The Giant's Flower Garden

Here's a little something for you to drop in your sandbox game: The Giant's Flower Garden.  This is a bit of scenery that can add a sense of the fantastic to an otherwise mundane, barren area.

Far to the southwest of the realm, in the arid wastelands of the border region, gargantuan plants sprout from the ground.  Locals say that decades or centuries ago, a giant sowed seeds all along the ridgelines.  The flowers that emerged grew straight and tall, looming 70 or 80 feet above the earth. The giant blossoms have three narrow petals, each half as long as the stem, emerging at equidistant intervals from the top of the plant.  Sometimes the petals partially break off from the stem and rotate in the wind, like a strange windmill.

These flora sprout on the edge of windswept bluffs, rows upon rows, for miles and miles.  The stems, hollow except for roots, are up to six feet wide at the base and made of some tough, strong material as tough as metal, yet as light as procelain.  If cut with the proper tools, the stem makes decent armor.  The roots of these plants are as thick as a man's wrist and stretch for miles across the dusty soil, connecting the blooms to one another and spreading out in all directions.  The roots are covered in a tough, yet flexible, sheath that is easily cut with a sharp blade.  The roots' interior consists of strands of pure copper, yet they remain mostly untouched by the area's inhabitants.  After all, the titanic gardener could return at any time, and he wouldn't take kindly to those who dig up his prize flowers ...

Chris over at the Hill Cantons asked about what fuels your sense of place when it comes to your fantasy games.  Well, the above vistas inspired me to come up with this flavor text as I drove through the empty expanses of West Texas on my way to a chili cookoff.  The windmills are visible for miles on each side as you pass between Ozona and Fort Stockton on Interstate 10.  Here's what the road itself looked like for a good part of the seven-hour drive:

Suddenly, my daily commute doesn't look quite as bad.