The sands of the desert are sweet, for veins of dark sugar twist through its dunes. Down below, metamorphic layers of thick molasses crawl through cracks in ancient bedrock, condensed to ooze by the weight of the world above. In these porous spaces ruled by dust and germ, pools of primordial rum have formed under extreme pressure. It is a liquor that men and machines alike can drink, and it produces similar results in both.
In the legends of those who live here, sugar is the fifth fundamental element, and serves as the animating force of all things. They believe that in addition to the sugars that drive the living to commune and reproduce, there are sugars that cause the planets and stars to encircle one another, and that what rests beneath their desert drives the cosmic engine that holds them to the ground. While a few industrialized communities burn the rum as fuel, widespread superstition states that burning or consuming it in excess could throw the planet from its orbit.
This is in disagreement with the mythology of their ancestors, which states that the titans held a banquet after creating the world, but left their dessert to rot. Cakes and honeys and fruits and creams made from the prima materia all sank into the world’s depths, where they dissolved and fermented, merging into the geological strata. It is through this digestive process that their supposedly perfect creation became intoxicated, leaving mankind to rule a drunken reality.