Awalawa

For most people Awalawa simply means the interior of Gondwana: a primeval and often impassable jungle with no human tribes and few visitors, where dinosaurs, huge mammals and strange birds long extinct elsewhere still live. Its borders are vague; the lines drawn on maps only show where settled country gives way to true jungle, and even in the fringe lands villagers seldom stray far from their fields.

The name comes from a prayer to Hawwa, one of the Old Gods, asking her to shield them from the jungle's dark forces. Natives who must go into the forest whisper the word again and again as a chant, and even people who scorn the Old Gods have been heard doing the same once they face the jungle for real.

The few humans living inside are exiles, bandits, hermits and others who prefer its perils to the safety of ordinary society, and only the strong, the quick or the clever last long. Its treasures still lure the bold, such as the half-buried diamonds said to glitter on the slopes of Ogili and Ollok, a pair of twin peaks. Some seekers have been granted Hawwa's protection; others lie as sun-bleached bones, a warning to whoever comes next.