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 for your games, but they can easily be converted over into any fantasy system. This week we visit the Arid Mesa.
Arid Mesa
The arid mesa can be found at the top of the tallest mountain in the kingdom, but it is very new and doesn’t really belong there. It has only appeared 2 weeks ago but it looks like it was always there. Scouts have been sent to the area, but none have returned, so no one knows what to expect, though roars can be heard echoing for miles, stemming from the mesa itself.
Lay of the Land
The mesa is just shy of 2 miles in diameter, with sheer red-stoned cliffs on all sides that plunge down thousands of feet. Anyone intending to go there will either need to fly or climb for hours. The mesa itself is covered in gigantic cacti, some of which reach 200 feet or more into the air.
Cutting through the arid mesa is a dried-out river bed, one that looks to have been dry for year,s if not decades and more. The recent rain is the first water that has reached the plateau and it seems to have soaked up the water like a sponge.
The red stone that makes up the cliff is natural to the area, but the mesa, of course, is not, and while the mesa itself is new (it used to be a mountain) it matches the exact contours of where the mountain used to be.
It is, in fact, a piece of land that has been transported back in time, through some magical mishap in the future. But while the land was transported back in time, its inhabitants were instead transported forward.
Dangers
The arid mesa is practically crawling with life, in spite of the arid conditions. It is populated mostly by dinosaurs, but gigantic apes, snakes and more are in attendance as well. The smallest creatures around appear to be a sort of proto-giant, who dress in animal hides, and hunt in packs, using javelins and clubs to take down their prey. They prefer hunting mammals due to the fur and skin, but several dinosaurs have fallen to them as well. (Use the rules for Ogres from PF1, Ogre Warriors from PF2 and Ogres from 5e to represent these). The final threat, but also the most civilized one, is a small group of three stone giants that have arrived once the mesa appeared. The diplomats sent to talk to them were informed that two of the stone giants are historians, and here to record the behavior of the proto-giants, as a sort of archaeological project. The last of the three is a scryer, the one who predicted the arrival of the mesa. He claims to have seen visions that something more is coming, but this time that creature will be from the future – a sort of messiah-figure for giants, one who will unite the disparate giant races, and rebuild the ancient giant empire. (Use the rules for Stone Giants from Pathfinder 1, Pathfinder 2 or 5e to represent these three).
Kim Frandsen
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