We’re done with monsters for now, and we’re getting into a section about terrain.

Terrain is as important a building block for a fun encounters as the monsters that make it up, and this section has some uniquely Dark and Sunny examples for you to add to your battlemaps.

Barbed Cacti

Even when they don’t uproot themselves to hunt you down, Athasian cacti can still be dangerous. These specimens have sharp spines that break off and stay stuck to you. Lines of barbed cactus squares can be used to cordon off some areas of the battlefield, and provide an excellent barrier for artillery monsters to hide behind.

Entering a square of barbed cacti deals 3 damage and inflices -2 to attack rolls (save ends).

Brambleweed

Like barbed cacti, but worse. Brambleweed grows in sprawling thickets that can thrive even in defiled areas, because they can use the blood or corpses of captured creatures as nourishment. Some defilers plant them intentionally as defensive measures in their lairs.

A creature that ends their turn in a brambleweed square is restrained until the end of their next turn. A creature that starts their turn there (which they will if they were restrained) takes 5/tier damage.

Defiled Terrain

This is a more varied category describing several possibilities for what might remain behind after a major act of defiling. It can be used as pre-existing terrain in an area what was subject to defiling in the past, or you can place it in the middle of the fight after someone uses Arcane Defiling or an equivalent power.

Ash Field

These are the remains of plant life caught in a defiling field. Sometimes the wind causes them to pool in terrain depressions to form areas of Settled Ash, which can act as a terrain feature.

Someone who’s adjacent to a square of settled ash can make an Athletics test to raise a cloud of it, which functions as a blast attack vs. Fortitude that blinds for a turn on a hit.

Black Sand

The residue of defiling mixed in with the local soil. People standing on black sand only regain half the normal amount of HP from healing effects. Wasn’t there an entire geographical region covered in the stuff?

Dead Magic

Areas that have lost so much to defiling that they have nothing left to give. Anyone standing on dead magic squares takes a -5 penalty to attack with arcane or primal powers, and is barred from using Arcane Defiling.

The book recommends being careful with dead magic areas, particularly if there are a lot of arcane and primal PCs in the party. Usually only very powerful defilers are capable of creating them.

Sickening Heat

This is either a mystical side effect of defiling, or it could just be a natural consequence of killing all that plant cover. Creatures ending their turn on these squares are weakened for a turn.

This terrain can do a number on your party’s strikers, and monsters who have the ability to inflict forced movement simply love it.

Glimmering Mirage

Mundane mirages are the effect of heat haze in the distance. These ones are more than that: they’re illusions crafted by malicious primal spirits. In addition to luring travelers, they persist once they get closer, and can conceal all kinds of danger behinds their alluring façades.

Glimmering mirages form walls 4 or more squares long. They block line of sight, and give concealment against ranged attacks to anyone standing adjacent to them. At the end of every turn, you roll a d6 for each mirage. A 1 means it’s gone, a 6 means it moves 5 squares, and other results mean it stays put.

Lightning Pillar

Literally a pillar of congealed lightning, probably created due to the area’s proximity to an “electric” region of the Elemental Chaos. PCs and enemies might be able to use their Arcana, Nature, or Religion skills to “hack” such a pillar and make it deliver a lightning strike to a chosen target.

Mudflats

These are natural areas where underground water surfaces a bit and mixes with the soil, creating an area that is both dusty and sludgy at the same time. Inland mudflats are the next best thing to oases, and draw many animals and people who learn to extract water from them.

Particularly thick mud flats are difficult terrain, and can contain mud sink squares representing deeper areas. Creatures standing adjacent to those can be pushed into them, which will immobilize them (save ends), with a slow after-effect due to the clinging mud (also save ends). Voluntarily or accidentally stepping into one would have the same effect.

Psychic Reservoirs

Fragile purple crystals that grow in psychically charged areas sheltered from the winds, these can be tapped by psionic characters to boost their attacks. It takes a minor action to tap into an adjacent crystal, which makes it crumble to dust. If the character uses power points, they gain 1 bonus point that lasts until the end of the encounter. Otherwise they gain +5 to their next damage roll from a psionic power.

Rocky Badlands

These regions are too rough to support permanent settlements, so they’ll mostly feature as ambush sites. They’re filled with teetering stone pillars that can be pushed onto enemies.

Salt Flats

These bone-dry regions are a hassle to fight in, as salt will inevitably get in the wounds and make them sting like hell. They’re also filled with loose salt piles that work a lot like the Settled Ash hazard above, except that they also slow the target if it was bloodied.

Sandy Wastes

What most people think of when they hear “desert”. They can contain 3x3-square Small Dunes that anyone might use as a hiding or ambush spot, even if they can’t normally burrow.

Silt Pools

They work a lot like mud flats, except there’s no water, just very fine dust. Usually filled with difficult terrain, and with deep silt spots that restrain (save ends) anyone who falls or gets pushed into them.

Slipsand

Sandy areas where some magical or psionic effect caused a significant amount of tiny glass crystals to be mixed in with the sand. They’re slippery and sharp, requiring an Athletics check from any who enters them to avoid falling prone and taking damage.

Tree of Life

These extremely rare plants are imbued with a much greater than usual amount of vital energy, which enables them to resist and even recover from defiling attempts given enough time. Ironically, this makes them extremely valued by sorcerer-kings and other powerful and rich defilers, which cultivate them for use as batteries.

I think earlier editions kept a more or less precise list of the remaining trees of life in Athas - they were that rare. In this edition, I believe their number is less restricted, but the most likely place you’re going to find one is still in the “boss room” for these defilers.

Trees of life emit a 5-square aura. Creatures within always regain the maximum possible HP from variable healing effects, and have a +5 to perform divination rituals.

Whenever someone performs Arcane Defiling inside the aura, or use some other necrotic power that damages one of their allies, the tree takes the damage instead. Trees have 500 HP and Vulnerable 10 Necrotic, and die when they hit 0. They regenerate 5 HP per hour.

Z’Tal Horde

A much funnier and more mundane piece of terrain! Z’tals are tiny, slimy, stinky lizard-bug-things that gather in very large swarms. They’re relatively harmless, but still a bother.

A z’tall horde fills one or more squares, which are difficult terrain. Someone who ends their movement in such a square takes 5/tier poison damage from the stink. Someone who starts their turn in a horde square must roll a save before taking any other actions. A failure means they fall prone because of the slippery slime. A close or area attack that deals at least 1 point of damage will automatically disperse a horde square with no roll required.

They’re sometimes bred as living security measures, but a horde of these annoying scavengers might naturally form around the corpse of any large creature.

Next Up

Hazards! What, you thought these were the hazards?