Origins: Grasslands of Merakai, Geography

Introduction

The Grasslands of Merakai is a campaign setting originally wrote and played during the late 80’s and early ’90’s. During that time, I posted a fair amount of information on the Usenet group rec.games.frp. While most of them are archived in various places, the Origins series will republish them with better formatting and in a more organized form.

I plan to update the campaign world information and design new maps for the region in support of a series of adventures I am working on. The archived information contains around ten thousand words. Seems I was far more verbose on Usenet than I recollect.

Maps are few and far between. I may have a few scattered around but many of them have been lost over the years between moves and general housekeeping. None existed for the Usenet articles other than ASCII art. Anything noted in italics was not sourced from the Usenet archives.

Grasslands of Merakai

The Grasslands of Merakai are a large set of plains which cover the central portion of a small continent. They are similar to the Great Plains of the US. Upon these plains are six settled towns or villages. Other than the areas immediately around the towns, the Grasslands are relatively wild and dangerous.

The Grasslands cover an area of 400 mi by 400 mi. Only one major river enters the grasslands and that is near the capital city of Dresan. Various small streams appear on the plains either from the mountains to the north or from the aquifer under the grasslands. To the north of the Grasslands is a large chain of mountains which arise between the northern coast of the continent and the northern border of the Grasslands of Merakai. West of the grasslands, the land changes into a brushy scrub with a canyons and an increase in woody vegetation (scrub oak, junipers etc.). East of the Grasslands is a cold desert dominated by sagebrush, creosote bush, and pinon pines. Below the grasslands is Korton forest.

The Thornbrush River is the largest river on the continent and is formed from its two forks on the western side of the Grasslands. At the fork sits the capital city, Dresan. The river is navigable by river boat all the way from Dresan to the coastal city Martillan.

Contiental Map - Scanned, Badly

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