The world (or at least this vast expanse of it) is sick, silent and perfect. Everything is now crystal, tinkling leaves on trees with trunks like cut glass, and shattered plains of broken fragments. Nothing can live among the majority of this beautiful ruin, though here places capable of supporting life endure.
Use the table below for any hex where you wish to emphasize that wizards did something stupid. Roll a D10 or D12 if your world is completely dead and a D20 if maybe some desperate holdouts still cling to terrible, miserable existence.
D20
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Beyond the Crystal Frontier
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1
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A plain of towering crystals pylons that act as prisms and sparkle with
rainbows during the daylight hours. Safe
enough at night and during the day, but at dawn and twilight, anyone on the
plain must save vs. paralysis or be permanently blinding by the coruscating rays.
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2
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A bog of milky acidic alkali water.
Various browning crystals cover the bog and are very slippery, and the
drinking too much of the water (the result of swimming in it for example) causes
death by slow ossification.
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3
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Endless dunes of tiny crystals that churn in a nightly scouring
wind. The deposits of crystal slowly separate
by weight and color so the dunes have a beautiful and vibrant striated appearance. After one night unprotected amongst the
cyclones and dust devils of the dunes any fleshy creature will be reduced to
a pile of scratched bones, forming the anchor for a new mound crystal sand.
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4
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A vast city, its white stone blocks unworn by time. All organic
materials in the city have been transformed into translucent red crystal and
the inhabitants of the metropolis stand, most staring upward in terror as
faceted statutes.
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5
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A tinkling forest of indescribable beauty, almost perfectly preserved. The trees, flowers and blades of grass have
been transmuted into perfect, lightly tinged crystal copies of
themselves. The land however is dead,
and every leaf, blade and petal a minute blade. Walking through the forest will require a
save vs. wands each turn or result in 1D4 damage.
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6
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A single enormous grey crystal stands blotting out the sun in midst
of a huge crater. The land around is a
blackened waste of poison, leached from the crystal’s twisted roots. It is honeycombed with passages and used as
a base for a pack of 2D6 giant undead
carrion birds (HD 4, AC 5, ATK 1 swoop DAM 1D6** MV 60’ (fly) SV F2 M 10) *diving
attack is as a backstab, x4 damage , +4 hit may take a round setting up a
dive.)
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7
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Crystals dangle from shards of earth floating above a pocked plain of
white mica. The floating rocks have a
nasty habit of plummeting at those beneath and crushing them. The rocks attack randomly (on a 2 in 6 per
turn) as 8HD creatures doing 4d6 damage.
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8
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Blazing cracked expanse of crystal, like a lens of burning glass, it
cannot be crossed during the day (1 point of damage per turn).
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9
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Ferrous Crystals from the size of a baseball to the size of a house
rust rooted in a landscape drained of
color and polluted with iron. Some say
all the iron in the world has been pulled here, including that from magical armaments.
It may be this curdled magic, but sometimes clusters of the ferrous crystals
come to life as monstrous spider things (2D4 rust monsters) and devour
anything else metallic that comes near.
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10
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Elaborate fractal cathedrals of pale yellow crystal hang above dells
of black, poisonous bramble. The
brambles are slow going (1/2 speed), and loud noises will collapse the
elegant structures in a rain of razor edged fragments (3D6 in 20’ radius vs. Save
vs. Dragon Breath for ½ damage).
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11
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A forest of alien, silicon based life, vibrant and utterly deadly to
humans and other terrestrial species.
The fruits of the skeletal trees are poison, and then flesh of the
crab like animals acidic. The land is
watched by a phantasmagoric (blue) dragon of the largest size who inhabits a tested
bower of blue thorns at the center of the slowly spreading forest.
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12
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Dull brown mountains honeycombed with caverns filled with monolithic
white crystals, occasionally breaking upward through to the surface. The caverns are easy to traverse, but contain
certain deposits of crystal capable of mesmerizing and enslaving travelers to
do their unnatural bidding.
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13
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Broken crystals of blue laced with veins of gold surround an unnaturally (and
poisonously) blue lake. The shores of
the lake are inhabited by a peaceful village of crystalline humanoids (as
crystal statutes) who seek to repair the broken crystal. They will feed organic guests with horded
grain and canned goods, but will turn hostile if any attempt is made to mine
the gold in the crystals.
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14
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A crude palisade on a hill ringed by black volcanic glass. Within is a necromancer and his reanimated
work force. The undead have managed to
dig a winding pit to more fertile soil and a well. Hundreds of skeletal hands can scratch
sustenance for 5-10 living souls.
The necromancer is lonely, depraved and furiously seeking the secrets of lichdom.
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15
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A forest of perfectly preserved plants trapped inside large transparent
amber deposits. A few survivors linger
here, chipping at the crystals to reach the trapped plants within and subsist
of the nuts and preserved animals they find there. The survivors are paranoid and hostile,
willing to go to any length to protect their source of sustenance.
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16
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Glowing green crystals erupt from the earth here, amongst irregularly
plowed fields. The crystals leech
poison into the land, causing all wholesome things to grow warped and
stunted, while everything malignant swells.
The shrunken twisted inhabitants live well enough off giant dandelion
fronds and potato bugs the size of pigs, but lately many of their children
have emerged as monstrous brutes (ogres) who terrorize their kin.
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17
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The canker faced farmers of this region have broken through the dirty
grey crystal crust of this land and live in burrows beneath, farming
mushrooms, lichen and other fungus.
The crystal seeks revenge for these desperate intrusions, and
burrowing crystal beasts (2D4 umber hulks) hunt the peasants in their burrows,
alone or in pairs.
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18
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Cracked wasteland cut with gullies, plants of red and green crystal
grow here, and despite their dangerous appearance these plants are edible,
even nutritious, though they contain powerful hallucinogens. The primitive hunter-gatherers of these
lands collect any confused wanders they find, leaving their goods as
offerings to the crystal gods, and adopt them. Once in the hands of a tribe, it takes only
a few days of guided hallucinogen fueled reprogramming to make a wanderer
forget their past and embrace the service of the crystal gods.
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19
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A Broken land of salty robust grass and outcroppings of worn
crystal. Nomads with their twisted,
cancerous herds roam this land, and they are a fierce people. Bands of 2D12 horse archers patrol, ready to
fight anyone who wanders into these lands.
They wear bone armor and use poison arrows, but will test invaders
with a few volleys and may come to respect groups that do not scatter or
charge under fire.
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20
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On the expanse of an evaporated sea, totems of salt loom amongst a dead
and desiccated land. The most common
inhabitants are the vengeful ghosts of ancient mariners who still haunt long
forgotten wrecks amongst the blinding white salt flats. A few small bands of nomads, well warded
against the dead, roam these lands collecting long dead fish, preserved by the
salt, and building the totems to mark deposits of unspoiled sea life.
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Holy crap you filled that in like a champion.
ReplyDeletedrained salt sea is fun sounding
ReplyDeleteThe sea, the burrowers and the mutant farmers are some of my faves.
DeleteI was looking for something weird to spice up some lands my players will be encountering.
ReplyDeleteThis? This fits the bill nicely. *evil laugh*
Glad you like it - I have a few more that are similar for science fantasy rust deserts:
Deletehttp://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2013/10/encounters-among-moribund-hulks-of.html
and a list of strange encounters for magical lunacyscapes:
http://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2013/08/monsters-of-boiling-depression.html#more
Also this one page dungeon:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_4yfZaJH0e5U0ZDOFZ0WTRFZU0/edit
Digging through some old bookmarks and found this gem.
ReplyDeleteAdded to the Blog Database.
https://jonbupp.wordpress.com/blog-database/for-dungeon-masters/chapter-5-adventure-environments/wilderness/