Sandeya

The Nomadic Peoples Sandeya Sandeya is located on its own planet. This planet, about the size of Earth, has three moons. Only a maximum of two moons are ever seen from the surface at once. Sandeya is wrapped in a thin cloud layer almost completley covering the planet, but due to some wierd meteorological thing I don't understand, it only rains about once every ten or so years in the desert.

Sandeya is divided into three regions: the Ocean, the mountainous and misty coastland called Myztar, and the Desert.

The Ocean is just what it sounds like; a big, salty ocean. Sandeya is too warm to support any coral reefs, though forests of kelp-like organisms are common along coastlines. There, a great many exotic, tropical marine animals and protists thrive.

Myztar completly encircles Sandeya's one pangea-esque continent. Here is the only civilized parts of Sandeya other than Yurt, the capital of the Sandeyan Empire. The many high mountains reach up into the cloud layer at many points, hence the name Myztar, which translates roughly to "Land of Mist." Myztar is dotted with great city-states with ranches and substinence farms between them. The city-states usually live peacefully with one another, though war is not unheared of. The city-states are future-tech, with spaceports and all, but Sandeya, not having resources that other civilizations care about, remains an obscure, backwater world.

The desert makes up about 90% of the Sandeyan continent. It is impossible to tell how many people live in the desert: no census can be carried out because until recently, the area was completly anarchal, and what government there is has less and less influence the farther away you go from the capital. The people live scattered across the sand. There is absolutley no source of water in the desert other than underground springs and a lake upon which the capital city, Yurt, sits. Therefore, the "Sandpeople" live mostly in caves.

The Sandeyan Desert is divided into two regions: the Outer Desert and the Deep Desert. While all of the Outer Desert is either ruled by one Myztarite city-state or another or completely anarchal. The Deep Desert, however, sits in the heart of the Sandeyan Continent, and is ruled by the Sandeyan Empire. The Sandeyan Empire was formed seven years ago when the Llarra Clan, led by a young strategic prodigge, mixed diplomacy and conquest to come in control of most of the Desert. The prodigge, a teenage girl, declared herself ruler of her new empire, giving it the name "The Sandeyan Empire" and herself the title of "Sand Princess." She and another member of her clan, Llamanama, then designed and oversaw the contruction of the city of Yurt.

Yurt is the capital of the Sandeyan Empire. Designed primarily by Grand Architect Llamanama of the Llarra Clan, it features farms, a sewage system, a garbage disposal system, roads, and other features intended to "modernize" the Deep Desert. At its heart is Sand Princess's Palace. Built on a rocky peripice, the palace is Anasazi-esque in appearance, and features a tall tower that looks out over the entire city and beyond.

The religions of Sandeya are many and varied. The only general statements that can be made about them, as they can vary widley within just a hundred miles, is that the desert people tend to be monotheist while the Myztarites lean towards polytheism and occasionally atheism. The Llarra Clan, which has more political influence that any other group on Planet Sandeya, worships a four-armed, bear-headed god named Ikanhulta. Some Sandeyans also identify the Sand Princess as the daughter or direct decendent of Ikanhulta. While she never says anything to discourage this speculation, she certainly does not dicourage it.

The Sandeyan Empire's national motto is "Progress towards the future." Its national animal is the sandhopper, a lotcus-like creature that is a common delicacy throughout the Sandeyan Desert, and its currency is the Cil.