During my many travels I have seen countless extraordinary places - the primeval wilds of Brokilon, with trees so high their tips disappear in the clouds, dwarven chambers carved into the guts of the Mahakam Mountains, with walls plated in pure gold, the ice palace of Pont Vanis, adorned with stained-frost windows - yet none of these made such an impression on me as did the rightly-famed Zerrikania.
Yet while I was traversing the Fiery Mountains, I feared disappointment awaited me on the other side. I had heard many a fantastic tale about Zerrikania - about its trackless sands, burnt white by the sun, its golden-scaled dragons, weaving their nests amidst the dunes, its hunch-backed horses able to survive weeks without even a swallow of water - yet none seemed to me at all plausible. I was sure all these sensations were but the figments of some bard's overactive imagination.
I know this will be as hard for you to believe, dear reader, as it once was for me - but all of the unbelievable tales are true. Not only that - during my many months of travel I came across wonders far surpassing those any prior travelogues mentioned. I saw temples dedicated to the worship of dragons. I heard their voice, almost human, but reverberating with a thousand echoes. I met warrior maids clad in leopard skins, tattooed from head to foot and giving no ground to witchers in mastery of the blade. I saw mages who channeled power from fire. I saw seemingly harmless flies whose solitary bite would make a man fall into a deep slumber, never to awake save to die. In short, Zerrikania is a land where the fantastic is normal, and the impossible occurs daily...
