"The sands, the sands they shift with time,
The tombs they buried now coated in slime.
Deep within lie treasures of old,
there for the taking by those who are bold.
Heros, heros, please heed our call,
in the shadows of the dunes evil does crawl."
Old Spade Worksong
The clench is a desert kingdom to the far west of the continent. The farthest east and north port, all the way in the most isolated part of the continent sits Farport. Chosen for it's seclusion (and kept that way by force) the Priests of Siscep chose it for the home of the grand archive. A heavily guarded and revered home of knowledge, the Scribes of Siscep keep many valuable relics and ancient tomes within.
Just outside the grand archive sits the rest, a tumultuous and downtrodden collection of outcasts residing on the scraps of the priests. They live off of a few local fisherman's hauls and the cattle that they grow inside a decent sized cave to the south of the city. A decent sized bazaar and residential district live a ways from the walls of the archive (the scribes are paranoid about structures to close to their walls).
Many of the caves throughout the clench are home to chillweed. A bluish dandelion which can grow without sunlight or water, turning ambient heat and moisture from the air into small coarse petals which allow for cave farming. During large bouts of sandstorms the residents of the outskirts gather in the cave, the chillweed collecting enough water to sustain them through the storm.
After these storms there is often large amounts of sand that needs to be cleared. It may have buried a house, blocked a road, any other number of things. The task of clearing all this sand falls upon spades. An almost slavelike social caste, mothers will sell their children into spadehood where they will be educated (slightly) and kept fed. In return they owe the Scribes an inordinate amount of coin to account for their raising. In rare cases a spade can pay back the scribes with his wages, but the system is built to keep them working indefinitely with no hope for freedom.
This is where the adventure begins.
