The southwestern reaches of the Dunes of Kunagi, where the sand sea breaks against the ancient fossil hills of Gyerekas and thins toward the Spotted Forest. Husakas is both a place and a people, the scorpion riders who have claimed this unforgiving territory as home for longer than anyone can remember.
Which is fitting, given what the land does to memory.
The Cursed Streams
Husakas contains something rare in the deep desert: water. Seasonal streams and creeks flow during the rare rains, collecting in rocky pools and underground cisterns. Travelers dying of thirst have praised their fortune upon finding these waters.
Then they drink.
The water of Husakas carries a terrible curse. Those who drink from its streams suffer complete and permanent loss of long-term memory. The loss is a clean severance, not a gradual fading. Victims forget their names, their families, their entire lives before that moment. They retain language, skills, and general knowledge, but every personal memory vanishes like morning dew.
The curse is bound to the region itself. Water transported beyond Husakas's borders becomes ordinary, harmless. But within this territory, every stream, every pool, every drop of rainfall that touches the ground carries the forgetting. Even the morning dew can steal pieces of you if you're not careful.
The scorpion riders say the curse came from the House of the Scorpion, a gift and a punishment from the Prince who dwells there. Whether this is true, no one remembers.
The Scorpion Riders
The Husakas people have adapted to their cursed homeland in ways that would kill outsiders. Their culture revolves around two pillars: the scorpions they bond with, and the memories they guard more jealously than water.
Scorpion Symbiosis
The giant scorpions of Husakas grow to the size of horses, with chitin ranging from rust-red to deep black. The riders do not tame them; they bond with them, in a ritual involving mutual venom exchange that leaves both partners permanently changed. A bonded rider can sense their scorpion's moods, location, and needs; the scorpion gains something harder to define, a connection that makes it more than animal.
Bonded scorpions provide survival advantages beyond mere transportation:
- Their venom, carefully extracted, can paralyze prey animals, allowing riders to drink blood for hydration
- Scorpions can locate underground water sources—though they cannot tell cursed from clean
- A scorpion's chitinous body provides shade, and they generate surprisingly little heat
- In emergencies, a rider can drink the hemolymph from a dying scorpion's body, a terrible sacrifice that severs the bond painfully
Memory as Wealth
In a land where memory can be stolen by a careless sip, the Husakas prize memory above all other possessions. A person's recollections are their wealth, their identity, their soul. This has shaped their entire culture:
Memory Keepers — Specialized individuals who dedicate their lives to memorization. They carry the lineages of every family, the laws and customs, the locations of safe water, the histories of feuds and alliances. A Memory Keeper never travels alone, never approaches water without three witnesses, and is protected by the entire community. Killing a Memory Keeper is the worst crime imaginable, worse than murder, because you've killed thousands of memories, not just one person.
The Telling — Nightly ritual where riders share memories aloud, ensuring that important knowledge exists in multiple minds. Even mundane memories are shared: what you ate, who you spoke to, what you saw. If one person forgets, others remember for them.
Name Chains — Every Husakas carries a chain of names: their own, their parents', their grandparents', back seven generations. They recite this chain daily. If you cannot recite your chain, something is wrong.
The Twice-Born
Not everyone who drinks the cursed water dies. Some survive as blank slates, the Twice-Born.
The community cares for them with surprising tenderness. A Twice-Born is not shunned but welcomed as someone reborn into the tribe. They're given a new name, taught the customs anew, assigned a new family from volunteers. Many Twice-Born become productive members of society, their old identities mourned but their new selves accepted.
Some people choose this fate. Those carrying unbearable grief, overwhelming guilt, or memories they cannot live with may drink deliberately, a form of death that leaves the body walking. The community does not judge this choice, but they mourn the person who existed before.
The ritual is called The Forgetting, and it requires witnesses who will remember what the drinker chose to lose.
Geography
Husakas stretches across approximately 200 miles of the southwestern Kunagi, bounded by:
- North: The deeper Dunes, including the approaches to Benshu's Promise
- East: The transition toward the Innerrim jungles, marked by the Spotted Forest
- South: The fossil hills of Gyerekas, and beyond them, the Ishnit Jungles
- West: The main Kunagi Hills, where Sandskull broods at the range's southern extent
The terrain is classic sand desert—dunes ranging from gentle swells to towering crescents, rocky outcrops, and the occasional seasonal waterway cutting through ancient channels. The cursed streams are scattered throughout, with no reliable way to distinguish them from the rare clean water sources (there are some—usually deep wells that tap water from beyond the cursed region's borders).
The Gathering Stones
A circle of wind-carved pillars in central Husakas where the scorpion rider clans meet during the cool season. Neutral ground—no feuds may be prosecuted here, no blood spilled except in formal duel. The Memory Keepers maintain archives here: carved stone tablets recording the most critical information, backup copies of what their minds hold.
The Weeping Wells
A cluster of deep wells that tap clean water from beneath the cursed layer. Discovered generations ago, fiercely guarded by a coalition of clans. The wells produce limited water—enough for the riders' needs, not enough to share freely. Outsiders may purchase water here at outrageous prices, or trade knowledge that the Memory Keepers deem worth preserving.
The Bone Road
A trail marked by scorpion molts and the skeletons of those who died seeking water. Follows the seasonal stream channels, which means it's also the most dangerous path through Husakas. Traders sometimes use it anyway—the streams are easier to follow than the featureless dunes.
Encountering the Husakas
The scorpion riders are neither hostile nor welcoming to outsiders. They'll trade information, guide travelers for appropriate payment, and share their fires with those who approach correctly (always from downwind, with hands visible, announcing yourself loudly).
They will not share their water unless you're dying—and even then, they'll warn you what you're drinking. They consider it a kindness to let someone die of thirst rather than live as a Twice-Born without community to catch them.
What they want from outsiders:
- News from beyond the desert
- Metal goods (rare in the sands)
- Interesting memories—tell them a good story, something worth preserving
- Medicines, particularly those affecting memory (they've been trying to cure or control the curse for generations)
What angers them:
- Wasting water of any kind
- Lying about your identity or history
- Interfering with the pilgrimage to the House of the Scorpion
- Treating scorpions as mere animals
The Pilgrimage
Every two hundred years, representatives from all Husakas clans travel to the House of the Scorpion to renew their pact with the Prince. The ritual involves gifts of memory: pilgrims tell the Prince something they know, then drink cursed water to forget it, giving him knowledge that exists nowhere else in the world.
In exchange, the Prince maintains the scorpion population throughout the desert. Without him, the great scorpions would dwindle and die within a generation.
The next pilgrimage is due in 47 years. Some clans have already begun preparing their offerings—memories so precious that forgetting them is genuine sacrifice.