Veeky Forums creates a desert setting

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Inexpensive white salt plains dotted with bleached coral, long beached ships and extinct aquatic animals skeletons, all that remains of once expansive ocean.

Unlike the hated sand magicians, rain shamans are necessary and revered in their part in ensuring continued survival for people away from the river.

Where did all the water go? If it evaporated it would just come back down as rain

Maybe it doesn't actually rain in the hour glass. The Mad God just pours water into it sometimes, and that's what rain is. Everything else is just stored up water that will go away eventually.

Colossal rock whales swim slowly in the sand. they are tens of KM long and take decades for a fin to rise and fall again. Cities were build on their back only to be covered by sand centuries later when the whale go undersand.

Fire snakes moves through sand by fusing it with their flame. They leave behind glass tunnels that some adventurers try to explore.

How does the water leave the hourglass once the mad god poors water in? Maybe the glass is permeable to water or something? That or just to be a dick he removes the water so that the hourglass stays a dessert

It filters to the bottom. Then things invert and there's a great deluge on the other side of the glass, followed by the slow rising tide of the sands. So goes the world. From a sea of water, to a sea of sand.

Hate to be that guy, but a crucial question must be asked for the sake of the world's solidarity: what do people eat here?

That's actually really good, rain still happens because not all the water enters the other half of the hourglass but overtime the amount of rain diminishes because more and more of the water is in the second half of the hourglass, that would explain how in the past the world used to be not a dessert

Giant centipede meat.
Salted sandfish.
Oasis fruit.

Farming is still a thing along the few remaining rivers, that and there's probably specialized plants adapted to the dry environment, most people are probably pastoral or hunter gatherers with a few agrarian civilizations along the rivers

the same as in ancient egypt: Bear.

Is this the first time the hourglass has been inverted? If not how did people survive? Magic? Did the mad god pick a few people to repopulate the new land

I don't know enough about Egypt but this is probably bullshit

I meant beer. Made with grain. Maybe they use domesticated bears as cattle?

Alcohol is a given, domestic animal wise they're probably on the smaller size as a consequence of the lack of resources maybe?

Sometimes, the Mad God will release a crystalline, frozen creature into the world, and see how long it takes before the humans try to hunt it. Upon death, the crystalline being release ice cold waters that are not only refreshing, but have positive growing properties on crops.

The gods of legend are real, but their once-vast power was torn away from them when they were defeated by the Mad God and his kith in an ancient conflict, and as a punishment, they've been cursed, to never leave the hourglass. What little power the gods can muster is gathered through mortal faith and sacrifice, and despite their imprisonment, they're still gods, and their might is still incredible to any within the hourglass.

These ice creatures are angels of the god that created humans, the mad god delights in the irony

Deep within the darkness of Tartarus sits an Hourglass. The tiny fragile object glows with a dim light that barely illuminates the chained Titan watching as the grains fall endlessly. A mocking gift left by a son.

Out of boredom He grew a world to do with as He pleases. A mere imitation of the one taken from Him, but His world none-the-less.
With His breath He brought rain.
That rain brought life.
That life brought civilization.

All the while the grains fall to their inevitable conclusion.

Displeased with His creation, once more, Kronos turns the hourglass over and starts again.

The faint light reveals the merest hint of a smile.

Sand.

The Mad God delights on all things foolish, both in jest and in cruelty. Those that make him laugh the most, be it through a carefree nature, a clever wit, or simply a really horrible streak of bad luck he finds funny, are sometimes plucked out of the hourglass to amuse the Mad God in person.

Few ever return. Those that due can hardly be considered the same person they were when they left.

Religeous fanatics of a half dead sand god shape most of the worlds resources and clean food... for a price. Since material wealth is nothing to them this comes always in the form of a favor to them and their god.

One of the gods that the mad god defeated before the creation of the hourglass was the god of death and renewal, the hourglass is a parody of his philosophy

Mad God's name isn't known, it's said that this is because saying his name was bad luck, or that knowing it would grant you power of him, which would surely invite his wrath.

The mad god saves a handful of people from death as he flips the hourglass, he does so because he likes to watch them struggle and doesn't want the show to end

There is a race of nomadic birdfolk called the Yipti who are known across the deserts as the very greatest scavengers and treasure hunters. They always seem to know where the oddest ruins with the best loot are about to show up, and adept at their exploration and exploitation, knowing little scraps of history and lore on just about everything under the sun.

This is because they are one if the first races of the hourglass world, and eve though their grand and ancient empire was destroyed in the first turning-over, they have been able to survive it and all subsequent turnings because they can fly. They have been living as nomads through the long years since their empire's toppling by salvaging what they can from other toppled civilizations and passing on their historical knowledge amongst themselves.

Species of mobile cactus slowly move throughout the desert using their spines, like sea urchins through water. Many communities depend on the movement of these herds for water. Harvesting them is a risky business for they are covered in extremely strong and sharp spines, almost bone-like in consistency.

The most inhospitable corners of this world are known as The Black Dunes. There the heat absorbed from the world's trio of suns heat the ebon sand to unbearable temperatures. The only civilization that survives there are the nomadic Dunefolk.They are not difficult to pick out in a crowd, by their tendency to walk around barefoot and their slightly cooler body temperature.

Unlike Athas and other half-baked attempts to create single-biome settings, this world actually still has oceans and temperature varying with latitude, because of course it does.

>he didn't read the thread

Biomes probably still exist, it's just that overtime the amount of water in the world goes down turning more and more of the world into a dessert

What biomes exists current era in the hourglass? I can't see anything with more perception than shrubland

Definitely delta flats near the source of the great river, and aside from that, most people don't realize that there's a ton of diversity in desert climate.

Perhaps a treacherous salty marshland at the very center of the desert where water and sand are being pulled down into the bottom section of the hour glass?

Isn't Athas mono-dessert because of magic? That and shrub lands exist to the north

That's actually pretty cool

How big is the hourglass?

Maybe make them like aboleth? They have genetic memory of all that happened to that race. They know all the ruins cause they remember when they were not ruins.

Make sense with the fact that Toth is the god of knowledge.

Maybe, I don't like the idea of people knowing about the hourglass cycles outside of myths and stuff, also are humans and bird people the only races? Are the bird people also from outside the hourglasses?

I had been thinking of going with an oral history through birdsong sort of angle,but that could work too.

I like this idea. Some of those angels generate cold around them:

From a setting I was making
Ice Rok

Giant bird made out of Ice that roams the skies of Ameth. It is said she freezes everything around her and her nest in the middle of a desert is made of Ice. The water continuously condenses due to the cold and flows forming a ring of fresh water around the nest. The said nest ends up surrounded by a paradise, the Ice Rok grants live to the desert creatures, but if you near it too much you die.

When an Ice Rok flies her shadow is so cold it condenses water. The bird will leave a trail of water puddles in her wake.

SHAI'HULUD!
THE WORLD SHALL TREMBLE IN HIS PASSING

Roughly 7 thousand miles wide, that gives a surface area slightly less than the surface area of the earth not counting oceans

In the new world, these saved men and women are seen as crazy old fools, talking about ages that never existed. An entire world of sand? Bah! How foolish, in this, our age of waters.

I was thinking that maybe they'd tried to restart their grand civilization several times, only to have it destroyed again with each turn of the hourglass, instilling this sense of silly futility in them as a race.

They may not remember exactly what happens when the hourglass turns, but they've retained enouh knowledge with each turn that they know that something catastrophic happens at regular intervals and that it's not worth fighting it.

So, the go out, they enjoy themselves, hey sing about the past histories of the world and they remember the locations of the best ruins with the best loot, living off the remains of all the civilizations that are dead and gone.

That works, any ideas for other races?

There are those who would take the forbidden arts of sand magic to their extreme, and use their powers to mummify themselves into terrifying undead, similar to liches.

They take up residence in ruins, plotting schemes and performing unethical experiments.

They are universally hated not just for their streaks of cruelty, but because their very presence sucks up the moisture around them, destroying water and making life harder for everyone.

Even the Mad God does not like these undead, but not because of their evil ways, those he considers entertaining enough. It's because to the Mad God, the mummies are dreadfully boring, always going on about research and science and magic when they could be doing a thousand more interesting things.

Well, let's see...

If you wanted an antagonistic race, you could go with some kind of mummy/necron analogue, as ancient as the bird folk, who dwell deep in specific layers of ruins beneath the sand.

Their civilization was likewise about to be destroyed by a turning of the hourglass, but they saw it coming early enough that they'd do something about it. They magically reinforced their cities and he selves to try and survive, but were buried deep underground when the world flipped over, trapping them without food or water or light or air. The centuries passed but magicked as they were, they were unable to die, eventually becoming dry, desiccated, and mummy-like. Eventually, though, as more and more sand empties out of the top of the glass the ruins of their cities emerge, freeing them. By now they have mostly gone mad and mindless with rage, grief, pain, and isolation and they try to guard and rebuild their cities.

Many may have retained enough of their sanity, however, to pose serious threats. Some may still possess enough of their humanity to become allies against the others.

Mesquite is a good option

Something occurs to me. Redwood trees are able to easily survive landslides and floods because, if further buried, they can sprout new roots up on their trunks and keep growing. What if some tree (one, obviously, that doesn't require the same temperate climate as the redwood) possesses this ability in this hourglass world. If it keeps sprouting new roots and growing up above the sand, what happens during the Inversion?

Is it warmer or colder around the edge of this hourglass? Is it a literal hourglass shape, i.e. does the area of the surface decrease as the sands pile up, or is it a more abstract constriction between the two halves? What are the differences between the emptying half and the filling half? What is their relationship?

If you wanted a race reminiscent of Tolkein's elves, you could go with something plant-based:

There is a sweet, sad race of dryad folk that live in the shrinking oasis that dot the desert landscape. Quiet, shy and deeply spiritual, these people have many customs with regards to the proper way guests must be treated and the needy helped, making their homes havens for travelers and those with no place else to go.

The sad thing is that the drying up of their oasis and the sheer number of people that turn to them for shelter work together to diminish the race. Every year there are fewer and fewer oasis and more and more dryads on pilgrimages trying to find some relief and salvation. Some even join caravans or adventuring parties.

The salty marsh is already is part of my current desert world campaign. The PC's live next to the last and rapidly drying up sea.

In my version, I made the night time shorter and the sun never really sets. Also made centipedes a symbol of the decay of the world. At its core, its life is being fed on by a mad being known as the Conqueror Worm.

Love the hourglass idea, not sure how it can be combined though. Players have no idea about the bbeg yet (a warlord who wants to control the last source of water) since only 3 sessions in.

Hi, Shamus.

It was previously mentioned that there is a large waterfall that comes straight out of the center of the sky. This would mean that the center of the hourglass is a mushy, murky swampy "oasis", as someone else had also said. A sinkhole in the center pours sand into the other side, which is likely primarily water. One could imagine that on this side, a giant pillar of sand continuously pours from the sky, leading to a single giant island among an endless ocean. At the bottom of the abyss lies a whirlpool where the water pours back through to the other side, back out of the sky waterfall again.

The edges may be a cold desert due to the effect of the deeper cold sands chilling the glass on the opposite side of the sun.

If the light source goes the usual East-West direction, then the North-South axis will be much colder.

This could lead to stretches of dry, cold tundra scrubland similar to the summertime Arctic. I like it.

The few true forests that remain are constantly bombarded with a rain of fire, allowing only vegetation that thrives in extreme conditions to exist. Those who venture into these blackened woods will find that the fire rain is the least of their worries.

Cold grey sand deserts in the north and south. Sandstone mountains and crags in the North are home to giant Burrowing Owls that hunt by night. Wolves and other scavengers lurk beneath their nests waiting for scraps. Narrow valleys are warded by the Apaec spiders that lurk in their immense webs above waiting for passing prey.

In the Shadows of these peaks live the Mountain builders. Great Adobe structures built on the hard bedrock of the upper lands shield the Mountain builders from the worst of the winter sandstorms.

Their Hydraulic Empires vie over what little water trickles from the mountains into the Centre of the World. Old dams dot the landscape from failed water sources. Some have been re-purposed as fortifications as old river valleys become invasion routes.

>10k+ years in GIMP
Fuck this shit someone better than me should do this.

So doomsday comes when the water runs out?

No many sand doesn't float. It's a sandy waterfall. The water runs out before all the sand does.

Good work user.

Seeing the hourglass drawn out like this makes me wonder fi there aren't two linked hourglass worlds.

Great beads of dew gather in the silken webs of the Apaec Spiders and drip from the mountains flowing down into the valleys into the lands of The Mountain Builders who worship the Arachnids as Gods of bounty and send "tributes" into the high crags for annual water flow.

Hey, question!

Are the walls of the hourglass tangible? If one could make it all the way to the edge, would there be a glass-like wall there, stretching out and up?

Also, what's beyond the walls of the hourglass?

Dryads only reproduce once.
Upon death, their bodies burst and expel a large number of seeds in all directions.
These seeds are nearly indestructible and well suited for surviving the great upheaval, but by the time conditions change enough to enable the seeds to grow into dryads, none of the previous generation will have survived to teach them, and must start over their civilization from scratch.

Personally I wouldn't go with that as your putting more water into the hourglass so overtime it would stop being a dessert

I imagine that the glass walls are literal. To the people in the hour glass, it just seems to be invisible walls that block their way. If they were somehow able to smash a hole in the glass, they'd see the real world beyond the glass, and the sand would start to flow out of the wall.

You're assuming anyone on Veeky Forums is able to make a coherent enough setting to think that far ahead

Probably, it seems cool so let's go with that

There would probably be some sort of insect race (probably ants or termites) that live symbiotically with it and until the inversion are a united empire. But during inversion their Empire splinters into dozens of feuding groups who battle for control of the tree and it's resources and usually ends with the tree completely burning away, which is actually necessary for the tree to spread it's own seeds.

Outside of the walls are the Mad God. His eyes are like two burning suns and surrounding him are his other failed experiments at world building. I imagine outside of the hourglass it would be like the far realm but more depressing.

Are there people living in the bottom half of the hourglass? If you tunneled deep enough into the ground you could get to the hole between the halfs of the hourglass, but you would defenitly have trouble getting down. Maybe going between halfs of the hourglass is something only powerful magic users and advanced civilizations do?

I like the idea of a literal glass wall. Maybe agents of the Mad God work to stop anyone from trying to breach it.

Who knows what would leak out, or in.

Some people claim to have seen what's on the other side of the glass. They've all gone mad. Ie, it's up to the GM

The brine shrimp there grow in hundreds of varied forms, filling the salty void where little else can survive. Smaller varieties dart through the shallows like alien fish, while shrimp as large as crocodiles drag the unwary into the depths, seizing their victims with jagged fangs.

Rain Shamans do not actually have the power to summon rain.

What's actually happening is that the Mad God, for whatever reason, is amused by their presence. When he sees a rain shaman dancing and singing and doing all kinds of crazy things to get the rain to come, he laughs, and rewards the shaman by bringing in rain.

Just as he steals adventurers who amuse him, The Mad God may also snatch up a rain shaman if their antics are too hilarious for him not too. These shamans who disappear are said to have become one with the rain spirits.

It's not that hard to get to the edge of the hourglass if we're going with I figure outside the hourglass is the mad god's house

What if Supernatural Sandstorms periodically disintegrated the water, evening it out over time?

What's the thickness of the glass, with a hourglass 7,000 miles in diamater, I image the glass has to be 10+ miles thick at least.

It might also be super glass/magic to withstand all the forces necessary.

Maybe some sort of titanic "Resurection" trees. They're massive and their roots streach all the way down anchoring themselves in the glass. Their life cycle involves a "winter" lasting however long it takes to for the hour glass to re-flip.

The Goddess of Dreams, like many other gods, has been reduced to a much weaker state after the Mad God took over. She now lives in the hour glass, as she cannot bear to leave the humans there without her assistance. Sadly, the Mad God cut out her tongue in an attempt to stop her from revealing too many secrets to the humans and "ruining his fun."

So instead, she uses her dreams to show the humans visions of the world outside of the hour glass, hoping one day they will understand there is a world beyond the desert, and one that they must escape to.

As for why she can't just write, being a god being dealing with mortals who die quickly, she'd always need to learn new written languages to best communicate with them. So it's much easier to just use dreams.

Maybe, I also like the water falls into the second half of the hourglass faster than sand so total water in the top half decreases with time idea better though

The followers of the Mad God claim that the suns are the eyes of god.

Elaborate maddening festivals, bacchanals and various antics must be maintained less the Mad God grow bored.

>Madness leaks into her dream lessons, often veiling or corrupting the message

...

Experience shows that the more extravagant the festivals are, the hotter the day actually becomes. This is because the suns are actually getting closer; the mad god is interested and wants a closer look.

Now for the big question: Whats on the other side of the glass?

Another world, deep space or something much, much worse?

The mad gods table and from there his house