Maroosh is a harsh region, with hostile wildlife and baking desert weather, this area is a dangerous place to live in. Not to mention the Pursuits that claim this land and defend it violently from outsiders. This desert waste is home to many peculiar lifeforms, and bizarrely is the epicenter of many strange happenings and sink-holes. Despite its desolate appearance and landscape, it’s home to a vast diversity of microorganisms that make the desert landscape glow brilliantly.

Shearan

The most lush and vibrant place of Maroosh, Shearan. This place is the most beautiful, and also most deadly. It’s a more recent appearance than most of Maroosh, appearing at the end of the last Udyrian Ice Age. It’s home to amazing biodiversity, and has many plants and animals that call it home. For half of the year it is a lush swampland, overflowing with water. Rivers, lakes, and ponds breathing life into the area. But the other half of the year it is dry and lacking in water and life.

During the dry season Shearan becomes even more dangerous. While most plants and animals go into a torpor state during the dry season, those who stay active during this time of year are often extremely aggressive and will take any opportunity for a meal, or viciously defend their resources.

There’s an odd phenomenon during the dry season as well. Explorers and some Purists sympathizers speak of a plague that rises from the scorched earth during the dry season. A plague of undeath, of carcasses rising from their dead state and migrating.

• The Great Swifties are small, fast avians that soar above the swamps of Shearan during wet seasons. When dry season is near, they migrate back to Amoreo, where they feast on seeds and the like. Great Swifties are flock animals, and they dive deep underwater for nutritious plants.

• Bullfish populate the depths of swamps as they skip through the shoreline, but most of the time, it is difficult to spot them. They are harmless to humans, that is if they do not confuse them for food. Bullfish are all time residents of Shearan, and during the dry season, they burrow deep into the soil and hide there for the entirety of it, hibernating. They like to snack at Swifties that do not escape fast enough. Some species of Bullfish migrate down into Morfar when the dry season comes, and return when Shearan stirs into life during the wet season again.

• Bofins are small insects that carry diseases, and they are the reason why old Maroosh tribes believe that the dry season is the season of disease. Their cute appearance and lack of sparkly colors that radiate danger make them very unsuspecting to other wildlife. Their claw-shaped feet allow them to dig deep into the host’s skin and feast on their blood.

Due to the recent nature of Shearan, native animals are still in an evolutionary arms-race, attempting to wipe out competition and drive rival life into extinction. Due to this, all life in Shearan is incredibly dangerous, even the most unlikely animals are capable of dispatching a human or danthical. Most animals here have some sort of deadly trick up their sleeves, whether it’s deadly toxins, big appetites, camouflage, or sheer aggression.

Even the plant life is trying to kill you, with toxic spores, weaponized growth, or noxious poisons. Almost anything not native to the region dies grimly by the native wildlife due to the cutthroat environment of Shearan.

Morfar

Just below Shearan, Morfar lingers. The water from Shearan trickles down into Morfar year round, making its climate more permanent than the marshlands north of it. Morfar is home to many species as well, most of which are far more docile than that of Shearan.

Morfar has fewer plants than Shearan, and is less of an oasis and more of a muddy floodland. The water here is less just water, and more just mud. Its rocky terrain supports a few predator species, but most life here gorge themselves on bioluminescent microbes that grow in colonies in the mud-pools and rocky surfaces. Making Morfar quite a dazzling place to glimpse. Life here is slow, and normally docile. But the Purist Wardogs often patrol here, while they don’t live here they still patrol regularly due to its close proximity. Making Morfar a slightly more dangerous place to venture through.

Atlan

To the southwest of Morfar, Atlan rises above the desert sands. A rocky and mountainous landscape, Atlan is drier than Morfan and Shearan but is more lush than the south eastern regions of Maroosh. Life here is bizarre, most animals adapt to the sheer terrain, and have evolved for mobility over everything else. Most life is nimble footed, and skittish thanks to this, but predators are fairly bold and agile also because of this.