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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Sandbox Wonders cont.

More things to find when exploring a fantasy world:

13. The Abrupt Forest - When the sun rises on this it is a flat, treeless plain. But soon saplings push out of the sod and grow.  And grow.  Trees will grow to adult height by sunset (or alternatively noon).  Depending on the type of forest they may grow as fast as a meter a minute or more.  Once night falls they recede back into the earth.  Cuttings and saplings can be taken.
14. The Hidden Forest - Opposite of above; the trees of this forest grow quickly once night falls and recede to a flat plain in the day.
15. The Forest that Isn't - A normal forest at night but the light of dawn turns the timber to birds or butterflies which fly away only to come settle back into tree form when night falls.
16. Water Rise - Water that flows up.  Sometimes found underground where they are a unfamiliar hazard to explorers.  On the surface their waters "fall" straight up to space.  Can be bottled.
17. True Ice Walls - These sheets of ice are somehow pushed vertically from a great frozen plain or lake.  Rows and rows.  Some pressed tight like the strata of a tilted mesa, some with space enough between for a human to walk. When someone is seen through the ice their true feeling toward you are visible in their face.  Crews harvest sections with saws and sleds to place in faraway palaces.
18. The Dammed Muds - Flats of mud that stretch for miles and that never dry.  Even if dug up and moved to somewhere else the mud will remain mud.  Said to be treasured by mages in the making living statues.
19. The Shards - A flat landscape, as far as the eye can see, covered with shards of inscribed pottery.  Like a great library, the writing on the shards can be searched for spells, recipes, or the locations of famous treasures.  Except some essential bit of information will always be missing, the one shard that bit was on lost to the ages (spells will misfire in random ways, recipes have side effects, treasure maps will have some riddle that needs answering or might point to two equally possible places).
20. Where God Waits - The landscape of this whole area is actually the shape of a human lying on its side.  The hip a great hill.  Two cults have sprung up around it, one that protects the figure in expectation of its waking day, the other secretly digs out its grey, clayey flesh at night to eat.
21. The Graveyard of Gods - A set of canyons filled with white bones too big for even dragons.  Ribs as big as rivers, Hills of solid bone.  Operations have been set up to "mine" the ivory, cutting out solid blocks as big as wagons can carry. Interesting murals might be scrimshawed in hard to reach places.
22.  The Battlefield - A Great rocky depression filled with the bones of thousands of warriors and most of their gear.  Weapons and armor, ancient, weird, or of excellent quality can be found if long enough is pent rummaging partial or broken gear scattered through the rocks.  Some say those who take from this place are cursed by doing so.

3 comments:

  1. These would make great dungeon locations. I guess I can't help it, I'm dungeon-centric.

    http://castletriskelion.blogspot.com/

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  2. Great stuff as usual. I'm adding your 'wonders' posts to my campaign influence links.

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  3. @Darnizhaan: Yeah, even the best of these will probably not being interesting enough for the party to want to go visit. So they are better as places you have to travel to to get to the dungeon or like you say, weird places dungeons are nestled in, and villages too.

    @Tim: Cool, thanks!

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