First, sorry if this is not the right place for this. Imagine a planet that is gravitationally locked to its star, one pole pointing towards the star, one way. The pole facing the star is inhumanely hot desert. The pole facing away, eighth plane of hell cold, and a band of tropical, then temperate, then arctic as it transitions from one pole to another. No day-night cycle, just a star making a circle in the sky on the hemisphere facing the star, and constant twilight or night on the other. Now imagine that the side facing the star precesses every 10,000 to 100,00 years, maybe due to internal magma flows or maybe due to tidal effects of moon(s). But whatever the reason, the net effect is to create and destroy civilizations on the time scale of half a precession, as the stationary buildings are frozen in ice then thawed to eventually bake and be swallowed by sand. The arrangement presents opportunities for adventuring into the cold or heat to recover artifacts from lost civilizations, and for a variety of climate adjusted cultures in the temperate band.