves hidden somewhere near the foothills, the exact location is a very closely guarded secret of the Aldura-Umal. These halls are the final resting place of every single Aldurian to ever set foot in the Burning Seas. Every sub confederation will make the pilgrimage once a year to set the skulls of their dead in the walls of the caverns, close to their loved ones if possible. Losing a skull to the desert is considered a great tragedy, and one of the quickest ways into the Aldura-Umal’s good graces is to deliver a lost ancestor back to their fold.

What Happens When You Arrive

1. Saëns-Saëns rises from the Burning Seas and sweeps north toward the oasis groves. The sand below them is scorched and hidden ruins are revealed for the first time in millennia.
2. A schism in the confederation threatens to derail the yearly Steam Ray Grand Prix.
3. All the skulls are missing from the Still Caves.
4. Immense patches of sand-glass have appeared around the Burning Seas, and they seem to be spreading rapidly.
5. Several sub-confederations have been stricken by a strange illness that compels them to dig deep, twisting tunnels in the sand.
6. Sarasan’s Rest’s Masks have come to life and are keeping the people up at night with their chattering.