Golian Desert

Several maps dating from early in the First Age mark the Golian Desert, placing it at the heart of the Golian Mountains, yet no dependable report of it has ever come to light and no credible witness has confirmed that it is real.

All the written testimony is doubtful. Okala, a mad Nubian priest, claimed to have met a man who came from a desert of limitless sand glittering with gold flecks. Toth-Azzis, a Qaddani magician notorious for his fondness for hallucinogenic powders, bragged in his infamous memoirs that he often went to a lovely desert high among the peaks to meditate and converse with the numberless spirits and demons dwelling beneath its crystal sands.

The shakiest source of all is Ali-Raji-Khan, a Sheban sorcerer possessed by a lesser demon who still has occasional clear spells. In his History of a Thousand Lands he writes that the only way to reach the desert is over the mountains, that the place is deeply strange, and that a city of white stone rises there, although he confesses he knows neither who built it nor who lives in it.