Desert

A Desert is a barren environment in which there is little water from precipitation (usually 250mm of rainfall a year or less). The term is also used to describe environments where water might be present but other conditions render them hostile to life. Not all deserts are blisteringly hot, but many are during the daytime. At night however, deserts can suddenly turn freezing cold as the desiccated air has a low thermal capacity.

On earth, most Deserts are the products of Rain Shadow. Normally the land is kept wet by water which evaporates off the ocean and is blown overland to come down as rain, but mountains are especially conducive to condensation, with little moist air getting through and leaving their lee-sides bone dry.

Types of Desert

• Erg: Sandy deserts, an ever-shifting landscape of dunes. Easy to get lost in one if you don't have a compass.
• Rocky Deserts aka Hamada: There's not an overwhelming amount of sand, but there is a lot of gravel and boulders.
• Semi Arid aka Steppe: Basically Desert Lite. It's still a parched climate but there's just enough rainfall to support hearty grass and shrubs, as well as hard agriculture. Semi-arid climates can be further broken down into the following categories:

• Hot Semi-Arid: hot and dry grasslands with sparse tree coverage and few patches of water. These are on the borders of full-on deserts in the tropics.
• Cold Semi-Arid: cooler grasslands, usually found at high elevations deep in the continental interior. May experience snow in the winter, but in limited amounts.

• Polar Ice Shelves: Yes. On a polar ice shelf you are standing on top of a kilometer of water. But it's still an environment where the necessities of life are otherwise exceedingly thin on the ground. And while a polar desert isn't technically devoid of water, its lacking in water that any plant life or land animals can drink.

Desert Topographic features

• Mesa: Once a large outcropping of rock (like a crag) worn down to an almost perfectly flat surface by wind erosion.
• Oasis': A place where there's water in an otherwise dry environment.
• Rivers: Of course, rivers are not unique to deserts. Nevertheless, a river flowing through a desert can have a major effect. Within a short distance of a river, you can have a nice fertile stretch.
• Desert Flora: Flora is sparse on the ground and those which do are fortified against harsh conditions. The most common are thick grasses, succulents, cacti, etc. They often have deep roots to get as much water as they can, thick leaves, and horny and waxy coats. When it does rain, some deserts will transform overnight into massive fields of flowers that last for only days.
• Dune Sea: massive heaps of sand. Navigating dunes can be difficult at the best of times, and outright dangerous when a sandstorm rolls in and potentially buries you. See Erg.

Deserts in Fantasy

The biggest thing about deserts is that they are typically empty (unless you have an Arabian Nights civilization in the setting). Not a lot of people survive here and those that do are typically nomadic, traveling from one oasis and or fertile area to the next.

Since a lot of the early civilizations emerged in river valleys near the tropics (Egypt, Akkadia, Persia, etc), deserts are a common feature of sword and sandal settings.

If you're really leaning into the fantasy aspect, deserts can be home to a variety of apex predators that realistically wouldn't be able to eat enough biomass to sustain themselves; a classic example is the giant sandworm.

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