Austrelion

Austrelion has been around for about as long as Egypt. It's the age of Ancient Egypt, and has the cultures of Arabia, Egypt, India, Australia, Africa, and mostly Calormen.

There are two big deserts in Accoria. One is Austrelion, the other is Valcan. Austrelion is the civilized one, and Valcan is the one that was overrun by orcs. Austrelion's capital is Ev-Sahir, or Home-City in Turkish, and it's just as big and ancient as before. See my other massive ideabarf about Austrelion.

The capital is Valcan. Picture six Bagdads, all pretty much dropped on top of each other. This city has been continuously inhabited for well over 6,000 years, due to its position atop massive aquifers. Nothing ever gets demolished or taken out- buildings are incorporated into newer ones, scavenged for materials, or forgotten and buried under new streets. The entire city has at least four layers of construction covering the inner city, and buildings sprawl out for miles beyond the city walls. Old Palace: A security nightmare. It’s been built into every other building in the vicinity, it’s collapsing, and civilians can fall inside by mistake. But it’s traditional. New Palace: Built outside the city walls, because that’s the only place for it and nobody cares about the possibility of an attack. Much cleaner, relatively speaking.

I'm thinking Austrelion should have the culture of Ptolomaic Egypt. Technically, they're way older than Troytonia, but Troytonia is more powerful, and Austrelion has been declining. So now they're trying to get back up again, maybe by starting wars, maybe by alliances, maybe by assassinating you.

Also like Egypt, political boundaries get extremely messy the further south you go. You go from coast trading cities, to farms and mansions, to the central Cityhome citadels that have been inhabited for milleniae and are totally self-sufficent, to desert towns that survive on trading. By now, the only outpost of real civilization is on the island of Skaer, which uses tunnels and water systems to artificially control the temperature. Most settlements this far south see highs of over 120 degrees year round, and the humans who travel this far south have to be shrouded in thick protective wrappings.

As you go further south, you meet the Sand Goblins, tribes of orcs who burrow into the great dunes and live on fungi and the underground creatures that surface at night. Surprisingly, the "goblins" have a decent civilization, and their burrows are full of paintings of the old days when the desert was full of green and water (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharan_rock_art).

After weeks of travel, a wanderer would eventually pass the equatorial desert and reach a land of fog, gorillas, and cloud forests, called Hamarin. The Austrelii, or at least the vast majority of Austrelii that follow the official not-Hindi religion, believe that the gods live here, and originally covered the whole continent in jungles. However, after the humans grew proud and tried to travel to other lands, the gods grew angry and set up the great desert, so that those who left could never return to Hamarin. This explains why, for most of its history, Austrelion empire has stayed on the one continent. The more expansionist Troytonians have grown in power and influence, meanwhile. Many of the younger, more bellicose statesmen in Valcan, including the crown prince, are practicing a new religion which encourages seamanship and expansion, and it is under their influence that Austrelion is heading towards war.