THE PUNCTURED LANDS

I used this image as the Roll20 'front page' of 'Secrets of the Wastes', the online campaign I ran during 2021 lockdowns. I named the setting the Punctured Lands after its vast, uninhabitable deserts, monumental reminders of an ancient war that refuses to stay in the past despite the best efforts of those who survived it. The campaign revolved exploring these wastelands after some had been cleansed of noxious magical energy by the cleric PC's god, which brought the party into conflict with a dracolich that had been using the wastes for its own nefarious purposes and ultimately served as the final boss.

I definitely originally got the image from DeviantArt, but don't remember anything else about the account that posted it. The title suggested it was some sort of study and not tied to any specific existing setting or franchise. When I later attempted to source the image to credit it, Google's reverse image didn't find any exact matches (it didn't find the copy on this site either, so make of that what you will). Trying to search 'underground ruins' on DeviantArt directly was also unsuccessful; unsurprising since site is flooded with AI slop and the search had stopped working properly long before that was ever a problem. I had the bright idea of using DuckDuckGo's 'hide AI images' feature in combination with searching 'site:DeviantArt.com' but that didn't work either because hiding AI images while restricting results to DeviantArt results in no search results at all! Thank you modern internet, very cool.