forum What is the most interesting natural landmark in your world?

Started December 28, 2017 by @andrew health_and_safety flash_onAdmin

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How did it get there? What do the locals think about it? What do people far away think about it?

My world building efforts are still in their early days so I haven't come up which much. That said I think the most interesting landmark would have to be the Elderweald, which is a sizable forest, graveyard and library all in one.

When the Barrow Elves settled in the area that would become the Elderweald, they brought with them a memory preservation technique. Through ritual the Elves would bury one of their own and then plant a seed upon their grave that would drink of the departed's nutrients and eventually grow into a mighty tree full of ancient wisdom. This isn't to say the tree becomes sentient or that an Elf's spirit lives on behind the bark, but rather memories are imprinted and can be accessed by skilled Sorcerers to be viewed inside their minds. In this way the Barrow Elves make sure that outsiders cannot easily steal their secrets, though any not among their number tend to view the entire woodland as haunted and not worth setting foot inside anyway.

@LoreAbidingCitizen that sounds wonderful! What a creative thought! It has definitely sparked some ideas to include in my own world building.

either the great tree where the royals of the forest fairies live (all forest fairy kingdoms are built around the largest tree in the forest, where the royal family lives, and it has a library where they keep the histories of the realm), or the mountain where luna lives in the second novel because it's a mountain and has one of the few natural gates between realms.

I think the most interesting landmark in my world is the Ethereal Hollow. It's a cave whose mouth is made entirely of a gemstone called Blue Tourmaline. Most of the common folk simply chalked this up to "magic". The true reason is the High Relic held within. It's called the Crown of the Millennium; it has the power to transmute certain objects and grant the wearer teleportation.
Anyways, thanks for reading this nonsense paragraph I made.

I'm not sure exactly yet because I haven't finished much of the world building yet, but one cool thing I have is a small island that is lit entirely on fire. And it is the only way for one of my characters blessed by the fire god to be able to contact him.

The Divided Ranges- A mountain range that has been caught in the crossfire of wars for millennia
I could go on about how the lore of these mountains links with the lore of the creation of the world but that would take too long.
To be really simple, a deity slept beneath the mountains, an enemy of the world's creator, Lins. Many people had died there and the deity collected their souls to give itself strength to awaken. At the time of the prophesied awakening, though, the spirits of dawn and dusk prompted heroes to face the deity and banish it back to its own creator, Duns.
Even thought the deity is gone, no one ever goes into those mountains and comes out again.

There's this tree a mile tall, and thick as a mansion. Long story short, it grew right over a rift in the space-time-magic continuum which gave it, and the forest around it magical properties.

There's a large desert called the Shiara Desert, known for its volcanic activity. The whole place used to be a lava field millennia ago, but wind erosion and eventual cooling turned the area into a vast desert. The interesting part is the lava tunnels that are rich in stone and metals, but they have since been lost to time. You can tell where the volcanos used to be due to the black sand made from worn obsidian. Those patches of black sand get so hot they burn wood, which is why no one ever travels near those areas.

In my world there’s a massive skeleton that spans over a large amount of area. The Skeleton is largely reptile like in appearance but it still doesn’t resemble any known species on Earth (though this skeleton isn’t found on Earth.) By all means, a creature of this size, even in this world, probably shouldn’t even existed. The humans investigating this world were shocked to discover it and some worried on how it died (natural causes, or was it killed by something?). However, the skeleton is simply one of many still existing in the world.
The skeleton was also found to be immune from the acidic rains on this planet, so the humans used it as shelter, and eventually built their first colony in the skeleton’s ribcage (not lasting very long either.) So now the skeleton is seen as a discovery of larger creatures than we could ever imagine (this specific skeleton spanned over a few mountains), but it was also seen as a shelter and provided info for the humans to research acids and how they could defend themselves as.

There is a very large ‘mountain’ (it’s more of a rock hill…) in which many caves have formed. Technically those caves are lava tubes. But in those tubes is where the higher tier demons and heavenly creatures would live. They had a council and would be the ones leading the world.

I'd say the Mountain Pride, purely because it named after the general who invaded it, and years later, is unihabited by the locals.

My world is really uninteresting in terms of landscape at the moment. But I do have an interesting semi-natural thing. There’s this hollow space under the ground in a desert because a pyramid was built just by magically moving all the sand up. Because of the magical means used to do this and how quickly the pyramid was made and all the magic that goes on inside it (because it’s really just a house for this crazy lady) there’s a sort of warp in it so you can go to different places and different times (and she’s been trying to figure out without getting lost if you can go to different realities).

Let’s see…one of the more interesting places in my world is probably the giant river in center of the country. It is absolutely massive, and serves as a crucial meeting place for the different cultures. Also, it is full of these huge white eels that are the descendants of dragons, and beautiful poisonous fish.

not necessarily in "my world," but my character Sash lives in a grand temple in the mountains, known as the 奇迹寺 (or Qíjī sì). Partially constructed of gold and copper, the temple had become the centerpiece of many fearsome myths in the area, the bulk of them due to the temple's mysterious disappearance some 200 years prior. This temple is located beside Ranwu Lake, Eastern Tibet's largest lake.