Terra's Flatworld
by WingofCootThere's a brief mention in Champions of Mystara of Terra creating a flat world in the outskirts of Mystara's solar system. About all that's really said about it is:
- about 500 miles in diameter and 100 miles thick
- Gravity is almost as high as Mystara's
- Ring of mountains around the edge, about 10,000 feet high
- Central lake, with a whirlpool at the exact center due to the spin
- Rivers running from mountains to central lake
- Has a Skyshield
- Lit by a mini-sun that orbits it
I started to develop a map of this world:
Besides the established ring mountains, central lake, and rivers, I added ranges of hills to provide some more topography.
If the mini-sun moves from "east" to "west", the areas directly under its path will be basically tropical, while the areas farthest from the path (the far "north" and "south") will be polar-like (receiving only low angle sunlight) though not experiencing the long polar nights of a round world.
The ring mountains at "east" and "west" will experience close, direct sunlight at sunrise and sunset respectively, while those st north and south won't. Combined with elevation, the northern and southern ring mountains will be the coldest places on this world and likely glaciate. The east and west ones will have an extreme and weird climate - hottest at morning/evening, not somewhat after noon as we generally experience on Earth.
Thus, I put tropical environments - savanna and rainforest - near the east-west line, and coniferous forest (and glaciers in the mountains) at the north and south extremes. I added small areas of desert at the far east/west, thinking that the close pass of the sun here would tend to evaporate water quickly. Most of the rest is temperate forest, though there are large cleared areas in both temperate and tropical zones where civilizations are found.
The valleys of the glaciated mountains at the far north and south produce lakes that feed the world's largest rivers. The massive proglacial lakes in the far south are especially important, and the huge quantity of water supports a massive swamp/marsh area on the south side of the central lake.
This world is pretty small on a planetary scale: 500 miles radius = 250 miles diameter is about 196,000 square miles, larger than California but smaller than Texas.
Slightly altered map, 8 miles per hex
- Increased the number of mountain/hill hexes
- Increased the number of forest hexes (since civilization/agriculture hasn't expanded that far yet)
- Added three smaller rivers
- Added some feature names (World's Edge Mountains, Southern Forest, Great Middle Lake, Sunset Desert, Evening Plains, Hubdeep, Tangleroot Bay, Morning Plains, Sunrise Desert)
The Sunset Desert is primarily a rocky desert, while the Sunrise Desert is two sand seas separated by a sun-blasted mountain range - freezing cold at late night and morning, scorching hot at sunset.