Landforms of the grasslands

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End of third game: archeonexus run
Decembuary 8th 5513.
Time to completion: 409.9 hours (since April, pretty much the only thing I've played). Not QUITE the single longest game I’ve ever played (CK2 run was that at 477.1 hours, but it was also not continuous).
Seed: Mythic
Cassandra Classic, Adventure Story
Notable Content Mods: Rimworld of Magic, D Elves and many many others.
(Zzzt! and solar flares disabled; after the first game I vowed they were just not fun at all, and even dealing with the latter wit RF fuses wasn’t worth the hassle.)
Colony Stats:
Wealth: 22024494 Items: 935023 Buildings: 861514 People/animals: 227958
Major Threats: 122 Enemy raids: 94
Deaths: 2 (The deaths are merely temps.)
Notable memes: God-Emperor, Supremacist, Progressive, Transcendent
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This was started as a custom solo necromancer run, my third ever Rimworld game and the first on 1.4; spinning off my Wrath of the Righteous character, or rather, from the Inevitable Excess DLC (which I had just finished prior to this run).
It went on a lot longer than I might have anticipated, but I 100% blame that on discovering MrSamual Streamer at the time Android Utopia started and the ballooning of my mod list...
Axatrox Excess woke up on a random place, not a lich and all alone, without even his magic. He was aware that is dear companions - or at least their similarly Excess counterparts Ast-Salem and Aileh were somewhere out there...
The plan was to do the archeonexus ending, and also explore a lot more mods. I started out with having no skill degradation mod, but kept the 20 skill cap until the final base.
My first mistake was not using the faction editor. I had previously used Lord of the Rims Elves, but I felt it had added too much stuff, so I tried D elves instead. It also has a load of really overpowered gear (that I really only replaced with protector armour at base three). It also spawned, like six elven factions, and I thus spent the game fighting more elves than I could shake a stick at. (Notably, the overwhelming majority of the colonists by the end had been elves...)
There were definitely too many factions overall. I think as well, another game where I don't plan to base hop, I shall steal MrStreamer's idea of only having a smaller world.
My second mistake was not making my stating dhampire custom genotype be xenogenes instead of germline genes by accident. Nor a major issue, but it was a bit of a pain to start with.
(I also accidently forced everyone to spawn with the necromancer trait, but nixed that very quickly!)
Custom, fluid ideology (first time I had tried fluid). Started out with God Emperor and went from there.
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Hauntfall was small, on a random map (which turned out to be very far south). No kill box this time as such, just using Embrasures (from that mod). No under-mountain structures.
My plan for Axatrox to be solo fairly quickly went by the wayside, and by the time he was ready to move on, he's already accrued several girlfriends (who went with him). Perxisys, Olazeiros (who became something of the alpha girl), Wyngwyn and Morrison, an early Woo! Skeleton from the mod of the same name and one of the only two I ever saw.
(Morrison was a beast, since she was constructor and crafter, and because she didn't sleep was a phenomenal asset.)
I had initially allowed multiple spouses for the males (for Axatrox, for when he found Aileh and Ast-Salem, God-emperor and all), but was trying to keep it down, after the mess unlimited polyamory had the first time.
But this quickly spiralled out of hand, and reformations expended the females spouses out to multiple (I dev-moded them bi) to eliminate the shared bed issues.
Notably Wyngwyn picked up a Grain's Hyperboloid (from Rimlaser), which she kept through all three bases and it was amazing because of the absurd range. (Olazerios also got a legendary monoword early on which she kept too.)
I had some early successes with bio sanctums, and before moving off, had genetically modified the main characters into new forms, which they retained until the end game.
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The second base, Bonecliff (where I apparently singularly failed to take any screencaps and had to try and go back to get them) was in an area of permanent summer northwards, in a savanna/mountain region, with a big lake in the middle, open only to the south and with a bit of lava.
I thought it would be defensible, but it was a big pain. I attempted to use a variety of turret mods by this point. I experimented with mechanoids a bit, but, honestly, wasn't overly struck. One of the problems being, unless you repeatedly fight war queens all day, there's no actual SOLUTION for wastepacks. You can move them around, or shoot them off, but that's not a solution, really.
I dropped Misc Robots and autocleaner, as they started to be problematic (TPS and just getting stuck).
Embrasures (the stand-alone mod) went, replaced by the various industrial dawn and fortification mods.
I also brought in a load of the VE expanded stuff. In the VE mods was VE cooking, which is was a bit disappointed with. Desserts and bakes were cool, I guess, but nothing else seemed worth doing. Cheese and the canned food felt particularly pointless. (And that it was impossible to make cans of baked beans is a travesty). Not sure I’ll bother in future.
I also kept the population small there. This, though, was where the real mess with lovers started. Every single colonist that showed up that wasn't unwaveringly loyal was female - even the damned zombies! At this point, I am Axatrox threw up out hands and said "sod in, then, Axatrox plus girls only then!"
In Axatrox's defence, as a worshipper of Golarion's Urugotha (goddess of undeath and a bit of hedonist) it wasn't totally out of character.
Subsequent reforms opened out to females having unlimited spouses as well. Only picked at the genetic engineering this time.
I ended up making a sort of kill box to funnel the enemies better into the turret anyway.
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Moved onto the final base: Ironskull (see initial image!) I thought going onto a mechanoid intrusion sounded fun and looked cool. I figured I could fish for meat. I wisely picked on which also crossed with grassland (also permanent summer - at least until an ice age happened...) Wisely because, turns out, you can't fish in mechanoid intrusion.
It was also a much more open map than I expected, which requires a lot of wall building.
I started out with a single fortified entrance, attempting to use , basically, a real-world gatehouse (double towers), behind which was defensive positions and turrets (expended out with additional turret mods).
This base, I experimented a lot more and took much longer (as much again as the previous two bases and more). I made full use of the warrants mod to retrieve Aileh, Ast-Salem and Axatrox's other girlfriends. I made seven tier one androids (I'd previous made one or two in the prior bases) to serve as cleaners and general labour and that did quite well.
Skill cap came fully off with endless growth.
A lot more mods got added (mostly MrStreamer's fault) a I Saw Cool Thing. The most notably would be Rim of Madness Bones, and Redmattis' Big and Small Genes and Vampires, Demons and the Undead and ESCP Necromantic Thralls.
For one thing, and I 150% blame this on MrStreamer, I ended up building a fricking skull palace. Not to start with, but later, the base basically moved over and what was original the first suite of rooms became the reactor and server rooms. But once I had bones, it then became necessary to steadily replace first the palace, and eventually most of the main base area, so that it was all Built From The Bones Of My Enemies. (Disappointingly, the bone throne - which Axatrox NEVER used anyway - did not play well with camera+ and oddly sizes itself when zoomed out.)
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I experimented with both VE androids and the to-tier Android tiers reforged (with a mid-game switch to the updated version, which nearly caused all the drones to grind to a halt with the new lubrication mechanic).
The one droid, Haunt, I built, apparently was incapable of romance, which was sort of a shame, but the VE androids too so much longer to be able to build and they are less flexible. (It's also not clear whether you have to upgrade them with regular bionics.)
The necromantic thralls mod is SO MUCH BETTER than Rimworld of Magic necromancer, it's not even funny. When I got to base three, I basically abandoned the RoM thralls save one, and used the necromancer thralls. Not only were they not slaves, but their own classification, they didn't randomly changes skills (so you got what you got), you COULD put bionics on them, and you could even give them RoM classes; most importantly, they didn't have that frack-awful -2 speed debuff. The whole necromancy path in RoW was overall very disappointing and I basically never used much from it. I totally abandoned the lich spell as being just not worth the cost at all. (Why, when everyone was ageless already?)
Redmattis' mods also gave me stuff like the xenogerm cloner and integrator. This, plus Oops all Gene Banks let me actually make a serious effort at gene collection. Though some of the girls waited until basically the end game to get their genes upgrades, thanks to Vamps, Demons and Undead, I snagge4d a load of nice useful genes.
More or less the final thing I did was apply archeometabolism, plus a small collection of genes (including very diligent student, flirty, very high libido, natural armour and perfect body) to basically everyone and really get that hedonism going. (I don't think I could have actually added the hedonism precept which is a bit of a shame, but never mind.)
Vanilla expanded psycasts I found generally very uninspiring - never mind the comparisons to RWoM, they just didn't seem to be worth the micro of just, like shooting with guns. With the nerf of a couple of days ago, even the one skill I did use a few times (Enchant Item) is now basically pointless and I am doubful I'll bother with it again.
Prison Labour was also a pointless addition, since I never used it and I think that and prisoner recreation made the job harder than it needed to be.
I tried out Rimnauts 2. While it is definitely a very cool mod, the mining expeditions took a lot of time and effort to do (even when Wyngwyn got a robot surrogate with a Jotun frame to go bonkers fast on mining). The better deep scanners mods were arguably less work.
High deconstruction yield precept was AMAZING, allowing me to Build Base (or Re-Build Base) without worrying about it. Definitely one I'll be using regularly.
I had the rimworld roads mod, but basically never used it, since by the time I was looking at doing that, I had STRS ships.
I had Rimefeller and Rimatomics in the pack since the start, but really only used them at Ironskull. The turrets are, as I expected, amazing. I didn't get very far into the nuclear stuff though, because it was only at the very end game that I used up enough rods to be able to make plutonium to get at the rest of the tree. So no nuking everyone off the planet, not without just a lot of waiting around.
Of the various turret mods they were a bit mediocre otherwise. Except for Rimlaser. Not only is rimlaser great because lasers are Better Than Projectiles, but their range is sufficiently good that were actually, like, USUABLE as real-world defensive positions. The crappy range of vanilla and vanilla-like turrets basically precludes this.
Rimlaser was just fantastic, though. Probably the mod I think was by biggest single delight overall, between the Hyperbololid, the laser weapons (sod the damage, the range was ace) and the larger laser turrets, which were beautiful in concert with Rimatomics obelisks, meaning for the first time ever, I felt like I had a proper knock-nod Nod base.
The main entrance getting a kill box was a very late addition, after the entrance fortifications. The final bit was to try and create two lines of laser turrets to basically shoot people as they passed through, but far enough away (and behind barbed wire) to encourage them to walk through instead of stopping to fight the turrets. Kind of worked, but takes a lot of space obviously.
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Special shout out to Fortifications - Industrial Citadels Multirail rocket launcher, capable of wiping out hapless raids all by itself. Though I had to watch both the Rimatomics HELs and VE security small shields, as both could get in the way!
One take-away was that I DEFINITELY needed a mod that gave more trade ships. They were so very rare, and since I was an enemy of the empire, getting tech prints became next to impossible. I sent Olazerios around every allied settlement (allied usually through the gifts of human leather...!) TWICE at one point and found nary a one. As a result, I was missing a few things at the end (Fleshshaping, and Altered Carbon's cortical modification).
The change from ATR to the new split mod skymind also broke the tech tree, so I couldn't research skymind core. (Fortunately, another mod let me make persona cores for Haunt), which was a shame, since I'd have played with those as well.
By the end, the game was creaking a bit under the load. Interaction bubbles had stopped showing up, there were weird bugs.
So today, I finished out converting/recruiting/gene-tailoring a couple more girls for the harem polycule, then decided that I would round off by triggering three simultaneous raids while Axatrox worked on the last bit of archeo structure research.
The game really, really struggled. The raids all showed up on the same corner, so they didn't even interact much except with the outer defences. Despite saving and reloads and one restart, I got through it (though the one necromancer slave, Skeleton Archer, inexplicably lost his Undead IV (Excess) hediff and became sort of alive for some reason (and I couldn’t 't fix it dev mode). But by this point it was just a case of forcing Axatrox to do the last research, getting everyone onto the Pelican to go to the last site. Funnily enough, even landing right in the centre, the mechanioids went down pretty fast!
This has been long and rambly, and I've probably forgotten half what I've intended to put here as I've thought about this over the past few months, but I'll call it here!
This playthrough has officially taken me to highest logged time of any game I have logged time to compare two (HBS BATTLETECH is close, being 784 hours to Rimworld's 970).
Most games get only a single game from me. It's very rare for a game to be played more than twice. But even after all this, there is much more I could do for my NEXT game (especially seeing all the different things MrStreamer does). So I have finally made the momentous decision to modify the Top Three Games of All Time - previously Dungeonkeeper 1, TIE Fighter and Planescape Torment - to the top four, and add Rimworld to the list. That is, frankly, quite an achivement, for at least the dubious worth it is!
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Full mod list (end game): (Damn reddit not letting me hide this ina better formatted dropdown...)
Prepatcher; Harmony; Fishery - Modding Library; Core; Performance Fish; Royalty; Ideology; Biotech; Big and Small + Prerequisites Framework; HugsLib; JecsTools; A RimWorld of Magic; Abilities Cooldown Notification; Achtung!; Adjacent Light; Adjustable Genes Regrowing Time; Advanced Biomes (Continued); Dubs Mint Menus; More Planning; Allow Tool; Almost There!; A Dog Said... Animal Prosthetics; Biomes! Core; Biomes! Islands; Cherry Picker; Vanilla Expanded Framework; Vanilla Psycasts Expanded; Alpha Animals; Alpha Biomes; Vanilla Races Expanded - Android; Alpha Genes; Vanilla Cooking Expanded; Vanilla Fishing Expanded; Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Memes and Structures; Alpha Memes; Altered Carbon: Ultratech Unleashed; Animals Logic; Area Unlocker; AssignedWorkbenches; AutoExtractGenes; Autocleaner; Beautiful Outdoors; Better Bed Assignment; Better Explosions; Better Transhumanists; Better ground-penetrating scanner; Bill Doors' Framework; Bill Doors' Display Shelves; Geological Landforms; Biome Transitions; Vanilla Plants Expanded; Biomes! Prehistoric; Bionic icons; Build From Inventory; Camera+; Change map edge limit; Character Editor; Choice Of First Psycaster Path; Choose Your Recipe; Clean Pathfinding 2; Float Sub-Menus; Craft with Color; TDS Bug Fixes; [LTO] Colony Groups; TD Find Lib; Ctrl F; CustomUIScales; Cut plants before building; Damage Indicators; Defensive Positions; Designator Shapes; Do Your F****** Research; Door Clearance; Door Mat; DragSelect; Drop All Inventory; Dub's Paint Shop; Humanoid Alien Races; Mechanical Humanlikes Core; MH: Android Tiers Core; Common Sense; Dubs Break Mod; Dubs Mint Minimap; Dubs Performance Analyzer; Dubs Rimatomics; Dubs Skylights; ESCP - Necromantic Thralls; Enable Oversized Weapons; EndlessGrowth; Retextured Apparel; Erin's Body Retexture; Erin's Hairstyles 2; Better Workbench Management; Everybody Gets One; Faster Biosculpter Pod; Flexible Xenogerms; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Architect; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Security; XML Extensions; Fortifications - Industrial; Fortification Industrial - Citadel; Fortification Industrial -Nuclear Dawn; Fortifications - Medieval; Fortifications - Medieval - Material; Fortifications - Neolithic; Gene Ripper; Gene Trader; Go Explore!; Gradient Hair; Ground Targeter; Heat Map (Continued); Hemogen Extractor; Hold the Grenades; Improve This; Infestations Spawn in Darkness; Integrated Genes; Integrated Xenotypes; Just Copy; Just Put It Over There; Keep Bed Ownership; LBE's A Dog Said Easy Patcher; Loading In Progress; Doors Expanded; Locks 2: Lock Them Out!; MH: Android Tiers; MH: Mechanical Biomimetics; MH: Military Tiers; Mad Skills; Map Preview; Meals On Wheels; Megafauna; Melee Animation; Mid-saver Saver; More Genes; More Ritual Rewards (1.4); More Vanilla Biomes; More Vanilla Turrets 1.1+; [XND] Turret Extensions; More Vanilla Turrets - Turret Extensions Patch (Continued); Multi-Bed Royalty Patch (Continued); Music Expanded Framework; Music Expanded Core; No Random Apparel on Ideology Edit; Numbers; Numbers - Extract Skull AddOn; Numbers Trait AddOn; Vanilla Furniture Expanded; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Spacer Module; One bed to sleep with all; Oops All Gene Banks; Architect Icons; Optional Icons for Architect Icons; P-Music; Packs Are Not Belts; Performance Optimizer; Permeable Terrain; Pick Up And Haul; Vanilla Expanded - Ideology Patches; Vanilla Expanded - Royalty Patches; Polyamory Beds (Vanilla Edition); Power Tab 2; Predator Hunt Alert; Therapy; Prison Labor; Prisoner Recreation; Prosthetic No Missing Body Parts (Continued); Quality Colors; QualityBuilder; Quick Stockpile Creation; RPG Style Inventory Revamped; Raids For Me; Raise The Roof 1.4; Random's Gene Assistant; Reasonable Components; Relevant Stats In Description; Replace Stuff; Replace Stuff Mod Compatibility; ResearchPowl; Retextured Sculptures; Rim of Madness - Arachnophobia (Continued); Rim of Madness - Bones; RimCities; RimHUD; Universum; RimNauts 2; RimQuest (Continued); RimSaves; Rimefeller; Rimlaser; Rimsenal - Hair pack; Roads of the Rim (Continued); Romance On The Rim; Room Food; SRTS Expanded; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Power; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Production; Simple FX: Smoke; Scattered Flames; Self Dyeing; Share The Load; Show Fertility on Health Tab; Show Known Techprints; Simple FX: Smoke Patches; Simple FX: Splashes; Simple FX: Vapor; Simple sidearms; SkyMind Network; Smart Farming; Smart Medicine; Smart Turret Covering; Smarter Construction; Snap Out!; Sparkling Worlds - Full Mod; Interaction Bubbles; SpeakUp; Stonecutting Extended; Subsurface Conduit; Tacticowl (temporary beta); The Price Is Right; Toggleable Overlays; Toggleable Readouts; Toggleable Shields; Too Many Areas; TradeHelper; Trading Options; Ugh You Got Me; Use Bedrolls; Big and Small Genes; Vampires, Demons, and the Undead; Vanilla Animals Expanded; Vanilla Apparel Expanded; Vanilla Apparel Expanded — Accessories; Vanilla Armour Expanded; Vanilla Base Generation Expanded; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Art; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Medical Module; Vanilla Hair Expanded; Vanilla Ideology Expanded - Relics and Artifacts; Vanilla Races Expanded - Custom Icons; Vanilla Races Expanded - Highmate; Vanilla Races Expanded - Phytokin; Vanilla Social Interactions Expanded; Bradson's Main Button Icons for VE Textures; Vanilla Textures Expanded; Vanilla Weapons Expanded; Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Coilguns; Vanilla Weapons Expanded - Non-Lethal; Wa! Skeleton! (Continued); Wall Light; WeaponStats; What's Missing?; Windows; Won hair_men; Work Tab; Yayo's Animation (Continued); [BETA] Simple Warrants; RimFridge: Now with Shelves!; Vanilla Furniture Expanded - Farming; [FSF] No Default Shelf Storage; [GMT] Trading Spot; Vanilla Traits Expanded; [KV] More Trait Slots [1.4]; [LYN] Cookie Genes (Skin and Hair Colors); [SYR] Set Up Camp; ↁ Elves; RocketMan - Performance Mod

Places were (and still are) often named for their physical appearance. These could be regional colloquialisms but usually it was a literal translation of whatever was nearby.
d100 geographic terms for place names

1. Fell - High Dwarves Fell - A fell ^{from Old Norse fell, fjall, "mountain”} is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain or moor-covered hill.
2. Moor - Craggy Moor - nounBRITISH a tract of open uncultivated upland; a heath.
3. Heath - Widow’s Heath - BRITISH an area of open uncultivated land with characteristic vegetation of heather, gorse, and coarse grasses.
4. Fallow - Gamekeepers Fallow - (of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown.
5. Bluff - Hangman’s Bluff - a steep cliff, bank, or promontory.
6. Grove - Walnut Grove - A grove is a small group of trees with minimal or no undergrowth, or a small orchard planted for the cultivation of fruits or nuts.
7. Hollow - Sleepy Hollow - a low, wooded area, such as a copse. Hollow (landform), a small vee-shaped, riverine type of valley.
8. Copse - Gooseberry Copse - a thicket of bushes or a small stand of trees.
9. Thicket - Thornberry Thicket - a dense growth of bushes or trees
10. Fork - Piney Fork - a split or confluence where a river or trail divides or converges
11. Wound - Aksihelios' Wound - A crack on the ground that extends for miles, perhaps might not even have a bottom. Usually named for the person that discovers it, or the first poor fellow that falls in it.
12. ⁠Bloodwound - Ironjaw's Bloodwound - A wound with a river of lava on the bottom. Commonly named for dragons of legend that were fought or defeated in the nearby areas.
13. ⁠Stitch - Stiches of Ludovika the III - A bridge or set of bridges that cross a wound. Normally named after the architect that builds the bridge.
14. ⁠Corpse - Khorestvia's Corpse - Any terrain where a war ended or a decisive battle happened. Named after the country, kingdom or province that was defeated.
15. ⁠Anvil - Xhaxtrann's Anvil - Mesas located exclusively in scorching deserts with no endemic life or vegetation around. Believed to be gates to hell, named after demons.
16. ⁠Jagds - Jagds Heliopolis - Any city or landmass that has been elevated into the skies regardless of the means.
17. ⁠Dorsa- Dorsa Heliopolis - The crater, lake or empty space left after a city has been elevated into the skies.
18. ⁠Tear - Rhumaean Tears - Any settlement built on cavernous ceilings, be it hollowed stalactites or hanging buildings tethered to the roof. Named after the water that constantly drips.
19. ⁠Mourn - Murkwater Mourn - Any shanty town built from trash or derelict vehicles and whatever remains of a battlefield.
20. ⁠Shadow - Lutton's Shadow - Ruins of a capital city that has been destroyed, be it by war, plague or any other nefarious mean. Named after the last ruler of the city.
21. ⁠Dream - Almhoud's Dream - A lush and safe area in an otherwise inhabitable wasteland. Named after the person that discovered it.
22. Bury Fort. E.g. Clevebury
23. Wold. Forest. E.g. Stow-in-the-Wold
24. Cleeve/ Cleve. A narrow river valley. E.g. Clevebury
25. Coombe. A valley or dell bordered by cliffs.
26. Cheste Cester / Caistre. A castle or fort. E.g. Gloucester
27. Brig. A place with bridge. E.g. Brigstow
28. Stow. A meeting place. E.g. Brigstow or Stow-in-the-Wold
29. Mont Mountain or Peak. Piedmont.
30. Fold Pen for Animals, or a Fenced-in Pasture. Alfold.
31. Wic or Wich: Fortified or Dwelling Place, Dunwich
32. Barrow or Low: A burial place. Dunlow
33. Hord or Hoard: Where Treasure Was Buried
34. Wye: An Idol or Shrine.
35. Trow or Tree: A Tree.
36. Ditch A Boundary Ditch.
37. Stan or Stone - A Boundary Stone.
38. Born or Bourne: A Spring.
39. Font: Spring or Fountain.
40. Broch or Brook: A Stream.
41. Twisla or Whistle - The Confluence of Two or More Streams
42. Fors or Foss: Waterfall.
43. Ford A River Ford or Crossing
44. Pul, Pol, or Pool: A pool. Blackpool
45. Much, Muc, Muk, or Muck: A Muddy Place, or where Swine Live.
46. Slap, Slip, Slǣp: A Slippery or Muddy Place. Slapton
47. Bury: A Grove, or Where a Grove Used to be, that then Got Turned into a Fort. Shrevesbury
48. Strop: Outlying Hamlet. Adlestrop
49. Coomb, Cumb, Cumm: Valley, Cup, or Small Measure. Cumberland
50. Caster, Chester, Cester, Ceter: Camp or Fortification (Latin) Lancaster.
51. Caer (or Kaer / Cair / Kêr) prefix as in "Caer Morhen" translates literally to "Castle Morhen"
52. Tor (or Torr) as a prefix or suffix literally translates to "Tower" but often refers to a larger fortification, as in "Wyvern Tor"
53. Moot A meeting place
54. Bastille / Baile / Donjon / Motte / Brig other words for fort or castle
55. Holm - Hill
56. Veld - Field
57. Dûr - Hard / firm
58. Gard / Guard / Ward - Protect
59. Berg / Bergh / Barg - Hill / Mountain / Refuge / Shelter
60. Vald - Seat of power / principality
61. Wield / Weald - Wild
62. Hold / Holt - holding or region of control
63. Wold / Wode / Ved - forest or woods
64. Ard – Ardgort "High Field" – the Gaelic word for “high”. (IRL, Ardglass)
65. Dun – Dun Cormaic “Fortress of the Raven’s Son” – the Gaelic word for “fortress/stronghold”. (IRL, Doonbeg)
66. Droichead - Fionndroich “White Bridge” – the Gaelic word for “bridge”. (IRL, Drogheda)
67. Gleann – Gleancuin “Silent Valley” – the Gaelic word for “valley”. (IRL, Glencree)
68. Inis – Inis Doire “Island of Oak Grove” – the Gaelic word for “island”. (IRL, Inniskeen)
69. Loch – Loghnua “New Lake” – the Gaelic word for “lake”. (IRL, Loughgall)
70. Mullach – Mulaghsean “Old Summit” – the Gaelic word for “summit”. (IRL, Mullaghbawn)
71. Sliabh – Slievesail “Willow Mountain” – the Gaelic word for “mountain”. (IRL, Slieve Donard)
72. Tir – Tyrcolum “Colum’s County” – the Gaelic word for “territory”. (IRL, Tirconnell)
73. Bowl / Cauldron. A crater or volcano's caldera
74. Claws / Fingers / Talons. Jagged stone formations sticking out of the ground.
75. Pit. A sinkhole
76. Serpent. A winding path. E.g. Serpent pass, Serpent river
77. Shield / Wall. A mountain range separating 2 regions
78. Table. A flat topped mesa.
79. Coulee - Splitpass Coulee - Noun (Canadian French): Term that loosely translates to "to flow" and is the name for a deep ravine or gully.
80. Kettle - Giant's Kettle - Noun (British): Term that describes a (relatively) circular deeper lake with steep sidewalls that formed as a result of stagnating ice that was buried in sediment and slowly melted away, following the recession of a glacier.
81. Crevasse - Endless Crevasse - Noun (French): Term that means a deep open crack (typically into a glacier)
82. Dell - Tasimer's Dell - Noun (Middle English): Term describing a secluded, often grassy, hollow or valley.
83. Spring - Iron Spring - Noun (Middle English): A place where the water table meets the surface, or an aquifer meets the surface and water pours out overland.
84. Field - Springfield - an open patch of grassland without trees
85. Land - Oakland - an area or region
86. Port - Portland - a dock or boatyard
87. Mond - Moundsville - an elevated area or short mountain
88. Ridge - Ridgefield - the edge, usually of a cliff
89. Lane - Shady Lane - a path or walking trail
90. Dale - Shadowdale - a valley, especially a broad one 92.

Occasionally walking across standard plains, climbing through rocky mountain passes, and smacking insects as you pass through a jungle can be mundane. So, I like to spice up locations in my world by meshing different types of terrain, magic, minerals, and flora that normally would not go together. In many cases these unique locations, tend to be a small isolated area of discovery, wonder, and sometimes a great fighting site. Feel free to use these just as that or create entire regions that have mysterious properties and keep your players guessing and engaged with the environment.
When creating an environmental mesh I keep the description short and rarely go into extreme details on the location, unless I expect my players to remain in the area for an extended period of time. Doing this does require some improvisation when the the players interact with the environment but the results tend to be a lot of fun.
When creating a new location I use 2-4 descriptors from categories like (but not limited to), terrain, magic spells, minerals, weather, and color. I personally use Wikipedia pages that list terrains, minerals, and weather types. Then I begin to make a brainstorming list like below by meshing them all together.
Once I’ve finally found a few I would like to use I then create a short description:
Examples:
#7: Player Description: Over the next few hundred feet you notice the grass slowly fades from green to grey. Before the grass is fully discolored you see stones from the size of your pinkie to boulders the size of a barbarian floating anywhere from a few inches off the ground to twenty feet in the air.
DM Description: The rocks will easily move out of the way if pushed. They will collide cascading and ripple off one another if pushed hard or thrown and will slowly resettle
#8 Player Description: As you continue West you hear a grinding sound in the distance. A light dust fills the air as you approach. Looking down a slight decline you see smooth stones tumbling over one another. They all flow like a river south and look to be come from the mountain in the north
DM Description: I wonder which player is going to jump in first…. Treat it like a river with some possible crushing blug dmg, maybe only make is a few feet deep. If random encounter have a bullet attack.
#34 Player Description: The ground is marbled with black and red dirt that swirls as gusts of wind pickup. Thin streams of dark green liquid spread like veins across the landscape. Occasionally deep purple flowers with large leafy bulbs can be seen as the only plant life living in these blighted lands.
DM Description: Osirous definitely puts his hands in the acid first. The purple plants act as a natural ointment against the acid, Enough of it could give temp resist and full protection on the hands [very briefly] if enough is applied to reach into an acid pool.
Brainstorming List ( A brain storm would be a weather condition...eww)

1. Hilly forest with spiky trees and sapphire colored rain storms
2. Icy Tundra speckled with lava geysers and strong blizzards
3. A cold desert with air-quake storms (strong vibrations in the air)
4. A lake surrounded by high cliffs with anti-gravity waterfalls (water flows up)
5. A dry desert that experiences thunderstorms but the ground is always dry
6. Ashy black soot covered hills with lush flora (no volcanoes)
7. Grey-grass grassland with small floating stones that can be plucked from the air
8. A river of smooth stones flowing into a crater flowing from a mountain
9. Volcano bluff where it erupts horizontally into a lava streams and ponds
10. Lacustrine plane filled with a tan ooze from a frozen lake
11. A narrow ridge (Arete) separating a shadowy wooden wasteland and an overgrown jungle.
12. A narrow rocky iridium pass with waterfalls draining into a deep pit on one side and a rocky and icy overhang on the other side
13. Cave formation with dark shadowy stone walls that breath and slowly shift
14. A sandy forest of tan\light yellows trees with orange and brown leaves that experiences sand storms
15. Massive dome of lava, inside is a flourishing red forest
16. A stony estuary that flood during rain causing dangerous rock cyclones
17. Hills that slowly flow like gentle waves with calm weather and thrash violently during storms
18. Various islets (small islands) the slowly rise and sink into the sea\large lake
19. Prairie with smooth large pillars of Scolecite (a white and light pink mineral)
20. A gas bubbling marsh with arctic cyclones
21. Red water river that flows through a network of caves with pink glowing flora
22. A forest of metal trees with streams of mercury flowing through it.
23. Kettle lakes pockmark a wasteland of dry brittle brown stone and dirt
24. A swamp with earthquakes that shake up multicolored crystal like flowers that absorb magic.
25. A muddy swamp where breaking sticks and tree branches scream in pain
26. Woods where plants and trees transform into different types of plants and trees
27. Mountainous area with animals that stone shape into their surrounding
28. Forest of trees and plants that identify as undead
29. Crater surrounded by anti-magic field with its own weather inside the field
30. Grassland where the grass is 8-10 ft tall with lots of small potholes ( your ankles will hate this place)
31. Radiating green pond in a wasteland that emits a healing aura
32. A natural cavern overgrown by grey and black plants and dead-end paths act as magical gates to other parts of the cavern
33. Swamp with tall black reeds that lash out like tentacles during heavy wind storms
34. Blighted land with thin streams of acid and the flora is purple
35. Hills that emanate bright light day and night
36. Mountain made entirely of bone and fossils
37. Swamp where the trees sweat and horizontal lightning storms flash between them
38. Thick forest of stalagmites with prickly spikes and a few inches of still water on the ground
39. A foggy valley where a red ooze occasionally seeps up from the ground
40. A valley between four mountains with continuous storms of wind, ice, heat, or lightning
41. Plagued woods with plants that have humanoid aberrations like a mouth, an ear, or a small hand.
42. Small water cyclones in the shape of animals migrate on an ice tundra
43. Rocky desert where daily earthquakes cause rocks to levitate and water to rise to the surface
44. Jungles with thick fog that continually rises and falls, some plants shine with a natural faerie fire aura.
45. Forest where all the trees and flora levitate and occasionally fall before levitating again at a later time
46. Glacial mountain surrounded by a wide bubbling river in a tropical environment
47. Mines where the walls secrete and thick black oily substance
48. Snowy hills with the occasional foam avalanche
49. Jungle where all the flora is furry and all the fauna is leafy.
50. A Tossing Tree around a lake uses its branches to throw people into the lake.
51. Salt-lakes with beaches in the middle of a wasteland along with hot springs.
52. Ocean\Sea is covered in a thick layer of poisonous fish scales
53. Ocean of hills where the waves never crash but are always rolling
54. Aquatic mountain, and entire mountain made of water, it’s outside is like an upside down tornado\cyclone
55. Coral reef with dark pits that birds fly out but never fly in

I’m sure you guys get the idea, If it’s an area the players will be in for awhile I’ll also brainstorm a few ideas about how local fauna and humanoids survive and use the terrain to their advantage.
Also, it just so happens that u/Mimir-ion also just posted about Exceptional Ecosystems. This posting was not planned with theirs but I do like to say “Great minds think alike” and I believe we both felt this is a topic that could use a little more attention. So please take a look at his suggestions too.
Mimir-ion's Post
My Brainstorming Sources:
List of Landforms
List of Minerals
List of Weather Conditions
Edit: Typos so many typos
Edit2: My first gold! tytytytytyty also, I found this image on worldbuilding and thought it perfect for this. Image of different terrain

1. Air moving across the face of the Earth 3.2 Wind
2. Windless area at the Equator 3.2 Doldrums
3. Surface features that affect climate 3.2 Landforms
4. Prevailing winds in the mid-latitudes 3.2 Westerlies
5. Cold and warm streams of ocean water 3.2 Currents
6. Places located in these latitudes have warm to hot climates. 3.2 Low Latitudes
7. Clouds release moisture on 3.2 Windward side
8. In an El Nino year, precipitation increases along the coasts of 3.2 North and South America
9. Cold ocean currents affect climate by 3.2 Cooling Land
10. These latitudes receive warm air masses in summer and cold ones in winter. 3.2 High Latitudes Why do different areas of Earth have different climates? 3.2 Areas are affected by:
    
11. Latitude
    
12. Elevation
    
13. Landforms
    

4.Currents

1. Wind
   
2. Closeness to Oceans
   
3. The climate region with the widest temperature ranges 3.3 Sub arctic
   
4. A dry area with sparse plant life 3.3 Desert
   
5. An era when glaciers covered large parts of the earth. 3.3 Ice Age
   
6. The climate region with dry winters, wet summers, and year-round high temperatures 3.3 Tropical Dry
   
7. A large and generally treeless grassland area 3.3 Steppe-Prairies
   
8. What describes a Mediterranean climate? 3.3 Mild, Rainy winters and Hot sunny summers
   
9. The terms tropical, dry, mid-latitude, high-latitude, and highlands identify 3.3
   
10. In this kind of a climate, ocean winds bring cool summers and damp winters. 3.3
    
11. In high-latitude climates, these are common. 3.3 Freezing Temperatures
    
12. Burning fossil fuels releases gases that mix with water to form 3.3 Acid Rain (actually cleanses the air) Contrast some of Earth’s Climates. 3.3 1. Tropical both wet and dry latitude difference 23.5 N to 23.5 S
    
13. Temperate
    

a. Sub tropical - 23.5 to about 30 N and S latitudes
b. Mid- Latitudes- 30 to about 60 N and S latitudes
c. Sub arctic- 60 to about 66 N and S Latitudes

1. Arctic- 66 to 90 N and S latitudes
   
2. Marine West Coast- warm summers and cool winters
   

5, Mediterranean- hot summers and cool dry winters
SUBMIT

As an ecologist and anthropologist there are some things I see repeated and thought some tips might be appreciated
Rivers:

• run from high elevation to low, usually along the least energy path (shortest path in terms of energy cost).
• converge from small streams to larger ones and the angle formed by the intersection of those streams points downhill/downslope.
• may branch in the direction of flow when they meet a lake or sea, forming an estuary or a delta.
• do not connect oceans to oceans.
• lakes and wetlands will have many sources flowing into them, but usually only one exit flow.
• rarely cut across mountain ranges, although this is known to happen when rives are older than the mountains and have been able to downcut faster than the mountains rise (eg. Columbia River and the Cascade Range).
• run according to the substrate they are on and create distinct patterns, this is determined by the bedrock or the sediment over which they flow.
• are slope dependent, they meander in flat terrain and run straight(ish) in steep terrain. ___

Continental Plates (Mountains and Rifts):

• mountains generally form where tectonic plates meet (not a universal and they may mark old boundaries such as the Urals & the Appalachians)
• mountains are often found along the margins of continents (see above); If this is where oceans meet a continent (eg. South America & the Pacific) then it’s likely they will be tall, steep, and will have volcanoes (again, there are exceptions depending on what angle the crustal plates are moving relative to each other); If this is where two continental plates meet (India & Asia) there will be Tall mountains and wide-spread chaotic terrain as a result of the impact (eg. the mountains in Central Asia and southern China)
• some mountains will form in relatively solitary locations (eg. Mt Kenya, Hawaii) but these are generally a result of volcanic activity associated with hotspots (Hawaii) or rifting activity (Kenya).
• rifts are where a continental plate is pulling apart, often there are volcanic mountains and activity as well as land uplift adjacent to the rift even if the rift itself is far below the level of the surrounding terrain (eg. The Great Rift Valley). ___

Islands:

• similar to mountains, islands are often a result of tectonic plates meeting (eg. Japan) or pulling apart (eg. Iceland), this type is often associated with volcanic activity.
• some are a result of isolated hotspot activity (eg. Hawaii & the Galápagos), these often have undersea mountains and sister island chains associated with them.
• Where mountain ranges meet the sea they often continue undersea and have offshore islands associated with them, hence island chains.
• undersea rifting zones form extensive underwater mountain ranges that periodically breach the surface, forming islands (eg. Iceland), again, island chains can be a result of this.
• shallow seas may have islands formed where coral reefs grow toward the surface (eg. The Northern Line Islands, The Maldives). Sea level changes and tectonic activity may raise these above sea level, or drop them under. These islands tend to be round and hollow, or long and skinny, with flat topography, these are usually called ‘atolls’ (note that coral reefs often form around other types of islands, resulting in a combination type of island).
• ocean currents along the shore of a continent (longshore drift) will form low coastal islands comprised of sediment usually called Barrier Islands (eg. the Virginia Barrier Islands & Texas Barrier Islands). Some of these may be peninsulas anchored at their base and stretching out, pointing in the direction of water flow.
• sea level rise (or fall) will also create islands from existing topography (eg. the British Islands, islands in the Baltic Sea, western Indonesia). ___

Climate/Weather:

• on a planet there are bands of warmecooler and wettedryer cells of air that help to determine where certain large scale environments exist (eg. grasslands vs forest). These masses of revolving air are called Hadley Cells they are dependent on the size of the planet, the density of the atmosphere, and the speed of rotation. In general air rises at the equator and falls at the poles, the number of cells in between is determined by that and must be an odd number as a result. Venus has one, Earth has three, and Jupiter has many.
• ocean currents have overpowering effects on the climate at local scales and for local regions that may overpower the effects of the large-scale influences (eg. Europe is kept warm and damp by the Gulf Stream, and direction the persistent winds come from, despite being at the latitude of boreal forest in Canada, Peru and Namibia have dry coasts, but abundant marine life due to cold water from Antarctica flowing north and upwelling).
• mountain ranges have similar overpowering local climate effects, forcing rain on one side of them and casting a dry rain shadow on the other side (eg. the Himalaya wet on the India side, dry on the Tibet side; western Oregon wet, eastern Oregon arid; rain forest in northern Iran at the southern end of the Caspian, dry everywhere else).
• the tilt of your planet and the direction it spins will affect your weather and where ecosystems are found as well. ___

Ecosystems, including forests and vegetation:

• are weather and climate dependent, this means that you need to pay attention to your wind and ocean currents.
• rarely have an abrupt transition and generally do not jump abruptly between types (eg. even if deserts and jungles are found on the same latitude you won’t see them adjacent to each other without a large land feature to provide a barrier).
• as above, the placement of mountains, oceans, inland seas, etc. will make for important regional variation.
• trees in tropical environments tend to have broad crowns, while trees in higher latitudes tend to be straight and narrow (tropical trees are collecting light from above, high latitude trees are collecting light from the sides).
• pocket forests often form in protected areas (bases of mountains) and along river margins (called ‘gallery forest’).
• vegetation tends to grow in clumps and patterns based on available resources and seed distribution rather than distributed evenly across the landscape.
• North-South oriented landmasses (and mountains/barriers) will result in a world with greater biodiversity and more different types of ecosystems than East-West oriented landmasses (and mountains/barriers). This is due to the difference between cutting across climate bands rather than staying within the same climate band. ___

Roads:

• tend to follow the contours of the terrain.
• often stay near sources of water, or make a shortest path between them.
• generally follow the margin of ecotones (changes in environment) if the ecological transition is a major one (eg. follow the edge of a forest rather than cutting although it, although there are always exceptions).
• often have small settlements at intersections or near important resources (water, ford, ferry, etc).
• intersections may point toward the nearest major settlement. ___

Settlements:

• are generally built adjacent to important resources especially transportation resources (rivers junctions, road junctions, fords, good harbors, etc).
• are almost always founded near an easily accessible source of fresh water.
• are almost always adjacent to prime food resources, especially agriculture or fishing.
• small settlements are generally ½ day’s walk from each other.
• large settlements are generally around 1-3 days ride by a fast messenger from each other (potentially several weeks by slow caravan) – this can be highly variable though.
• generally are built on one side or another of a waterway, not equally distributed across both sides (although a satellite settlement is common). ___

Harbors:

• Are built in areas protected from wind and waves (if natural protection is missing then artificial breakwalls will be built). ___

Lastly - It’s your world and rules can be broken, but if you do so you need to have a reason why it breaks the audience’s expectations of how things work.
Resources: NPS: rivers and fluvial systems Geology Café: Rivers, Streams, and Water Underground Geology IN: Types of Drainage Patterns Lumen: The Theory of Plate Tectonics N. Carolina Climate Office: General Circulation of the Atmosphere Higgins Storm Chasin: What is a Rain Shadow USC.edu: Ocean Currents and Climate EstrellaMountain.edu: Ecosystem and Community Dynamics Alexander 1977 A Pattern Language- Towns, Buildings, Construction - PDF link.

Environment / Geological Formations Names:
Context: A list of environments & terrain that world builders might want to use in their worlds:
Abandoned Mines or Quarries
Abandoned Structures or Ruins
Alien Encroachment, Alien Environment Foothold (areas near gateways, dimensional rifts, crashed ships, bio-domes, meteor impacts, or a recently opened environment where environs, flora, and fauna from one side have spread to the other side)
Anchialine Pool (a landlocked pool of water with a subterranean connection to the ocean)
Animal / Monster (+ burrow, lair, graveyard, hatching grounds, hive, nest, nesting grounds, warren)
Animal / Monster Trail
Arch (+ natural arch, bridge*, ice arch, sea arch, stone arch )
Archipelago, Island Chain
Aretes (narrow ridge between 2 valleys)
Artesian Well (water under positive pressure coming out of the ground / coming out of a hollow tree)
Ash Field, Ash Plain (area covered in volcanic ash)
Atoll ( ring shaped coral island )
Avalanche Site (+ ice, snow, rock)
Badlands
Barrens
Barrier Island
Barrows
Basalt Columns
Basin, Bowl (landform sunken below the surrounding area)
Bay
Bayou
Beach (+ sand color: black, bluish, brown, green, lavender, orange, pink, red, tan, white, yellow / iron sands)
Blowhole
Blue Hole (a large marine cavern or sinkhole, which is open to the surface and has developed in a bank or island)
Bluff, Bluffs
Bog (+ peat)
Boreal Forest, Snow Forest, Taiga (subarctic coniferous forest)
Bornhardt (dome shaped, steep-sided, bald rock outcropping)
Boulder Field, Block Field, Stone Field
Bowl, Basin (landform sunken below the surrounding area)
Bridge (+ fallen tree, ice, natural, roots, skeletal, stone, tidal, vines, web)
Brook
Burm (narrow ledge or shelf)
Butte (isolated hill or mountain)
Caldera (cauldron-like depression created by collapse of crust above an emptied or partially emptied magma chamber)
Canyon
Cape
Cataract (large waterfall)
Causeway (natural)
Cave, Cavern (+ ice, sea, undersea)
Cenote (pit or sinkhole that exposes groundwater)
Chaparral, Shrubland
Cirque, Corrie (ampitheatre shaped valley created by glacier)
Clearcut (area where all the trees have been cut down)
Cliff
Coast
Coral Forest (+ giant, on land, undersea)
Coral Reef
Cove
Crag
Crater (+ black glass, lake)
Crater Lake
Creek
Crevasse
Crossing
Crystal (type)(+ canyon, cavern, cluster, deposit, druse, field, forest, garden, giant geode, vein)
Dale
Dam (+ beaver, natural)
Desert (+ sand color: black, bluish, brown, green, lavender, orange, pink, red, tan, white, yellow / iron sands)
Dimensional Rift, Planar Rift
Divide
Dry (+ creak, gulch, lake bed, pond, river bed, stream)
Dune, Dunes (+ sand color: black, bluish, brown, green, lavender, orange, pink, red, tan, white, yellow / iron sands)
Dust Bowl
Enchanted / Cursed Forest (+ animated, awakened, candy, crystallized, demonic corruption, flesh abomination, haunted, slime, toxic, etc)
Escarpment (steep slope or long cliff, that separates 2 relatively level areas of different elevation)
Esker (long winding ridge of stratified sand & gravel)
Estuary
Falls
Farm, Farms, Farmland (+ crop type, herd type, fallowed)
Fen
Field, Fields
Field of (cacti, coral, crystals, flowers, fulgurites, fungi, moss, mushrooms, pods, spikes, thorns, vines, webs)
Fissure
Fjord (long narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs)
Flats (+ mud, salt)
Floating Island (levitating, floating on water, floating on lava) [Sky Isles]
Flood Plain
Ford
Forest (type)(+ bamboo, bonsai, boreal, burned, coniferous, cursed, dwarf, dead, dying, evergreen, fungal, giant, haunted, ironwood, of flowers, petrified, pygmy, redwood, spiny, temperate, tropical)
Forest of (cacti, coral, crystals, flowers, fulgurites, fungi, moss, mushrooms, pods, spikes, thorns, vines, webs)
Fulgurite Forest
Fumarole / Fumarole Field - Volcanic gas vents
Fungal Forest
Gap
Garden
Geothermal Mudpot(s)
Geyser (+ blowhole, lava, sand, steam)
Geyser Basin
Giant Footprint, Pawprint, Hoofprint (size: wagon, house, castle, town)
Giant Forest
Giant Fulgurite
Giant Geode
Giant Insect (+ carapace, cocoon, hive, mound, nest, shell, tower, webs)
Giant Lilly Pad
Giant Monster Remains (body, insect carapace, sea shell, skeleton, snail shell, tortoise shell)
Giant Mushroom
Giant Plants (type: bushes, flowers, trees, vines)
Giant Tree
Glacial Horn (sharp pyramid shaped peak)
Glacier
Glade
Glass Field, Glass Plain (site where some event super heated the ground turning the sand into glass or clay into ceramic)
Glen
Gorge
Grassland
Graveyard (type: animal, kaiju, monster)
Grounds (+ breeding, burial, hatching, hunting, nesting, proving, spawning)
Grotto
Grove
Gulch
Gully
Hanging Valley (tributary valley higher than the main valley)
Hellscape (+ burning, frozen, toxic, volcanic)
Hill
Hot Springs
Hurst ( Hillock )
Island, Isles (+ barrier, chain, tidal, volcanic)
Isthmus
Jungle
Kame (irregularly shaped hill made of sand & gravel, left by a glacier)
Key, Keys
Krummholz (stunted windblown trees growing near the tree line on mountains)
Lagoon
Lake (+ arctic, boiling, bubbling, color, fresh water, frozen, hypersaline, inland, of acid, of fire, of lava, salt water, shallow, toxic, underground, volcanic)
Lake Bed (+ dried)
Landing
Landmass (+ floating on water, held up by plants, held up by roots, levitating, on pillars)
Lava (+ fields, flow, geyser, lake, pool, river, sea, tube)
Lava Flow (+ molten, solidified, old)
Lava Tube
Ledge
Levee
Mangrove
Marsh (+ brackish, freshwater)
Massif (isolated mountain or isolated mountain range)
Meadow
Mesa
Mineral (+ deposit, field, surface deposit, vein)
Mire
Moor
Moraine (debris left by a glacier)
Mound
Mount / Mountain
Mountain Cloud Layer (+ above, below, within)
Mudflats, Tidal Flat
Mudflow, Mudslide
Mudpot, Mud pool (acidic hot spring of bubbling mud)
Natural Tower, Pinnacle, Spire, Needle (individual rock column shaped like a vertical shaft)
Natural Water Slide
Nunatak (exposed rocky ridge not covered in ice within an ice field or glacier)
Oasis
Ocean
Orchard, Orchards
Overhang
Overlook
Pack Ice
Pass
Pasture
Paternoster (series of glacial lakes connected by a stream)
Path
Pattern - Large pattern or symbol that can be seen from above (crop circle / geoglyph / natural formation that resembles something)
Peak
Peninsula
Petrified Forest
Pingo (mound of earth covered ice in arctic environments)
Pit, Pits (+ mud, sand, slime, tar)
Planar Rift, Dimensional Rift
Plateau
Point
Pond
Pool, Pools
Prairie
Precipice
Pumice Raft
Quicksand
Rainforest
Rapids
Ravine
Reef
Ridge
Rift Valley
River (+ cascading, flooded, frozen, underground, whitewater rapids)
River Delta
River Valley
Roche Moutonnee (rock formation created by passing of a glacier)
Salt Flats
Salt Marsh
Sand Bar
Sand Pit
Sands (+ sand color: black, bluish, brown, green, lavender, orange, pink, red, tan, white, yellow / iron sands)
Savanna
Scrubland, Shrubland, Chaparral
Sea (+ arctic, bubbling, color, fresh water, frozen, hypersaline, inland, of acid, of fire, salt water, shallow, toxic, underground, volcanic)
Sea Cave
Shallows
Shelf
Shoreline (+ rocky, sandy)
Sink Hole
Spire
Springs
Steppes
Stream
Summit
Swamp
Taiga, Boreal Forest, Snow Forest (subarctic coniferous forest)
Tarn (mountain lake or pool formed in a cirque by a glacier)
Tar Pits
Tepui, Table Top Mountain - flat top mountains
Terrace
Tidal Cave
Tidal Island
Tidal Land Bridge
Tide Pool, Tidal Pool
Trail
Trembling Earth (spongy ground / plant material over water)
Trench (+ undersea)
Tundra
Tunnel (+ earthen, giant insect, ice, monster burrow, natural, stone)
Undersea (+ canyon, cavern, deeps, kelp beds, oyster beds, reef, ruins, shallows, trench, volcano)
Vale
Valley (+ glacial, hanging, river, step, u-shapped)
Valley Step
Volcano (+ active, dormant, inactive, island, smoking, underwater)
Warrens
Waste, Wastes, Wasteland
Waterfall
Well (+ artesian, divine, infernal, of magic, of power, water)
Wetland, Wetlands
Whirlpool, Maelstrom (permanent, reoccurring)
Wild, Wilds
Wood, Woods (type)(+ burned, cursed, giant, haunted, petrified, spiny)
Biome Mods: (biome type + mod)
Arctic - cold, often frozen or icy conditions
Aware - animated / sentient / collective sentient / genius loci / benevolent / hostile
Day Light - always day / always night / always solar eclipse / long day or night
Dimensional Anomaly - terrain appears in a fixed location, terrain appears & disappears at certain times or certain events
Disaster (during / after) - avalanche, blizzard, earthquake, fire, flood, fungal bloom, hurricane, ice storm, meteor shower, plague, red tide, sand storm, swarm, tidal wave, tornado, volcanic eruption, war vs. monster, war vs. sentient
Giant Monster - Biome is on top of a living giant monster / Biome is a giant monster (earth elemental / golem)
Fauna - normal, clockwork, elemental, enchanted, giant, helpful, intelligent, magic construct, mischievous, monster, poisonous, spirit, thieves, toxic to eat, transformed people, zombie
Flora - normal, burned, clear cut, dead, enchanted, fast growing, fast life cycle, floating gas bags, giant, intelligent, magic construct, predatory, toxic
Hollow Earth - terrain in giant hollow space within the planet (underground)
Magic - absorbing / amplified magic / cursed / reduced magic / wild magic
Perpetual Weather - fire tornado, fog, hurricane, ice storm, lightning storm, mist, rain storm, sand storm, snow storm, wild magic storm
Resources (animals) - able to domesticate, bioluminescent light source, bones, carapace, dung, feathers, food, fossils, fur, guano, hide, honey, ink, ivory, oil, pearls, quills, scales, silk, venom, wax, wool
Resources (plants) - bioluminescent light source, building material, brewed drink, cotton, drug, dye, flowers, food, fuel, incense, innately magical, medicine, needles, oil, poison, resins, spice, syrup, tinder, water, wax
Resources (minerals) - clay, coal, crystals (+ fast growing, giant, luminescent), gems, innately magical material, metals, minerals (+ glowing), salt, stone
Resources (other) - fertile soil, fossils
Resources (magic) - innately magic material or substance, amplify magic, resist magic, replenish mana, anti-magic
Season - spring, summer, fall, winter / dry season, rainy season
Unusual Atmosphere - corrosive / flammable / low oxygen / thin / toxic / steamy / vacuum
Unusual Features - mineral formations (luminescent) / mineral formations (spiky)
Unusual Gravity - hi-gravity / low gravity / fluctuating
Unusual Magnetic Field - fluctuating / moving / strong / weak
Vegetation - animated / bio-luminescent / fast growing plants or fungus / giant / spikes / toxic
Wandering - terrain moves over time / locomotion - grows into area / transforms adjacent area / teleports
useful Links:
List of Structures & Landmarks
World Building Partial Name List
d100 odd landmarks
d100 Place Descriptors
d100 Places every adventurer should see before they die
Fantasy Maps
d100 Geographic terms for place names
Artist Looking for Map Commissions:
DMcSquared_
Jared Blando - Artist who makes battle maps
Seths Custom Maps - Artist who draws maps for money
Terrain Types:
Biome Picture Guide
Biome Picture Guide
Cave Features - Pics
Coastal Features - Pics
Desert Features - Pics
Forest Features - Pics
Mountain Features - Pics
Plains Features - Pics
Valley Features - Pics
Map Makers / Generators:
Alpha Project - HexBox DM Tool
Azgaar's Fantasy - Map Generator - Free
Inkarnate - Map Maker
Gozzys - Map Generator
Hexographer - Map Maker
d20SRD - Map Generator - Free
Myth-Weavers - Cave Map Generator
Myth-Weavers - Dungeon Map Generator
Northern Cartography - Free Maps
Polygon - Map Generator
Legend Keeper - Map Maker & RPG tools - still under construction
Wonderdraft - Map Maker - beta
Arkenforge - Maps & Tools
Campaign Cartographer 3 - Map Maker
Dyson Logos - Free Maps
Rand Roll - Dungeon Map Generators Guide
Map Icons
SWN Space Sector Generator
Sectors Without Number - space sector generator
List of Map Tools & Generators
Hex Map tool - in development
Battle Maps:
Battlemaps
Black Scrolls - modular map tiles
One Million Islands - collection 01
One Million Islands - collection 02
Acidic Passage
Alter by the Road
Ancient Alter
Autumnal Forest Lake
Bandit Camp 01
Bandit Camp 02
Cave
Cherry Blossom Creek
Cragmaw Hideout
Crashed Airship
Crossroads 01
Crossroads 02
Cursed Crystal of Shadow
Dead Titan Pass
Dead Tree Crossroads
Deathly Desert
Death Valley
Desert Camp
Desert Entrance
Desert Island
Desert Road
Desert Ruins
Desert Tomb
Desert Waterfall
Dragon's Lair
Druid's Grove
Dryad's Grove
Exploring the Caves
Floating Island
Forest Boundary
Forest Glade
Forest Path
Forest River 01
Forest River 02
Forest Road
Forest Ruins
Forest Waterfall
Frozen River
Grassland
Inlet
Jungle Lake
Jungle Map 01
Jungle Map 02
Kobold Cove
Kraken Lair
Lair of the Basilisk - Desert Oasis
Lake
Lava Passage
Mangrove Swamp
Mineral Pools
Misty Boneyard
Moon Cove
Mountain Arena
Mountain Entrance
Mountain Pass
Mountain Road
Mushroom Cave
Mushroom Clearing
Oasis
Ogre Crown Falls
River Course and Bandit Camp
River Crossing
River Crossing - Jungle
River Run
Roadside Camp
Rocky Beaches
Rocky Road
Rope Bridge
Rope Bridge Chasm
Ruins on the Lake
Sacrifice Tower
Sea Cave
Seaside Camp
Seaside Cave
Sinkhole to Hell
Sky Island
Small Deserted Island
Swamp Path
Tar Pits
Titan's Boneyard
Tropical Shipwreck
Twisted Shrine
Turtle Island
Under the Great Tree
versiliths_remains
Waterfall Scavengers
Weaver's Way
Wilderwood Lake
Winter Ambush Site
World Maps:
Kaldori
Veras
Verronwealth
World of Gëa
World Map by Muellerson_
Zalesiana
Edit: - last edit 09/10/2023

For any new members to this subreddit that may be reading this threat, let me begin with the admission that the methodology of world build I am about to detail is far from the only methodology that one can use to build a campaign setting. Indeed, there are a great many DMs I have played under and respect a great deal who never put in a shred of documentation regarding their world-building, preferring to improvise it as they go. If you're like me, your mind is a bit too detail-oriented for full-fledged improvisation of the world, and you may feel more comfortable having a general framework to react with to your player's actions. If this applies to you, then you may find this post useful. If not, I am very glad that you have more ease with improvisation than I do. Keep up the good work. Otherwise, continue reading to your heart's content, and I hope this method aids you as much as it has aided me thus far.
A General Overview
As a general rule of thumb, I have encountered two primary methods of world-building amongst DMs. There are a great many individual styles out there, but every style I have ever encountered has fallen into one of these two categories, which I will hereby refer to as "Inside-Out" and "Outside-In".
"Inside-Out" world-building refers to the process of establishing kingdoms, societies, and traditions that one may wish to use in their world, and building environmental factors around it that fit into the established themes. Examples of this include placing a range of mountains in an area because the DM wanted a prominent dwarven clan to call the area home. More often than not, I find this method to be employed by improvisational DMs who are making the plot up as they go, and, as such, shape the world to their whims and make notes for later they can remember what they put in the area.
The primary focus of this post, however, lies within the realm of the "Outside-In" methodology. If the former of these two methods revolves around shaping the surrounding environment to the whims of your planned civilizations, then this method is in turn the direct opposite - the DM begins with the general terrain (anywhere to a rough concept of major landforms to a full-color map of the area) and decides how the environmental conditions would shape the history of that particular region. This method requires much more time and planning than the Inside-Out method, but I personally find it gives a more thorough, developed feel to the setting in the long run. The passages following this section will detail how you too can use the Outside-In method I have employed throughout my campaigns, and then shape it to your own needs and desires.
The Genesis
Now, of course it is useful to have some concept of your world's creation story and the origins of your pantheon established before doing any elaborate world-building, but many times the early stages of your campaign will have you coming up with these aspects as you go anyway. While these aspects are of course useful if already plotted out, these aspects are not necessarily the genesis that this section is attempting to detail. Rather, the genesis in question is a rough overview of the landforms and other environmental effects within your campaign setting. We'll illustrate this concept through the use of an example kingdom that we can refer to throughout the post. Since we don't have a map for this world, we'll instead begin with a thorough description.
An Example
Our region is going to be in the northern hemisphere of our world's globe, within the northern reaches of the temperate zone. The terrain is primarily composed of foothills and highlands, with rocky soil and frigid winters. Rainfall is common, and there are several rivers and brooks that run through the hillside, connecting to large freshwater lakes within the mainland. The coast is rocky with crashing white waves, causing safe harbors to become something of a challenge to find. Most of the region is completely cut off from the rest of the continent by a vast mountain range of awe-inspiring height, which bars travel for most caravans and would-be traders.
Potential Resources
Now that we have outlined the general layout of our region, it's important to note what types of resources the region in question would be able to use to its advantage throughout its history. Important questions to consider here include how easy access is to trade, how well-suited the area is to agriculture, and how hospitable the land is overall. Just as important is the consideration of which resources will not be available, as these plights offer an easy glimpse into which difficulties the early societies will attempt to overcome. Egypt, for example, would have had to strive much harder to locate sources of freshwater and irrigation than those near a rainy grassland might.
An Example
In terms of potential resources, our region is fairly well-off in many regards. The climate is wet enough to provide decent amounts of rainfall, and freshwater sources such as lakes and rivers are in abundance. Minerals are present throughout the expanse (especially near the mountain range), and the region does not have much to worry about in terms of invading forces. The mountains and rocky coastlines make any form of invasive force difficult, and defensible enough.
Conversely, these same barriers offer an equally difficult challenge to overcome. Invading forces will have difficulty entering, but so too will tradesmen. Frigid winters will require thick clothing and warm shelters, made more difficult by the lack of wood in the rocky terrain. The rocky soil presents another interesting dilemma, as many crops will not take root in rocky soil. The roaming hills, however, will make livestock easier to maintain (which will be needed for various furs, oils, fats, and leather).
The Shaping of Society
From here, the easy part of the world-building begins (at least in my opinion). From here on out, the goal becomes a simple line of cause-effect relationships, where one tries to determine how the available resources and dilemmas might shape the development of the peoples within the realm. Since no one can really prove you wrong in this regard, it is often best to trust your first instinct (so long as your first instinct isn't anything terribly stupid in nature. It would be absurd to claim that a city completely cut off from the outside world by a ring of impenetrable forests would become the trading capital of the world without some major civil improvements first, or at least some impressive sources of magic and/or technology).
An Example
We have already established that our region is going to struggle with the development of agriculture, but the region makes a good area for livestock. As such, it's reasonable to assume that the first peoples of this land would begin with the domestication of cattle, sheep, and other such creatures (as exotic as is applicable to the region in question). Furs, specifically, will be used to endure the harsh winters of the area. Agriculture will be limited, but is entirely possible. As such, the crops will be limited to types of foods that can take root in rocky soil (there are certain kinds of sweet potato that might fit the bill quite nicely).
Since trade and warfare are both likely going to be scarce, it's fair to assume that the region will have to become largely self-sufficient, developing it's own system of villages that may engage in trade between each other. This system may even appear quite feudal in nature, given a few centuries to develop. Eventually, trees that were planted from seeds might take root and give way to forests as the inhabitants begin to understand the vast importance of fire. Stone tools would develop over time, which would eventually give rise to mining and metal-working. The area may not have much experience in the way of warfare, but they will still learn to settle their differences with each other through combat eventually (as any society of humanoids inevitably does).
Conclusions
We could go on forever discussing the potential causes and effects of the region, but since this is just a general example we'll leave it there for now. However, now we have a great deal of insight into the regions general composition. Agriculture is present, though limited, and winters must be prepared for well in advance. Livestock are plentiful, which is necessary due to the lack of trade outside the region's expanse. Due to their relative isolation, the region will become self-sufficient, and potentially feudal in nature, if given time to develop.
This method becomes more potent the more factors you apply to it over time. How might the dissolving a nearby trading partner affect a prominent trade-based kingdom? If an area is well-known for the magical resources at its disposal, how might that area use those resources for warfare, trade, and civil development? The questions are truly endless, which allows you to sort out what you feel is most important to the setting overall and take it from there.
All of this is simply to say that sometimes, considering the causes and effects of events and resources will give you a great deal of insight to a kingdom's composition. If you learn to utilize this method effectively, you could have someone hand you a map with no context, and pinpoint where civilizations might develop and how their environment might affect their individual cultures. You don't always have to take a culture back to the dawn of time. Instead, focus on the most immediate developments, and the world events that would have had the most impact. If your campaign starts just after the fall of the former pantheon of gods, how does that affect your societies piety and beliefs? Are they open to a new pantheon taking their old gods' place, given time?
These methods are not necessarily for everyone, nor are they an inherently correct way of doing things. For me, however, they have aided my creations a great deal, and continue to do so with each session I plan. I hope a few of you out there find them as useful as I have.

News roundup for the previous week.
In International news

1. Chinese hacking thefts of American corporate secrets have plummeted in the 13 months since China signed an agreement with the Obama administration to curb economic espionage, U.S. officials and outside experts say
   
2. China helps Cambodia preserve its history: In 1998, China sent a team to participate in the renovation of Chau Say Tevoda. In 2009, China and Cambodia have reached an agreement that Chinese government would provide 6 million USD on restoring Ta Keo
   
3. Chinese American community holds large anti-violence rally in Center City Philadelphia: "Stop Armed Robberies in our Community", about 700 marched. In 2016 more than 100 Chinese American families or small businesses in Philadelphia have been victims of armed robberies
   
4. China will provide assistance for Nepal Army's modernisation programme and strengthening its disaster management capabilities
   
5. Pakistan’s Gwadar Port Is Now Operational As First Chinese Ship Docks. "The money China is planning to pour into Pakistan is more than twice the amount of all foreign direct investment Pakistan has received since 2008, and considerably more than the entire assistance from the United States..."
   
6. China Poised to Take Over US Air Base, Invest in Portugal's Azores: The islands are “very important both logistically in the Atlantic Ocean but also in terms of technology and research, in the field of climate change and deep water research,”
   
7. BRICS Countries Push to Expand Trade Within Group: Chinaland is among nearly 600 companies that took part in the trade fair hoping to capture new markets in the five emerging economies that make up BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
   
8. Russian researcher says without Chinese capital Syria will have no chance to rebuild
   
9. NASA has signed an agreement with a Chinese civil aviation company to help the country’s airports improve the management of their busy route schedules, amid increasing criticism over delays in recent years
   
10. Foreign interference in South China Sea won’t bring prosperity to region: Duterte
    
11. ‘Time to say goodbye,’ Duterte tells US during visit to China
    
12. Duterte aligns Philippines with China, says U.S. has lost
    
13. Chinese pianist Lang Lang raises over 2 mln USD for music education: Lang Lang International Music Foundation teaches classic music through the Keys of Inspiration program since 2013 in five cities around the global, helping over 2,500 children
    
14. China, Philippine to sign $13.5B deals, hold sea bilaterals. About $15 million in loans will go toward drug rehabilitation programs
    
15. Philippine leader open to war games with China, Russia
    
16. Nepal wants to be a dynamic bridge between India & China: Prachanda
    
17. China to help Cambodia modernize its armed forces: government
    
18. Chinese Americans hold first anti-violence protest with guns: Some 2000 protested, "telling those who want to target Chinese that we are armed and we are firmly against crimes targeting Chinese". All the guns in the rally had yellow flags on them, showing that they were unloaded
    
19. South Sacramento meetings to address crime in Asian American, Latino communities. Sacramento police assigned several specialty units to prevent and investigate these crimes. Officials credited increased police presence and outreach to the Asian community with a 43% drop in robberies in September
    
20. "Representatives from the Vatican and China are expected to meet before the end of the month in Rome in an effort to finalize a deal on the ordination of bishops on the mainland, a move aimed at ending a longstanding dispute, according to Catholic Church sources familiar with the negotiations."
    
21. U.S. warship challenges China's claims in South China Sea - officials
    
22. Peng wins first tour title at Tianjin Open
    
23. UC Davis international students drive demand for Chinese cuisine: “We won’t eat anything other than Chinese or Japanese food,” said Maggie Mai. “Everything else is garbage,” added her friend. “No matter where they are, they keep their Chinese stomach,” said Michelle Yeh, a professor at UC Davis
    
24. Doctors hail China’s pledge to stop harvesting inmate organs: Doctors at the conference described meeting patients and visiting hospitals around the country, and said the recorded usage of drugs given to transplant patients lined up with China’s reported numbers of transplants
    
25. Zimbabwe prefers Chinese aid over Japanese - Minister. "Japan came to help Africa in order to entice Africans to vote for Japan in the UN. That's not what we are after. We fought for 50 years for independence. The people who came to our side with assistance were Chinese, not Japanese or Americans."
    
26. Asian neighbors seek closer cooperation with China in health sector: Medical cooperation is also going on with many other Asian neighbors including Nepal, Laos and Vietnam, hoping to build up a cross-border mechanism to safeguard public health
    
27. Turkmenistan and China are considering cooperation opportunities in the field of space research, the Turkmen government said
    
28. Locals come first: the end of the golden era for expats in China? - Rising living costs, new visa rules and a move towards hiring locals are making life on the mainland harder for foreigners, expats say
    

In Domestic news

1. In China and Germany, Renewables Are Outgrowing Their Grids: China built so many coal-fired power plants, which are slow to turn on and off, that it has to turn its wind turbines off for as much as 15 percent of the time because its grid can’t always handle both being online concurrently
   
2. China refutes rumors of organ harvesting
   
3. China’s Coal Capital Is Spending Millions to Go Green
   
4. World doubts the leadership of Uncle Sam: expert
   
5. Shenzhen: shaping its own Chinese dream
   
6. Chinese archaeologist refutes BBC report on Terracotta Warriors
   
7. Ride-Hailing Gets Green Light: New national regulations give legitimacy and oversight to China’s nascent ride-hailing app industry and tear down long-held restrictions on the traditional taxi sector
   
8. Chinese state media call for 'correct' use of social media stickers
   
9. Overseas studies pay off: according to the 2016 Employment Report on Chinese Students Returning from Overseas, it found that 82.5 percent of employers were willing to offer preferential benefits, such as better posts and higher starting salaries, to returned students
   
10. Outrage across China after NBA player vandalizes Great Wall with signature
    
11. China's Largest Cities Attracting Fewer Migrants, Study Shows
    
12. Regreening China will take more than trees: The impacts of the restoration efforts of the Loess Plateau and other similar projects were analysed in search of common features of restoration success and failure. Three common themes for successful restoration were identified
    
13. The Future of Music Streaming Lies in China’s Small Cities: Kugou has become the world’s largest music-streaming site by targeting less-developed areas
    
14. China wants to give all of its citizens a score – and their rating could affect every area of their lives
    

In SciTech news

1. China is Designing Portable Nuclear Reactors: hedianbao, or "portable nuclear battery pack," is cooled by lead and will fit inside a shipping container 6.1 meters long by 2.6 meters high. The hedianbao will generate up to 10 megawatts and could run for decades without refueling
   
2. China's Shenzhou 11 blasts off on space station mission
   
3. Chemists design organic molecules that glow persistently at room temperature: "Organic RTP systems are desirable, thanks to their wider availability and better tailorability, but are challenging to develop," says senior author Ben Zhong Tang
   
4. China's maritime monitoring vessel Yuanwang-7 completed the first round of maritime tracking and control of the Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft on Monday in the Pacific Ocean
   
5. Chinese scientists achieve high-power quantum computing: they succeeded in performing quantum simulation with atoms in extraordinarily cold conditions. This achievement was published in the prestigious journal Science on October 7
   
6. Chinese scientist plans mass production of sea-rice: Within three years, the sea-rice research and development center, headed by scientist Yuan Longping, is expected to expand the yield of sea-rice to 200 kilograms on each "mu," the Chinese unit equivalent to 666 square meters
   
7. Supercomputer prototype to be finished next year: "The new-era exascale supercomputer is noted for its independent development, including chip for computer and operating system and computing environment of work,". This high performance computer, named Tianhe-3, will begin operating by 2020
   
8. Tencent to debut live-streaming WeChat drone at end of month: The $300 flier will record at 4K and stream at 720p
   
9. The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou-11 – and its crew of two taikonauts – has successfully docked with the Tiangong-2 space module
   
10. Veteran astronaut soars to new heights: Jing Haipeng to enter orbit for record third time on Shenzhou XI mission, will become China's most experienced astronaut
    
11. Astronaut Chen Dong: From naughty boy to inspiration. One day, he was lying on the ground looking at the sky along with his brother. "Is that a meteor?" Chen asked. "No, it's a satellite." Curiosity gripped Chen's heart, and he began frequenting the library, reading books on satellites and space
    
12. China Beats US in AI Research: study by US government's National Science and Technology Council revealed China published around 350 scientific papers concerning deep learning and deep neural networks in 2015, compared to 250 for US. In quality of research, 80 papers cited to 70 for US
    
13. Chinese firm launches R&D on 600 km/h maglev train
    
14. Nano-spike catalysts convert carbon dioxide directly into ethanol: ORNL's Yang Song, Rui Peng, Liangbo Liang, Zili Wu, Miaofang Chi, Cheng Ma are coauthors on the study
    
15. China wants to send more robots to work
    
16. China’s Virtual Reality Investment is Moving its Focus to Content
    

In Economic news

1. More than 400 European companies have turned to European trade commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom with a request to end the trade duties imposed on Chinese solar modules and cells
   
2. As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers Are Transforming Everything by Karl Gerth.
   
3. Chinese automaker Geely is launching a new brand, and America is in its crosshairs Volvo parent company introduces Lynk & Co. Oct. 20
   
4. China No Currency Manipulator, Obama Treasury Says for Last Time
   
5. China to World: We Don’t Need Your Factories Anymore - Chinese manufacturers once bought high-tech materials from overseas firms. Rising expertise means they now shop locally, altering global trade
   
6. GE turns to Chinese partners to lift Silk Road infrastructure sales: Vice Chairman John Rice said the U.S. industrial conglomerate is seeking greater cooperation with Chinese engineering, procurement and construction companies in the 65 countries identified in the Silk Road corridor
   
7. China’s Weibo almost head-to-head with Twitter’s market value: According to Bloomberg, the Beijing-based Weibo now holds a US$11 billion market value, and is fast approaching Twitter’s US$12.6 billion
   
8. China scores WTO victories against some U.S. anti-dumping methods Reuters
   
9. More Robots to Be Produced in Tianjin by 2020: The robotics industry in Tianjin is expected to produce a total of 60,000 robots annually, which is worth about 12 billion yuan ($1.8 billion) by 2020, according to a forecast by the Tianjin Municipal Commission of Industry and Information Technology
   
10. Chinese business leaders laud ‘golden era’ for Canadian relations
    
11. Saudis, China Dump Treasuries; Foreign Central Banks Liquidate a Record $346 Billion in US Paper
    
12. China's Housing Market Isn't in a Bubble After All: Big cities like Shanghai are experiencing net immigration with only limited blocks of land coming on the market. “this is not a bubble; this is a shortage of supply,”
    
13. LeEco to sell smartphones, TVs in the US
    
14. ‘New normal’ making Chinese firms go global: more than US$ 170 billion of acquisitions abroad during the first nine months of 2016. Service-sector accounts for more than half of GDP. The manufacturing sector is moving up the value chain. And privately-owned businesses make up 60% of China’s output
    

In Military news

1. China, Mongolia to strengthen military cooperation
   
2. Rising China to test US on global security, Henry Paulson says
   
3. Pentagon report concedes that Russian and Chinese A2/AD systems are calling naval superiority into question.
   
4. 俄媒称中国研发反隐身雷达 终结美隐身机辉煌 (Russian media said China developed anti-stealth radar terminating american stealth superiority
   
5. China, Russia Enhance Military Cooperation in Response to US Missile Threat: The trajectory of American ICBMs towards Russia and China runs through the North Pole and data from Russian warning stations could be useful to the Chinese
   
6. In space, the looming threat of a new arms race: Moscow and Beijing are keen to show off their space-attack capabilities, a deep worry for US strategists. China, too, has demonstrated its ability to send a small, low-orbit satellite capable of maneuvering toward another craft
   
7. Three Chinese navy ships will make their first port call this weekend at Vietnam's strategic Cam Ranh Bay
   
8. India and China for the first time conducted military exercises in the state of Jammu and Kashmir
   

Other Notables

1. Mother of boy with flesh-eating eczema which left him 'looking like a burns victim' says he has been 'cured' by Chinese medicine
   
2. Launch of Manned China Mission with Shenzhou 11 to Tiangong-2
   
3. How China's Giant New Studio Plans to Lure Filmmakers Out of Hollywood
   
4. Shi Shenwei the laborer swings to China online fame. The 23-year-old spends his midday break swinging from scaffolding poles on a building site, a gymnastics routine that has made him China's latest social media sensation. Bemused co-workers wonder where he gets the energy during a 10-hour work day
   
5. Election lays bare extent of US media bias
   
6. Modern History Of China The 100 year period between 1900 & 2000
   
7. Pictures: Spectacular scenery of Zhangye Danxia Landform in China
   
8. Kelly Hammond's historical revisionism on Hui Muslims of China during World War II or, how to lie to your audience
   
9. China's 'hottest grandpa' on ageing: "No one can keep you from success except yourself"
   
10. Wanda to Unveil Massive 40 Percent Incentive to Lure Hollywood Film Shoots to China: the incentive in Louisiana, among the most generous in the U.S., is 30 percent. In Asia, Malaysia's rebate of 30 percent had been among the most lucrative
    
11. The importance of 1958 to 1961 and the demonization of Mao
    
12. Northwest China's Kyrgyz Hunting Tradition Gradually Withering: The young are unwilling to be hunters because they do not want to live in deep and isolated mountain areas and defy tough natural environment
    
13. Chinese journalist seeks funding for startup incubator of sci-fi writing talent
    
14. Chinese Yao Minority Women Have The Longest Hair In The World
    
15. Chinese Astronauts Enter Tiangong-2 Space Lab from Shenzhou-11
    
16. Armed Chinese Troops in Texas? The Iraqi and Afghan resistance would be viewed as heroes in the US if Americans had to go through what Afghans and Iraqis did.
    
17. Uygur Rapper from Xinjiang Speaks in Music to Show His Hometown to World: One of his song "Mamat" was created from Adil's years of experience in mainland cities and tells a story that a young man from Xinjiang comes to a metropolis for work
    
18. The auspicious power of Chinese dragons
    
19. Pictures: Beautiful scenery of Wulanbutong grassland in Inner Mongolia
    
20. Made in china # HD Documentary 2016
    

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I came up with this after reading a post on the forums about Wiz being open to the idea of supply lines, so long as it didn't change the flow or feel of the game, and I came up with a simple solution. The numbers below are examples, and would need to be balanced. Note, this is in addition to the current supply limits in provinces (explained at the end as to why.)
TLDR at bottom.

• When an army is moved outside owned territory, an arrow with a thick line is drawn from the capital/nearest fort to each army. The line follows the coasts and landforms. If in an "overseas" province, the supplies come from the nearest friendly port if there is any and takes the safest sea route from the selected origin of supply port.

That's it. It's that simple. When you click on an army, it shows the supply line (and there could be a supply line map mode.) Hovering over the supply line shows the supply capacity and how much range is left.The supply line is done automatically - it determines the nearest and best location for supplies. Maybe an option to override where you draw the supplies from (with the capital, forts and unblockaded ports being valid options.) It can be set so that certain tech groups don't use this mechanic - such as nomads or hordes.
This line varies in width and color. The wider and more green it is, the better the supply line. Width determines supply range. If the line is very thin, that means you are at or nearing the end of the supply range. Color determines how much supply is left - the line moves from green to red to indicate a shortage of supplies. Bright red with black bands indicates there is not enough supply (ie. the weight of the army is higher than what can you support), or the supply is being blocked (see below.) At a glance you can instantly tell the range and integrity of the supplies.
Here is a picture that demonstrates most of what I mean.
This game screen is from the Eu4 multiplayer match between Arumba, Quill, Mathis and Northerlion. For our purposes, assume that Bohemia is at peace with Saxony but is not providing them with a supply line. The 3/6 determines how far the unit can go using the current supply line (in this case, they are 3 provinces from the supply origin, and can go 3 more.) The 19/15 shows the army is consuming 4 more supply than is available (should read supply line units, rather than limits.). The 8.8% attrition is the 4% attrition from lacking supply units, the other 4.8% is the default attrition. Again, as this is probably too high, this is just an example. The wagon icon shows the total # of supply units needed.

• Supply units. One unit of supply simply represents being able to feed, clothe, arm and reinforce one full regiment. The amount used by the army is represented by the wagon icon.
  
• Valid targets for origin of supply. Forts, capitals or mainland unblockaded ports that you own. (You can request "supply basing rights" from allies similar to fleet basing rights.) Overseas ports would need to be supplied by a mainland port. Again, the best origin of supply would hopefully be selected automatically by the game. Changing an origin of supply takes 3 months, the army is supplied by the old supply line until then.
  
• Max Number of Supply Lines A country can have a set number of supply lines, dependent on technology. For example, tech level 1 has a max of 1, while a tech level 5 would have a max of 2, and so on. Remember, this only applies to armies outside of your own territory (this includes allied territory.)
  
• How does the arrow and line work? and How do “oversea” provinces work? As simply as possible. From the nearest point of origin (listed above), the arrow is drawn through to the army in the most efficient way. For overseas provinces, the process is slightly different. The supply must go from an owned or allied unblockaded port that is not overseas (say your capital, for example.) to the port that is overseas (say a captured coastal province in this example.) The overseas port may be one that was captured via a siege, so long as it is unblockaded. To set a point of origin for supply, you’d simply hit the supply button and select the origin you’d like to set, the game would plot the route from there - this can be cleared and returned to default if needed. The game would not take into account hostile forces and their ability to raid supply lines.
  
• Province effects on supply lines. As the line crosses provinces, the supply is sometimes diminished. For example, in a severe winter / arctic province, you may notice the supply line takes a significant hit to its supply. This simulates the historical effect of severe climates on supply lines. The exact amount of supplies removed would depend on the supply limit of the province it passes through. This includes the province that the army is currently located in. A severe winter, arctic climate might take 5 units or more off your possible supply whereas a summer grassland would have no effect.
  
• Forts, armies and navies effects on supply lines. For every 1k hostile troops in a province the supply arrow passes through takes off some percentage of the overall supply. For sea supply lines, this is equivalent to one light ship, 4 heavies or 8 transports (examples, of course.) If you wanted to get really fancy, this supply line raiding could provide a small amount of ducats. For forts: Supply can't pass through a hostile fort or its zone of control, effectively requiring you to run your supply line in an inefficient manner if you don't siege down the forts right away.
  
• Islands / Overseas with no nearby port. Landing troops without a way of guaranteeing supply is foolhardy, just as in real life. You'll have to capture a port and be able to ensure it stays unblockaded, preferably a province without a fort so minimal attrition is suffered. Sea tiles are affect the range and total amount of supply just as land tiles do.
  
• Total supply capacity and range. Total supply is determined by two things - military development and force limit. The total supply capacity for an army would be an x% of the supply limit, for example, 50%. Each point of military development you have total would add y% to this limit, for example .5%. Let's say you have a force limit of 20, and 10 military development. Your total supply limit would be 15 regiments so long as the supply line is unbroken. Range would be slightly different. Range would be calculated directly via tech level, with bonuses provided from all three tech lines. A/D/M tech level 1 would have a range of 3 provinces, A/D/M tech level 3 would have a range of 5; these are examples of course and would need to be balanced. Dark ocean tiles take up one range, coastal ocean take up .5 range, and inland sea takes .25 range. Finally, buildings could add bonuses to these equations.
  
• Technology affects the range and integrity of the supplies. Simply, any tech or idea that increases supply limit increases the range and capacity of your supply lines, adding bonuses to the equations above.
  
• Supply bonuses. Being closer to the supply origin gives a bonus to reinforcement and morale recovery, up to a cap (being right next to a capital is the same as being just a couple grassland provinces away, for example.) If the supply line is red or narrow, then the reinforcement and morale recovery takes a penalty with increasing severity.
  
• Out of supply. What does it mean to be out of supply? Either out of range or cut off from the supply line / exceeding supply units? Three things: reduced reinforcement and morale recovery and attrition dependent on how thin the supplies are spread. For every unit above the limit, the army would take an extra 1% attrition and suffer 5% slower moral recovery and reinforcement rate. [ The calculation would be the current supply units needed - total available supply units; if out of range the available supply units is calculated as 0. For example, an army that needs 19 supply units, but is only supplied 15 would take an extra 4% attrition per month, while reducing recovery and reinforcement by 25%]
  
• What is the historic reasoning for this? The 17th to early 19th centuries saw a revolution in army sizes - they ballooned from at most 10k troops to over 200k, and these changes saw the rise of a dedicated supply line to help feed, clothe and arm all of these troops. Armies still pillaged and plundered through provinces - which is why the supply limit already in the game would remain as is. But in real life there simply wasn't enough to plunder in most areas to support these army sizes (outside of total warfare/scorched earth, as in the Mongols.)
  
• What is the game play reasoning for this? It adds an element of depth to the game that is easy to understand, but has a high skill ceiling for players that really delve into it. It doesn't change the way the game plays or feels fundamentally. Imagine being France, trying to invade Russia during the winter. Not only would the winter hit your troops, but so too would the lack of supplies. This adds a flare of authenticity while still remaining a fun component of game play. It also adds clear war "targets": capture their ports so allies can land forces, capture their forts to cut off supply, take their capital to gut their army. Plus, there are likely lots of different things you can do and add to this system that I haven't even thought of.
  

TLDR: Lines drawn from the supplied army to supply centers, such as forts, ports and capitals describes the supply line. Easily determined at a glance by the color and width of the line. Doesn't change core gameplay, but adds another element of depth and strategy that can affect every facet of the game in a new, novel and fun way.
Link to the forum post.

1. It’s too linear. Westeros is starkly based on a north/south axis and Essos is stunningly east/west. Continents are more globular.
   
2. Where are the forests? If this world is like Earth, forests should be a far larger part of the ecosystem. Same can be said for deserts and to a degree mountains. There is a bewildering uniformity of landform here (grassland dominant).
   
3. If it’s cold enough to not melt the Wall (which is made of ice), how can there be trees north of there? The northern-most tree-line should be well south of the Wall.
   

Have you noticed some additions? [basic map](viewers-guide.hbo.com/season1/#!/map/) for reference.