Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Finder’s Archives.
In this column, we take some of the lands from Magic: The Gathering and turn them into something you can use for your fantasy games.
The stats given in each entry assumes that you’re using Pathfinder 2 for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week it’s time to look at the fecund life of the Blighted Woodlands.
Blighted Woodlands
The blighted steppe was the final place impacted by the cataclysmic events at the blighted cataract, and the effluence of the Immortal Ichor. As it was the last place to be “infected,” most scholars had expected it to be the one that was hurt the least. However, here in the woodlands, it manifested yet another problem. Here, the very essence of reality was torn asunder, and portals somehow opened to other planes. Now, anyone that walks the land is at risk of being attacked at any moment.
Lay of the Land
The woodlands were fairly overgrown before the events took place, but now, they’re a quagmire of all kinds of plant life: trees, bushes, shrubs, or mushrooms. Within each of them is a number of what the scholars have termed “planar seeds.” No one knows how many are within each plant, but what is known that the older the plant, the more powerful the creature that is summoned when that seed “hatches” is. The only redeeming feature of these is that not all of the creatures are evil or hostile. They are, however, all natives of other worlds and planes, and there are reports of everything from angels to demons coming through, along with stranger creatures.
Dangers
As any creature of the outer planes can make its way through any of the plants, moving through the Blighted Woodlands is incredibly dangerous. No one knows how long it takes for each seed to come to fruition, nor what dictates the power of the creature inside the side. However, the bigger and older the plant, the bigger the seed. The see that birthed Marrowbiter (a vrock PF2 & 5E) was the size of a pumpkin – but deep within the Blighted Woodlands, there is a seed that is the size of a small house. Whatever is in the seed is going to be immensely powerful, and Marrowbiter is desperately trying to keep it from hatching so that he can maintain his role at the top of the food chain – especially as he does not know what is inside the seed. Unfortunately, all his attempts have proven to be useless, as the seed is seemingly impervious to all harm. All his attacks and attempts have succeeded in doing seems to be moving the seed closer to fruition.
Kim Frandsen
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