User:ProphetPX/Xal'Anim (3.5e Campaign Setting)/Geography and Environment

Environment

 * Imagine entire oceans of liquid steel, where just a tossed drop of it (let alone a surfy froth!) can pose such danger as to cut your skin (or slice off entire limbs!). Imagine rivers of energy, lakes of crystal, and gestational mountains which form huge natural combustion engines of reverse-thrusted fire, whereas "giving birth" (in the new sense of planetary growth) is given entirely new meaning! Erratic storms of horizontal node lightning, water-plumes (the opposite of "waterfalls"), primal energy geysers, amorphous ash banks (as opposed to "fog banks"), shifting storms of intelligent smoke which haunt the landscape, countless invisible celestial "stairs" to hidden aerial palaces accessible only by the exact harmonic musical key, yet always the mundane earth mote where lost dungeoneers become imprisoned forever...
 * Dimensional slides and "Oddball Physics", Psionic plant-life, inhabitable structures formulated by mutating string-worms, Vortex Valleys, Walls of Mercurial Imagery where rock-faces and cliffs literally "come alive" with life and expression...
 * Wind (that of the overall breathable Air) seems the most powerful elemental effect in operation here, yet the biggest reason why silence is near nowhere to be found.
 * In order for a racial character or monster to perceive their surroundings or navigate the outer surface landscape, so-called "Light-vision" is required. And only at the level (or above) of minor playable-races and monsters (such as the deplorable elf!) can they "see" with any certainty or lack of difficulty, what transpires around them, AT ALL -- being barely able to perceive objects in "visible" Light in it's proper form. Most lower races (including most elves) are only capable of [this campaign's version of] infra-vision, so darkness (due to the close pervasiveness of ring-light) is not very common (on the surface world). However this situation is inverted a little bit when it comes to those races and monsters which inhabit the inner hollow of Xal'Anim's planetary sphere. Something known as UltraVision is within the capacity of most of the higher races and since no lower races can employ it by nature, this definitely creates a rift between that of the higher created order, and that of the lower and "subterranean" factions. Even more sublime is that of "Atomic Vision" where celestial, infernal or abyssal, and aberration monsters and PC's can literally see between the valence ethers of whole atomic structures and perceive innate differences down to the atomic level between this or that. This might be seen as the equivalent of having 1,000,000,000:1,000,000,000 vision (as opposed to ordinary human's mundane sight of 20:20 -- if healthy).

Geography

 * There are THREE (3) major continents, and FIVE (5) minor sub-continents...

States

 * T.B.A.

Maps

 * (I have devised a full map of the Continent, fully geographically landscaped, with national borders and topographical features marked, but how do I upload it?)