Hex Crawl 23 #232: Winds of the Scarp

Two hexes northwest, nine north of Alakran.

 

The Scarp, that central wall of mountainous stone formations that divides the higher east from the lower west, gives rise to odd phenomena when winds blow directly in its face, whether from the east or from the west.

Standing here, a strong wind from the west will blow up against the face of the Scarp. Scattered dust will "clothe" the Scarp in a thick and eerie haze, and the blowback circulation leaves a "silt fog" of yellow dust in the air for six hours and to a distance of 3-5 miles. The effect is most promounced in places like this, where no intervening badlands or foothills break the hammering of the wind against the Scarp's full height.

A strong wind from the east, though, will end up whistling high overhead, while below you watch in eerie calm. Birds are buffeted, dust trails stream through the air, and the wind is only felt at 7-10 miles distance to the west.

Hex Crawl 23 #116: Hail in the Wadi

 Five hexes southwest, one northwest of Alakran.

 

The seasonal wadi that leads out of the Slurry and curves around eventually to reach the Gasshadu River is unremarkable. Well, except for one event that is spoken of in Targatana and has even reached the souks of Gesshed, to the north and west. Once within living memory there was a hailstorm after a strong rain in the rainy season that briefly turned the wadi into a roiling sluice of ice.

Hail is rare, but not unknown. in these lands. The ignorant speak of it as "cold salt" that cannot remain long on earth, because it has been shaken down from the heavens; and after a hail storm, people will sometimes look to the skies in vain, trying to see where a new star has been punched in the black dome of the sky. The more learned and certainly the alchemists have connected hail to the moisture it leaves behind, and correctly recognize it as the solid form of water, which if collected and somehow preserved in in this state can lead to the most interesting procedures and experiments.  Some wizards know spells to pull it out of the air, which adds rather than subtracts to the folk mystery of ice.

In terms of the weather dice system, a hailstorm in these latitudes will occur when a roll of 6-6-5 is followed by a roll of 5-5-6 during the rainy season - a truly generational event that, if weather is rolled for both day and night, occurs on average once every 29 years.