Rainshadow Desert

The Rainshadow Desert's distinguishing feature is its near-total lack of moisture, and complete absence of surface water. The desert lies directly on the equator, so temperatures are generally high in the day, before cooling during the night due to the long shadows cast by the mountains.

Despite the lack of water, it is populated mainly by various tough, thorny shrubs, as well as a tall, plumed plant. One flowering plant of the Rainshadow Desert, the deathbottle, is carnivorous, and catches small animals in its subterranean traps.

Valuable nutrition is provided for the animals and plants of the Rainshadow Desert by an unlikely animal: the ocean flish. Fish and other marine animals of the Global Ocean are often caught up in powerful hypercanes and flung over the mountains into the desert, where their bodies, called flishwrecks, are used by bumblebeetles for depositing their eggs. They also presumably provide nutrients for plants.

The dominant animals that live here are invertebrates, which get all their moisture from their food. Small, single-legged insects, called desert hoppers, browse on vegetation and are themselves eaten by deathbottle plants. Flying insects such as bumblebeetles spend their entire adult lives searching for a fishwreck to deposit eggs in.