Qom¶
The desert of Qom lies over a dead country. In the Dragon Wars of the Age of Magic, "the event which led to the creation of the Desert of Qom destroyed some of the most powerful Elven and Human kingdoms" (S386, S372, S429); beneath its sands lies the lost capital of the high elves, and before the sand there were the forests of Uoreskall. No source says what the event was.
Also called: the Desert of Qom; Qomn (S367); the Qomen Desert (an empty heading in the 2014 gazetteer, S548).
The making of the desert¶
The draconic hordes of Pravustiratel "swept easily across much of the Northern and Eastern halves of the continent" in the Dragon Wars, and it was then that the desert was made (S386). The kingdoms it destroyed are named only by their peoples: the Aquitan, who had "a kingdom in what is now Qom" and "were wiped out" in the Draconic Ascension (S387; see Humans); and the Aurelian hill dwarves, who "once had a large kingdom in the mountains and badlands of the North. Most of it was destroyed when the desert of Qom was created or in the immediate aftermath. The population of the former kingdom scattered and now has isolated settlements across the continent" (S372). The desert is therefore in the north of the continent, among mountains and badlands.
Uoreskall¶
Before the Shattering the forests of Uoreskall ("Yore'skall") covered the land. Somewhere deep in them stood Taer'ustol, the planar tree-fortress from which the single Druidic Order of the elves governed the wild places of Terrun, "located somewhere deep in the forests of Uoreskall in what is now the desert of Qomn" (S367). Taer'ustol "existed across planar spaces and would only appear on the material plane to those with the right keys," and after the Shattering it was "lost to planar rifts which severed them from the material plane and set them adrift in the Void" (S367). The order and its fortress are told under Druids.
The lost High Elven capital¶
In 704 SM of the Fifth Age a Sancturi-era company was given twelve anchored portals, one of them to the "High Elven Capitol (lost ages ago) beneath desert of Qom" (S191). They found "greenish marble" and a Hollow (S192). The high elves who built it were, by the Fifth Age, extinct, and nothing says the capital was lost in the same event that made the desert, though the Dragon Wars destroyed "the most powerful Elven and Human kingdoms" there (S386).
Gap
The sources never name the event that made the desert, the elven capital beneath it, or any oasis, people or road of Qom. The 2014 gazetteer's heading "Qomen Desert" (S548) has nothing beneath it.
Earlier accounts¶
The 2015 compendium (S372, S384) and the 2019 overview (S429) tell the desert's making in the same words as the 2020 history (S386) but date the war differently, a question already open for the History pages.