A desert of black sand under a starless sky—this is one of Mabar’s iconic images. In the Last Desert, there are remnants of glorious monuments: the half-buried head of a grand statue, its eye cracked; a fragment of a memorial wall, engraved with names that can no longer be read; ruins so worn that it’s impossible to guess what purpose the building once served. Characters proficient in History and Arcana can recognize that these monuments are drawn from dramatically different cultures; some are the work of celestials, while others might have been created by the giants of Xen’drik.
At the center lies a massive tomb-palace. Its style suggests the architecture of Aerenal, but it’s grander than even the City of the Dead. This is the fortress of the Queen of All Tears, the Dark Power of this domain. The Queen is an embodiment of misery, and her subjects are largely incorporeal undead, shadows and wraiths from the barren sand. Meanwhile, cruel specters and banshees attend the Queen, along with succubi and incubi who bask in the delicious misery that suffuses the region. The Queen herself takes the form of a mummified corpse, enshrouded by a spectral image of a beautiful elf woman. The suffering of others is her mead, and her only pleasure is the slow torment of the hostages in her Hinterland fragments.
The Queen of All Tears is one of the youngest of the Dark Powers. She was once a mortal who dreamed of mastering life and death, but her pursuit of these goals resulted in the deaths of everyone she ever loved and everyone who shared her blood. Her kingdom was razed, and she killed her own daughter and transformed her into a lich, so at least one piece of her legacy might survive. Her name was Minara Vol, and she was the mother of Erandis Vol. In the process of becoming a Dark Power, she’s lost much of her own identity and sense of her past. She despises both elves and dragons, but has forgotten even her own daughter. If the Queen were to somehow regain her memories, she might seek to strike at the Undying Court and Argonnessen, or to aid Erandis—or it may be that she continues to dwell in her despair and ignore her past.
The Queen’s layers are largely desolate and miserable, filled with wailing wraiths and banshees. One is a battlefield plucked from Aerenal, where the bones of elves and dragons lie intertwined; this may hold the key to discovering her past.