I think you're looking at a cloud of smoke out of a chimmney

I agree they both look Great and match the setting for each picture respectively. Perhaps implement a Day/Night cycle?

I vote for the second one by far. The darker lighting makes the other colors pop out. The first one looks less crisp and a bit washed out to me.  Put in gamma and brightness options and call it a day

What??? I love desert!! I love the malakim too, er I mean the Shiia-Humans ... or Gypsy humans from hyrule type thing if nothing else.

Although the malakim were more or less anti-recon and trickery, and more truth based, the gypsy humans from Hyrule (I forget the name) were more recon/sorcery, all kinds of trickery ... like a Desert based Faeryl Viconia. However, with the lighting from the above picture, that desert reminds me more of a happy band of malakim.

Personally I would rather have a large variance of color tones than a large variance of lighting, although I do agree some areas of the map should be lighter and others could be darker. Perhaps a static cloud cover (perhaps affected by terraform spells) could affect this.