Hex Crawl 23 #15: Dunes

One hex south, one southwest of Alakran.

Here's a featureless 5 mile hex of dune belt, known as an erg, a region of shifting sandy hills.

Around the middle of this hex is where the shape of the dunes shift. Crescent dunes in the east formed by wind blowing from the south (northern winds being blocked by the ridges of Alakran) have gentle slopes on the northern side and and steeper slopes to the south. The horns of these crescents point away from the wind, so, north in that region. Climbing them can be avoided by taking a zigzag path. Travel time through them, compared to hard plains, is tripled going from south to north and doubled in any other direction.

The linear dunes in the west are molded by winds blowing from both north and south, and their slopes are symmetrical, and stretch from east to west. Their ridges are sharp, like sword blades. There are 1-2 of these ridges to each 1 mile subhex. Travel time through them is tripled in any direction except from east to west, which is only 1 1/2 times the base rate.

Camel mounts reduce any tripled travel time thrugh dunes to double.

The dunes suppress any visible vegetation, yet life there is, in and on them. In this dune hex, if a lair encounter is rolled (1 on d20), a sand-burrowing skink -- a brown, white, and orange lizard no more than eight inches long --will pop its head out, look around, then dart back under the dunes.