The Playas
Once a string of shimmering, shallow lakes in central Hazlan, the Playas are now lightless basins choked with dust, brine, and rotting magic. Where once birds wheeled above reflective waters and fisherfolk launched skiffs into mineral-rich shallows, now lie expanses of cracked earth, steaming sinkholes, and sucking quicksand, infested by the worship-hungry purple worms that burrow through Hazlan’s shattered mantle.
The Playas are not merely dry lakebeds—they are Hazlan’s festering, unburied scars, riddled with predators, forgotten magic, and earth that remembers drowning. Beneath every footprint is a mouth. Beneath every silence, something listens.
“They were lakes once. Now they’re waiting for us to sink.”
Geography
The Playas stretch across a sunken, elliptical depression marked by silt flats, mineral encrustations, and a disturbing lack of life. Their beds have not fully dried—beneath the thin crust of brittle salt and alchemical sludge lies a viscous, violet-black slurry, thick with reagents, worm bile, and half-digested corpses.
- Quicksand zones breathe slowly, rising and falling like lungs.
- Clefts in the earth, some as wide as cottages, exhale humid, acidic vapors and emit unsettling wet sucking sounds.
- Patches of the playa crust are covered with faint, spiraling glyphs—too eroded to read, but often pulsing with faint heat when touched by moonlight.
Localized Phenomena
The disappearance of the lakes is not entirely natural. Hazlani lore suggests that centuries ago, a coven of Rashemani wizards attempted to siphon the lakes' waters into the Weave itself—seeking to transform liquid into a "spellcasting reservoir." The result: time-stunted evaporation, summoning sinkholes, and the collapse of the aquatic ecosystem.
Residual effects include:
- Water that boils when it’s prayed over.
- Dead animals that twitch and whisper after sinking in the mire.
- Occasional illusionary flashes where the lakes reappear, shimmering and clean—only to collapse into worm-churned sludge seconds later.
Fauna & Flora
The Playas are the primary feeding and birthing grounds of Hazlan’s purple worm population, their vast forms lured by buried alchemical waste and old leyline scars. Each worm is tainted: some bear multiple mouths, others dead sorcerers grafted to their flanks, or glittering crystals pulsing within their gullet-ribs.
Signs of their approach include:
- Rhythmic tremors.
- Patches of salt and soil liquefying.
- A faint chime, as if hundreds of glass bells are ringing underwater.
Aside from purple worms, the Playas harbor:
- Salt-mummified undead, trapped long ago beneath the retreating waters, now wandering and whispering lost oaths.
- Worm-touched prophets, blindfolded humanoids with glazed-over eyes who speak in echoes of future quakes.
- Hazlani spell-scavengers, who seek alchemical artifacts amid the mire and frequently vanish with a single muffled scream.
Tourism
To the people of nearby Ramulai and Sly-Var, the Playas are a cursed absence—a place where water once dwelled but was stolen by the earth itself. Farmers blame the Playas for poor harvests, and even the Rashemani whisper tales of the "Thirsting God," a forgotten desert deity said to live inside the largest purple worm.
Children are taught to never step where the ground sweats. And if the salt begins to sing? Run.
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