The Hourglass Desert

Words alone are rarely sufficient to describe the nature of the Hourglass Desert. An interloper who first stumbles across this strange new world might not grasp the full extent of the forces underneath the sands. They might only see the sands draining in whirlpools, not realizing that an eternity away, an identical twin dimension takes shelter from those same sands trickling down from the skies above their heads.

Twin Seasons. During the summer, white sand rains from the sky. Flying creatures would be able to see the source of the sands if they were able to fly safely, but taking flight through the thousands of tonnes of sand sprinkling down to earth is hazardous at best and suicidal at worst. During the winter, however, the skies have settled and the sand dunes that have formed during the summer start to shift and slide in lazy circles, until finally they form sets of enormous whirlpools that drain the vast majority of the desert's sands into the basins below, where the sands are, for all a casual observer might observe, lost forever. Only for the rains of sand to start up again the next summndrian

Twin Realms. The Hourglass Desert is actually two separate planes of existence, called the Sunset realm and the Sunrise realm. While it's summer in one realm, it's winter in the other. In a sense, the two realms share exactly the same sands. Every season the sands that drain out of one realm are sucked into a wormhole and deposited in the skies of the other realm.

The two realms aren't exactly the same, however. The sunset realm is dominated by the pelandrian elves who have stumbled out of the feywild and made a new home in the Hourglass Desert. The elves, and all other creatures who reside in the sunset realm, live exceptionally long lives for their species, and it can sometimes feel as though time has slowed to a crawl.

The sunrise realm, on the other hand, has become a bustling little pocket dimension for interplanar travelers. Permanent residents use the realm's curious properties and constant output of energetic sands to experiment with mechanical creations, trading their devices for curiosities and materials from other planes. While the sunset realm can feel languid, the sunrise realm bursts with activity, almost to a desperate degree.

Native to both realms are the Duskrise, a strange, nomadic race that, over time, seems to have adopted a host of abilities from the other races who have made their home in the sands.

Twin Wormholes. It's not known how close the two realms really are to one another, on a cosmic scale, but distance matters little when a wormhole closes the gap. The realms are connected by a set of two wormholes, each of which connects the draining sands beneath one realm to the glittering skies of the other realm. From the sand's perspective, it is always falling steadily down in a never-ending loop of rainstorm and whirlpool.

During the winter, creatures that can fly can safely reach the wormhole in the sky of their realm, entering the basins beneath the surface of the other realm. During the summer, creatures that can burrow can safely reach the wormhole beneath the earth of their realm, sending themselves tumbling into the skies of the other realm.

Attempting to access the wrong wormhole during the wrong season is a supremely dangerous affair, and countless curious adventurers have suffocated to death or worse, for the sands themselves can seem almost sentient, almost vindictive, and have the power to send a creature hurtling through their own stages of life, aging up to a hundred years in an instant.

For mechanical information on the deadly effects of the desert, see Combat Complications in the location statblock.

Common Threats Most beasts that can be found in a desert environment can also be found here. Included are a list of more exotic creatures that can be found alongside regular beasts. aarokocras (living close to the sky channels)

(living close to the sky channels) giant hyenas (hunting in packs even during summer rains)

(hunting in packs even during summer rains) giant vultures (hovering in hope above deadly monsters)

(hovering in hope above deadly monsters) kruthiks (violent towards ankhegs )

(violent towards ) ankhegs (violent towards kruthiks )

(violent towards ) gargoyles (resembling sand sculptures)

(resembling sand sculptures) lamias (employing aarokocra and pelandrian thralls)

(employing and thralls) elementals (air, earth, and fire, but not water)

(air, earth, and fire, but not water) medusas (turning creatures to sand instead of statues)

(turning creatures to sand instead of statues) purple worms (referred to as sand worms)



