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, the port was found to be devoid of any of the people or angels who lived and worked there.
Fort Odrusk
This Eighth Eon port is still used as a port-of-call for those hearty folk who are brave enough to journey to this frozen land. Just as Zalicia, after an exceptionally cold and long winter, the fort was found empty the following spring.
Rumours of ghosts and other Wraiths of Winter drift from the fort just as the snow drifts across the Atilan Ice Fields.
Lake Sratiss
This large salt lake is heated year round from hot springs that bubble up from deep beneath the earth. The land around the lake is pockmarked by geysers and smaller ponds of the heated salt water, lending 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; with even the somewhat benign creatures posing a risk to anyone who is unprepared for their journey across the Ice Fields.
The following is a selection of a few of the more interesting creatures that roam this frozen desert.
Remorhaz
Remorhaz are huge insectoid predators who burrow through the frozen ground and ice looking for prey; the extreme heat that radiates from their bodies lets them glide through the ice and tundra as if it was water. With little warning the monsters strike, swallowing hapless explorers whole and burning any of who try to stop their feeding.
Thankfully encounters with these steaming monsters are rare, mostly happening during the long and dark months of 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 it’s 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
The largest herbivore of the Ice Fields, these grandly antlered deer who stand well over 6 feet at the haunches, are found living close to the scattered pine forests that stand tall and proud against the cold of Arctica.
While they are not predators, they are still very dangerous in their own right, especially when the females are with young or when the males are fighting for mating rights.
Wraiths of Winter
A catch all term for the undead that have haunt the expansive Ice Fields. What is story and what is fact is little comfort to those who come across these tortured souls, with the stories ranging from ghosts, to whites, to wisps, to zombies: all of them lost souls who succumbed to the cold while trying to find their way though a never-ending landscape of white.