B/X D&D Month XV: The Burning Dust

We go off the map and west of the Sullen Sea for the next couple of entries...

The Burning Dust – a terrible atmospheric effect that makes the Southern Wastes uninhabitable. On the great southern continent of Phelar there is only death and the choking madness caused by the Burning Dust. No one knows its origins, only that it is pervasive and delineates the habitable lands from the desolation of the south; even the hardiest explorers can penetrate no more than a hundred miles in before succumbing, for the dust poisons both the lungs and the flesh through mere contact. Still, some try, and a few have uncovered vast subterranean realms below the desert where chaoskin dwell in multitudes. The effort is worth it for many, for hidden in the vastness of the Burning Dust are completely intact, ancient cities full of lost magic and technology.

There is the Great Obelisk, around which rests a vast network of tiny structures that suggest a population of men no taller than a half-foot in height.

There is the Rusted Necropolis, a city as great as Phantomax itself, its streets patrolled by immense dragons which exude the Burning Dust with every breath and seem to thrive on it. The city streets are teaming with undead who carry on with their business as if the city had never perished.

There is the distant southern port of Fallen Grace, so named because it is said that the city was, like Phantomax, occupied by men and to be turned into a great bastion of human power, but the Enkanneth named Sartovas studied too deeply of the primordial secrets within and became mad, slaying all of his flock and then possibly casting the spell that coated the Southern Wastes in the Burning Dust.

North of the Burning Dust lies the great city of Phantomax…