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 time we visit the vile edifice of the Cradle of the Accursed.
Cradle of the Accursed
While the name seems to indicate that the Cradle of the Accursed is a single location, that would be a mistake. There are several of these scatted across the lands, with all of them situated in areas that are extremely dry — something that has led scholars to believe that the Cradles might actually be the cause of the deserts that they’re often found in the middle of, but some have been found in “cold desert” areas, so it’s possible that they do not stop precipitation, but no one knows for sure.
What is known is that around each cradle a culture seems to develop where criminals are led here, as part of their punishment, and forced to walk through the center of the cradle. What happens in there isn’t known to anyone, but what comes out on the other side is usually a zombie (though other types of undead have also been known to exit). These never attack the people who sent the criminal through, but wander off in a specific direction, as if they are compelled to do so. Each cradle sends them in a different direction, but towards the same general goal. No one has seen them arrive there, or figured out where the place they’re being sent is, but there have been thousands of them over the years, and surely the undead must be somewhere?
Lay of the Land
Surrounding each cradle is a wasteland devoid of any life, for at least 2 miles around them. Within that zone, nothing can live – plant or animal, though intelligent lifeforms can find ways around it, by importing water and so on.
The Cradles themselves are made of a dark stone that hasn’t been identified, but which is suffused with negative energy, leading to a theory that it was mined somewhere on the Elemental Plane of Earth, where it borders the Negative Elemental Plane. Each cradle consists of two enormous slabs of this stone, with each side carved into intricate, stylized shapes, with the northern one always inscribed with several glyphs.
Any living creature that tries to walk down the middle is filled with a sense of foreboding and dread.
Dangers
Any animal or humanoid that passes through the area is turned into an undead, usually a zombie, of their own kind, who will wander off in a pre-determined direction, in a shuffling gait. Attempts to stop the creature result in immediate violence, with the undead in question killing anyone living in sight — once they’re all dead, it will resume its course.
If more than one creature moves through at the same time, they’re all turned into the same type of undead. For example, if a squad of human soldiers moves through, they’ll continue to act as a unit on the other side. If there is more than one type of creature, the results might differ. Powerful individuals sometimes retain their intelligence when they transform into (non-zombie) humanoids, but they’re still drawn in the same manner as the zombies, though they are able to resist the urge, at least for a while.
See you back next time. 😊
Kim Frandsen
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