The Merciless Sky
Armardardatar is a testament to resilience. It is a land that has been scoured clean by a sun that hammers rather than nurtures. The ground is a mosaic of cracked earth and dunes of metallic, rust-colored sand that shifts in the hot wind. What little water exists is brackish and deep, fought for with a desperation that outsiders cannot comprehend. To be born here is to be born into a war against the world itself, a war the Garclins have yet to lose.
The Garclin Way
The Garclins are a reflection of their homeland: hardy, wary, and brutally practical. They do not build grand cities; they endure. Their communities are carved from rock or salvaged from the husks of ancient ruins, offering little more than shade from the sun and shelter from the dust storms that can strip flesh from bone. Trust is the most valuable currency, and it is earned through shared hardship, not given freely. Their distrust of outsiders is not born of malice, but of simple, hard-won survival logic.
A Poisoned Chalice
The arrival of Prezwell McDaniel's Archions presented a conflict that blades could not solve. The offer was simple: allegiance in exchange for technology that could make the wasteland bloom. To the Garclins, this offer is both a prayer answered and a poison offered. To accept is to trade away the very hardship that has defined them, to surrender their strength for comfort. To refuse is to condemn future generations to the same brutal existence. The debate rages, a new kind of storm in the heart of the desert.