Chapter 5: TRAVERSING THE WASTELANDS become rocky salt flats and then become a dust bowl or rust field in a matter of hours and change again just a few days or weeks later The unpredictability of a land storm is only overshadowed by its power Forever scarred is the miles-wide swath of destruction left behind, and absolutely nothing remains as it was The storms can strip away and carry off many feet of sand and dried earth, exposing whole new rock formations, veins of coal, deposits of precious metals, or even long-buried ruins In reverse, newly deposited dust that follows a land storm’s wake buries once familiar things and obliterates trails or roads The detritus chokes fields, buries villages and towns, smothers caravans and livestock, and often makes new corpse-filled ruins that might be exposed by some other land storm in coming years Getting caught beneath a land storm is a death sentence Winds fast enough to knock a man down and drag him along the ground can also tip over wagons, topple walls, and rip the roofs off buildings Air fills with more dust than a scarf can filter out, so this choking cloud prevents breathing even before it whips up into frenzied winds Survivable shelter must block out the wind entirely, which can happen if one is not buried alive New dirt piles up several inches per minute to depths of ten feet or more during a storm Efforts to climb atop growing dirt mounds are exhausting and most often futile, as the storm can last for several hours The best way to survive a land storm is to get out of its path as quickly as possible Obsidian Mountains Sharp-edged glass mountains stab out of the wasteland in many places, towering in high command of the region, but only for a short time Exposed by earthquakes, volcanoes, or land storms, obsidian mountains are short-lived, collapsing into massive shards fairly quickly They are difficult to traverse, as razor-edged rubble, sometimes piled several feet thick, fills every path and valley The daytime sun heats them like firebrands, further weakening and splintering the dark crystalline pieces In some places, obsidian mountains rise and fall so rapidly that local sages suggest the very bones of the earth expel the black glass like some horrible lanced infection Fire Rain A phenomenon unique to the blasted wastelands, fire rain most commonly falls on or downwind of volcanoes, tar pits, or wide veins of either coal or sulfur, of which there are many along the jagged mountains and hills of the New Dune Wasteland and lands further north Such rains announce themselves with thin but roiling black clouds that rise and fall rapidly in the air above What falls are not droplets of water but flecks of hot, oily tar, most already ablaze and trailing thin black ribbons of black smoke behind These incendiary showers ignite any combustible vegetation they find, but with so little of this left, the smoldering drops instead sizzle on the ground until expended, marking the sand and stones charcoal black During and for some time after a fire rain, smoke obscures vision and makes breathing difficult The sizzling ground burns the feet, scorching unprotected flesh and damaging footwear, slowing travel Anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the open can suffer anything from minor burns to life-threatening injuries One’s clothing and equipment takes the brunt of the damage, more often ruined than not by these wicked firestorms of the deep desert Ghost Lightning Ghost lightning is a dangerous but potentially useful phenomenon of the iron-rich red deserts It occurs anywhere abundant metal lies, either on or just beneath the surface Iron or copper reserves just underground may facilitate ghost lightning in an area where such deposits are not immediately obvious Essentially, a passing lightning storm “charges” a region with unspent destructive electrical energy waiting to expend itself when activated Its only physical manifestation of warning is a greatly increased static charge felt in the hair and clothing Unwitting trespassers are subject to random discharges of electrical energy Most are painful but not otherwise harmful, and little more than a flash of light with a loud snap Among a group, ghost lightning arcs to the individual with the most metal gear, which is why many desert veterans keep most metal equipment packed on animals Occasionally, a strong lash of ghost lightning causes unconsciousness, burns, or rare damage and death Most often, it is an annoyance that only frightens animals Desert folk learn to watch for the warning signs and choose to avoid it Ghost lightning can be useful to a spell caster who learns to control and harness it Lightning magic employed in a region already charged with its ghostly counterpart is greatly enhanced As with all magic, the additional energy could pose a danger to the wizard, either in miscast spells or sorcery’s wrath There are also desert folk who swear that the Prophet can manipulate ghost lightning at will Many others also claim they can harness it by posting metal-tipped lightning rods in different shapes across the ground 109