Community Atlas -- Qaras (WIP)
ScottA
Surveyor
I wanted to challenge myself for my next contribution to the Community Atlas, so I chose a section of Qaras from the Doriant continent. I wanted to do a desert region and use the Scorching Sun style pack. This one has been kicking my butt, though! I think I've deleted the whole thing and started from scratch three or four times over the past two days! I might finally be onto something now, though, so we'll see. Anyway, here it is so far. I feel a little lost, as being a desert I'm really limited to what I have to work with, unlike those wonderful tropical islands and mountainy, foresty overland maps!
Comments
As for deserts, they can be just as full of interest and features as anywhere else, but you may need to think beyond the "sandy wasteland" concept a little more. Pillars of salt, salt pans from dried pools and even lakes, dry river beds sometimes created by flash floods, meadows of flowers (short-lived, but liable to happen anywhere there's been a rainstorm; yep, even deserts get them occasionally!), the more conventional oases maybe with nomad trails leading to and from, expanses of wind-scoured rock - including wind-carved pillars supporting unexpectedly large boulders, like forests of giant petrified trees or mushrooms - genuine petrified forests (or the remains of one swamped by the desert), the archetypal "lost city" only periodically revealed by the shifting sands perhaps, and more. A magical event might have fused the desert sand into glass somewhere, maybe even creating a literal glass mountain, perhaps one with again a literal heart of fused gold that can be seen, but is almost impossible to access. And for some real confusion of expectations, why not have a thriving town or small city in the desert's midst, accessed and water-fed only from below the surface, say?
The northern river's mouth maybe needs tweaking to make it a bit less harsh into the sea is all. Though I'm tempted to suggest adding a cataract on the canyon river - that's just me being too Egyptian desert though, while this is much more Arabian Nights style