Cortenmaas is a vast and unforgiving continent, its identity shaped by endless deserts that stretch beyond the horizon and the scattered oases that sustain life within them. These oases are more than mere sources of water–they are centers of culture, trade, and power, often fiercely contested and deeply revered. Ancient caravan routes weave between them, forming the arteries of civilization, while the open sands in between remain perilous and largely unclaimed, home to shifting ruins, nomadic peoples, and things long buried beneath the dunes. It is divided into six nations: Briss, Creaven, Den’sall, Fult, Havdreck, and Jaed.
Briss
Briss did not begin as a nation so much as a stubborn refusal to accept the limits of the desert. Where other peoples clung to what water they were given, the early circles of Briss chose to make water instead. At first, their work was modest, small gatherings of druids walking the edges of an oasis, calling brief rains from clear skies through repeated invocations of Create or Destroy Water.
Creaven
Creaven occupies the western edge of Cortenmaas, where the desert does not end so much as erode into a narrow seam of coast. Its single great port receives what the interior cannot produce–timber, metal, grain–and sends outward what the sands yield in return: resin, glass, and cured hides.
Den’sall
Den’sall has a narrow border with Briss to the west, which is unfortunate because its inhabitants find the Brissian culture heretical. It is the least developed country of Cortenmaas, and by no mistake. The Den’sallian people are mostly nomads who drift from oasis to oasis, worshipping the desert itself.