The Seraj Isa...known far and wide as the Glass Desert. It's a strange phenomenon, a desert introduced to some power - some great force - that would thus superheat it to this extreme. However, a desert of glass cannot remain flawless forever. Eventually, something will happen to it, break it down, and when it does...the trouble begins.
Putting aside the troubles of navigating such a place safely, there was another concern, one that people may not have considered: Something powerful created this place. What if another were to act upon it, without real warning? A shooting star, for instance, hitting the ground with tremendous force, forming a crater, a small valley.
Herein lies the origin of the Valley of the Scorpions of Glass.
It was not a place filled with real scorpions, but rather...an area which has been shattered - pulverized - by a strong impact. It becomes a valley of shifting, refractive matter. The light introduced to the eyes from afar may sting, hence the name. Get much closer and you have an ultimately more unusual effect to worry about.
The valley refracts light unusually into the eyes, and introduces bizarre hallucinations, things that the mind is not generally prepared to cope with. They could be anything, literally anything, but they are not real. The problem with it is that the person experiencing this lightborn fantasy could be rendered insane, and many have been drawn further in, if they did not run away screaming or tear out their own eyes.
Now, the valley has claimed a number of lives, but there was - at this time - a funny little Essyrnian man carefully plotting the safer areas around it - which he would sell - and was planning to engage in an activity to try and gain all that was lost in the valley. This was Akbar The Third, a mind-bogglingly successful shopkeeper. Not rich, per se, but fairly well-known for having multiple shops across the land, somehow.
He had sent word of his plotting of the Valley of the Scorpions of Glass, and that he essentially...wanted to pull everything for value from it. Many will scoff and say that it's too dangerous. A fair statement, admittedly. Some will be crazy enough, or strong enough. Let's just find out who.