Saturday, 31 August 2013

What Lies Beneath

Airborne radar surveys of the ice sheets in Greenland have revealed a hidden canyon beneath the ice that is over 460 miles long, 6 miles wide and 2600 feet deep. That's way longer than the Grand Canyon and now officially the longest canyon on Earth. It could be even longer since they haven't been able to survey further south yet.

My first thoughts were of the Rift Canyon in Greyhawk but that's a tiddler compared to the newly-discovered Greenland Canyon.

I love discoveries like this; finding the Gamburtsevs under the Antarctic Ice Sheet was another cool moment. I mean, what's not to like about a range known as the Ghost Mountains?

It's just occurred to me that an ice-free Greenland would work really well as a campaign world. Anyone else find inspiration for their worlds from sources like this?

1 comment:

  1. Basically it gives rise to the role-playing potential of Clark Ashton Smith's Hyperborean cycle stories, which were based upon pre-Pleistocene Greenland before it vanished under the ice.

    In fact, one could use the iced-over canyon in a 1920's Call of Cthulhu game, with the premise that ancient sorceries of Uzuldaroum shielded the deep valley from the "The Coming of the White Worm". Lots of fun to be had uncovering prehistoric archaeology whilst fighting off the Voormis. :)

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