The Oasis is a region in the central Stormlands. Surrounded by the Storm-Path, the roughly elliptical route followed by the immensely powerful Great Tempests, the Oasis is a refuge between the storms. Historically an incredibly fertile area - one of the gifts of the Tempests - the Oasis has been contested between a number of successive states for many centuries, which has slowly depleted the once-bountiful land and turned it into a region of near-constant strife.
Geography
The Oasis is surrounded on all sides by the Storm-Path. To the north and south it is bounded by the Illan Peaks and the Red Forest Hills, respectively, which are roughly 300 miles apart at the farthest. East to west the Oasis measures around 220 miles across at the widest, though it has no truly fixed borders, defined far more by the absence or presence of the Tempests than by anything else.
Several large lakes dot the Oasis. The largest of these is the Great Fire Lake near the center of the Oasis, joined by the much smaller Lesser Fire Lake slightly to the southeast. In the southwest of the area is Qaan Lake, and opposite it in the northeast is the Mist Lake. All are fed primarily by springs; rivers are temporary in the relatively dry and arid Oasis, formed only in periods of unusually strong rainfall in the northern mountains and southern hills. Historically these bodies of water have been where the largest population centers of the Oasis have grown.
In general, the interior of the Oasis is safer, environmentally-speaking, than the margins, where storm-flares can sometimes strike even at some distance away from the current positions of the Tempests.
Though somewhat less of a concern than in the surrounding Storm-Path, magic within the Oasis can behave oddly, and sometimes dangerously so, due to the influence of the Tempests. This has been a major factor in the development and proliferation of firearms in the region.
Inhabitants
Control of the Oasis is split between nations collectively known as the Oasis states - Bura'khab, In'khab, Qems, and Reshan. These nations, and their predecessors, have fiercely competed for valuable territory in the refuge between the Tempests. Not only are these lands still agriculturally highly productive, even in their depleted, diminished state, but safe proximity to the Tempests also holds the promise of vast amounts of storm-wrought wealth in the form of aeon stones and other valuables created by, or precipitated out from, the Tempests.
Populations in the Oasis are especially concentrated in the middle. Near the margins of the Oasis cities disappear and villages shrink until they too vanish.
Within the Illan Peaks in the very north of the Oasis lies the dwarven realm of Haran Gurr. This realm's small size on the surface hides the degree of subterranean dwarven expansion, however, with most of the nation's people and territory found in the immense cavern networks far below the Oasis.