Shapas Desert Geography: The Tic-Tac-Toe Regions

Type: Location — Regional Geography (Full Text) Status: Canon (confirmed by creator)

Source: conversations-002.json, "Maf Game Overview" — see RAW SOURCE. A regional mapping of the Shapas Desert, laid out as a nine-square "tic-tac-toe" grid centered on Wetrock.

The Basin

The Shapas Desert sits within a broad, oval-shaped basin. To the west, around Spartania, no real wall exists — the land simply blends into the Dielvan Wac Desert beyond. To the east, roughly 80 miles from Maiha, an eastern wall marks the basin's edge.

Wetrock: Center Square

Wetrock sits almost exactly at the grid's center, on a high plateau of canyons, washes, outcroppings, escarpments, depressions, and low ridges. Ground cover ranges from gravel to pea sand to hard pan to salt pan, with pockets of pure dust on slot-canyon floors. It's tiny — a few hundred people at most, a handful of Kaolsan families — and primarily a religious community, drawing Kaolsani pilgrims to visit the Rock itself. Only one road reaches it, arcing north from Maiha.

Top-Middle Square: Soulsen and the Oil Fields

Soulsen — a wide region roughly 300 miles east to west — sits at the top of this square, with oil fields extending down through most of its center. Where the central plateau gives way to sand heading north, the oil fields begin a few miles further on. Soulsen's southern bulge alone hosts more than 70 refineries from dozens of companies, including major names like Nurid Oil, Naensai Energy, Imperial Oil, and Royal Oil. Pipelines of every diameter web the region — wildcatters renting capacity on others' lines, independents building their own when they can afford it, the majors running proprietary systems. One Nurid Oil field is nicknamed "Little Texas"; another, "Dalas" (spelled phonetically, not for the real city), has grown into a small company town of its own — hospital, dormitories, mess halls, repair shops, even tattoo parlors — ringed by derricks and oilfield service companies.

Oil Field Culture

The oil companies ban gambling and alcohol outright, making the entire north desert "dry" — which in turn makes nearby towns like Lawvesta and Maiha extremely valuable destinations for workers on a 2-3 day pass (or, rarely, a full week off) with a few thousand dollars burning a hole in their pocket. Work rotations follow a phrase unique to the fields: "7 days and a wake up" (or 14, or 2, or whatever the rotation happens to be) — meaning 7 days of work before vacation starts. Days off within a stretch don't count as a "wake up"; only the day your regular rotation actually ends does. Veterans warn new hires not to get too comfortable with a few days off either — a broken fitting, a schedule slip, or a blown well, and you're back in the field immediately.

Top-Left Square

Gravel, pea sand, and small stones arranged into washes, ridges, and outcroppings, with substantial brush and short, rugged trees and cactus throughout — except the square's lower-left corner, where miles of rolling pea-sand dunes take over instead.

Left-Middle Square: Spartania

Centered toward the western edge, this square ranges from hard pan and sand in the north to soft and hard sand elsewhere, often running into each other, with dunes and washes of differing materials running parallel, plus outcroppings and tiny bluffs to the northwest.

Bottom-Left Square

Heavy brush throughout — filling washes and depressions, covering ridges and dunes — alongside wildlife trails, some of it dangerous. The square's middle transitions to hard pan and salt pan with sparse bushes and heavy cactus, plus occasional small "johus"-type trees.

Bottom-Center Square: "Typical" Shapas

What most people picture as the Shapas Desert proper — fewer canyons, no vegetation at all (not even cactus or the northwest's constant brush), uneven rock pan, hard pan, gravel, rock domes and outcroppings, occasional mesas, and a handful of famous rock formations named for their silhouettes: "the Ship" (resembling a three-masted sailing ship), "the Fat Lady," and "the Old Man."

Summary

Taken as a whole, the creator describes the Shapas as perhaps one of the most varied desert terrains and environments anywhere — strange rock formations, canyons, scrub brush, and Spartania's thick, thorny growth on one side; nonstop industrial activity, oil, lights, people, dust, and constant movement on the other. Nothing here ever shuts down.

Open Questions

• Soulsen does not yet have its own dedicated location page — flagged for future treatment given its role as the region's major oil-producing area.
• The top-right, right-middle, and bottom-right squares of the grid were not covered in this source and remain undocumented.