dysonlogos

The Edge of the Desert

Added 2024-01-31 16:00:30 +0000 UTC

This hex map was drawn for David Flor’s “The Mosidian Temple” based on an old hex map he sent me to work from. But while we wait for the adventure to be released, let’s extrapolate a whole mini setting just based on the map.

The Edge of the Desert, as the name implies, is a liminal area where mountains provide enough rain shade to allow for dense jungles that rapidly give way to a dry desert wasteland, with a thin strip of grasslands between.

“The Desert” (it goes by other names too, but to most, it is just the desert or the sand) is inhospitable, but was once far more pleasant as the ruins would indicate (with the sand-covered ruins of a city on the left, and a secluded temple hidden in the rocky barrens). A solitary oasis provides a last chance for those lost within the sands, but they have their own significant defences (see the Golem Oasis from April 2023).

Aside from the oasis, much of the map is a setting for exploration – the only settlements being around the edges of the map (a small city and a nearby trading encampment in the northwest jungles, a village on the largest of the lake islands, and a small humanoid village tucked against the mountains on the edge of the desert). Jungle paths lead to old ruins, a massive unexplained statue, and a temple in a sheltered grassland valley near the lake.

This absolutely screams for weird jungle adventures to discover old ruins and ancient treasures and then trying to put together an expedition with enough people, water, and food in order to find the ruins in the desert and somehow bring home the loot that will be found there.

https://dysonlogos.blog/2024/01/31/the-edge-of-the-desert/