Red Oasis

• The Red Oasis is not wide, but it is deep—a perfect circle, nearly forty feet across and plunging into unfathomable depths. Its waters glimmer a bruised crimson, as if reflecting some sky that does not exist.
• Around its edge, the sands have been baked into coppery crusts, and no footprints linger for long—those who walk near it are seemingly erased.
• During the day, the water appears still and syrupy. At night, it glows faintly, and eerie animal sounds echo from beneath its surface—even though no beast is in sight.

The color of the oasis is not metaphor: the water is red. It stains hands, cloth, and memory.

The people of Har’Akir refuse to drink from the Red Oasis, for they say the gods themselves cursed its waters. The legends tell:

• Those who drink from it are marked by the wild, losing speech and civility. Over days, they become feral, their eyes glowing in the dark, their skin growing tough and sand-cracked, and their minds vanishing into predatory instinct.
• Animals that drink from it do not age. Instead, they become more cunning, and over time, seem to grow too intelligent. Some tribes speak of jackals that whisper, and serpents that smile.

In truth, the Red Oasis is a fount of primordial spirit, a well of beast-souls left from an age when animal deities roamed the sands in mortal form. These spirits still linger, yearning for vessels, and waiting for men foolish enough to sip their essence.

• No human settlement exists nearby, but packs of strange canids, lions, serpents, and vultures are frequently seen patrolling the area in coordinated, almost ritualistic formations.
• At dawn, footprints resembling massive paws or talons appear near the oasis, though no creature is ever seen leaving them.
• The Red Jackal, a legendary beast said to be the first drinker of the oasis, prowls the area. It is said to speak in dreams, offering wild pacts and dark knowledge to those who show “the instincts of the pack.”

Occasionally, “wild prophets”—former mortals lost to the Red Oasis—wander back into civilization, half-beasts, warning of a time when the beast-gods will rise again to claim the desert.

The pharaoh Ankhtepot ignores the Red Oasis.

Or so he claims.

Some whisper that the Black Pyramid once stood near it, and that Ankhtepot's immortality was meant not for him, but for the animals of the gods. That he stole a gift meant for the beasts, and in so doing, cursed the waters with rage eternal.