Gray Desert

[Lord Mhoram]

Gray Desert: a region south of the Land; Glossary pg. 493

I can't find this place on the map. Was it mentioned anywhere in the Chronicles?

[danlo]

It's mentioned in Doom's Retreat and The Ruins of the Southron Wastes in The Illearth War. I believe it's the area that surrounds Doriendor Corishev and the SW stretch of Land found btween Cravenhaw, The Southron Wastes and the tail end of the Westrons. Or possibly even further south of that stretch (off the map).

...His army was traveling into the half-desert of the Southron Wastes.

No vestige or hint of autumn ameliorated the arid breeze which blew northward off the parched, lifeless Gray Desert. Most of the grass had already failed, and the few rills and rivulets which ran down out of the mountians evaporated before they reached five leagues into the Wastes. And even south of the foothills the terrain was difficult--eroded and rasped and cut by long ages of sterile wind into jagged hills, gullies, arroyos. The result was a a stark, heat-pale land possessed by a weird and unfriendly beauty. The Warward had to march over packed ground that felt as hard and hostile as rock underfoot, and yet sent up thick dust as if the soil were nothing but powder.--(The Illearth War, Del Rey paperback pg.351)

Sounds like parts of New Mexico! Actually this passage really made me feel like I was at Trinity Site (in southern NM where the US tested it's first A-Bomb) a place that still, sadly, looks like it took the full impact of the Ritual of Desecration...

[I'm Murrin]

Apparently it is the whole area to the south of the map, stretching right across - according to TIW the northenmost part was similar to the Land north of the mountains, but the Grey Desert expanded when the One Forest was cut down. Now it covers everything south of the Land (for a long way, at least).

Strangely enough, I looked at my books and although they go into the Grey Desert (if only to skirt the boundary) in the first chrons, the glossary only mentions it in the second.

[Fist and Faith]

I just copied & pasted this quote from Syl's dissection of ch. 19 of TIW:

Every falling tree hammered home an ineluctable doom for the masterplace. As the trees died, the southern lands lost the watershed which had preserved them from the Gray Desert. Centuries after the ravage of the One Forest became irreversible, these lands turned to dry ruin.

[Lord Mhoram]

Oh I see! Cool! I probably would know this if I hadn't lost TIW..

[Guest]

Wasn't the Grey Desert where the people of the land fled to avoid the Ritual of Desecration?

[danlo]

I believe the Stonedowners from Mithil went 2 the tail end of the Southron Wastes. I doubt they could have escaped the RofD had they stayed on the Gray Desert.

[duchess of malfi]

Yes, in LFB it is said that they go to the Southern Wastes, where life was still very difficult...