Fantasy Geography! Please share ideas

Something that frustrates me about 'fantasy worlds' is the lack of fantastical geography - you know forests of crystals, rivers of fire etc...

I welcome any suggestions great or small for bizarre, unique and scientifically implausable scenes and vistas!

The Gap Chasm from Xanth is great - hundreds of hundreds of feet deep in a land that is average 20' above sea level. It's magic folks! nobody thinks it's odd!

Another hole-in-the-ground idea is a bottomless pit, like the Great Devoid in the Myth: the Fallen Lords game. It's huge across, like 100 feet, and objects that fall in are gone. Forever. Beyond even the God's ability to retreive.

How about a land where time runs backwards? The plants look like they're shrinking into the earth. It looks like the people are all walking backwards and stuff. After a few centuries, observers will notice their technology and whatnot getting more primitive as they go back into the stone age. Of course, they think the rest of the world is going backwards. Crossing the border of this land is difficult, but can be done with the correct magic.

on Nickolodian, there was a fairy tale TV Show. There was a COOL story about 3 sisters who were princesses and they danced. The actual story can be found here:

The Tweleve Dancing Princesses

Locations in the Story:

They were standing in a wonderfully pretty avenue of trees, all the leaves of which were of silver, and shone and glistened. The soldier thought, "I must carry a token away with me," and broke off a twig from one of them, on which the tree cracked with a loud report.

After that they came into an avenue where all the leaves were of gold, and lastly into a third where they were of bright diamonds; he broke off a twig from each.

In my world there is the Sunstar Plains. It stores sunlight energyduring the day and at night it gives off a glow akin to candles.

My players haven't been to any yet, but flying islands exist in my world. The only ways on and off are either travelling via airship or (this is gonna sound psychotic) leaping from a mountaintop as an island floats close to it.

A desert.

Composed entirely of broken glass.

In my world non-original:
1.) Trees with partially metallic leaves
2.) Rivers that "sing" with Elvin melodies
3.) Boulders and Mountain sides that are "spongy"
4.) Rivers of blood. Literally.
5.) Cities and towns where the houses and furniture are now eatable. I mean edible. I mean "you can eat them.."
6.) Flying Cities hidden in the clouds
7.) Cities that are "cursed" and moving through time in large chunking leaps.
8.) A glass mountain run through with threads of precious metals.
9.) Trees and forests that need blood instead of water.
10.) A world thats flat..


In my world, original (inso-far as my conscious mind knows)
1.) A country blocked off by a wall of fire 300 feet high and 150' wide which only the "faithful" of a Greater Diety can walk through unharmed.
2.) A great plateau 1500 miles long, in some places 3 miles high, which seperates the lands and has caused its people to designate "East vs West"
3.) An inward facing 400 feet high ring of black shale (and schist) stone positioned like a "/" facing inward into a desert of glass (sand on top, thick layers underneath) which contains the trapped soul of a dark god. Implosions as far as I know still make an "outward" blast ring; this one didn't.
4.) A simple plains surrounding 4 large black pyramids. One day a year the fields of this plains are filled with jack rabbits that at a certain time a day call out one word "Niibitz"...
5.) A tree made of black magical steel, which is alive but has no leaves or seeds.
6.) A moon made from magical ice.
7.) Huge deserts made up from the steel, stone, and glass dust of a city that once stretched over 100 miles.
8.) A country that where winter lasts 1/2 of the year, summer the other half, and whose inhabitants change to match the mood of the season (including the ruler!)
9.) Seas made of glass.
10.) Events: 1 day out of the year when all of the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, streams, etc turn to solid ice for 1 hour.

hope these give ya ideas.

Edit: note - for those asking about harmful side effects from any of these "unnatural natural occurences" most of the time you can say "none". Physics, biology, etc. falling a bit off center as the effects cause is "magical". However in the case of the "rockblast/dark god" area - PCs and creatures moving through the area suffer heat & electrical damage (d6 using the DMG guidelines for environmental affects and increasing accordingly) due to radiation, etc. Also they suffer magical mutation randomness (borrowed from an old Gamma World (tm) book)

Malcolm said:

10.) Events: 1 day out of the year when all of the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, streams, etc turn to solid ice for 1 hour.

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Must be hard on the tropical fish. Not to mention the whales, dolphins, sea turtles, and, well, all sea critters.

Do they expand, like water really does when it freezes?

Some great stuff coming in - thanks ... this place is gonna look like Michael Moorcock had a nightmare !

MerakSpielman said:

Must be hard on the tropical fish. Not to mention the whales, dolphins, sea turtles, and, well, all sea critters.

Do they expand, like water really does when it freezes?

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Since it's a magical thing, I guess lifeforms get somehow hibernated and return unscathed to life afterwards. Unless the whole thing is explicitly designed to keep life out of the sea, of course.

As for me, I play on Planescape, so I have more weird landscapes than normal ones.

A giant, black lake that is filled with the pure essence of magic and creates wild magic effects around it for hundreds of miles.