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Prax and the Genert Wastes

Posted on November 28, 2022

So let’s think a little bit about Prax. As we all know, Prax is the western and comparatively fertile part of the Genert Wastes. Prax gets about 46 cm of rain and 55 cm of snow (that’s about 52 cm of precipitation in total). It gets NO rain in Fire Season and only a smattering in Earth Season. Thus by Dark Season, Prax is dry, and wildfires are common in Earth Season and early Dark Season. If the Desert Winds blow towards Dragon Pass in late winter or spring, there might not be any precipitation at all that year.

When Prax gets rain, it is too much for the hard clay, exposed stone, and sand that makes up most of the ground. Water rushes off to die in the Dead Place, tearing up the ground with flash floods. Shortly after the rainstorm is over, the ground is bone dry again. With one notable exception, all of Prax’s rivers are seasonal.

Most of Prax is covered with scattered scrub, with some expanses of grasslands. Although the landscape is mostly plains, there are buttes, hills, arroyos, and other distinctive geological features such as Tada’s High Tumulus and the Sleeping City Hills, the Block, Ex, etc.

Most of the grasslands are summer grazing only (they are too dry and dead by winter), but there are a few grasslands still grazeable in winter (along the border with Dragon Pass, the River of Cradles, the Good Place, the Better Place, and the Sacred Grounds). Think of the Praxian tribes and their herds as being animated by something like Brownian Motion, gathering together during the summer in the grasslands, and then scattering to graze in scrub, or to try to fight for winter grasslands.

Prax is hot in summer – daily highs about 43 C are common in early Fire Season – but it can be cold in winter. Snowfall Is common in Dark Season, but it rarely sticks around, as a morning athat starts at -7 C might be 18 C by midday.

The Praxians can survive in Genert’s Wastes, but it is tougher than Prax. The grasslands there are fewer and farer between, and Vulture Country is a band some 30-40 km wide that is bone dry and nearly waterless. The Desert Wind is stronger in the Wastes, and the Copper Winds burn. But the Praxians can and do survive here – at any given time, perhaps half the Animal Nomads are in Prax. These are vast badlands, largely empty except for monsters and spirits.

Greg Stafford map

This is one of my favorite projections, as it shows Prax right up next to Dragon Pass and Heortland, but also how close Tarsh and Holay are. And the Elder Wilds are just on the other side of the Rockwoods.

And you can see the Shan Shan in the east – beyond that is Kralorela.

Jeff Richard

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Genert Wastes, Map, Prax (homeland)

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