Real Locations that should be fantasy

[Lord Liaden]

Add some Cenotes from the Yucatan with some of H.P.L.s "Deep Ones" and by god you have a ready made supernatural fantasy.

Heck, we could take that even further by weaving in some of your other listed items.

The fantasy world equivalent of Crater Lake could be an enormous cenote, formed when the analogue to the city of Ubar collapsed into a gigantic water-filled cavern beneath it. The city really was destroyed as punishment by the gods, which included transforming the inhabitants into aquatic monsters, who still inhabit their drowned city.

The lake connects via underground rivers to other cenotes across a widespread region. Local human inhabitants place offerings into the cenotes to placate the "fish men" and dissuade them from raiding the humans.

(Speaking of Crater Lake, if you can't do something fantastic with Wizard Island and the Old Man of the Lake, you're just not trying.)

[Lord Liaden]

This. This is exactly why I started collecting these sites. They are real but inspire such awesomeness. I think of them as looking at the works of the great masters in art school. You aren't going to re-create their works but you can learn from them and improve your own vision.

That really is movingly beautiful.



(But in all seriousness, I agree.)

[Lord Liaden]

Okay, I wanted to make a few more suggestions. A couple of these are so internationally well known that I hesitated to put them up, but to be fair I should let you sort them out.

First, the Incan city of Machu Picchu, built on the literal peak of a mountain. IMHO there's no more haunting "lost city" site in the world.

Next, the incredible Carlsbad Caverns. Natural "architecture" went truly wild here. For a fuller range of downloadable photos, go to http://www.nps.gov/cave/photosmultimedia/index.htm .

Here's an odd little spot: The Cave of the Hands in Argentina, prehistoric rock paintings with a most unusual motif. And done with neolithic spray paint! More photos here:
http://www.jordibusque.com/Index/Sto...aManos_04.html
http://www.jordibusque.com/Index/Sto...aManos_05.html

I'll see what else I can dig up.

[teh bunneh]

Next, the incredible Carlsbad Caverns. Natural "architecture" went truly wild here. For a fuller range of downloadable photos, go to http://www.nps.gov/cave/photosmultimedia/index.htm .

The whole area around Carlsbad is riddled with caves. There's four that belong the the US Park Service (at least, four that are accessable to the public), and a whole bunch more on private land. Carlsbad is the biggest and most famous, but there are a lot of them. After seeing Carlsbad, I believe that there could be entire cities built underground. It's just that big... and it's not even the biggest cave in the world!

Those pictures of Spider Cave they've got on the site don't do it justice. That "Tight squeeze" is about 30 feet long, maybe three feet wide, and about 18" high... and filled -- FILLED -- with spiders. Millions of them. Billions of them. On the walls, on the ceiling, on the floor, in your hair, in your clothes... a thirty foot crawl on your belly through a chute so tight you cannot turn around, cannot back up, cannot see anything except that tiny circle of light from your helmet...

I highly recommend it.

[Lord Liaden]

A few more suggestions:

Banaue rice terraces of the Phillippines, a 4000-square-mile, 2000-year-old terrace farm region still partly in use today.

The Ajanta caves in India, a huge Buddhist shrine and temple complex, starkly imposing outside, magnificently decorated inside.

My Son Hindu temple complex in Viet Nam, which I find particularly eerie because much of the jungle growth hasn't been cleared off of the ruins.

[Lord Liaden]

I thought you might appreciate many more spectacular photos of the Ajanta Caves to choose from: http://www.shunya.net/Pictures/South...nta/Ajanta.htm

And from My Son temple, which really highlight the eerie jungle growth: http://www.ourplaceworldheritage.com...e&whsiteid=949

[Sociotard]

I submit Craters of the Moon. It features miles and miles of Lava flows, pitted here and there with caves. The bubbly lava is so insulatory that the caves often contain snow all year long. Meanwhile the surface is about as hot as a desert can be at our elevation and latitude. The only life is some lichen and the odd scragly plant that found a crack in the floes. My favorite thing to see was the holes in the floes where a tree had stood for the last eruption, only to have the lava envelope it. Now, all that remains is the hole where it was.

[Eosin]

Man, it is going to take me some time to get all these great sites up. Thanks for the input. Keep it coming.

[teh bunneh]

Sociatard's post reminded me... There's also the Land of Fire and Ice, and the Valley of Fire in New Mexico...

[Lord Liaden]

Well, I went a little crazy with the research today , but I think this rounds out everything striking and fantastical that I can find. It'll probably take a couple of posts to properly cover these, after which I shall retire from this thread. So, let's get to 'em:


First, The Meteora, a group of six Orthodox monasteries in Greece built atop enormous natural sandstone pillars. Athough they're all spectacular, to me the Varlaam Monastery looks particularly striking, as it appears to be built behind a giant stone face. (Photo gallery at the bottom of the page, and more photos here.)

The Tunnel of Eupalinos on the Greek island of Samos is an underground passage over a kilometer long cut through solid limestone in the 6th Century BCE, used as an aqueduct. More details and photos here.

The Hypogeum temple/necropolis on Malta is the only prehistoric (2500 BCE) underground temple in the world, imposing in its stark massiveness. More photos here.

The Giant's Causeway is a huge mass of interlocking, mostly hexagonal basalt columns, on the coast of Northern Ireland. (Photo gallery at the bottom of the page, and more photos here.) They look almost artificially shaped and planted, but are volcanic in origin. The Causeway would match well with the similarly-formed Scottish landmarks of Fingal's Cave and the Cliffs of Ulva.

[Lord Liaden]

As it turned out, Turkey/Anatolia is an absolute treasure-trove of bizarre stuff. As you'll see below:


Fairy Chimneys, most common in the Cappadocia region of Turkey, are huge cones of soft rock with hard rock caps. Many of them have been carved out as houses, very obvious from the image gallery at the bottom of the page.

The great underground city of Derinkuyu, built in the 8th-7th Centuries BCE, extends 85 meters below the earth, with room for thousands of inhabitants. Many more photos here, including one more view of a fairy chimney settlement.

Finally, Mount Nemrut, site of a great 1st Century BCE tomb. The many seated statues around the tomb were deliberately defaced, their heads removed and left lying on the ground around the site. I'm not sure whether they were originally left upright or set that way by modern archaeologists, but the effect is rather ghoulish. Additional photos here.

[Wulf]

The Externsteine in Germany ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externsteine )
For more pictures send me an PM. Got some from my trip with Roter Baron.

The Dragon´s Rock ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drachenfels_(Siebengebirge) )

Especially the legend about the Dragon´s Rock is a good Hook for an adventure ^^


Wulfi with 2 suggestion from good ol germany

[CTaylor]

Greece has some very strange topography, if you've seen For Your Eyes Only you've seen some; China has the same sort of Karst topography, with rocky outcroppings like tall, thin plateaus surrounded by flat plains.

[Nolgroth]

I don't think there is enough rep to supply this thread. Great stuff guys.

[Killer Shrike]

I've been to Kutna Hora (the bone cathedral in the czech republic). It's very strange, but not really worth the drive from Prague IMO.