Silk road (L&L: Aikakirjat)

The silk road is a long caravan route across the steppe from either Dybolan, or Basra dar Janab to the faraway city of Beimen. The route takes abou 225 days to traverse, but since most routes include passes that fill up with snow during the winter, most caravans stop for winter in the midway city of X.

Basra dar Janab to X (southern route)

Swamps of Mohoy

Winter run

Since the swamps of Mohoy are the biggest obstacle coming from Basra some caravans leave at midwinter, meaning they arrive at X in late spring where they can arrive at Red pass before autumn winds fill it with snow.

Troll country

Caravans on the southern route steer clear of the troll country. Still some trolls may be found even as far north as the northern route. This is especially true on the winter, adding to the danger of the winter route.

City of X

Originally this was a city built by giants. Most of the giant buildings have been repurposed as four story blockhouses housing several families. Normally the population is about four thousand that eke out living from the dry lands. Small river brings some water to the brackish lake of Temut from where the irrigation systems rise the water to the fields.

Name of the city

Some local people call this city Maracanda, in the maps of Middle kingdom it is marked as Horse sieve (probably because only camels can travel any further east) some maps mark it as Pirate City, giants call it Söderberg and orcs of the desert as Shagradb.

This led Halgaimian mapmakers to simply mark it with X, name that stuck in lands of the inner sea region.

Population

At summertime, when most of the caravans are traveling through the deserts and steppe, the city has a population of about 4000. Mostly humans, but members of any race can be found in the shadows of its cyclopean buildings.