What kind of encounters should i include in a fantasy desert? Sandworms are a given of course, but what else?

starved, Heat-crazed People.

This desu. Superior Mirages in six directions. A fata morgana or two. The green flash EVERY NIGHT.

*antlion

Of course you need camel! Everyone need camel! I am Crazy Hassan, and I have a used camel specially for YOU! Camels last twice as long as horses, drink a third of the water, and just between you and me, look very nice. But come, you must see my camels! A camel for all situations and all permutations! You are stuck in space? I have space camel! Comes with its own helmet and rocket! Buy now, I'll throw in bottle of fresh, best-quality air for free! Need to cross the ocean? Aqua-camel! Comes with its own waterwings! Great bargain - you buy the body and two legs, I'll throw in another two legs FREE! I have sold camels to everyone! No complaints! Tell your friends, tell your family! Bargain camels, almost never used! Ah, that one spit on you, it must like you!

Ordinary sneks.
Giant sneks.
Sandmen.
Fire spirits.
A revenant, cursed never to die and blidnly wandering the desert in the eye of perpetual sandstorm that follows it wherever it goes.

Lizardmen poachers hunting monsters for ivory.

>Ordinary sneks.
>Giant sneks.
Sneks that challenge your party to a game of chance.

>sudden sand storms
>navigation problems due to shifting sands or magnetic rock
>giant varieties of bugs, toads, lizards, etc.
>an ornery vulture that follows you...on foot...and just won't go away
>cacti elementals
>notMongolian marauders riding giant hawks

Dune rider transport.

Ships or rafts with huge sails that drift across the desert like an ocean.

Blue Dragons?

Eternal mummy Pharaohs.

Cactus dryad's luring people to their deaths, so their bodies can be used to feed their host plants

Drugs.

"Our tribe has the dankest kush for ten thousand miles, sahib. Toke, but slowly."

Tribal politics.

Cute.

Lonely highways in the middle of nowhere. The lines in the road expand slowly as you drive on it, and the road heats up until the rubber on your tires melt. Then the road-beast's stomach flows around you like a starfish and digests you right there.

Herds of belligerent wild donkeys/donkey centaurs/cameltaurs.

Swarms of vampiric gnats that live under sand grains waiting for you to pass above.

An oasis with suspiciously green foliage. None of it seems to have roots. And the rocks at the edge of the pond are a little more even than you... It's a monster. The oasis is a monster and it too will try to eat you.

A lonely filling station with gas prices decades out of date. An old man sits on a rocking chair outside, still as death. Strange fluids drip from the storefront... No, it's not actually a monster, it's just an old run-down filling station. The old man is a werecoyote, though.

A herd of incredibly well-camouflaged brontosaurs that you don't notice until you're underfoot. What do they live on? No time to worry about that.

A strange city is built under a cliff. Its inhabitants have been cursed with reversed gravity! Their raiders roam the desert tied on long ropes to non-inverted camels, donkeys, and/or brontosaurs, sniping at your party from high above.

A long-lost company of Montgomery's army in North Africa. They found themselves invited to sup with a djinn, and left his palace to find themselves in your setting. Not only that, but if they step off their tanks, they instantly age and die. Be warned that while their tanks never run out of fuel, their tea supply is long gone.

A traveling caravan. Its people seem perfunctory and dejected. No, it's not carnivorous tents with faux-humans as bait, they're just Polynesians who've been away from the ocean too long.

A convoy of gypsy wagons. This one actually is a monster in disguise.

A certain type of sand can form natural circuits of high quality. Over geological timescales it has formed a sentient dune.

Dire Caracal (Also called the Desert Lynx)

youtube.com/watch?v=a1kYKgZnUZE
Nope.

>M'aiq would like a bigger box. Thees one too small.

A great stone sphinx. It does not come to life, and you detect no magic from it, but your party still feels a terrible dread when they come near.

The next dune is an iceberg. It is very, very cold.

Giant dune lilies with mirrored pads. They raise them and focus sunlight on interlopers. At night they are covered in symbiotic microcats.

When too many fennecs hide in the same hole, sometimes their tails get entangled and their minds merge, granting them fantastic magical power.

Very large owls.

A shambling horde of undead, cursed to cross the desert while under a powerful slowing spell. You can walk up to them and loot them if you want, but be warned that some of them are still capable of spellcasting, and their hate alone can form a powerful curse.

Sandworms. They are an inch and a half long. Where they nest, there are more worms than sand, but you don't know that till the dune starts moving.

A kind of seal that moves like a sidewinder. Hunts in packs.

Thirsty cloud demons.

Dwarves in full metal armour, horned helmets, furs, beards and axes, doing typical dwarf stuff (1°) drinking beer, 2°) hitting things with axes). They have crossed galaxies and dimensions without ever doing anything differently, it's not a variation of temperature that will cause them to change.

In D&D3.5, not eating and drinking can't kill you, you just take non-lethal damages, fall unconscious when you take enough of those damages and keep taking non-lethal damages until you are hydrated and fed. But you don't die of this, not until something else kills you by ablating your HPs with lethal damages.
What this means is that in D&D deserts, you may find entire caravans of people and animals that have been put in eternal stasis by thirst and hunger, just awaiting a sip of water and a mouthful of bread to come back to life after decades in those conditions.
... why caravans ? CITIES ! that have been covered by sands, and are now uncovered, and its flash-dried inhabitants are still haunting their houses, breathing, unconscious, but alive...

Read it in another thread but
>the desert was once ocean floor many ages ago
>abandoned temple with bizzare architecture because it was designed with swimming in mind
>suddenly ghost sharks

user said fantasy desert.

I finished a desert campaign not too long ago; here are some of the encounters we faced:

>a very confused and dying half-elf priestess of the goddess of ice and snow.
She said it was a teleportation mishap, but I saw the GM's character sheet: Lawful Evil.
I don't know what he planned with her, but we escorted her out of the desert and dropped her off at a port where she could take a ship anywhere.
>giant scorpions a la radscorpions.
>cannibals riding skiffs that sail about on the sand.
Once we reached an oasis, raptors. (pic related). "Roughly dog-sized, with row after row of needle-sharp teeth, roving about in packs of ten to twenty, flapping their wings for speed". Piranhas of the desert.
>Golems. giant jackal-headed onyx golems that breathed fire and threw boulders. Once we figured out that they could be commanded by anyone with a knowledge of the ancient tongue they became trivial, but still.

Beetle herders

Sleepy Western Town with Cowboys, shoot outs, the works.

A forgotten Pyramid half buried in sand possibly filled with the treasure of the Pharaohs

A friendly bard looking for his next drink of water

>dire housecat

>The ocean is a desert with its life underground
>And the perfect disguise above
>Under the cities, lies a heart made of gold
>But the humans will give no love

That's both scary and awesome

Wrong. Aging kills.

>Party comes through a desert on their May to mcguffin land.
>Day two they spot a brown lump in the distance.
>Upon investigation they find a shriveled camel corpse, still breathing.
>RANDOM ENCOUNTER
>Large sand scorpions, which the party dispatched easily.
>Sand scorpions don't die, just stop moving a lot after getting chopped up.
>Strangly enough, no character has gotten hungry or thirsty in a long time, and the cleric with ten ranks in healing has declared everyone dehydrated.
>Players come up upon a caravan of dessicated corpses, same story with the camel
I forgot

Eventually. But how many decades could someone lie there unconscious before aging finally offs them?

I would be on the lookout for wild David Attenboroughs.
Nasty little creatures.

Seriously though watch the 5th episode of his Africa series, it's a good piece of inspiration + you can get good screenshots to use.

kat.cr/david-attenboroughs-africa-1080p-bluray-x264-shortbrehd-publich-t7104439.html

Sad triangles

youtube.com/watch?v=PZbkF-15ObM

Eldritch upside-down prisms-pyramids made of glass pulverising stuff by deflecting and concentrating sunrays and by causing illusions.

The twist is that you don't know if they are artificial machines or conscious and malevolent beings maybe both

They reproduce by exploding and the shards acting as seeds for other prisms to grow on by fusing sand

I'll post my HD screens a bit later.

look at this smug looking fucker what evil plans does he have

Escaped slaves that insist that WE WUZ KANGS

The fires died but the heat remains.

He has the same look as me when I'm bored out of my mind.

...

...

...

>La la la la la la lala la la....la.

>desert was once an ocean
>still is, but the ocean now exists underneath, the desert's rocky outcroppings honeycombed with cenotes
>saltwater oases in certain spots, strange fish occasionally was up from its depths, as the ocean rises and falls with the tides
>many school near the surface for catching
>strange things can wander out at night, or odd lights visible in the depths which bear the suggestion of shapes large and bizarre
>desert's main exports are dried fish, salt, and other dried ocean goods, along with whatever the desert provides

Massive subterranean explosions that form thunderclouds.

Mescaline. Not in the game, actually get high on mescaline.

Motorcycle hooligans on the hunt for gasoline, ammo, and rape.

>fantasy
I know, the idea's fantastic, that's why I posted it.

Soldier ants that always hold the rear of the one behind it and travel across land in a long, long chain. Sometimes going underground in to mile long tunnels, barely big enough for a short man to get in to.

Largely left alone until you enter their territory, a smell typically giving an indication of when it begins. Give them a caste system and a strong heirarchy with certain ones begin able to be domesticated with the use of chemicals or training.

I like this actually.

Sandstorms
Sandsharks
Sandgolems
Sand dragons
Sand witches
Sand goblins
Bandits
Sand wizards
Sand in their boots
Sand, sand, and more sand.

actually tho...do what is talking about and just add shurima and azir and the entire kingdom of sand people that will fuck up your party's day.

aggresive Sandolphins

Camel monsters?

...

Deserts are big and open, abuse the shit out of that.

Massive fucking pyramid golems.
Snakes that jump from the top of dunes to their prey.
Whole complex civilization of ants. Not ant people, ants.
Big fucking cacti, not just saguaro or whatever the fuck, get some crazy brambly plants like Joshua trees and Cholla bushes and make them into treants.
Mummies, not any ordinary every day mummies, but ADVANCED mummies.

The vast wasteland of deserts and the harsh conditions lead it to be a very spiritual place, if there's ever a time to meet shit not on this earth then the desert is perfect.

The party encounters a traveling caravan, they'll be happy to share their food and water with them, if they only share a tale of their travels.

Another, smaller desert about 100x100 meters in the middle of the desert. It has different sand type, color and even a different temperature than the desert outside. The sands at the boarder do not mingle.

A childs swimming pool filled with water and a few floating pool toys. No sign of anyone around. The water has been used.

A sailing ship. No one knows how it got there but it's been used for a long time as shelter of travelers. Their names and dates are carved on the inside along with a few random items.

A merchant caravan. They're very friendly and want to sell you things, but they only have weird "Bad Dragon" style sex toys.

A lost child in a bathing suit and towel, looking for his swimming pool. No clue how he got out here and he doesn't know where home is.

A large, ancient catapult designed to launch ships through the air. Why anyone would build one, especially in a desert, is beyond you.

A teenage dragon looking for something to keep her occupied on this long boring day.

An insane ship builder forever cursed to wander the deserts unless he can fly his way out aboard a ship.

Sand.

KANGZ

This I like

Go watch the Clone Wars episode a Sunny Day in the Void. R2-D2 a few other droids and a tiny frog man clash land on this desert planet where the ground is all white rock and the sky is the same shade of orange 24/7. The environment is cool in that it just looks wrong, like they've passed into limbo.

There were plants and birds and rocks and things

youtube.com/watch?v=Ni0tR9vDyiE

>Grains of sand so fine it literally flows like water
>Desert Tortoise people who live closer to the coast and trade further in-land with the nearby human cities
>Sandworm people who are distantly related to merfolk but adapted to live in the sand-seas
>Giant rock formations that attract lightning and various monsters that live off the lightning
>Sentient mirages that are actually fey creatures that lure humans to their deaths and feed on their hallucinations.
>Vulture like Harpy people who act as messengers and navigators
>Flightless sand dragons who have air vents along their back that allows them to inhale massive amounts of air and blow it out creating dust storms.

look at that skull structure, clearly a king, not a kang.

Time.

to die?

The mummified remains of dead travelers who seek to slake their eternal thirst on the blood of the living.

large ancient castles buried under the sand that can be partially dug up/raised from the earth via magic contraption.

For high-level encounters, evil djinn.

Consistent wind patterns allow bandits to use sailboats on wheels and skis to traverse the wide desert, attack and withdraw with their loot quickly.

However, if the wind dies down at the wrong time, they are at the mercy of their would be victims

Well, Time is a lot like a drug. Too much will kill you.

Giant Desert Conch
Carnivorous Salt-bush

Also, FFXII or Xenoblade X for some inspiration as well

small gemstones set into metal casings scattered around the desert that don't read as magic when detect magic is used. if brought near certain ominous ruins, however, they turn on begin drawing massive amounts of sand near them into the shapes of bodies.

tribes of semi-feral vampiric bandits that come out at night to hydrate. during the day they bury themselves in shallow holes (less than a foot) beneath the sand, and if discovered, appear to be regular desiccated corpses.

>An oasis with suspiciously green foliage. None of it seems to have roots. And the rocks at the edge of the pond are a little more even than you... It's a monster. The oasis is a monster and it too will try to eat you

I did this to my players. The idea was that the water was the monsters digestive juices and would turn into acid when it revealed itself, including the "water" that the players had just drunk. Kinda got ruined when my players noticed me laughing as I asked "and who else would like to drink from the oasis"

Khajiit has wares if you have coin

>>Mummies, not any ordinary every day mummies, but ADVANCED mummies.

THESE AREN'T YOUR DAD'S MUMMIES, THESE ARE ENERGY MUMMIES!

ENERMUMMIES!

Red snow dotted around the ground in small splotches. It looks of blood, but smells sweet, if consumed a character either begins ignoring the cold (the warmth is artificial though, they will still die of exposure), or they'll get an intestinal thing, which is fairly inconvenient in this environment. The fungi is entirely mundane.

All you lazy fucks with your sand deserts, snow deserts best deserts.
Or have the encounter take place in an urban food desert.

>not running a campaign in a dessert

>>desert snob detected

>giant trapdoor spiders
absolutely. Imagine spiders that live along caravan routs, popping above ground just long enough to snatch a camel from a caravan.

I have a few ideas for different desert environments. The names arn't particularly original but fitting.

The Ebon Wastes is actually a giant volcanic iisland that buts up against a semi active super volcano that constantly blows out ash so the land is literally coated with the stuff and has a weird cycle where once the volcano dies down the land becomes super verdent before the volcano destroys it again at randoms intervals. Typically it's taken as a sign if the massive lush of green shows up it's not to long until another eruption is at hand.

The Ivory Wastes are located further north but more inland and closed in on 3 sides by mountains where there are some sparse forest but mostly empty expanse of snow. Even with it's size and emptiness massive monsters hide in the snow fields and it's said that a giant walks aimlessly in circles doomed to this fate for eternity.

The Golden Wastes resemble the Sahara desert with massive rolling dunes and several cave like structures and what seems to be buried mountains. It area gets its name because of it's location as a gather spot for many different nations and trading.

I like
I also like
Not so much

I've been playing around with the idea of a glass desert, but haven't come up with a convincing enough reason for it to be there outside of literally just "magic did it". As in a solid few inches or so of glass for ground. Under certain lighting conditions it can get fairly visually distracting and the mirages intense. Thinner points of the glass could have adapted plant life break through, or perhaps some of the plants are nothing more than glass sculptures mocking the real deal. But the most dangerous glass is the thick glass, for it is pocked with "air" bubbles and structurally unsound.

how about a sand desert in an area that has lots of thunderstorms/electrical activity? the glass wouldn't be uniform, but there would be a shit-ton of fulgurite embedded in the ground.

There is a kind of molten glass volcano active nearby.

Darude Sandstorms

Fremen are always a good encounter.

So what, it's shaped like a giant hand flipping the bird, and as it flows over you all you can hear is the sand whispering insults?

Why are they so cute?