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<blockquote data-quote="Eltab" data-source="post: 7494798" data-attributes="member: 6803337"><p>Deepest darkest Africa (meaning the Atlantic-facing jungle belt) is the trope most people think of, even though Egypt is in Africa and so is the Sahara.</p><p></p><p>One could invoke <em>Roots</em>: somebody is backtracking his personal history and needs to find the way to a certain village, which may or may not still be inhabited by his distant ancestors' current descendants. Does word get out that he is coming? How do they react? Is he on an altruistic pilgrimage, or does he have some other motive mixed in there?</p><p></p><p>One area that could make for interesting play is the Sahel - the prairie band between desert and jungle. The rivers through here run cross-ways and tend to divide the region or provide invasion routes for outsiders to barge in (see the Niger River). The upper Nile crosses this region but was not navigable (rapids / cataracts) so the Pharaohs could not easily send exploration expeditions.</p><p></p><p>The ruins of Zimbabwe would make a good place to put kenku, tabaxi &c cultures - you can make up what you want since so little is known with certainty.</p><p></p><p>A highly isolationist society could use the Sahara as a deterrent against outsiders, with an XL oasis or a river valley or a tall mountain range that collects what little rain there is, deep in the "lifeless" desert - surrounded by wardens with slay-intruders-on-sight orders. Of course, how do the PCs know that something interesting or important is in there, if nobody has ever discovered it and survived to tell the rest of the world?</p><p></p><p>Reverse the "explorers' disease kills the natives" story. The travelling PCs can't enter a given area because malaria &c, but the natives have long since grown immune. Something valuable can be found in the land beyond that and only the natives can bring it out to the wider world. Or a tse-tse fly slays common beasts of burden. For whatever reason, the people must (a) carry out this valuable resource in backpacks or (b) tame some unusual animal such as rhinocerous or unicorns to haul wagons. Only a trickle of the valuable commodity is available to the wider world, though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eltab, post: 7494798, member: 6803337"] Deepest darkest Africa (meaning the Atlantic-facing jungle belt) is the trope most people think of, even though Egypt is in Africa and so is the Sahara. One could invoke [I]Roots[/I]: somebody is backtracking his personal history and needs to find the way to a certain village, which may or may not still be inhabited by his distant ancestors' current descendants. Does word get out that he is coming? How do they react? Is he on an altruistic pilgrimage, or does he have some other motive mixed in there? One area that could make for interesting play is the Sahel - the prairie band between desert and jungle. The rivers through here run cross-ways and tend to divide the region or provide invasion routes for outsiders to barge in (see the Niger River). The upper Nile crosses this region but was not navigable (rapids / cataracts) so the Pharaohs could not easily send exploration expeditions. The ruins of Zimbabwe would make a good place to put kenku, tabaxi &c cultures - you can make up what you want since so little is known with certainty. A highly isolationist society could use the Sahara as a deterrent against outsiders, with an XL oasis or a river valley or a tall mountain range that collects what little rain there is, deep in the "lifeless" desert - surrounded by wardens with slay-intruders-on-sight orders. Of course, how do the PCs know that something interesting or important is in there, if nobody has ever discovered it and survived to tell the rest of the world? Reverse the "explorers' disease kills the natives" story. The travelling PCs can't enter a given area because malaria &c, but the natives have long since grown immune. Something valuable can be found in the land beyond that and only the natives can bring it out to the wider world. Or a tse-tse fly slays common beasts of burden. For whatever reason, the people must (a) carry out this valuable resource in backpacks or (b) tame some unusual animal such as rhinocerous or unicorns to haul wagons. Only a trickle of the valuable commodity is available to the wider world, though. [/QUOTE]
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