Tell me about "weird" lands in your world

[Gez]

The whole setting is weird.

Anyway:

• The Inner Sea, in which, if you dive deep enough, you arrive at a place where the dimensional fabric of the universe is folded upon itself. In effect, you're sent to the Elemental Plane of Water, making it a bottomless sea.
• The Fire Desert, named after the fiery storms that often occurs. During these firestorms, the flying sand is brought to incandescence. Only by digging deeply under the dune can you hope to survive the fire.
• The Wall. The Rostfergs range of mountains does not have any buttress on its west side. Instead, the mountains present a flat, sheer cliff looking like a titanic wall.
• On the river Chenel, which flows from the Inner Sea to the ocean, is built Abystine, the city of bridges. Of course, now that Eberron is out and features Sharn, it's less spectacular than the insanely-big skyscrapers Keith Baker imagined, but it's still a city built on gigantic bridges crossing a kilometer-wide river, with other bridges linking the main bridges, and so on. Plus the undercity, made of muddy, often submerged tunnels, and magical bubbles in the bed of the Chenel, that keeps water out and make perfect haven for the seediest, shadiest figures a city can have.
• The Nethergate. This spectacular, gothic portal is the entrance of a tunnel with a steedy, but regular slope. The tunnel leads down forever, never breaked by any intersection or anything else, always the same width, always the same texture, dreadfully monotonous and seemingly without end. None of the expeditions that returned have claimed to find an end or anything special.
• The Dark Forest of Charvade hates you, filthy biped. She hates everything remotely sentient. But it is sentient itself (oh the irony) and it controls all the fauna and flora here, in a concerted effort to kill intruders. Especially the civilised ones. Its control over nature extends to the creation of mutated, envenomed, poisonous, fiendish, horrid, thorny versions of what they should be.
• Another sentient place is Kaztengarken, the Evergrowing City. Having dominated a tribe of orcs long ago, and twisted them into psionic superwarriors with a hive mind, Kaztengarken is a sinister city built of bone, stone, and wood. The orcs constantly raid other orc tribes to enslave them, and use these other orcs as cannon fodder to raid civilised settlements. Slaves of all species work to extend the city in all direction, erecting buildings, cutting lumber, bringing boulders, preparing food, etc. When they finally die from exhaustion, their bones are used as construction material, their flesh is fed to the other slaves. Kaztengarken plans to recover the whole world.

 

[Gez]

The whole setting is weird.

Anyway:

• The Inner Sea, in which, if you dive deep enough, you arrive at a place where the dimensional fabric of the universe is folded upon itself. In effect, you're sent to the Elemental Plane of Water, making it a bottomless sea.
• The Fire Desert, named after the fiery storms that often occurs. During these firestorms, the flying sand is brought to incandescence. Only by digging deeply under the dune can you hope to survive the fire.
• The Wall. The Rostfergs range of mountains does not have any buttress on its west side. Instead, the mountains present a flat, sheer cliff looking like a titanic wall.
• On the river Chenel, which flows from the Inner Sea to the ocean, is built Abystine, the city of bridges. Of course, now that Eberron is out and features Sharn, it's less spectacular than the insanely-big skyscrapers Keith Baker imagined, but it's still a city built on gigantic bridges crossing a kilometer-wide river, with other bridges linking the main bridges, and so on. Plus the undercity, made of muddy, often submerged tunnels, and magical bubbles in the bed of the Chenel, that keeps water out and make perfect haven for the seediest, shadiest figures a city can have.
• The Nethergate. This spectacular, gothic portal is the entrance of a tunnel with a steedy, but regular slope. The tunnel leads down forever, never breaked by any intersection or anything else, always the same width, always the same texture, dreadfully monotonous and seemingly without end. None of the expeditions that returned have claimed to find an end or anything special.
• The Dark Forest of Charvade hates you, filthy biped. She hates everything remotely sentient. But it is sentient itself (oh the irony) and it controls all the fauna and flora here, in a concerted effort to kill intruders. Especially the civilised ones. Its control over nature extends to the creation of mutated, envenomed, poisonous, fiendish, horrid, thorny versions of what they should be.
• Another sentient place is Kaztengarken, the Evergrowing City. Having dominated a tribe of orcs long ago, and twisted them into psionic superwarriors with a hive mind, Kaztengarken is a sinister city built of bone, stone, and wood. The orcs constantly raid other orc tribes to enslave them, and use these other orcs as cannon fodder to raid civilised settlements. Slaves of all species work to extend the city in all direction, erecting buildings, cutting lumber, bringing boulders, preparing food, etc. When they finally die from exhaustion, their bones are used as construction material, their flesh is fed to the other slaves. Kaztengarken plans to recover the whole world.

 

[Tonguez]

The Undersea is a region that can only be reached by diving into the deepest trench in the middle of the ocean. Through pounding pressure, cold and dakness until you emerge into a bright lit land with a breathable atmosphere, where whales can be seen diving out of the 'sky', and schools of fish sometimes swim up from the ground in front of you before heading 'skyward'. The Under Sea is occupied by the Kiwa (who look human) who have learnt to surf in the under sea currents (rivers) which they use for transport. The only other entrance to the UnderSea is a huge whirlpool victims of which might be washed up on the 'shores' of the Undersea

Stonewall - A gigantic cliff (and nearby pinnacles and outcrops) rising up from the burning sea. The sea below is geothermally superheated and so steam and the occasional burst of lava will rise up, this has created a rich ecology of algae and similar plants that are harvested by a stange culture of goblins who spend their whole lives climbing and swinging across the Cliff and its outcrops which they have made their home

The Floating City of Al-Damasq A plateau which was long ago levitated into the sky and is ihabited by the psionic Iskandrya (Enhanced Human 'Titans'). The hole left behind when the Plateau was lifted into the sky is barren, ringed with jagged cliffs and ever in the shadow of the floating city. The Iskandrya keep slaves here forcing them to grow crops for the City above

The Rafts The Rafts are the home of the Anawaru (Mariner Elves) and is an island sized flotilla of rafts which float across the Open Seas. The Rafts feature gardens for growing crops, livestock (pigs and rats) and all the other necessarys of island life. The Mariner Elves (just normal elves who spend their whole lives at sea) avoid contact with others and only come to land once per year to make repairs.

The Burning Desert A Geothermally active badland noted for its rivers of lava, sulphur geysers and acid pools. It is home to a number of creatures found nowhere else in the world such as the Fire Lily, the Red Bird (a fire breathing Dromaeosaur), the goatlike Azeroth race and the psionic fourarmed Halza giants.

 

[Ace]

The wierd stuff IMC is mostly caused by people -- that being said each of the 13 gates has a "gate fringe" by it that exchanges land essences with the area on the other side

One verdant mountain has a bleak Mars like section, there is a soft forested plain growing healthily in the middle of a desert, a jungle in a cold valley and a desert in the middle of a forest

 

[Ravilah]

Well, my favorite land was Chalilah. There are only six main villiages in this wide, verdant land of plains and forests. Every man, woman, and child in Chalilah lives in perfect harmony--because if they don't, their psionic halfling overlords will crush their minds. The halflings of Bolehollow travel through the villages, reading minds, correcting unwelcome stray thoughts, and <ahem> assimilating any strangers that happen to wander into their territory. The halflings are very pleasant, and they think that harmony and community of of upmost importance. If you disagree, they will very pleasantly melt your brain.

My players barely survived an encounter with a pretty female halfling named Wheatblossom.

 

[Starglim]

A super-mountainous region consisting of a fallen moon with strange chemistry and weird insectoid life, surrounded by volcanoes, broken lands filled with aberrations (in today's terms), blasted deserts and poisonous rivers.

 

[Fieari]

Some of these ideas are really great... I esspecially like the sea that links to the elemental plane of water. I think I may even make it a one-way link... go down deep enough, and you not only won't find the bottom, but you can never find the top again either!

My world has a few weird areas.

The first isn't exactly natural. Far to the north, it's believed you can find the edge of the world. You will come to a point, surrounded by ice and snow, where you'll hit a cliff. Beneath the cliff are clouds, and they stretch to the horizon. In actuality, there is a steam-based city living under the clouds, keeping their land warm through magic and technology.

The next is located in the center of the Kingdom of Hilden... an area where the ground itself channels negative energy. There is grass growing there, but it will drain life from travelers walking through it. At first it'll just feel like poison ivy, since the drain is in fact rather slow, but spend enough time there, and you'll die and be raised as undead. This obviously makes travel... difficult. The Kingdom is in a ring around these deadly plains, and the Church of Pelor takes great efforts to keep the undead penned in, and other creatures out.

The last area of real interest is the Navan Forest, which people believe to be sapient. It isn't... but it acts as if it were. Rather instead, it is a place filled with OLD magic-- the kind that is defined by not understanding it. In fact, the very act of learning about this magic destroys it, which makes it very mysterious indeed. This old magic has twisted the landscape in strange multidimension ways... there will be paths you can get on but never get off (like a moebius strip) and retracing your steps can take you to entirely different places, and there are locations that you can only reach if you first go to another landmark... impossible to find otherwise or by shortcut.

Despite the forest not actually having a mind or even a spirit of its own, its easy to think that it does. Esspecially since the old magic causes your circumstances to change depending on who you are. What you get out of the forest is what you put in, in most respects. Put in innocence and joy, and that's what you'll get out. Put in fear, or condensension, or pride, and something else entirely will be your experience within the forest.

Of course Navan is filled with treasure. But by the nature of the place, those who seek it CAN'T FIND IT.

 

[DMH]

A desert where there is no water at all. The only life is magic and sunlight consuming stones and because they eat magic, spells (and other magic) fail there. It is just as lethal as the driest parts of Dark Sun.

A kelp forest where everyone lives upside down. None of the locals (based on starfish, finned fish, and snails) believe there is life under "the bottom" of the water.

A shallow water world where spellweavers have created a shell that keeps spelljammers out. The shell is causing global warming and the swamps to expand. The lizard peoples who live in the forests are slowly taking over the frogs' territory- marsh land that is being replaced. I have a rather long write up at alternity.net on this; it is the first thread in the fantasy forum.

A flat planet where the only areas that aren't are asteroid craters. When ever one falls, abberations escape them and run wild.

A world where there is a permanent ice age and the only areas where humans dwell are artifical volcanos. Giant trees grow through the ice and frost worms burrow everywhere.

A mountain range with many magical minerals. Miners face death with every new vein discovered and even golems made to mine are affected.

 

[Woas]

In my homebrew, there is a forest, called the Autumn Forest, because no matter the season, the state of the trees and foliage of the forest is always as if it were autumn.

Then theres the Arcane Wastes, or Arcane Desert. It is a large area that was the site of a major part of the backstory. Long story short, the Arcane Wastes is like a huge nuclear fallout zone. But instead of nuclear radiation in the area, it's more like arcane radiation. Many a abberations have spawned from this wasteland. Theres also reports of arcane magic doing real wacko stuff when cast in the area.

Theres also the River of Dreams. They say if you ride the river for 4 days and 4 nights, your dreams become reality...

 

[Crothian]

I have a paradise that is now destroyed...the few survivors that got up describe it as the "land revoted" no one is quite sure what happened but even the PCs who are 17th level fear going there. They are now circumnavigating the area instead of cutting through it.