The Jangwa Desert
World Bible
Spring 2023
"The harsh desert climate of the Jangwa is perhaps the most hostile in the world, and failure to respect the deadly temperatures and treacherous storms of the desert will lead to a swift and painful demise. The region is almost entirely devoid of vegetation, save for a few scattered oases and vegetative areas on the region’s northern and western borders. For the most part, the area is very sparsely populated, with dense pockets of population concentrated around priceless resources throughout the desert."
Created as part of a world-building exercise in the spring of 2023, The Jangwa Desert is a world bible detailing the peoples, cultures, and histories of the world previously explored in The Aquarius. To create this bible, I performed research
on the histories of real-world desert-dwelling societies to inform my work, and even pulled a bit from my own experience growing up in Arizona.
One of the main things I wanted to focus on when creating this document was the story of the world itself. Why have these settlements been built here and what challenges needed to be overcome along the way? What new practices or traditions might emerge in overcoming them? How did those currently controlling these valuable resources end up doing so? I made sure to challenge myself by asking these questions about every detail I chose to include, ranging from borders between empires to the migration patterns of tiny locusts across the desert. I look forward to the opportunity of allowing an audience to experience this world, whether that be through another RPG campaign or via another medium.