Cursed Tundra

Tundra
Hannes Grobe , AWI, CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons

A curse lies on the land. Animals avoid it, crops fail, and travellers sleep badly and quarrel for nothing. Nobody who lives nearby will go there after dark. A treeless land of moss, lichen and dwarf shrubs over frozen ground, beyond the northern forest. Long dark winters, a brief summer of endless daylight, and herds that cross it in the thousands.

Over the year it averages -10 °C.

Hear it

For the table

Ground
rough, about 20 km a day on foot
Seasons
-28 °C in the heart of winter, 8 °C in the heart of summer
Water
plentiful
Foraging
nothing

Hazards

  • Bitter cold. Without furs, a fire and shelter at night, the cold numbs, then kills. Frostbite takes fingers and toes first.
  • Strong wind. Steady wind tires walkers, blows out fires and, on sand or snow, blinds and buries the track.
  • Blizzard. Wind and snow erase the horizon: no landmark, no up or down. Those caught in the open dig in and wait.
  • Biting insects. In the warm season, clouds of mosquitoes and flies bite day and night. Sleep and tempers wear thin.
  • Thin ice. Frozen lakes and rivers are the easy road in winter, until the ice gives way. The water beneath kills in minutes.
  • Curse mist. A grey mist rises at dusk and smells of iron. Those who sleep in it wake heavy, sure they heard their name called.
  • Ill luck. Straps snap, flints will not spark, the horse goes lame on flat ground. The land wants the party gone.
  • Dread sleep. The same dream comes to everyone: a door that must not be opened. Some wake screaming, some do not want to wake.

D&D 5e

Plays as
arctic, fast pace at most (with skis or snowshoes)
Checks
forage: Survival DC 20 · find the way: DC 10 · search: DC 10
Creatures are spotted at
6d6 × 10 ft
  • Bitter cold. At −18 °C (0 °F) or colder, anyone exposed makes a DC 10 Constitution save at the end of each hour or gains 1 Exhaustion. Cold resistance passes automatically; sleeping in a bedroll does too, and a blanket gives Advantage.
  • Strong wind. Disadvantage on ranged weapon attacks; open flames go out and fog clears; a flyer must land at the end of its turn or fall. In a desert it can raise a sandstorm: Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks.
  • Blizzard. Heavy snow makes the area Lightly Obscured: Disadvantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks. With the cold, the extreme cold rule applies.
  • Thin ice. A 3 m (10 ft) square of thin ice holds 3d10 × 5 kg (× 10 lb); past that it breaks and drops everyone on it into frigid water. In frigid water a creature lasts as many minutes as its Constitution score, then makes a DC 10 Constitution save each minute or gains 1 Exhaustion. Slippery ice is difficult terrain: a DC 10 Dexterity save on entering it or fall Prone.
  • Curse mist. (House rule) Anyone who takes a long rest in the mist makes a DC 12 Wisdom save. On a failure, the rest gives back no Hit Point Dice and removes no Exhaustion.
  • Ill luck. (House rule) Once a day, the GM may turn one d20 roll by a player into a roll with Disadvantage, after seeing it. A Remove Curse spell or a blessed charm keeps one creature safe from it for a day.
  • Dread sleep. (House rule) Each night, one creature makes a DC 13 Wisdom save. On a failure it has the Frightened condition until the next noon, and it cannot willingly move toward the place it dreamt of.

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

Pathfinder Second Edition

Plays as (Pathfinder Second Edition)
arctic, difficult terrain, about 16 km a day at Speed 25
Checks
Subsist: Survival DC 20 · Sense Direction: Survival DC 20
Random encounters
flat check DC 17 each day
  • Bitter cold. Temperature bands (GM Core p. 95): at 0 °C to −11 °C (mild cold) travellers tire after 4 hours; at −11 °C to −29 °C (severe cold) they also take minor cold damage (1d6 to 2d6) every hour; at −29 °C to −62 °C (extreme cold), every 10 minutes. Cold-weather gear removes severe-cold damage and turns extreme cold into severe. A soaked traveller counts the band one colder.
  • Strong wind. Wind gives a –1 to –4 penalty to Perception that relies on hearing and to physical ranged attacks, and puts out handheld flames; strong wind can call for Athletics to move, a critical failure pushing back and knocking prone (GM Core p. 95).
  • Blizzard. A blizzard combines cold, heavy snow and strong wind (GM Core p. 96): apply the temperature band, a –1 to –4 penalty to Perception that relies on sight, and travel fatigue after 4 hours.
  • Thin ice. Ice is difficult terrain and uneven ground (GM Core p. 90): moving across it can call for Acrobatics to Balance.

This product is licensed under the ORC License located at the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including paizo.com/orclicense, azoralaw.com/orclicense, and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein. Attribution: this rules layer is based on the following Licensed Material: Pathfinder Player Core © 2023 Paizo Inc., Designed by Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, and Mark Seifter. Authors: Alexander Augunas, Kate Baker, Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Carlos Cabrera, Calder CaDavid, James Case, Eleanor Ferron, Steven Hammond, Joan Hong, Vanessa Hoskins, James Jacobs, Jenny Jarzabski, Erik Keith, Dustin Knight, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Patchen Mortimer, Dennis Muldoon, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mikhail Rekun, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Mark Thompson, Clark Valentine, Andrew White, Landon Winkler, and Linda Zayas-Palmer; Pathfinder GM Core © 2023 Paizo Inc., Designed by Logan Bonner and Mark Seifter. Authors: Amirali Attar Olyaee, Logan Bonner, Creighton Broadhurst, Jason Bulmahn, James Case, Jesse Decker, Eleanor Ferron, Fabby Garza Marroquín, Jaym Gates, Matthew Goetz, James Jacobs, Brian R. James, Jenny Jarzabski, Dustin Knight, Jason LeMaitre, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Owen K.C. Stephens, Amber Stewart, Clark Valentine, Landon Winkler, and Linda Zayas-Palmer; Pathfinder Monster Core © 2024 Paizo Inc., Authors: Alexander Augunas, Dennis Baker, Kate Baker, Joshua Birdsong, Joseph Blomquist, Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, James Case, John Compton, Paris Crenshaw, Adam Daigle, Darrin Drader, Brian Duckwitz, Robert N. Emerson, Scott Fernandez, Eleanor Ferron, Leo Glass, Matthew Goodall, BJ Hensley, Thurston Hillman, Vanessa Hoskins, James Jacobs, Jenny Jarzabski, Miko Kallio, Jason Keeley, Jeff Lee, Lyz Liddell, Luis Loza, Ron Lundeen, Robert G. McCreary, Philippe-Antoine Menard, Jacob W. Michaels, Dave Nelson, Jason Nelson, Tim Nightengale, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mikhail Rekun, Patrick Renie, Alex Riggs, David N. Ross, Michael Sayre, Mark Seifter, Chris S. Sims, Amber Stewart, Jeffrey Swank, William Thompson, Jason Tondro, Clark Valentine, Landon Winkler, Tonya Woldridge, and Linda Zayas-Palmer. If you use our Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit us as follows: Biomes, Pathfinder Second Edition rules layer © 2026 Michael Ghelfi. Reserved Material: the names of Biomes and its catalogues, its descriptions, sounds, art and code. Pathfinder is a registered trademark of Paizo Inc.; this site is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Paizo Inc.

A scene

  • Snowing. The wind shrieks and it’s snowing in a harsh, driving storm. Beneath the temptest’s roar is a rhythmic crunch. Footsteps, perhaps. What hides in this grey? The full generator on the blog

Adventure hooks

  1. The curse was laid by a woman wronged three generations ago, and her last descendant runs the inn where the party sleeps. She does not know, and she is very proud of her family.
  2. A curse breaker has set up a stall at the edge of the cursed land and sells charms by the dozen. The charms are useless, but one of them, by pure chance, works, and he does not know which.
  3. Every quarrel the party has here grows worse than it should, and one of them is about to say something they cannot take back. The curse feeds on it, and grows stronger every time anyone in the land hates anyone else.
  4. A family has lived on the cursed land for forty years without trouble, and the neighbours think they are witches. In fact they simply apologised, once, to whatever laid the curse, and they will tell anyone who asks politely.
  5. The caribou have turned away from their old river crossing, and the hunters waiting there will starve. The shaman says something stands on the old path; the scouts sent to look found only a single tall stone, still warm.
  6. The summer thaw has opened a bank of frozen mud, and a mammoth tusk sticks out of it. Two ivory traders are racing for it, and the family camped nearby says the beast is their grandmother.
  7. A ptarmigan hunter has gone snow-blind and must cross forty kilometres of white to reach home. He can read the way from the ridges the wind has carved in the snow, if someone describes them to him well enough.
  8. A musk ox overturned a trader’s sled and has followed him ever since, planting itself between him and anyone he talks to. He wants rid of his bodyguard; business has never been worse.

What grows here

  • Arctic Willow (shrub). A creeping willow rarely over 15 cm tall with round glossy leaves, the woody plant that reaches furthest north, on tundra and rocky moorland around the Arctic and on high mountains further south. Muskoxen and caribou browse its bark and twigs; Inuit and Gwich'in burnt the twigs, used the flowers as lamp wicks and treated wounds, toothache and diarrhoea with it. Food of: Muskox. Food of: Reindeer. Gives: Arctic Willow Leaf.
  • Common Juniper (shrub). A shrub or small conifer of very variable shape, with needles in whorls of three and berry-like cones that take eighteen months to ripen to purple-black. It has the widest range of any woody plant, around the cool north of the world from the Arctic southwards, on heaths, mountains, tundra and in open forest. Its berries flavour gin, beer and meat, and its fragrant wood made dairy vessels in Scandinavia. Gives: Treated Juniper Berry, Juniper Wood.
  • Dwarf Birch (shrub). A birch shrub no more than a metre high with shiny copper-red bark and small round toothed leaves that turn red in autumn. It grows in arctic and subarctic tundra, rocky barrens and raised bogs, and further south only high in the mountains, where it survives as a relic of the last Ice Age.
  • Cloudberry (herb). A low herb of 10 to 25 cm with palmate leaves and white flowers, growing on acid bogs, wet meadows and tundra around the North Pole. Its amber berries, rich in vitamin C, kept scurvy away from Arctic peoples and are made into jams and liqueurs in the Nordic countries. Gives: Cloudberry.
  • Peat Moss (moss). The bog mosses of the genus Sphagnum, whose spongy cells hold many times their dry weight in water; they build the peat bogs of the north, and grow in conifer forests and moist tundra. Dried, they dressed wounds in place of cotton up to the First World War, and the peat they lay down was burnt as fuel. Gives: Peat Moss.
  • Reindeer Lichen (lichen). A pale grey, much-branched lichen that forms mats up to 10 cm deep on the ground of boreal pine forests, tundra and low alpine slopes across the Northern Hemisphere. It is a chief food of reindeer; people soaked it in wood ash to take away its bitterness and ate it, and some northern peoples boiled it as a remedy. Food of: Reindeer. Gives: Reindeer Lichen.

Animals

Kept here

  • Horse (dangerous if cornered, in herds, at dawn and dusk)

Creatures

Also met here

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

To gather

Nothic Iris, Lycanthrope Fur, Arctic Fox Pelt, Arctic Willow Leaf, Juniper Wood, Grey Wolf Pelt, Horsehair, Moose Hide, Muskox Horn, Peat Moss, Red Fox Pelt, Reindeer Antler, Reindeer Hide, Reindeer Lichen, Willow Ptarmigan, Brown Bear Bile, Brown Bear Hide, Cloudberry, Common Eider Down, Golden Eagle Feather, Muskox Qiviut, Polar Bear Fat, Wolverine Pelt, Polar Bear Hide, Beetle Wing, Glacier Fish Blood, Winter Eladrin Tear, First Morning Dew, Mammoth Ivory Powder, Norn Root, Winter Wolf Eye, Yeti Glands, Remorhaz Flame, Adult Dragon Tonsils, Aurora Borealis Capture, Dragon Tongue, Solar Flare Fragment

Beneath

Near the surface the rock keeps the year's mean warmth, without seasons; it warms as one goes down.

At the surface
-10 °C
100 m
-7 °C
500 m
4 °C
1 km
18 °C
3 km
73 °C

A town here

How large a town this land can feed, what it makes and what it must buy. Build it in Hearth

The same milieu, otherwise

Tundra, Haunted Tundra, Crystalline Tundra, Dead Tundra, Primeval Tundra, Eldritch Tundra, Burning Tundra

Open it in Biomes — MGS Toolbox