The desert only seemed harsh and cruel to the people who weren't used to it. It was dry, it was sandy, it could have a painful wind, and the heat, the utterly terrible heat that could drive a man insane pretty quickly. You just had to hope that your mind was able to handle the stress and pressure, the endless sand dunes, just walking forever in the sand, your footprints disappearing behind you in the wind. The terrain changed slowly over walking, the dunes would disappear or grow bigger, and you could never be so sure with everything. You had to hope that if you owned a map, there would still be the different oasis and small villages and tribal outposts. Too many things changed however in the desert, and some people could end up just another sun-bleached skull in the sand.
Some other people however didn't mind being lost in the desert.
They enjoyed the desert, the didn't mind the searing sun, the biting winds, or the possibility of death. They just wanted to keep on moving, keep traversing the desert, some because they could, others because they had to.
This was a little bit of both.
Riding upon a camel, the beast calmly plodding through the sand with eyes half lidded, the man atop was a man who must have been in the desert for quite some time now. He wore light garbs, baggy and white, as well as a sort of wrap around his face to prevent his face from burning. He could have easily have worn a hat, but the wrap was good enough for him. On his right leg, he wore a simple pair of cloth boots, while on the left side he appeared to wear no boot, and he didn't need to. Gold with a black onyx inlay, the leg was more of a bird's leg than a human leg. There were even talons where the foot should be, three large claws on the front, and one claw at the back. His right hand was of the opposite design, it was black onyx for the main part, and golden inlay for a splash of colour and a rather impressive design. The fingers were slightly more clawed than a normal person's, but not obscenely dangerous like his foot looked like.
As he looked upward to the sun, there was a gentle sigh from this man. It wasn't that he was hot, he found himself relatively cool, not cold of course, but he wasn't bothered, it wasn't uncomfortable. A slight glint from the space around his eyes showed that there was something odd over his right eye, but what it was was rather unknown. Someone could only that there was a lens involved, perhaps some piece of glass and a bit of gold around the edge, a strange eye-patch of some kind that wasn't quite like a normal eye-patch. More of a goggle, though it did have a black lens he could slide into place and make it impossible to look into or out of.
The camel gave a small groan as it plodded on, and he patted the creature's hump. "We're almost in town buddy. Then you can have some water and you'll be fine." He had gotten stuck with a camel that liked to complain. He was never very hard on the beast, but the creature always felt sorry for itself and seemed to complain after a couple of leagues. It wasn't that there was anything physically wrong with it, the camel just liked to complain. He didn't much care though, the creature still plodded on, and the both of them were rather happy with that.
They crossed into Essyrn rather quickly, going into the walls of the city finally. The buildings inside were mud brick, and as he remembered, the walls had to be caravaned into Essyrn. A smart place to build really, around an Oasis, it made sense to him really. They were smart people, and he could appreciate their ingenuity. He found a small public trough for animals and dismounted, tying his camel up to the hitching rail in front of the trough. People sometimes gave him odd looks, they were mostly not used to seeing a strangely dressed man with strange limbs. He however, paid very little mind to most of them, because he just didn't care. Why would he? It was useless getting bothered by something like being stared at.
He'd get even more as he began to unwrap his face from the cloth, letting his short dirty blond hair be freed. His brown eye stared at people, the other was hidden beneath his strange golden goggle, multiple lenses with little switches and sliders on the side of it. He reached up with his golem hand and began to adjust the lenses, focusing and changing until he found the right combination. The right combination made the lenses look blue, which he was okay with. Looking at the world in a blue coloured light was fine enough.
The question now was...where to get himself a few supplies? He was already near the centre of the city, he did want to go see the oasis again, get a small glass of water from the strange water. He always felt better after drinking from the oasis, there was just something about it...it tasted so...strange.
The good kind of strange.