Let’s share some fantastic, bizarre, and weird real world locations that would make perfect fodder for #ttrpg !
My own contribution is “Christ of the Abyss”, a bronze statue of Jesus that was deliberately sunk into the ocean off the coast of Italy in 1954. Two other statues were cast from the same mold later on, and sunk at Grenada and Florida.
I find the very concept of religious statues being sunk into the ocean fascinating - and, of course, in fantastic worlds people might have an easier time visiting such statues. Perhaps they have acquired some magic that allows them to breathe water for some time, or perhaps they are naturally amphibious. Or natural water breathers - perhaps there is some trade deal with surface dwellers where land-based religious items are created for aquatic civilizations that they cannot manufacture themselves.
What other such weird locations do you know of?
Another candidate: The Centralia Mine Fire, an underground coal seam fire that has been going for sixty years, and which could continue to burn for 250 further years!
I wonder how dwarves or other subterranean civilizations would deal with something like this?
@juergen_hubert
Fantasy dwarves would, I suspect, find some way to divert a tremendous amount of water (or sewage!) into the fire zone in order to quench the oxygen-free burning.@juergen_hubert@ttrpg.network @juergen_hubert@mementomori.social I remember learning about this as a child — many decades ago
Potala Palace in Tibet
The Sumela monastery in Turkey’s black sea province of Trabzon
Mount Thor in Canada, featuring Earth’s greatest vertical drop of 1,200 m (4,100 ft), with the cliff overhanging at an average angle of 105 degrees (15 degrees from vertical)
I particularly like the monastery - we need more places like this as adventure locations!
You may be interested in Paro Taktsang, or Tiger’s Nest Monastery. I believe this was used in Batman Begins as the home base of the League of Shadows, before the villain turn.
The Plain of Jars. Thousands of giant stone jars on a plateau in Laos. Many contain bodies. No one is entirely sure who built them or why.
I have only ever seen Antarctica in a single game. The Thing. And I’ve played a bunch of Chthulhu games, so that’s wild (At the Mountains of Madness takes place in Antarctica and many of the games take snippets from that story and put them in their game).
Another one: The “Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe” in Kassel, Germany.
This is a masterpiece of Baroque landscape architecture, and the Hessian landgrave at the time was only able to afford it because his father sold of Hessian subjects to the British so that they could put a stop to those pesky rebels in the North American colonies. The park is built across a hill slope (and covers an elevation change of more than 250 meters). Its highlights are the “Wasserspiele” (“Water Plays”). On every Sunday and Wednesday during the warmer seasons, water is released from a vast cistern at the top, located beneath a giant bronze statue of Hercules. Over the course of 75 minutes, this water flows down a series of artificial waterfalls and channels until it powers a giant fountain close to the bottom of the park.
Beyond that, the park has all sorts of other attractions - a fake ruined castle, a fake ruined Roman aqueduct, and a series of miniature temples to assorted Roman gods. This park makes a perfect setting for all sorts of cinematic adventures and/or occult weirdness!
Pamukkale in Turkey.
It’s a really cool hot springs area where the minerals are super saturated in the water and so deposit out in calcium carbonate. Over time it becomes travertine. But just the location itself looks super interesting.
In a similar vein, the salt flats in Utah. When there’s been a rain and there’s standing water over the flats, it becomes a huge reflection - absolutely fantastic set piece for both some unique RP or for a really interesting battle.
Your salt flats comment calls to mind certain areas of the Exumas, an archipelago in the Bahamas, specifically in the cuts between cays where the tidal flows drain from the sounds onto or off of the flats. It is possible to sail into what appears to be uninterrupted shallow ocean, anchor, sleep, and wake to find yourself floating in what is essentially a puddle surrounded by limitless, gently undulating waves of glistening sand in every direction, trapped until the tide reverses. Surreal, ethereal, alien.
I don’t know if his is missing the spirit of the question, but i’d say many planets and moons in our solar system could provide inspiration, like the moon europa with it’s endless ice plain (the surface is amongst the smoothest in the solar system) and gigantic sub surface ocean. In a fantasy world their might be a civilisation down their. Maybe the ice sheet is so thick they never knew about the surface and are only learning about it now, because some recent event has exposed a part of their ocean to the surface.
Locations on earth? The mountain villages around the Himalayas in Napal. You walk endless narrow paths, cross forests, glacial lakes. The view is breath taking. The mountains grow into the sky like paintings. The air is as clear as it can be. You walk trough clouds and sunshine alike and all around you is nothing but wonder. And all along the way, in a place that is always hard on you and sometimes even hostile, there are little signs of the deep devotion the people of this place have for it. Sometimes it’s a little shrine, just a few stones staked upon each other. Sometimes it’s a little stupa. This places have been here for hundrets, some for thousands of years, maintained by generations of villagers. Their religion has the coating of Buddism, but it’s so much older. For in their religious practice they still call to the spirits of the land, yes, of the mountain itself. And it shows. This landscape, hostile as it may be to the casual traveler, has become something the locals not only tolerate, but actively worship. And there is a certain magic to that, a magic that has formed over thousands of years of love and worship. It shows in how every little shire, every stack of stones, is still maintained. It shown in offerings being made to the mountain itself at some shrines, every morning before the sun rises by a different family from the nearest village, every day since their people have come here in times untold. It shows in how the locals know the land by hearts, every path, every slippery slope, every treacherous segment of cliffs they traverse every day. In isolated places you can encounter the wise men of this people, whom live the lives of hermits. In a fantasy setting there would be druids, for they are as close to the real live equialent as i have ever met.
