(With apologies to T.S. Elliot)<br/><br/>In the days of the first age, Demons worked for the Exalted to build within the southern wastes a vast network of roads.  In the violence of the usurpation, and shadows of the contagion, still those unfathomable slabs remained, stretching off into infinity.  Caught in a bleak eternity with nowhere to go, halfway between the delicate coral of the vainglorious cities, and the endless seas of sand.  If one listens carefully, you can hear the silent death scream of Adorjan whispering through these sands, where you rest in the womb of mother Cecylene.  This land is harsh, studded every so often with an ancient pyramid, just as likely to glorify the eternal principle of She Who Lives in Her Name rather than the illusion of control cast by the celestial beauracracy.  In this land, every month is the cruelest month, and the greatest harshness in the land lies in the heart of its people, the green sun of Malfeas beating within the core of a thousand tribes...<br/><br/>Winter keeps the world warm, covers the earth in forgetful snow, wiping away the memories of a world before the treason of the Gods.  But even the Gods can't be everywhere.  They can't wipe away the memories of the southern land.  They can't turn the lands to their ends.  Always, the South serves the Yozis.  And so, in this land, a wise man will find true fear in a handful of dust.  In this land of eternity, what are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?  Son of man, you cannot say, or guess, for you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, and the dry stone no sound of water.  There is a shadow under this red rock, the shadow of an unreal city, under the brown fog of a burning winter's dawn.<br/><br/>With luminious eyes, they trade and live, drinking down the scuttling milk of their goddess, teeming and swarming in the shadows of the red rock mesa.  Their city has no name, for from day to night, all that comes to the lips of the pentients is blasphemy.  For truly, their community is the center of the worship of the Goddess of Thrice Damned Gifts, an old Goddess, known to every man, woman and child for hundreds of miles.  She is the kind of goddess you pray to when you are lost in the desert, and the loss of your soul and everything you love seems preferable to a slow death of thirst.  She is a trickster and a rapist.  She is the wateland.  She is love.<br/><br/>