The Alberta Badlands, now the Terrorsaur Badlands, stretch
across southern Alberta and into prehistory, characterized by dramatic
landscapes of multi-hued canyons, wind-sculpted hoodoos, and rich deposits of
dinosaur fossils.
The Alberta Badlands span a vast swath of southern Alberta,
stretching east from Drumheller to the Saskatchewan border and southward toward
Montana. This region—encompassing over 90,000 square kilometres—is a scarred
yet sacred landscape, defined by its raw geological drama. Eons of erosion by
wind, water, and time have carved out plunging coulees, sharp escarpments, and
surreal hoodoos—pillars of rock that stand like silent sentinels of prehistory.
These formations aren’t merely scenic oddities; they reveal strata upon strata
of Earth’s deep history, each colour band whispering of eras long past.
Heart of the Fossil Frontier
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Here, millennia of sediment from the ancient Western
Interior Seaway preserved the remains of towering creatures like Albertosaurus,
Styracosaurus, and Edmontosaurus, turning them into ghostly stone
blueprints of a vanished world. But the Badlands' fossil wealth extends far
beyond the park's borders—ancient remains surface across thousands of square kilometres,
often unearthed by nothing more than a good storm or a curious eye.
Wild, Remote, and Revered
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Despite its scientific allure, much of the Badlands remains
remote, rugged, and lightly inhabited—more a territory of ghosts, wind, and
memory than of modern settlement. Locals and visitors alike speak of the
landscape’s unsettling stillness, of how the stone seems to hold a memory.
The terrain becomes ever more extreme the farther one ventures from paved
roads—rivers vanish into steep ravines, and bone-white buttes shimmer under the
sun like the vertebrae of buried titans
What the Badlands Entail — Terrain & Features
The Alberta Badlands are not a single unified wasteland but
a rugged patchwork of stark canyons, rolling plateaus, whispering hoodoo
fields, and fossil-choked ravines. This fractured terrain is a place where the
land has turned itself inside out, revealing the earth's ancient bones and
shaping isolated micro-environments where danger—and wonder—lurk in every fold.
These landforms not only define the region's physical character but also
influence weather patterns, the distribution of flora and fauna, and survival
strategies. To the untrained eye, the Badlands may appear empty, but those who
know the land understand it is alive—constantly shifting, echoing with
forgotten thunder.
Bonezones
Southern Alberta—especially the region surrounding Dinosaur
Provincial Park—is home to some of the richest and most fossil-dense strata
on the planet. In the wake of the Hodgepocalypse, these once-dormant fossil
beds have become necromantic faultlines, where the veil between life,
death, and the Hallowed World has grown perilously thin. The earth
itself hums with memory; bones vibrate with residual psionic energy, and not
all of them choose to rest. Within these so-called Bonezones, dense
fossil concentrations act as ambient mana batteries, empowering spells
linked to death, memory, and transformation. Necromancers, psychics, and
paleomancers alike covet these sites, for spellcasting here channels power
directly from the ancient dead—sometimes maximizing damage, removing material
costs, or even chaining effects beyond control. Yet the price is steep. When
the moon rises or the air crackles with geomantic energy, the bones
awaken—shaping themselves into monstrous revenants, echoes of creatures that
once ruled the world, now reborn as bone‑beasts fueled by fossilized
hunger.
Bonezone Mechanics)
When within a Bonezone, a magically active fossil bed,
spellcasters gain unique benefits and face unique threats:
·
Spellcasting Surge: When a creature casts
a necromancy or psionic spell within a Bonezone, they may choose to expend Hit
Dice equal to the spell level to gain one of the following benefits:
·
The spell has advantage on damage if it deals
necrotic or psychic damage.
·
Lingering Spirits: When a creature
finishes a long rest within a Bonezone, roll a d6:
o
On a 1, a Bone Beast (use skeleton or allosaurus
stat block with undead traits) animates nearby and attacks.
o
On a 6, the creature receives a vision or memory
from a prehistoric mind. They gain an advantage on Arcana or History checks
related to the ancient world for the next 24 hours.
Unstable Veil: During nights of the full moon,
critical hits made against undead creatures in the Bonezone cause bone shards
to explode, dealing 1d6 piercing damage to all creatures within 10 feet (DC 13
Dex save for half).
Beneath the Bones: Subterranean Relics of Industry and Invocation
Beneath the scalded earth and fractured bluffs of southern
Alberta sprawls a forgotten skeleton of the industrial age — a honeycomb of
abandoned coal shafts, flooded drift mines, and crumbling tunnel networks
carved deep into the soft sediment of the badlands. Once the lifeblood of
frontier towns like Drumheller, East Coulee, and Lethbridge, these subterranean
arteries have long since been surrendered to erosion, collapse, and decay. But
something older now stirs in the dark. These forgotten mines have become
natural conduits to the Hallowed World — gateways through which the first
Terrorsaurs slithered and screamed their way into our realm. The coal seams hum
faintly with psionic feedback, and whispers from soot-choked corridors speak in
the voices of long-dead miners who refuse to rest. Echo Mines belch black fog
that burns the mind, and some shafts twist space and time into recursive loops,
trapping the unwary in memory-haunted darkness. These are not mere tunnels;
they are the pressure fractures of reality itself, now warping under the weight
of post-magical saturation. Every echo is a warning. Every footstep down below
might be your last — or your first into something older, hungrier, and
impossibly alive.
Plot Hooks
1. "The Black Loop"
A survey drone sent by a post-collapse trade guild has
vanished beneath the hills near East Coulee — its final transmission shows a
looping corridor of mine tunnels that seem to fold in on themselves. Locals
whisper of the Black Loop, a section of collapsed shaft where time stutters and
the same torchlight flickers around every corner. The party is hired to recover
the drone’s data core... and anything left of the last crew who tried.
Twist: The loop is a time knot caused by a psychic
soot pocket. The team finds versions of themselves, including a possible
future-dead party member whose gear bears prophetic warnings.
2. "Coal-Hearted King"
Miners' bones were never properly laid to rest after the
Collapse. Now something deep has stirred them. An echo of an old pit boss — now
a Coal Wight Tyrant — has reasserted dominion over his former mine, raising
wights from black bones and building a cruel underground fortress of soot and
slag. His wights have started raiding nearby homesteads at night for tools,
ore... and workers.
Quest: Clear out the mine before the Coal Tyrant
reactivates the mine forge, which will let him mass-produce bone-armoured
revenants using fossil echoes and enslaved spirits.
3. "The Last Lantern."
A lone green light shines nightly from an old mineshaft near
Drumheller, seen from miles around. It has drawn fortune-seekers, cultists, and
even a few desperate prospectors. None return. The Church of the Bright Vein
offers a reward for adventurers who can snuff the last lantern — and recover a
relic known only as the Ember Lamp.
Catch: The lantern burns with the soul of the mine’s
last survivor, a psychic child whose dreams manifest creatures from her memory.
The deeper you go, the more real her fears become.
Canyons, Coulees & Gullies
“The veins of deep time.”
Cut through the Badlands like scars are the canyons,
coulees, and gullies, carved over millennia by meltwater and seasonal
torrents. These narrow ravines—some plunging nearly 200 meters deep,
especially in the Red Deer River Valley—form a natural labyrinth of
hidden trails, ambush zones, and winding paths for predators. The coulees often
begin as mere dips in the prairie but suddenly fall away into shadowed gorges
with sheer, multicoloured walls.
In the Hodgepocalypse, these water-carved trenches become
both shelter and snare. Herds of wild Dinosaurs may move through them
unnoticed, only to erupt onto the plains in bone-jarring stampedes. Bandits,
cybercult chapels, and even ancient relic-vaults are sometimes hidden in the
narrowest bends. When psychic storms roll in, these gullies channel the howls
of the past—whispers in the wind that can disorient the weak-minded.
The Cypress Hills
“Where the land rises, and the world splits open.”
Straddling the borders of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Cypress
Hills form a startling anomaly in the otherwise flat expanses of the
Badlands. Rising over 600 meters above the surrounding plains, they are
the highest point between the Rockies and Labrador—a sudden upland of
ancient forest, hidden springs, and sacred stone that defies the logic of
prairie geography. Even before the fall, the Hills were treated as a mystery:
they were never glaciated during the last Ice Age, preserving flora, fauna, and
energies unseen elsewhere in Canada.
Now, in the age of the Hodgepocalypse, the Cypress
Hills are sacred, sundered, and saturated with power. The ley lines of
the continent knot and pulse beneath its soil, forming geomantic thrones and
runic faultlines. Storms of fossilized pollen sweep through its hollows.
Lightning cracks in unnatural silence. Gravity bends subtly in its groves. Magic
pools like water here—and it leaks.
Breaching the World
The Hallowed World, a parallel reality of primal
instincts, ancestral memory, and psionic fury, finds its strongest anchor in
the Hills. This is Ground Zero for the breach that brought the Terrorsaurs
through—a psychic stampede of biomechanical thunderbeasts reforged in rage and
entropy. Each eruption cracks reality anew, twisting plant life into dreamlike
forms and summoning fossils into new, terrible existence.
Terrorsaurs rarely nest here—but when they do, the nests
warp into egg-temples, surrounded by spiraling stones and rune-burned
trees. The psychic resonance of these nests echoes into the land, creating
hazards like:
Hoodoos & Rock Pillars
“The standing stones of time and spirit.”
Rising like petrified sentinels from the broken earth, hoodoos—those
strange mushroom- or column-shaped pillars of layered stone—are among the most
iconic features of the Alberta Badlands. Formed where harder rock resists
erosion while the softer earth beneath it crumbles away, these natural
sculptures range from 1 to 3 meters tall in places like Drumheller and
East Coulee, with some in more profound valleys reaching heights of 5 to 7
meters.
These stone monoliths are more than just geological
curiosities. To many cultures, they are spiritual anchors—geomantic
nodes pulsing with the echoes of deep time. In the Hodgepocalypse, some
hoodoos become druids’ towers, each etched with mystic glyphs,
focus-glyphs for leyline tuning, or used as lodestones by elemental channelers.
Others resonate with fossil memory, projecting ghostly visions when
touched under a blood moon.
More than one adventurer has reported waking at the base of
a hoodoo to find strange patterns etched into their skin, or hearing
whispers in a long-dead tongue. Cyber-prophets sometimes stake out these
formations, believing them to be natural antennas to the One Machine.
The hoodoos neither deny nor confirm them.
Soft Sediment Slopes & Clays
“Where the earth melts like memory.”
The Alberta Badlands are composed of layers of bentonite
clay, shale, and fine silt, all formed in the ancient seabeds and floodplains.
These materials—soft, fragile, and moisture-reactive—erode more quickly than
the harder sandstone or caprock surrounding them, giving rise to a terrain
that is constantly shifting beneath the weight of time and weather. A dry cliff
one season may become a crumbling slope the next.
These soft sediment slopes create a unique blend of
beauty and peril. When dry, they offer treacherous footing—powdery and loose,
riddled with sudden gullies. When wet, they can liquefy into quickmud,
swallowing boots, wagons, or even unwary dinosaurs. Rainfall can spark miniature
landslides, exposing ancient fossils—or entombing explorers in sediment.
In the age of the Hodgepocalypse, these mutable grounds have
taken on an almost living quality. Pathways traced by scouts one day may
dissolve the next into new configurations. Some whisper that the clays remember
too much—that they “slide away from the unworthy”, or twist themselves
to trap the curious. Some fossilborn claim they can feel their ancestors
whisper through the shale layers, and necromancers have been known to harvest
bentonite infused with bone echoes for arcane rituals.
Maze Lands: The Living Labyrinth
Twisting canyons and coulees carved by ancient erosion
aren't merely natural formations — they're alive with magic. The Maze Lands hum
with temporal bleed from the Hallowed World, where psionic storms and
fossil-etched ley lines have rewritten the memories of the very stone.
Travelers who stray too deep into these lands often find that the land doesn’t
just shift underfoot — it remembers differently. Ravines bend with the
pull of the moon, especially during blood moons or ley eclipses, subtly
rearranging routes and warping distances. Trails that once led to safety now
loop endlessly or open into mirror canyons filled with echoes of prehistoric
time. Survival or Arcana checks to navigate here may suddenly reroll depending
on moon phases — a failure might mean being caught in a Time Slip,
teleported into a folded section of space, or reliving someone else's
fossilized memory. Buried ruins, lost bones, and predators that tunnel not
through earth, but reality, await those who dare to map these living labyrinths.
Mechanical Effect – Maze Lands (Hazardous Terrain)
When traveling through the Maze Lands, characters must make
a DC 15 Wisdom (Survival) or Intelligence (Arcana) check once every 4 hours of
overland travel. Upon failure, the party becomes disoriented as the landscape
subtly shifts — they may unknowingly retrace their steps, teleport to a
mirrored version of their location, or enter a forgotten ravine from another
time. During special lunar events (such as blood moons, leyline eclipses, or
Hallowed World surges), these effects intensify: the check DC increases to 18,
and on a failed check, the party must also roll on a Time Slip table
(DM-defined) or face a short-term madness effect (DMG p.259). Certain monsters
native to the Maze Lands (like rift serpents or canyon drifters) are unaffected
by this distortion and may use it to ambush or evade prey.
Pallister’s Triangle
“Where the world forgets what is real.”
Forming the southern boundary of the Strathcan territories, Pallister’s
Triangle stretches across south and Saskatchewan Alberta—a vast expanse of dry
steppe, ancient lakebeds, and horizonless skies. Known in
pre-Hodgepocalypse times as the Palliser Triangle, this region once
represented the edge of Canada’s breadbasket and the beginning of its
droughtlands. Yet as the world’s energies began to twist, this barren triangle
became something else: a magical anomaly, a geographic paradox,
and a crossroads between worlds.
Even before the Hodgepocalypse, travelers spoke of strange
disappearances within the Triangle. Convoys vanished from satellite networks,
drones lost telemetry mid-flight, and entire research camps fell silent.
Compasses spun aimlessly. Data corrupted itself into recursive patterns. Locals
called it “Canada’s Bermuda Triangle” long before the scholars admitted
something unnatural had taken root beneath the soil.
At the heart of this distortion lies the Cypress Hills,
a verdant plateau rising nearly 600 meters above the surrounding plains—a
rare oasis of forest, water, and stone in a sea of dry steppe. In the time of
the Hodgepocalypse, the Hills have become the apex of the Triangle’s power—a
geomantic crucible where ley lines knot, reality thins, and the Hallowed
World’s pulse seeps into our own. The Hills are now the primary gate
through which the Terrorsaurs emerge, colossal emissaries of primal fury
and ancient memory.
Those who survive the journey to the Triangle’s core
describe it as neither heaven nor hell, but a place between—a vast,
shimmering expanse where magic behaves like weather, and the ground hums with
distant heartbeats. Ritualists seek it for its unparalleled energy; fools enter
it hoping to control it. The wise merely stand at its edge and listen to the
wind, where sometimes—if the silence is right—they can hear the world dreaming
itself apart.
Riparian Zones & River Valleys
“Where the cliffs bleed water, and the past carves its
way through the present.”
Threading through the heart of the Alberta Badlands, the Red
Deer River and its tributaries are lifelines in an otherwise unforgiving
land. Over countless millennia, these rivers have carved deep channels through
soft sedimentary rock, exposing layered canyon walls, unearthing fossil
lodes, and leaving behind rich floodplains and wetland zones. These
riparian corridors serve not just as geographic arteries, but as ancient paths
of migration—for beasts, for people, and now, for things that never should have
returned.
Where the river runs deepest, the badlands terrain is
most dramatic: winding canyons, narrow coulees, steep cliff faces, and
towering overlooks shaped by flash floods and erosion. The landscape shifts
constantly with the water’s whim, creating ambush sites, sunken paths,
and treacherous crossings that can vanish overnight. Many areas are only
accessible by boat or glidepath, creating natural choke points for trade,
travel, or conflict.
Salt, Sulphur & Clay Deposits
Beneath the parched skin of the Badlands lie the mineral
scars of ancient seas — vast beds of salt, veins of sulphur, and pliant clays
that once soothed wounds or cured hides now throb with arcane aftershock. These
were once mundane treasures for settlers: salt to preserve meat, bentonite to
cleanse, sulphur to heal. But that was before the Manaclysm.
In the Hodgepocalypse, these deposits have awakened.
Salt flats now shimmer with psychic residue — standing upon
them too long reveals not just memories but visions of things yet to come.
Sulphur seeps boil with internal flame, spawning fire-blooded spawn that
screech in forgotten dialects of the Mesozoic. And the clays? They remember.
Touch them, and they might sculpt the past in real-time — moulding spectral
echoes of beasts, people, or horrors long buried.
Travellers say the land here sweats madness. And when the
wind whistles across a bentonite basin under the full moon, it sings the names
of creatures that shouldn’t be remembered.
Clay of Remembrance
Soft earth that dreams of the past.
Location Effect: When unearthed or physically
handled, the clay briefly manifests spectral shapes of whatever was buried in
it — fossils, corpses, weapons, even memories. This may be visual, auditory, or
fully illusory.
Mechanics:
·
Casting Aid: If used as a material focus during
a spell involving divination, speak with dead, locate object, or phantasmal
force, it removes the need for material components worth less than 100gp.
·
Echo Trigger: Once per long rest, a creature
touching the clay can force a DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana or History) check. On
a success, the clay manifests a helpful echo (GM’s choice):
·
A ghostly vision revealing a secret about the
current location
·
An image of the creature once buried here,
possibly including ancient equipment
·
A temporary boon: +1 to attack rolls and saving
throws for 10 minutes (as ancestral blessing)
Oracle Licks (Hallucinogenic Salt Flats)
Where salt remembers time better than stone.
Location Effect: When a creature comes into contact
with the salt (bare skin or taste), roll a d6 on the Oracle Lick Table below.
The creature must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or experience a vision
for 1 minute. While in this state, they are Stunned, but resistant to psychic
damage and immune to being frightened.
Oracle Lick Table (1d6):
- · You relive the final moments of a hadrosaur herd fleeing an unseen predator.
- · You glimpse a future where the Red Deer River runs backwards under a green sun.
- · You hear the chants of an ancient Fossilborn priest-king calling to the Terrorsaur Lords.
- · You see your own bones, picked clean and laid in a spiral — prophetic death vision.
- · You awaken with a forgotten language on your lips (gain comprehend languages for 10 minutes).
- · You see nothing, but feel something watching you from beyond the Hallowed Veil.
Optional Mechanics:
Ritual Bonus: If used as part of a ritual, the salt grants
advantage on Arcana, History, or Insight checks for 1 hour afterward.
Overuse Risk: A creature that contacts the salts more than
once per long rest must succeed a DC 15 Constitution save or gain 1 level of
Exhaustion and 1 random Indefinite Madness (DMG p. 260).
Optional Hazard:
Clay Wailers: On a failed save (DC 13 Wisdom), the
clay emits a psychic screech that draws the attention of nearby undead or
causes 1 level of confusion (per confusion spell, 1 round).
Weather and Hazards of the Terrorsaur Badlands.
“The land remembers. The sky whispers. And the bones are
never still.”
The Terrorsaur Badlands are not merely deadly due to fang
and claw, but also from the land and air themselves. The weather in the region
is unpredictable, fluctuating between haunting calm and violent magical
upheaval. Combined with the Badlands' natural erosion and geologic volatility,
these hazards create a battlefield shaped by both time and terror.
The Bleed Season
In early spring, when frozen layers thaw unevenly, the
Badlands bleed—mud slicks run crimson with iron-rich waters, and strange
eggshells rise to the surface.
- Events:
Increase in hatchling terrorsaurs, dreamquakes, and ghost migration.
- Hazards:
Landslides, invisible sinkholes, and territorial mothers.
Choke Points & River Ambushes
The Badlands’ natural canyons and rivers form critical
travel arteries—and deadly traps.
- Tactical
Importance: Whoever controls the river crossings, narrow ridgelines,
or fossil bridges controls movement and trade.
- Adventure
Ideas:
- River
bandits riding amphibious dinos set tolls or ambush trade convoys.
- Ruined
viaducts house hideouts or collapsed arcane trains with relics.
- Magical
sinkholes form at overused crossings, especially when fossil energy
destabilizes local bedrock.
Desertification
The Terrorsaur Badlands exist in a fragile balance between
aridity and sudden water deluge. The semi-arid climate is characterized by long
stretches of dry weather, often followed by intense thunderstorms or
snowmelt runoff, which carve the landscape into hoodoos, coulees, and
ravines. This cycle creates terrain that is both brittle and prone to
flooding, with rapid erosion occurring across soft clays and
bentonite layers.
The land thirsts, then punishes. Desertification has
worsened under climate strain and mana flux — but water now behaves
unpredictably, carrying more than just mud and debris.
Environmental Mechanics
Trigger Zone: Any 20–100 ft. area of desiccated soil,
often marked by dull gray dust, bleached fossils, and faint static sparks in
the air.
Effects While Traversing:
- Cracking
Ground: When a creature moves more than 10 feet per round
through Mana-Dried Soil, it must succeed a DC 14 Dexterity saving throw
or cause a Ground Collapse:
- The
ground gives way into a 10-ft-deep pit (or more, DM’s choice),
dealing 1d6 bludgeoning damage and possibly exposing buried fossil
chambers or creatures.
- Dust
Clouds: Any collapse or area spell creates a choking dust cloud,
rendering the area Heavily Obscured in a 10-ft radius for 1
minute, or until cleared by wind.
- Instability
for Large Creatures: Large or larger creatures (including mounts,
dinos, or war machines) make the Dexterity save at disadvantage due
to their weight.
Dreamquakes
Occurring without warning and often centred on ancient
fossil beds or leyline ruptures, Dreamquakes are localized psychic tremors that
ripple through reality itself. The very ground seems to shimmer like heat haze,
fossil bones vibrate with unseen resonance, and shadows stretch against the
light as if trying to escape. Those caught in the wave must steel their minds
or risk slipping into fugue states, where memory, prophecy, and hallucination
blur. Victims might relive the final moments of a thunder-lizard’s death,
witness the downfall of long-buried civilizations, or see cryptic glimpses of
the Hallowed World’s actual shape. For some, it’s revelation; for others,
madness. Cults, prophets, and leywalkers seek out these seismic soulquakes for
their visions—but the cost of truth may be one's mind.Effect: Creatures
within the radius must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or enter a fugue
state for 1 minute, reliving ancient memories or false visions.
Random surge (1/day per location, or GM discretion),
typically following leyline activity, thunder, or bone movement.
Effect (Psychic Pulse):
When a Dreamquake occurs, all creatures within a 60-foot radius must
succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or fall into a fugue state
for 1 minute.
·
While in the fugue state, a creature is Stunned
for the first round as the vision overtakes them.
·
For the next 9 rounds, they are Incapacitated
but aware, experiencing a vivid hallucination or memory echo.
·
On a successful save, the creature experiences disorienting
flashes and has disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) and
Intelligence-based checks for 1 minute.
Echo Storms
The Echo Storm howls in on tar-slick winds, a tempest not of
weather but of memory. Long-extinct cries of tyrants and thunder-lizards scream
across dimensions, their voices fossilized in time and now loosed upon the
world like banshee winds. As the skies darken and bone shards rattle in the
gusts like whispering teeth, travellers find themselves caught in the shrieking
remnant of some long-dead roar. The air reeks of ozone and primal fear, and
those caught within may find their ears bleeding, their minds rattled, or worse,
touched by something that should have stayed buried. It is said that some Echo
Storms birth strange creatures made of resonance itself—beings sculpted from
prehistoric screams and psychic decay.
Rigger: At GM discretion, typically during long
travel or near known bone storm zones.
Effects While in the Storm:
- Deafening
Screams: All creatures within the storm’s area must make a DC 13
Constitution saving throw every 10 minutes. On a failure:
- Take
1d6 psychic damage
- Become
Deafened for 1 hour
- Spellcasting
Disruption: Any creature concentrating on a spell must succeed on a DC
10 Constitution save at the start of each turn to maintain
concentration (due to psychic interference).
- Perception
Penalty: Wisdom (Perception) checks relying on hearing automatically
fail.
- Encounter
Variant: Roll a d6 every hour:
- 1–2:
Resonance Elemental (CR 3–5) or Echo-Spawn appears.
- 3–4:
The party hears the scream of a creature that died eons ago—this may
grant Inspiration or a vision.
- 5–6:
Shards of bone and tar swirl, but no direct effect—yet.
Ending the Storm: The Echo Storm subsides naturally
after 1d4 hours or can be disrupted by a high-level casting of Control
Weather, Silence on a massive scale (GM discretion), or a powerful
leyline stabilizer.
Flash Flooding
In the Terrorsaur Badlands, the sky may be dry for days —
until it isn't. Without warning, a sudden upstream rain or thaw can send walls
of water surging down narrow coulees and bone-choked gulleys, transforming
dusty ravines into roaring death traps. Adventurers caught in the flood must
dance with danger (Dexterity saves abound!) or be swept into the depths — along
with whatever ancient bones the torrent unearths. Sometimes, those bones don’t
stay still: Fossil Drifts may animate into bone constructs or hybrid
relic-beasts, cobbled together by water, magic, and some unfathomable memory of
tooth and claw. Worse, the flood may tear open leyline veins or rupture
hallowed rifts, turning a bad day into a breach event.
And then there are the Choke Points — where rivers
cut through the badlands and trade, raiders, and bone cults all clash for
control. Arcane crossings, half-collapsed bridges, or ritual fords become
coveted ground, defended by spells, teeth, and the occasional tyrannosaur
totem. Whoever holds the passes holds the flow of commerce, magic, and war.
Flash Flood Trigger
Occurs during heavy storms, upstream thaws, or as a magical event. Roll a d6
each travel hour in a canyon zone during/after rain:
- On a
6, a flash flood erupts. (Adjust odds for narrative pacing.)
Flash Flood Effects
·
Dexterity Saving Throw (DC 15): On
failure, creatures are swept 2d10 × 10 ft downstream and take 2d6
bludgeoning from debris.
·
On Success: The creature finds high
ground or braces against the surge.
·
Heavy Obscurement: Water and debris cause
all vision-based checks to be made with disadvantage.
·
Prone Risk: Creatures swept away begin
the next round prone unless they succeed a DC 13 Athletics (Swim) check.
Fossil Drifts
When the flash floods retreat and the waters recede, they
leave behind more than just silt and shattered bones. In the eerie silence that
follows, Fossil Drifts emerge — chimeric constructs of bone,
antediluvian detritus, and necromantic resonance. Ribcages fuse with skulls not
their own, tailbones curl into claws, and ancient instincts surge to the
surface as these relic-beasts twitch into unnatural life. This post-deluge
chaos is precisely why the river-cut canyons of the Badlands are
fiercely contested. Known as Strategic Choke Points, these narrow
flood-cut corridors serve as vital trade arteries and lethal ambush sites.
Whoever controls the crossings — be they shattered bridges, crumbling fords, or
ley-bound stepping stones — holds dominion over movement, commerce, and
survival itself. Terrorsaurs, Bone cults, raider warbands, and embattled
defenders clash over these passes, not just for territory, but for the raw
magical power the floods may uncover.
·
Necromancy spells cast in this zone gain advantage
on attack rolls or DCs, but increase the chance of further awakenings by
+5% per spell level.
·
Detect Magic reveals ambient necromantic
residue and flickers of ancient memory (flavour visions or clues).
Spell-Fire Storms
The Badlands have always burned — but not like this. In the
age before the Hodgepocalypse, wildfires ravaged the coulees and grasslands,
consuming brittle brush and baking the clay into brittle crusts. Now, the land
itself hungers for ignition. Arcane residue seeps from the soil,
mingling with lightning, heat, and human folly to create something new —
Spell-Fire. These are no ordinary blazes: semi-sentient infernos that stalk the
canyons like predators made of flame and memory. They feed not on oxygen, but on
magic — snapping toward spellcasters as if scenting blood in the air. Walls and
barriers mean nothing; they drift through cracks and shimmer through stone,
drawn by the pulse of life and the echo of incantations. Every spell cast
within their reach risks calling them closer, their heat laced with whispers
and faces made of smoke. Some say the fire dreams of rebirth, others that it
remembers the world before flesh. Whatever truth hides in its embers, few
who’ve met a Spell-Fire Storm have lived to tell of it — and those who did can
still hear it breathing when they close their eyes.
Region Effect (Spell-Fire Zone):
Areas affected by Spell-Fire are suffused with unstable magical energy and
scorching heat. While in a Spell-Fire Zone (typically a 1d4 × 100 ft radius),
the following effects apply:
- Spell-Triggered
Leap: Whenever a creature casts a spell within 300 ft of an active
Spell-Fire Storm, roll a d6. On a 5–6, the storm reacts violently:
- It
leaps 30 ft toward the caster as a magical flame surge.
- The
caster must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw or take 4d6 fire
damage and catch fire (1d6 fire at the start of each turn until an
action is spent to extinguish it).
- If
the spell cast was of 3rd level or higher, the Spell-Fire leaps automatically
and deals 5d6 psychic fire damage, as the flames whisper forgotten
incantations into the caster’s mind.
- Magic-Fueled
Growth: For each spell cast within 300 ft, the Spell-Fire expands by
10 ft per spell level used. This expansion lasts for 1 hour unless
suppressed.
- Unnatural
Flames: Spell-Fire ignores non-magical cover and barriers,
phasing through gaps or cracks up to 1 inch wide. Only magical effects
like Wall of Force, Globe of Invulnerability, or Counterspell
(DC 15) can halt its spread.
- Semi-Sentience:
As a lair action or environmental tick, the Spell-Fire may:
- Mimic:
Create illusions of loved ones or monsters in the firelight. DC 13 Wisdom
save to recognize.
- Chase:
Move in the direction of the most recent spellcaster within 300 ft.
- Burn
Leylines: Convert leyline crossings into unstable founts (causing
wild magic surges within 30 ft for 1d6 rounds).
- Resistance
& Vulnerability:
- Immune
to mundane extinguishing (e.g., water, sand).
- Vulnerable
to cold and radiant damage.
- Taking
20+ cold damage in a single round shrinks the zone by half.
