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 or 5e for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we move into the mountains but find ourselves bogged down.
Canyon Slough
The Canyon Slough is a stretch of bayou that lies within the confines of a mountain valley; protected on all sides from the ravages of storms, it sees a heavy downpour almost every day. The run-off from the mountains transfers a lot of silt and minerals into the bayou which slowly drains itself into a river on the southern end of the valley, where the water is clean once more. (From here it flows on into the plains where it proceeds to feed thousands of people before finally ending in the ocean).
Lay of the Land
The silt and dirt that rolls off the mountains and into the bayou create some fairly dangerous spots of land here. Most of the land isn’t solid at all, and can only be traversed using flat-bottomed skiffs (normal boats simply stick too deep and end up beaching themselves on hidden dirt banks). Willows and cypress trees are the main (practically only) form of vegetation here. Their roots stretch far into the ground, and they are much older than they look, due to the continuous depositing of sand and silt on top of the old ground. In effect, it forces the trees to keep growing, and at all times at least 50% of the tree trunk is submerged, if not more.
The land is very rich in minerals though, and many groups of people are trying to retrieve the minerals from the silt. Some use simple sieves and hope to find gold or similar precious metals, but the most successful operation is run by a small clan of dwarves who have established a series of Moat Pits from where they dig up coal. While coal is their main export from here, as they’ve struck rich deposits, they’ve discovered that the mountains hide platinum on their slopes. They’ve perfected a very complex series of techniques for extracting the platinum, and this is very rapidly making the clan very rich. They’re sent scouts into the mountains to see if they can find pure veins, but these expeditions have been unsuccessful so far.
Dangers
The mountains around the Canyon Slough are filled with the dangers that are normally found in mountains with small tribes of goblins and orcs sometimes banding together. A group of five stone giants controls these lesser tribes and they do not like intruders on the mountains (though they care little for the Canyon Slough itself).
Within the canyon, the various prospectors are the main danger, but none more so than the dwarves of Clan Stonebarrow. Their riches have enabled them to pay for the creation and upkeep of a series of stone golems (PF2 / 5e) to assist their warriors in keeping the moat pits safe. Only the smallest of their excavations are protected by a single one of these golems, and most of their excavations (of which they have at least 20) are protected by 2. Thankfully, there is fierce competition between the various pits, so while they’re supplied centrally by the Clan, they do not work together and often clash in brawls. Only the gravest danger (like a dragon or worse) would force them to pool their golems together into a single force.
With that, we hope you enjoyed this somewhat smelly visit to the bayou. Hopefully, your beard didn’t get wet, and we’ll see you next week. 😊
Kim Frandsen
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