#throwing my prized hc out there. mozenrath has comically large earlobes.)

[fallowfinality]

If you want, how do you think Mozenrath would interact with those who'd cross the border into his territory? Would he have a toll enforced or see what goods they were carrying? Or would he react more dramatically than those around him?

(Good question! I'm gonna put my answer under a cut, but tl;dr: imprisonment, probably.)

(I can't imagine the Land of the Black Sand is visited with enough frequency to warrant a standardized way of dealing with intruders. In the show, it seems sort of out-of-the-way, and practically the entire genre changes when you approach the border, along with there being giant swirls of black sand in the regular tan dunes.

If you find yourself at the border, you probably already know about Destane, and maybe also know about Mozenrath. There's a chance some travelers would be desperate enough to cut across the land to shorten a trip, and it would be an appealing choice:

We never see clear skies in Mozenrath's realm, and my interpretation is that the clouds only clear during the night, if at all. There's also no wildlife, to my knowledge, and you'll probably be the only person around besides a few Mamluks patrolling your corner of the desert. So it's an entire desert in perpetual shade, with seemingly no chance of running into bandits.

My personal headcanon is that if you're non-magical, and Mozenrath catches you, it's because he really has nothing to do but read books and scry around his land all day. I'm also of the opinion that most of his material wealth is either 1. looted from burial grounds and soon-to-be-Mamluks or 2. basically magical counterfeit, both of which are just gold coins with an ominous aura.

I doubt he has much patience for any material gain besides that, so his concern would be someone smuggling artifacts. He'd have Mamluks imprison them, then he'd have a look, but he probably wouldn't find anything worth taking in most cases.

As for imprisonment: expect him to be weird about it. He's terminally bored, so he questions every prisoner, though he knows that again most cases won't lead anywhere. His way of making conversation, really.

You really only have to worry if you're either smuggling an artifact, or worse, you're actively practicing magic. Most artifact smugglers leave with no artifact, and are haunted by Mamluks for weeks on end, which leads to people thinking that they're practicing necromancy and casting them from society.

A magic user would be lucky if that was all he did to them. Mozenrath assumes that any sorcerer in his land is either hopelessly in over their head or plotting against him, depending on how powerful they are, and the handful of intruders he's outright killed were the ones he couldn't forcefully strip the power from.

So, let's say you're a complete innocent who is just so desperate to get back to Agrabah that you have to cut across the Land of the Black Sand. Is it worth it?

It might seem that way. And it might very well be that way! But the day or so you might save if you don't get caught could also be several days that you spend in a dungeon in the Citadel, being forced to tell your life story to a scraggly, begloved wizard with a skrimpy frame and hideous ears.)