NOTES BY THE AUTHOR. This text is only a draft, do not see this as something "official" for the land of the Azazel Chronicles.

I have wandered among these nomadic desert tribes for years now. And I still can't understand them. They are not afraid of the heat in the desert, not for the scorpion or its poison. They are not afraid of the sandtiger, nor the desert crab. They can walk in the diamond desert at the day, and they have their sight intact afterwards. But they are afraid of the oddest things. They are afraid of glass, and also of humans riding a horse. They refuse to ride a horse, and I don't know why.

There is much that I don't understand about them. Their magic is different from ours. Ours, I say, but I am not a "civilized" human anymore. But I'm not one of them, either. One cannot become a member of their tribe; one is borne into it.

The "civilized" humans don't think that the tribes are civilized. That is wrong. The tribes are more civilized than most others. They don't wage war against one another, and they have rigid rules. While the humans kill each other over a piece of land, the nomadic people won't. They have no counties, and no borders. If one man kills another man, he is condemned to walk the diamond desert for all his life. It's a pretty vile thing to do to a man, force him to live under the cruel sky, being burnt by the diamonds of the desert at the day, and feeling their heat during the night.

The diamonds, yes. The diamond desert if one of the few mysteries on the earth today, at least of those that I know of. The diamonds are quite small; only the size of a thumbnail, and they're very beautiful. But, alas, one cannot touch them; they have lied in the desert since the creation; they have absorbed the heat of the sun. They are as hot as the sun; one will burn his hands if he would touch them. A man cannot look into the desert at the day; he would go blind. Sometimes, a tribe will send a man into the desert, as a trial. If he survives for a whole month, he will be accepted as a man, before the trial, he was just a boy. I think it's a cruel way of judging, but I didn't grow up with the traditions either.

Most of the men who walk the desert become the leader, the chief. But some choose to walk the three deserts for all of their life. The three deserts are: the diamond desert, the golden desert, or, as normal, civilized, humans call it: the sand desert. And the last desert is the harshest: the desert. The desert is a desolate, hot killing ground. Nothing lives there, not even the earth-beasts. The sun makes the stone become as hot as fire, and when the night falls, the temperature drops long beneath freezing. I saw the desert once; it was beautiful, in a way. The way one would look at a sword and say it's beautiful. Its beauty is overwhelming, but one knows that it would kill you in a second.

Swords. That is something odd about the nomadic ones. They will only use swords, nothing else. Not even a shield. It's scary. They are the deadliest warriors this side the great water. There is a tale of a nomadic man, who left the desert, and became "civilized". After a while, in the city he lived in, it would be a competition. He entered, and won. Of course, since the competition was about sword-mastery. Then, an assassin killed him. He was shot at three hundred feet's distance. Someone was obviously jealous.

The legends of the nomadic ones are very... odd. As everything else with this people. The legends say that God punished them, to walk the desert for eternity. But a servant of God gave them a gift. The knowledge of the dance of death. They won't say what this dance is about, but they worship it as a miracle. When someone mentions the dance, everybody in the vicinity listens.

I don't know what to make of this people.

Yours truly.

Tedok.