Salt Flats

[Kilmore]

I'm working my way south while making my fantasy world. I'm in the deserts now. It has occured to me that salt flats are a feature of deserts that aren't often seen in games, and I was wondering...

1. What are they like, environment wise?
2. What are their natural causes? What about supernatural causes?
3. Aside from salt, is there anything that can be gotten from there? Any use a nation could have for them?
4. I bet anything that dropped dead in the salt flats would have a better chance of being mummified by the minerals than normal. Any ideas for Salt Mummies?
5. Where are they at in the real world? Utah, of course, but where else?

 

[Ulrick]

Okay. I don't know much about Salt Flats.

However, Stephen King did a good job describing one in the book "THE GUNSLINGER." The first book in the Dark Tower series.

I recommend reading it.

 

[the Jester]

Well, salt flats are formed by water drying up. The salts, which were dissolved in the water, essentially stay behind while the water evaporates.

The ocean is salty because it's stagnant (technically speaking- no outflow). That's the extent of my knowledge...

 

[megamania]

Check on Darksun. It has a good description of Salt Flats. It is not a place you want to be for long. Ehhhh...thinking about the Salt Zombies.

 

[wighair]

Here's a (pretty boring unless your into geology) link...

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/sabkha.htm

I've been to some salt flats in the Sahara. You get a crusty surface which would ideal for some easy tracking. You can pick the surface up (like big slabs). Maybe some fantasy creature could hurl these at travellers. Of course the crusty nature of the surface would make pit hiding easy peasy.

You can also get weird colourings of red and blue depending upon mineral contents I guess.

You also get strange rainbow patterns in the water there. Wonderful iridescent effects.

I would imagine they're a pretty deadly place to be without the "create water" abilities of fantasy characters. Also slugs would not last long. An ideal target for poly other!

Hope this is useful.

 

[isoChron]

Imagine saltlakes drying in the sun. They build a crust on top of a heavy salt saturated liquid. There are paths over the crusty surface, but they are not secure. Think of parts of salt heavy and hard enough to carry loads and parts which will collapse after stepping on it. The path can sometimes run a feet beneath the surface of the salt water melange and is not seen, just sensed with the feet. In fact its a different kind of swamp. You can try to swin in the salty water but remember the dust, blown in from the nearby desert. It produces quicksand a few feet under the crystalline surface ...
The people showing travellers a way over the lake are in a dangerous business and sometimes the evil business rival shifts the marks ...

These lakes are a very effective barrier against armies but some specialized scouts or commandos may find a way across and, well do what they are up to.

Just my 2cents

 

[Aeolius]

An ideal locale for my salt hags; daughters of night hags and sea elves.

I got the idea for a salt hag, after looking through the Sword & Sorcery "Creature Collection", which featured a brine hag. I didn't care for theirs, so I made my own. I also wanted to find the means to include tritons and my opinaku (half-elf children of weresharks and sea elves) into the Night Hag Family Tree. At the same time, I added a kraken/aboleth crossbreed known as the sykraken, in order to include krakens.

My inspiration for naming the salt hags came from Salt Old Woman, a Zuni spirit whose flesh became the salt flats. In my campaigns, a salt hag is born to salty waters, but may travel upstream. In this manner she uses her abilities to make a briny (mix of salt and fresh waters) environment .

 

[Desdichado]

I believe Israel has salt flats around the Dead Sea, doesn't it? Salt flats would be pretty deadly for all kinds of folks: it's not just slugs that would dehydrate rather quickly. Overall, though, I think they're pretty boring. I once drove from Salt Lake to Reno during the day. One of the worst drives of my life.

 

[Iron Sheep]

I'm working my way south while making my fantasy world. I'm in the deserts now. It has occured to me that salt flats are a feature of deserts that aren't often seen in games, and I was wondering...

1. What are they like, environment wise?

It depends on how dry they are. Typically it's a crust of salt over a layer of mud, and if there's enough water in the mud, the combination can be almost impossible to walk on. People have died of heat and exhaustion, even in fairly recent times, trying to walk through some of the salt flats in Death Valley. Around the edges of the salt flat, or on a very dry salt flat, it will be normal ground with a layer of salt on top.

In the heart of a salt flat, there may be a salty lake, although it may only be there after rain.

2. What are their natural causes? What about supernatural causes?

Salt flats generally occur in "blind" valleys and catchment areas where rain water can't escape to the sea (or escapes very slowly), like Death Valley, the great basin of Utah, and many of the catchment areas of Nevada. They're also found in the deserts of the Middle East and Australia (Lake Eyre is a particularly large one in South Australia).

Water flows to the lowest point of these catchment areas, where it basically sits until it evapourates, leaving the salts it has dissolved out of the rocks that it flows over on the ground. Repeat this over many years of rain, and you can get a thick buildup of salts.

As for supernatural causes, anything which can cause water to evapourate or be destroyed would be an obvious cause (an artifact buried in a valley which has a side effect of destroying water in a wide area?). They could be related to portals from a para-elemental plane of salt, or ooze.

3. Aside from salt, is there anything that can be gotten from there? Any use a nation could have for them?

There is water, at least some of the time, which in combination with spells like purify water may give a community a water supply in the desert. If there are perennial streams which feed a salt lake, then you don't even need the spells. Also, where there's water, there's life, so it may be a food source.

Also, the salts in salt flats often are more than just sodium chloride. IRL salt flats have been, and are still, mined for things like borax. Maybe the salt from salt flats make good spell components?

4. I bet anything that dropped dead in the salt flats would have a better chance of being mummified by the minerals than normal. Any ideas for Salt Mummies?

Maybe, maybe not. I believe that natural mummification requires extreme dryness, and salt flats are one of the few areas in a desert where it routinely gets wet. Nevertheless, maybe instead of mummy rot, salt mummies cause a disease which gradually sucks the water out of your body, leaving you a desiccated corpse if you don't get healing.

5. Where are they at in the real world? Utah, of course, but where else?

See above: Utah, Nevada and California, the Sahara and Middle East, and Australia, at least. Basically, they occur anywhere where water pools, and the rate of evapouration is greater than the rate of inflow (at least most of the time).

Hope this helps.

Corran

 

[Guillaume]

Re: Re: Salt Flats

Maybe, maybe not. I believe that natural mummification requires extreme dryness, and salt flats are one of the few areas in a desert where it routinely gets wet. Nevertheless, maybe instead of mummy rot, salt mummies cause a disease which gradually sucks the water out of your body, leaving you a desiccated corpse if you don't get healing.

I'm not sure about the extreme dryness part. Mummified bodies have been found in a variety of environments, including bogs which are extremely wet. It may have to do also, in case of presence of water, with osmotic pressure. In laymen terms, you can get the water sucked out of a tissue when ion concentration is higher outside the tissue than inside. Water inside the tissue will have a natural tendency to escape and try to dilute the outside solution. That would be the case in the salt flats creating a mummification process.

Note also that is the principle used in meat conservation. By plunging it into salt, you increase the osmotic pressure to such a level that bacteria and mold is incapable of keeping its water. No water, no reproduction. No reproduction, no meat spoiling.

Guillaume