There has not been much material on other continents than Garund, Avistan, and recently Tian-Xia. Most of the others have been named and "sketched in", but that's about it.
It sounds like Sarusan may be analogous to Australia in the real world. You may want to look up some general geographic information on Australia, then, to get some inspiration for Sarusan.
Thanks! I guess I'll have to use my own noggin for once:)
Um lost prison colonies, ghost treasure ships, massive gold seams that disappear and reappear in other locations, tropical rainforrests, deserts, drop bears, tree kangaroos, carniverous kangaroos hunting in packs like velociraptors, dire Tasmanian Devils, bunyips yowies, min min lights, wandjina, shadow sprits that hide in the cracks in the rock, totem people (The Dreaming and dreams are very powerful, every clan has a sacred animal, lots of rangers, Druids, and necromancy), the Rainbow Serpent, giant frogs that absorb or disintegrate water, terror birds, Wombats the size of a van, 30 foot long Komodo dragons, 60 foot long crocodiles. Ancient petrified forrests (heck have a whole city turned to stone), woka demons (little demons that hide in your camping gear and feast on you like piranhas when you are asleep) who have one green eye and one red eye, very thin walls between galorion and the first world (see Picnic at Hanging Rock) . Intact watch 10 Canoes, Razorback, Mad Max 2, Van Diemens Land, Wolf Creek, and The Proposition,.
Id Looks up PRehistoric Australia and South America (which had alot in common with Australia until the land bridge) then likely make some of the animals bigger for a more fantasy feal.
I think there was some Civilization all over the south of Tian Xia wasnt there? IT might be connected to Sarusan but i cant remember the name of it.
You could also do something like look up the old Isle of Dread modual, though its a bit smaller.
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You could make 'the Dreaming' more of a part of the area, make some monsters function sort of like shadow monsters, and be bigger / tougher / more damaging if one fails a Will save, as they feed off of fear and confusion as to their true nature (and perhaps get bonuses at night, when they cannot be seen as clearly, and appear as unstoppable beasts, despite being, in the light of day, not quite as terrible as they sound clamoring around at the edges of the firelight).
The hide behind could be used as inspiration, or even various real world ambush predators that are more confident attacking prey that is unaware of them or facing away from them, and will sometimes retreat if forcefully confronted.
Things not appearing as they seem would be a constant theme, with carnivorous man-eating plants that create a mirage of a small pool of water (and spring up to devour any creature attracted to that water) being the sorts of critters that might fit the 'things are not as they seem' feel. A culture of native humans, demihumans or humanoids who paint themselves with local red or grey mud, and 'freeze' against rocky outcroppings, seeming to 'meld out of the rock' to deliver a sneak attack, and take advantage of their camouflage and the terrain to 'hide in plain sight,' could be encountered, and it later be discovered that they are just mimicing a *real* ogre-sized monstrous humanoid race that *can* meld out of the rock (and has stony skin). If you want to include a fantasy equivalent to Ayers Rock, that could be the 'city' of the race that lives within the rock, or it could be the prostrate form of their sleeping god...
I'd be inclined to have Sarusan, like the Mwangi Expanse and the Realms of the Mammoth Lords, be one of those places that megafauna (like giant sloths, woolly rhinos and saber-tooth tigers) and dinosaurs still exist. That sort of thing sounds more adventure-worthy than angry kangaroos and incontinent koalas.
A displaced group of humans living on the coast, from another continent, could create a small island of 'normalcy' for adventurers from other lands, or could be even more alien and upsetting, if it's a prison colony, founded from survivors of a fleet of ships sent to dispose of political refugees or cultists of some unpleasant god or prisoners of war from some ancient conflict. Such a 'haven of scum and villainy,' particularly if heavily composed of the dregs of an evil army of conquest that was beaten back, or the deposed 'rightful rulers' (read, horrible overthrown tyrants) of another land, or a large-ish cult of worshippers of Norgorber or Rovagug or some demon lord or whatever that was forcibly expelled from a more civilized nation, could make the familiar seeming coastal people more terrifying and 'savage' than the natives to the interior of the mysterious continent. Instead of more common gods, the shanty towns built from wrecked prison or slaver ships might worship unpleasant gods that are barely relevant on the other continents, like Gyronna or Ghlaunder or Zyphus, or, mwa-ha-ha, the Old Ones...
And, to mix things up, they might not be human. Washing up in a ramshackle fishing village, whose 'main hall' and village church is the remains of the oddly-shaped cuttlefish-prowed galleon that crashed ashore here, and finding out that the inhabitants are black-eyed, scale-skinned, seaweed-draped Cthulhu-worshipping degenerate aquatic elves could certainly mess with some preconceptions!
/pedantry on
Scutosaurus is a pareiasaur, which belongs to a basal clade of reptiles. It MAY be a distant relative to turtles, although it is more likely some oddball that left no descendents
/pedantry off