Adventure in the Redlands (artifact)
This book was published in the early 1100s IS by a possibly-fictional adventurer known as Lexenir, and claims to detail his journey through the Redlands of southern Aironoi. It paints a vivid picture of mysterious cults roaming the wastes, abducting the innocent for use in mysterious and sinister rituals to serve dark purposes. It tells of Lexenir's encounters with no less than 11 different cults, each of which possessed their own strange and violent traditions. These traditions, which range from ritual cannibalism to human sacrifice to drinking the blood of Redrunner settlers, are described in excruciating detail, as is his heroism in saving people from such terrible fates. The people of the Redlands are described in ways that make them sound less than human, claiming that they hide themselves during the day due to the sun's deadly light.
The book is accompanied by a series of drawings, which Lexanir claims are traditional Redlander art, consisting of complicated patterns of shapes, arranged so that they seem to suggest great monsters in their curving, spiraling lines. The book was received with mixed acclaim, and many have claimed that Lexenir, and his story, are both fabrications. Nonetheless it provides those who live across the far-flung Empire a taste of the mysterious Redlands.