World Building June - Day 2
Howdy! Still trucking along w/ my desert planet. Technically this is day 3, which I will also post in a little bit. dont worry about it *falls asleep*
2. What’s the Geography of your world?
I’m a bit neurotic abt keeping things consistent irt conlang and naming conventions, but I haven’t developed that too much yet here, so bear with me as I continue to use placeholders for a while
[PLANET] is almost entirely desert, ranging from the polar oases to the central arid expanse, to the rocky Bashmu Highlands and the downright necrotic eastern lowlands, with many a variety of desert ecology in between.
Water is scarce away from either of the poles, with an average rainfall in the populated steppes and rocky crags of only 1-3mm a year. In parts of the central expanse, there has never been rain sighted nor standing water discovered. There are no oceans on [PLANET], with the largest body of standing water being Lake Aral at the southern pole oasis, which covers an area equivalent to the Caspian Sea on Earth. The closest body of water to the planet’s equator is a thin and gnarly arm of Lake Aral that stretches northwest, where it supplies life sustaining water to the Scorpionfolk of the region.
This has been more about climate so far rather than geography but that’s because the desertification of the planet is a key part of understanding its geography; aka a distinct lack of oceanic borders that lends to a “dry earth” look. The far southern and western reaches of the main “continent” end in abruptly sheer cliff faces, leading most geologists to believe the planet once had oceans that evaporated away as the surface heated millions of years ago. As such the majority of the cliffs’ once-jagged peaks have been weathered down to plateau by wind.
NOW the fun part of its messed up geography
I am still working out dates here but sometime far in the “story’s” past, at a time when people were still around aka during recorded history, [PLANET]’s only natural satellite set off a horrific series of events as its mass finally drew it too close to its host after billions of years of slow orbital erosion. AKA the moon was too got dang big and after 2.5 billion years its gravity had begun to rip chunks of the planet’s crust away, hurtling them into the lunar surface, and vice versa.
At the point where its moon became tidally locked there is now forever a 100,000 mile long eruption of planetary and lunar debris, kept in place with magical locks that stop either body from acting on one another any longer. As a consequence, the moon remains in one place at all times, and the pair now orbits as a single body around its twin stars.
The region circumscribing the colossal hole in the planet is a jagged, treacherous marriage of volcanic and high altitude, and is mostly inhabited by Mortars (fire people). The whole region is also rife with violent electrical and radiation storms that can discorporeate any Mortar on the surface; as such they continue to remain mostly within the exposed mantle.
