What kinds of things could you find on a lost continent?

The remains of a previous expedition that suffered a mysterious but fatal end. Toss in some journals, and you have an excellent opportunity to introduce scads of plot hooks, red herrings and random information.

You can even milk this a bit longer by having information that will only make sense after the PCs have reached a certain point, the ghost of an expedition member that comes to haunt the PCs, or the BBEG on the continent may even be a survivor of this earlier expedition (possibly tying into plothooks elsewhere in your campaign world).
 

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In addition to mysterious new things, you can also twist the familiar. perhaps a group or race that the PCs are familiar with is very different here (cannibal halflings anyone?). Perhaps a fruit that is identical (at first view) to a common one back home is poisonous on the lost continent. Take some of the PCs' basic assumptions and twist 'em.

-Dave
"The answer to having a better life is not about getting a better life, it's just about changing how we see the one we have right now." --Angel Kyodo Williams, founder of the Urban Peace Project
 

die_kluge said:
Like one I had come up with yesterday was a field full of huge gears - some kind of remnant from Mechanus that landed in the prime eons ago. Inhabited by those ant dudes. Just a concept at this point. But it gives me something to work with.
:)

The 'Field of Gears' thing sounds pretty interesting to me. Maybe you could tie it in with Justinian's plot idea here.
 

Conaill said:
The remains of a previous expedition that suffered a mysterious but fatal end. Toss in some journals, and you have an excellent opportunity to introduce scads of plot hooks, red herrings and random information.

You can even milk this a bit longer by having information that will only make sense after the PCs have reached a certain point, the ghost of an expedition member that comes to haunt the PCs, or the BBEG on the continent may even be a survivor of this earlier expedition (possibly tying into plothooks elsewhere in your campaign world).

OOH! Now that's something I can work with. Excellent idea!
 

Wrecked ships, if you have any shores on this lost continent, with some of the settlement type setting mentioned above.

Tar pits. For some reason this stuck in my head as a not-so-bad idea.

Burial grounds of the primitive inhabitant society. Dead things creap all players out, the more the better, and you don't need to make them animated to get them paranoid. If you party has been summoning skeletons and such to do their bidding, this may be a perfect way to introduce the party as agents of evil to the new world.
 




I think that maybe you should explore the thought of why this is a 'lost' continent. Implying that it was at one time, 'found' or central in focus. Perhaps something happened to the land itself making it deadly to its native inhabitants. Most of them perhaps fled, though a few (one particular culture left behind adapted?) were able to eke out life, remaining involuntarily behind. This gives you great options; language being the first and formeost. civilization another.
Perhaps only 'little people' were left behind. The land became toxic (swamps, sinkholes, noxious low-lying gas clouds, ground-burrowing bulettes?) and those who were not killed learned quickly to take to the trees. A whole civilization was left behind to live above ground, in the canopies of native foliage. This alone lends the possibility of whole new prestige-classes, skills, and feats (think about it). The 'Gulliver's' could be oddities among the shorter 'tallfellow' derivative race of halflings that they so closely reflect in larger-than-life view. Does this make them Gods? Or perhaps a prophecy of false gods?
And what if the PC's get deep enough into the exploration of this lost continent and discover the indigenous life, how do you communicate. Perhaps some words are similar or in common while others are not, mean something else, or are totally foreign. Generations of separate evolution will be hard to bridge. Challenges that can't be met head on with strength and steel always appeal to me. And do the altruistic PC's hope to help rid the land of whatever drove these peoples to the trees? Will this hinder those peoples by destroying some unkown symbiotic relationship, thus causing the PC's to have suddenly acquired some unanticipated enemies?
I think that you are in store for a wealth of great potential and fun...
 
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This may or may not work depending on your divine myths, etc. But maybe they find a site / location that is described in some sacred text of some deity as a holy place (that was previously never located). This works especially well if there is a cleric of that specific deity or of a rival deity in the party that finds it.

It could well become a holy site for pilgrimages, etc.

Other possibilities:

* something that will make them question some basic assumption of their own continent's beliefs (something found that questions creation myth or where magic comes from, etc.)
* a rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it
* a primative/savage "double" (look alive) of some well-known NPC or someone that died or something
* the remains of an adventuring team (from the PCs own continent) that apperently found this lost continent sometime ago but were killed/died


hmm.. okay, it's late so this isn't the best time for my creative juices... I'll add more later if I think of something :)
 

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