Mesa Settlements

The idea of a Mesa (technically a butte) is very alluring to me. It's a big tower of rock in the middle of a vast expanse of flat ground.

I have been looking at them for years and wondering, as many people probably do, "what does it look like on top?"

As some of the buttes have a raised 'skirt' around their base it made me think of the defensive constructions used in medieval castles. The raised area was to strengthen the tower and made it more difficult for someone to assault the base.

So then the idea hit me that the Buttes were sort of like "Desert Towers" or Castles in the Desert. Well, if you're going to have a tower, you're going to have people living in them. And if you're going to have castles you're going to have to have someone to protect yourself from.

This got my mind working but nothing ever felt like it was the right thing.

Some of the Buttes that I found may not have the best tops so I thought that maybe they could be tunneled into like caves so that people wouldn't be subjected to the harsh winds at that altitudes.

A butte with tunnels and caves would suggest a community. It would certainly take some sizable effort and food coordination to feed enough workers to hollow out such places.

And then, if I could tie a few of those buttes together (if they were naturally clustered together) then you could have settlements of several buttes as a colony or community.

See where I'm going here? It's almost like a Seich in Dune.
If you could tie them together with rope-bridges then you'd have a community that only touched the ground when needed.

And that left the question: what are they keeping off the ground from?

In Dune they had to face huge sand worms that were the size of several buses strung end to end. That seemed a bit too much. It's not like you'd ever be surprised by one of them coming. So long as you could just get out of their way you wouldn't be hurt by them but they might tear up a harvester from time to time.

However, something smaller - like this creatures from Tremors, would be fast enough to be able to sneak up on someone from under the earth and snatch them like a real predator.

One way to escape these predators (which can tunnel through the soft desert soil but have a tough time with rocks like the butte), would be to stay off the ground. Enter... a glider.

Though the only form of a hang glider I could find looks like a flying triangle, I'm sure that in a fantasy sense, someone could find a more interesting construction. How would they make it?

Simple: you hunt the things that also fly.

So I threw a Pterodactyl into this desert ecology and, of course, have to throw in herds of something that it can hunt; probably antelope.

The flying lizards could be a real threat to any kind of surface creature as they could swoop down from neighboring heights and pluck them from the earth. Also, they could be a problem for the mesa communities because the buttes would be their favorite nesting sites.

Their wing leather would be highly prized by the glider-makers as it's proven to be light and strong enough to handle the wind-sheer.

Antelope meat would only be part of these people's diet so they would have to find some other means to grow crops - perhaps on the tops of the buttes.