If you look at the world map, you'll notice forest that shouldn't be there. That means only one thing; Avangion/Druid etc. If you note my Sundra Peninsula, you'll notice that the trees are on the wrong side compared to the Forest Ridge and there's no source of water; so, Avangion.
Seriously, the sun doesn't cause rain shadows. The direction of the wind causes the rain shadows.
If you look at where scrubland is placed, it's all over the Hinterlands, and also north of the Tablelands in a vast and strangely unoccupied plain. (The 'unoccupied' part bothered me enough that I decided to set my game there, if only to try and explain why it's not settled.) That matches clouds coming in from the west.
I have to assume that wind patterns are substantially deformed by the local terrain in ways we can't really coherently model. Something like the Sea of Silt seems to be a good hand-waving explanation for any weather strangeness implied by the map.
Moons? Seriously?
Yep two of them. Our moon effects weather patterns as well as tides and winds. I could not even imagine the strangeness two moons would have on a worlds weather, flora and fauna.
You know what? Whatever . . .
If the Tyr region is at the equator as suggested by this map.
This the winds are wrong.
Well, the effects of two large Moons shouldn't alter the climate.
If the Tyr region is at the equator as suggested by this map.
1- A non-canon world map drawn by a fan.
2- You assume that the center across the fan-map is the equator. We don't know what latitude the Tyr-region is at on that map nor in canon. So that's a big, "If . . ."
Well, there a problem with the Tyr Region; if Athas rotates with the sun raising in the East, then the Forest Ridge Rain shadow is on the wrong side; that is, the forest should be in the Tyr region unless it's not near the equator as in the Brax world map.
Perhaps Athas isn't rotating itself (that is, the "Sun" as the moon determining night and day is rotating around Athas) so that there isn't a Coriolis effect. Then by standard physics all wind would be determined by which land masses heat air more than their surrounding does (causing the heated air to ascend resulting in low pressure with surrounding air trying to compensate in the form of wind), with desert > all (no water to fuel a local cooling cycle like the one over oceans).
The wind would of course still blow from a night region to a day region because the day region is heated. When the wind is blowing towards the Tyr region from a region with more water, it is carrying clouds which would result in rain shadows just like the Forest Ridge. If it is blowing from the Tyr region, it isn't carrying any water because water there is scarce.
Again, sorry to be a broken record, but what if Athas was like Exalted's game world in the South? However, instead of the different directions going to different elemental poles, there is only the fire elemental pole. What happened is that someone, gods, primordials, whoever, anchored something in the Tablelands and gave it the most stability. Perhaps the Tablelands were the first created and it was a floating island in the Elemental Chaos. At one point, it had all elements in balance but something happened and Fire slowly won.
Now, I don't have the time to go into all of the details but a flat world creates a lot of interesting situations.
- This is why the Tablelands are so important because when you go beyond it, you start moving into the Elemental Chaos.
- If you could get high enough, you could see all of the land.
- There is a sun and it does rise and set as normal but over the flat land. It was set in motion and now is self sustaining. However, it's a magical construct and that's why it can be tapped for the magical energies in it. It also helps explain sunscorched areas.
- Maybe years ago there were "reality engines" that created and stabilized the land. But they are slowly failing. As they fail, the land near them slips back into the Elemental Chaos and is lost, eroding away at the amount of land there is. This makes the land beyond the Tablelands as big or as small as you want to make it. It could also explain the levy.
- This means that Athas does have it's own cosmology because instead of being in the prime, it's a bubble in the Elemental Chaos.
And there are other things as well. This is hardly an exhaustive list but an idea. It means that it's not real world physics but primal and elemental spirits that create the weather. Suddenly, keeping them happy is a very important job, if they can make it a little cooler or a bit longer growing season or the like.
Just a few ceramics of thoughts.
turlough
Athas's landscape has been affected by magic.
The forest ridge is halfling territory, and they favor preservers and elemental priests.
The table lands are occupied by sorcerer kings (who sometimes persecute elemental priests), and a superstitious populace likely to burn preservers and the occasional elemental priest at the stake for being magic users.
The winds can blow wherever anyone freakin wants, man, but we do have magic to explain why things are the way they are. Don't even need to call in avangions.
The presence of the Dragon to the east could also explain why the wind blows from east to west, even the wind does not want to go to the Dragon (plus, Ur Draxa is built on top of an elemental vortex, that has to mess things up).
And unless someone wants to explain how two moons would actually affect things, we can't dismiss that as a possibility. Plus, Athas may be a different size, distance from its sun, and it's sun certainly is different. All these may seem like minor things in a cosmic sense, but move our moon just a touch in a cosmic sense and the tide might become harsher or softer. Affect the temperature of our sun just a touch in the cosmic sense and we become a desert world or have an ice age.
Athas is built completely different from Earth, so it doesn't make sense to assume earth like behavior.
Are you guys pretending the Silt Sea is an actual ocean?
Wait.
Are you guys pretending the Silt Sea is an actual ocean?
Wait.
Are you saying Athas doesn't exist?
...I got nothin.
I don't want to sound like a nit-picker, but that's just something I noticed. But I do a lot of actual science and I notice things when they are incorrect; like the Sea of Silt. Man, any amount of wind would pick that up and cover the world in a silt storm that lasts months similar to what happens on Mars. Two Moons? I know from orbital mechanics one of off those Moons would get ejected or absorbed into the other rather early in their formation.
*Based off an episode from the Simpsons...
Well, there a problem with the Tyr Region; if Athas rotates with the sun raising in the East, then the Forest Ridge Rain shadow is on the wrong side; that is, the forest should be in the Tyr region unless it's not near the equator as in the Brax world map.
If you look at the world map, you'll notice forest that shouldn't be there. That means only one thing; Avangion/Druid etc. If you note my Sundra Peninsula, you'll notice that the trees are on the wrong side compared to the Forest Ridge and there's no source of water; so, Avangion.
www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/2/
I don't want to sound like a nit-picker, but that's just something I noticed. But I do a lot of actual science and I notice things when they are incorrect; like the Sea of Silt. Man, any amount of wind would pick that up and cover the world in a silt storm that lasts months similar to what happens on Mars. Two Moons? I know from orbital mechanics one of off those Moons would get ejected or absorbed into the other rather early in their formation.
It's canon that there are vicious dust storms on Athas, even capable of tearing the PCs apart. We have the SKs (see Bly2729's link) to thank for it not being necessary to dig up the city-states every few hours (instead, they just keep building on top of the place over the centuries).
As for the moons, you're still making the same mistake of assuming that Athas is in the same situation as earth. Mars has Phobos and Deimos; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have a ton. The second moon could also be a dwarf planet that crossed too closely into Athas's orbit (Pluto's Charon might have been independant at one point, and both may eventually end up as moons for Neptune). There's also no reason to assume that Athas is as close to its sun as we are to our's. It may get roughly the same amount of heat, but that could be because the sun is a different type of star.
Athas is not earth. One cannot say "well, it works this way with Earth, so..." And there's freakin magic.
My point exactly. The history of the world says that they actully changed the sun with magic. That's huge. If that can be done then any scientific conversation of Athas weather is moot. I only brought up the two moons on an earth based weather discussion. If earth had two moons things would work much different here.