The Dead Lands
MATERIAL UNDER DEVELOPMENT
The Dead Lands are a vast spill of volcanic obsidian which lie to the south of the Tyr region, rumored to have been created aeons ago by destructive necromantic magics. Many believe the plains are as large as, or even larger than, the Tyr Valley region, but no Tyrian explorer has ever measured its exact borders for the region is deadly and inimical to life.
While some believe the Dead Lands to be a nearly featureless plain of obsidian from one end to the other, this idea is no more accurate than the idea that the deserts of the Tyr Valley region and beyond are comprised only of endless sand dunes. The environs of the Dead Lands are as varied as those of the Tyr region: there are deserts of black sand made from obsidian ground down by wind and other forces over the aeons, twisted towers of black rock that claw at the sky, unstable plains of razor-sharp shards of obsidian glass, volcanic vents that glow with red fire and belch smoke and toxic gases, massive cracks forming shattered valleys cutting through the polished obsidian cap covering the region, viscous oozing pools of dark magma, fields of ash and petrified wood, foetid and poisoned pools, even a vast (and horrid) sea whose waves are lit with impossible flame. These terrible wonders, and more, showcase nature’s majestic variety even in a forsaken place like the Dead Lands.
Of course, I have not seen these places myself. Mad is the mortal who tries to walk the Dead Lands, even upon its borders. Rather, I rely on the journals of the Ormur of Piith, a spirit like myself, and a spirit literally, who has crossed the obsidian lands, recording all he sees and knows of them.
- The Wanderer’s Journal
The Dead Lands are a land of phantasms and mummified corpses, hungry and angry. You do not cross the Dead Lands without seeing the dead. At every step the eye can discern translucent shadows shimmering up from the land in the distance like desert mirages: the images of men and women long-since passed beyond life, standing or moving, fading and resolving.
Disconcerting as this may be, it is the mindless, hungry ghosts that appear from nowhere to attack everything in sight, who can be banished but never killed, that prove more worrisome to travelers, living, dead, or otherwise. Abandoned caravans litter the trade routes, hauntingly untouched, empty of bodies. Yes, does it surprise you? The dead trade among themselves here, as do the not-dead.
It is a land of bleak, colorless rock, fire-lit ashen sky, and environmental extremes that its inhabitants need no longer worry about. It is a preserved nightmare of forgotten things, twisted in the manner of all nightmare, charged with too-deadly unreality. Does it surprise you the dead have poetry in them yet? That we yet remember dreaming? Our curse is that we can not forget.
There are pools of water unfit to drink by even the ever-thirsting throats of the dead, black and bracken, acidic and steaming with the venom of the unquiet land. There are trees that rot where they stand, and have for a thousand years. There are screaming chasms and haunted valleys and seas of fire. And there are mysteries yet unsolved.
The greatest of which is why this was done to us?
- From the Books of Ormur of Piith
The Dead
Ghosts — what Tyrians would call spirits — are a constant danger on the plains, accosting everything that crosses them. Lost souls that have not made the crossing into the Gray, but do not realize their lives ended decades, centuries, or millenia ago. They have no sentience or will to speak of, existing more as moments of terror and death trapped in time. The Queen of Ghosts is a rumor that terrifies even the strongest of the undead.
Karuhm — these comprise the majority of the corporeal dead of the deadlands, really little more than echoes of memories, with speech limited to but a few stock phrases, and obsessive, repetitive behavior. The sentient dead sometimes awaken from among these. These are mainly mobile corpses preserved by wind-and-sun, many mostly skeletal.
Drow — or “dark elves”, these dead were a cabal of elven wizards in life, born into an era of genocidal, xenophobic conflict, whose existence was perpetuated beyond the moment of their death through some unknown combination of forces. Each is marked by the sorcerous power they wielded in life, able to conjure minor sorceries at will, though not all pursued the path of the wizard after their Rising.
-They have seen great wars and been twisted by them.
-They are few, perhaps a few dozen to a couple hundred at most.
-Their citadels, now ruins or caverns buried beneath obsidian and ash, host the El-loth, giant spiders psionically linked as a hive-mind.
-The drow are at war with the El-loth, giant undead spiders possessed by the fallen spirits of the elves’ long-dead enemies. The elves often wear the spider’s chitin, along with spidery symbols, as marks of their supremacy over the El-loth.
-They are revered and worshiped by the elves of the Tyr region, as the oldest elders and repositories of forgotten elven lore; many young elven defilers train with the drow.
The Plain of Shards: The ground here is covered with razor-sharp shards and chips of obsidian, in some places the layer of shards runs quite deep. Walking is difficult, not merely because the shards can cut all exposed flesh to bloody ribbons, but because the shards are treacherously unstable and shift and slide underfoot even as one walks. Somewhere within there is a black pool from which shades of the long-dead can be summoned by those who know the forbidden lore, and nearby a Tomb of Forgotten Kings that leads deep into the earth protecting secrets of lost ages with death and sorcery.
The Black Sands: A parched stretch of desert of black sand, known for skin-flaying sandstorms and monstrous, undead beasts of gargantuan size who tirelessly hunt to feed insatiable appetites for destruction and violence. Deep in this region, one can find ruins buried in the sands, those which have not been worn away by howling winds that bear sawing sands the likes of which Tyrians have never experienced, and more usually the catacombs that remain beneath the surface, whose sand-widened entrances are sometimes exposed.
The Vulcan Rent: A deep crack in the obsidian plains that spews fire and smoke; so hot it sears flesh from bone. This is the home of the djinn and jann, and the Court of Wishes, who live in vast brass palaces built alongside churning rivers and lakes of molten rock, mining metal and crystal from the earth to trade for slaves and goods from the Golem Lands.
The Ashland: Things become dim and hazy here, even the hungry ghosts who otherwise wander the Dead Lands are suspiciously absent or weak, some believe those who cross it become lost upon paths leading into the gray void of dissolving spirits beyond Athas. Others believe this is the demesne of the terrible Queen of Ghosts, whom all fear.
The Crags of the Dead: The winds of the valleys amid the Dagger Crags moan with the voices of the slain, where villages of the undead eternally reenact the last day of their lives, their bones collapsing each sunset, rising each sunrise, staggering through mocking motions of life while the sun touches the sky. There is no will or intellect here, and undead victims hung from spikes, eternally tortured, mark entries to the region to give all warning.
The Wailing Valleys: there are deep crevices that lead down into the earth, so far down that some say one cannot see the sun from the bottom and others say they are bottomless. From them, always, rise the unearthly wails of a lost race of peoples whose civilization once made these depths their home but were slain in some long-forgotten apocalypse. None has descended who has ever returned.
The Twisted Towers: The black fingers of giants clawing at the sky, curled and spike-laden, thrusting from the broken ground beneath which their owners are buried — if giants were a thousand feet tall. The bones of drakes and nightmare beasts litter the ground around the towers, some not quite dead for all the flesh that has withered away.
The Eternal Forest: Trees of petrified rock with obsidian leaves drop razor-sharp leaf-shards to the ground in a vast, dead forest even the wind does not touch. Golem monks come here to meditate and pray in the silence; some say there are silent, invisible spirits here that teach them their ancient arts.
The Plains of Black Glass: Mystical and horrible, the plains are a flat sheet of obsidian almost untouched by the elements, polished to a reflective sheen. It is said one can see the future, the past, the present in the glass of the plains, speak to shades long passed, and learn dark secrets, but the brittle ground can break open under a traveler at any moment, swallowing them into darkness or releasing a burst of steam and magma that chars them to ash.
The Golem Land: The undead are not the only things who have built a civilization upon the plains, but men forged of bone and obsidian have crafted a sprawling kingdom in the ruins of the Dead Lands. This is a land of constructs, soldiers crafted for a war long-since over, living in feudal cities and villages, trading and warring with the undead and one another.
The City of 1000 Dead: The undead do not live in shining cities, but the decaying ruins that remain of those cities that once stood where the Dead Lands now are. Whatever this city was in life, only the palatial district of its kings remains, continuing on in death as they did in life, servants, priests, and psychophants pampering the bones of the king, who lives on, scheming the schemes of dead men and engaging in cruel sport.
Obsidian Fortress: An outpost of the Golem-lands built of shining black glass, carved from the rock of the plains, it falls regularly to the attacks of undead, only to be reclaimed later, and may at any given moment be either shelter or death to those crossing the plains.
Small Home: Though the city was buried in black rock, the undead dwarves who were its inhabitants have spent the ages since tunneling out the streets and buildings, creating a catacombs from their city beneath the obsidian rock. And when that was done, they continued to dig even deeper towards what purpose unknown, if purpose there even is.
It should be remembered that the dead are not the living. They are not ruled by passion, except those darker ones retained from life; they desire only what they desired in life, not new things, and that which brings memories of living, yet feel an equal hatred towards it once obtained; they care for news from a thousand years ago as if it were fresh and unknown, and act upon it; and they live their lives entirely in the past, with no thought of the future.
“There can be no peace with the kingdoms of the dead. They hate us for a war aeons gone, one they still fight as though freshly struck.” – General Irho-maul, Confederacy of Geiru
Suggested Terrain Types
Petrified rock fields: fallen forests whose trees turned to stones scattered everywhere.
Black desert: where the obsidian has been ground down into deep, shifting black sand.
Shards: where unstable layers of razor-edged obsidian shards cover the ground.
Volcanic vents: splits and cracks in the obsidian release smoke, ash, and toxic clouds.
Magma: churning pools or slow rivers of molten rock surrounded by basalt and etc.
Ooze: volcanic sand and ash combine with moisture creating fields of ill-colored muck.
Ash: dry, blinding areas coated with ash and pumice.
Crystals: huge black crystals grow in large clusters from the ground.
Spike forest: Narrow spines, spikes and splinters of obsidian, like a fallen forest.
Razor-trees: large clusters of sharp obsidian spears that crack and fall at the slightest touch.
Undead Trees: eternally rotting trees that give off an overpowering stench and cause despair.
Pools: standing water that has become brackish and fouled.
Obsidian Badlands: columns, plateaus, and twisting natural towers of obsdian.
Cliffs and chasms: uneven splits cutting through the obsidian.
Polished glass: where the obsidian is level and unbroken and has been polished smooth.
Brittle: the ground here appears solid, but can crack and shatter with the slightest weight.
Suggested Environmental Events
Firewinds: clouds of ash and fire.
Sandstorms: black, cutting sand and ash is stirred up by powerful winds.
Ghoststorms: these roiling storms disintegrate matter, turn the corporeal incorporeal, etc.
Groundsplits: the obsidian suddenly cracks and breaks, opening chasms or pits.
Undead eternally tortured atop petrified spikes of obsidian wood.
Some undead are of a strange form made of bone, dress, and witch-fire — a translucent green flame that shines with the rotting visage of their living forms, that shifts such that it is hard to tell what is spirit and what material, showing one, then the other.
Though no living thing can live long on the obsidian plains, things do survive, even prosper, here.
The orc fire traders.
The Underground.
The Wombforge — These are mysteries around which each village and city of the golems are built, from which new golems randomly emerge. The days of a birth are heralded by signs and celebrated. Golems are born with full intellect and ability, but without personality. After birth, each golem must discover who they are to be.
- Strong psionic beasts
- Limited arcane magic
- Twisted divine magic
- The only wizardry here is necromancy
copyright (c)2010 Raven Daegmorgan
Athas, Dark Sun, and related properties are owned by Wizards of the Coast