@TheEdVerse hello! I like desert settings, love FR Anaouroch and Empires of the Shining Sea! How would you describe the differences between Faerun Deserts? Calim, Anaouroch, Raurin, Plain of Purple Dust. Thanks!
— 🐉Fabio Foggetti (@foggio) June 1, 2020
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This answer is a simplication through generalization, but: Anauroch is a low-water desert of all sorts from hot sands (summer only; cold sands in winter) through wind-scoured rock to frigid ice-sheathed rock as one moves north.
Calimshan is a hot sands desert 2)
…(blowing dunes, like much of the real-world Sahara) all the time. Raurin is like the Serengeti: arid plains/savannah with water-storing trees for much of the year, that has a brief "wet season" when rivers and lakes form, plants grow like fury, and herds…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 1, 2020
3)
…drink deep. And the Plains of Purple Dust are literally PURPLE, due to the minerals in the pulverized rock that blows in frequent sandstorms, and (the lightest grains) hangs in the air the rest of the time, tinting even “empty air” a deep amethyst purple. The 4)
…Plains are actually well-watered, but there's so little soil (as opposed to rock-dust and gravel) that very little beyond lichens and mosses and ground-hugging broadleaf plants and tumbleweeds grow: the rains that do fall, though as frequent as twice a…#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 1, 2020
5)
…tenday, “sink right in,” the water hastening deep down into the Underdark and leaving behind a desert. So folk who have barrels and bowls and catchbasins can easily grow gardens and even small-scale crops, and live and travel quite comfortably in the Plains 6)
Deep aquifers make life in Raurin sustainable for those who know how to tap them, or keep to known wells and oases.
Anauroch is too large to cross alive for someone who doesn't know its oases (and desert ways), and the Calim Desert is a heat- and parch- killer.#Realmslore— Ed Greenwood (@TheEdVerse) June 1, 2020
