Life of the Desert
A journal detailing one of the closest looks into the Ayuub nomad tribe of southern Alik'R, experienced, written and edited by Voltaire du Guesclin

A scholar concerning himself with the life of the people of Hammerfall may notice a disturbing lack of information about the Ra Gada nomad tribes. Only bits of information are known of these interesting societies that spend most of their life on the move, either in the mountainous north-east of Hammerfall or the sandy west. For example many names of the tribes are unknown to us beyond the two largest tribes of the west ? the Barcas, a tribal confederation I believe to be based mostly on the northern coast where they live a generally more settled life than the tribes south of them, and the Ayuubs, a highly traditional confederation of tribes. That could be explained by the fact the nomads, like the Ashlanders of Morrowind, have no love for the written word and their legends and history rarely make it out of their tribe, being passed along in the shape of tales from the oldest men of the tribes to the most promising of youngest ones. The end result is that some legends have changed from their original state and can be unreliable; however, nearly every member of the tribe has at least a basic grasp of the history of his 'family', which inspires pride and a desire for glory into the hearts of the young to-be warriors of the tribe with the tales of their predecessors.

The only way to learn anything real, without relying on the possibly highly unclear and biased accounts of merchants and travellers, is for a scholar to try and live with the tribe he wishes to examine for a suitable amount of time. That way, one can write down events as they happen in front of the scholar's eyes, without any middle man between the nomads and the scholar that would examine those nomads. Due to this, you will rarely find a scholar who deals with more than one tribe, as you have to devote a large amount of time for being accepted into the tribe and afterwards you will have a great amount of trouble trying to blend into another tribe. Most of the nomads' tribes live in constant conflict with each other, since the need for revenge between families can be caused from anything as trivial as walking into one's yurt without being invited to something as serious as the killing of a relative. Such conflicts transcend generations in the shape of tales, and mutual dislike between the families grows, eventually escalating into an inter-tribe struggle as one of the heads of the conflicting families are bound to come before the Khan of his tribe and ask for aid in resolving the conflict. Sadly, the only way to seal this circle is either the extermination of one of the families or the performing of an apology ritual, which usually ends with the assimilation of the apologizing family into the tribe of the other family in the conflict. Due to this many tribes began training their greatest warriors to fight in a duel for the honor of their tribe, something that was previously specific only to some tribes. One such duel I had the pleasure to observe and will later try to detail as much as I can, for the skill of these nomad champions has impressed me greatly.

I myself am not a great authority in terms of the societies that inhabit Hammerfall, my field of expertise lying north of this province; however I find myself intrigued by most mannish races and their specific quirks. Perhaps the greatest difference of the Ra Gada from the other mannish races of Tamriel is the split in its society between settled city-dwelling Crowns and Forebears and the nomadic tribes that would consider themselves Forebear, although I myself would place them in a separate category. They are carrying on the old ways of the nomads of Yokuda, most notably the Swordsingers that supposedly lived in small communities in the deserts of Yokuda from what I have gathered. One may notice some things I would consider influences of the Swordsingers in the following chapters, however I shall leave it precisely to that ? the following chapters.

I am displeased with myself somewhat because this work of mine had to undergo heavy editing after I returned to High Rock; mostly because in the year or so I lived in the Ayuub tribe, which I chose to examine as the second largest and very traditionalistic tribe of Hammerfall, the journal I kept degenerated into something completely unfit for publishing, as the entries ranged from quick scribbles which I have trouble deciphering now that I am home, to stories several pages long; I was particularly guilty of this during my first evening after being accepted as a member of the tribe, when I wrote only some quick notes while listening to the elders of the tribes as they told me legends of the tribe, for fear of offending them or missing something; however, when I returned to my new tent I wrote on for hours and well into the night.

Thus I was forced to edit my journal heavily before I could publish it, which is an excruciatingly boring activity, albeit a necessary one. This allowed me to break the story down into several chapters with which I attempted to follow the chronological order of events; however that failed somewhat as in the chapters where I described specific events I would draw together the whole information I previously or later acquired of those events to avoid confusion and breaking the flow later on in the story as well as to give my readers as full a view of these events as possible from my experiences. You will notice this in the first chapter where I detail my troubles while attempting to be accepted into the tribe, when I pulled together both my experiences and those of other youths that I later observed being accepted into the tribe after hitting the age of fourteen. This trend, I hope, will only serve to enhance my reader's experience with this book and will help him or her to avoid repetition that would be obvious if, say, I described my acceptance into the tribe and much later into the story suddenly returned to this with a long and not that much different story about a youth of the tribe.

Before beginning my tale I must thank several people. First of all, the idea to travel and personally live with these nomads that began intriguing me so belongs to another scholar, who I consider a friend of mine with hope she does too. Although I have decided to let her remain unnamed, I believe many will recognize her from the fact at least I consider her to be quite the authority in terms of matters surrounding magick. The second person I would thank is the Crown Prince, now known as the High King Haroun of Sentinel after the unfortunate death of the late High King Thassad during the War of the Wolves. At the beginning of my journey I sailed to Stros M'Kai, where I had the honour of talking with this great man, who impressed me greatly and was of great aid in helping me find the Ayuub tribe; otherwise I might've gotten lost in the vast sands of the Alik'R and this work would've never seen the light of day as the Ayuub tribe, or most other nomad tribes for that matter, is very hard to find due to the fact they are constantly on the move and are able to masterfully disguise the past locations of their camps as well as their trails, at least so long as they are travelling slowly.

With that out of the way, I will continue with my tale and hope that it will satisfy various audiences, from those who feel a thirst of exotic adventures to those who would wish to learn more of these interesting people, the nomads of the Alik'R.