Atilan Ice Fields
Stretching for over 300 miles from Hfnia Coast to the foot of the Gilrail Mountains, the Atilan Ice Fields is a frigid desert of ice, snow, and rock. Rarely the white landscape is broken by the odd dell of rugged pines, the trees standing proudly against the cold, showing us that even here life finds a way.
Many dangers, both natural and monstrous, are found across the seemingly expanse of white: bottomless crevasses that fall deep into the lightless depths of glaciers; vicious ice trolls, seemingly immune to the cold, driven by their never ending hunger; packs of deadly wolves white as the fields, and much larger than their cousins to the south, that hunt anything and everything; and rumours of monsters only born from the sunless winter nights, the so-called Wraiths of Winter.
Points of Interest
The Silent City of Zalicia
A once bustling port during the twilight years of the Sixth Eon, it is now a silent and icy covered ruin. After a particularly long, cold, and dark winter, as the tale goes, the port was found to be devoid of all who lived there.
What happened to the city is still a mystery more than a thousand years later. Many adventurers and explorers have disappeared into the depths of the necropolis, never to be seen again.
Fort Odrusk
This settlement is still used as a port-of-call for those hearty folk who were brave enough to journey to this frozen land, even after the fort was found one spring after a particularly dark and cold winter just like the Silent City.
Rumours of ghosts and other Wraiths of Winter drift from the fort just as the snow drifts across the Atilan Ice Fields. These tales remind everyone who comes to these frozen shores of the danger that is awaiting them, not only out on the ice, but within the very walls of the Fort.
Lake Sratiss
This large salt lake is heated year round by the countless hot springs that bubble up from deep beneath the earth. The land around the lake is pockmarked by dozens of geysers and small ponds of the super heated water, which give the area a constant blanket of steam and mist.
Ecology
Despite the Atilan Ice Field’s biting winds, driving blizzards, and months of darkness, it is still home to an astonishing array of animals and monsters, both benign and terrible.
The following is a small selection of the more interesting creatures that roam this frozen desert.
Remorhaz
Huge insectoid predators who burrow through the frozen ground, the extreme heat from their bodies letting them glide through the ice and tundra as if it was water. With little warning theses monsters strike from below, swallowing both explorers and animals whole. The extreme heat that radiates from their body burns anything that fights back.
Thankfully encounters with these super heated monsters are rare, mostly happening during the long and dark winter.
Frost Salamander
Just like their fiery brethren found in the sweltering deserts of the south, frost salamanders are huge elementally charge amphibians that are incredibly dangerous. Their favourite hunting spots are along the banks of the countless frozen rivers and lakes, waiting for anything to make its way down, or across, these natural pathways.
When some poor beast or weary adventurer crosses over the large amphibian, the salamander will rush from its den, freeze the prey with its elementally infused breath, and then consume the block of ice over several days after it has been pulled deep into the maze of tunnels the beast has dug.
Megaloceros
These grandly antlered deer stand well over 6 feet at the haunches, and are the largest herbivores found on the Ice Fields. They are found living close to the scattered pine forests that stand tall and proud against the cold of Arctica in herds that can number a few dozen.
While they are not predators, these animals are still very dangerous in their own right, especially when the females are with their young or when the males are fighting for mating rights.
Wraiths of Winter
A catch all term for the undead that haunt the expansive Ice Fields. What is story and what is fact is of little comfort to those who come across these tortured souls. The stories about these monsters range from ghosts, to whites, to wisps, to zombies, and any other kind of undead one can think of: all of them lost souls who succumbed to the cold while trying to find their way though a never-ending landscape of white.