Frozen Marsh

Marsh
Photograph by Eric Koppel. User:EKoppel, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

An endless winter holds the land. Snow lies in midsummer, rivers are frozen to their beds, and trees stand cased in ice that never melts. This cold does not come from the sky, and fires give less warmth than they should. Open wetland of reeds, rushes and shallow pools, without trees. Rich in birds, fish and thatch, hard to cross on foot, and loud with frogs on summer nights.

Hear it

For the table

Ground
hard going, about 10 km a day on foot
Water
plentiful
Foraging
fair

Hazards

  • Sucking mud. Firm-looking ground opens onto deep mud or peat. Alone and laden, a traveller can be held until the water rises or the cold comes.
  • Biting insects. In the warm season, clouds of mosquitoes and flies bite day and night. Sleep and tempers wear thin.
  • Endless cold. The cold does not lift by day or by season, and a campfire only warms those who sit right beside it.
  • Glazed ground. Paths, roots and stones wear a skin of clear ice that the sun never softens.
  • Frostbite. Fingers and toes go white, then stop hurting, which is worse.

D&D 5e

Plays as
swamp, slow pace at most
Checks
forage: Survival DC 10 · find the way: DC 15 · search: DC 20
Creatures are spotted at
2d8 × 10 ft
  • Endless cold. (House rule) The extreme cold rule holds in every season, day and night: at the end of each hour outdoors, a creature makes a DC 10 Constitution save, DC 12 at night, or gains 1 Exhaustion level. Cold resistance or immunity passes automatically; furs and winter clothing give Advantage.
  • Glazed ground. Slippery ice is Difficult Terrain. A creature that moves onto it for the first time on a turn, or starts its turn there, makes a DC 10 Dexterity save or has the Prone condition.
  • Frostbite. (House rule) A creature that ends a day of travel with wet hands or feet makes a DC 12 Constitution save. On a failure it has Disadvantage on Dexterity checks and on attack rolls with weapons until it finishes a long rest beside a fire.

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)
swamp, greater difficult terrain, about 11 km a day at Speed 25
Checks
Subsist: Survival DC 15 · Sense Direction: Survival DC 15
Random encounters
flat check DC 14 each day
  • Sucking mud. Quicksand (GM Core p. 107): a hidden patch about 5 m wide (Stealth +12; Survival DC 18 to spot by disturbing it). Stepping in sinks a traveller to the waist, then one step each round (neck, then under); Athletics DC 20 climbs back a step, and allies can pull with Athletics DC 20.

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.

Adventure hooks

  1. A smith whose forge no longer grows hot enough to work iron offers her best blade to whoever finds where the heat of her fire goes. It goes to a hollow nearby where, in the middle of the ice, a patch of grass grows green around a cradle someone has built there.
  2. A merchant has noticed that nothing kept here ever spoils and has opened a cold store for rich clients from the south. Business is splendid until a young lord comes to collect a crate laid down by his grandfather and finds the grandfather inside, alive and furious about the delay.
  3. Every evening an old woman walks out to talk to her son, who stands frozen in the ice where the winter caught him. She does not want him freed; she wants someone to promise to keep talking to him once she is gone.
  4. The village draws lots each year to choose who walks out into the cold to feed the winter. This year the lot fell on the headman’s son, and the headman has quietly decided that a passing stranger will do just as well.
  5. Reed cutters have found a body in the peat at the edge of the reed beds, centuries old, a rope still around its neck. The village wants it buried at once; a scholar from the city wants to buy it, and so does somebody else, secretly.
  6. On a summer night every frog in the marsh fell silent at once. The causeway watchman says that is when the thing that booms in the reeds goes walking; the old folk laugh about it, and bar their doors.
  7. A wildfowler’s decoys are so good that the ducks fly into his nets by the hundred, and the lord’s falconers accuse him of stealing their game. A contest is set for Sunday, falcon against decoy, and both men need a second.
  8. An eel catcher needs help to set his wicker traps along a channel before the autumn run. He pays well and asks only one thing: that nobody whistles on the water.

What grows here

  • Broadleaf Cattail (herb). A wetland plant of 1.5 to 3 m with broad strap leaves and a brown sausage-shaped seed head, always in or beside shallow water. It grows across Eurasia and North America and more locally in Africa and South America, from sea level to 2,300 m. Nearly every part is edible, and its leaves thatch roofs and seat chairs. Food of: Horse. Gives: Cattail Rhizome, Cattail Leaf, Cattail Pollen.
  • 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.
  • Common Reed (grass). A tall wetland grass of 1.5 to 4 m, found worldwide, that forms vast reed beds in shallow fresh or brackish water, like the 1,700 km² of the Danube Delta. Its purple plumes turn grey and silky in autumn and the stems stand through the winter. It is the classic thatch of Europe. Food of: Goat. Food of: Cattle. Gives: Reed Stem, Reed Rhizome.

Animals

Kept here

  • Water Buffalo (can wound or kill, in herds, day and night)
  • 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

Winter Wolf Eye, Yeti Glands, Remorhaz Flame, Cattail Leaf, Cattail Pollen, Cattail Rhizome, Common Adder Fat, Reed Rhizome, Reed Stem, Crocodile Glands, Eurasian Beaver Pelt, Horsehair, Nile Crocodile Egg, Buffalo Hide, Buffalo Milk, Wild Boar Bristles, Willow Bark, Willow Ptarmigan, Cloudberry, Common Adder Venom, Eurasian Beaver Castoreum, Nile Crocodile Hide, Beetle Wing, Frog Lung, Giant Mosquito Wing, Hemlock Stem, Orchid Flower, Snake Venom, Valerian Root, Wolf Aloe Leaf, Grung Venom, Hag Index Finger, Pitcher Plant Nectar, Sundew Tentacle, Will-o'-Wisp Spark, Concentrated Venom, Corpse Flower Petal, Electric Eel Gland, Ghost Orchid, Hag Brain, Sea Hag Gill, Troll Bone Marrow, Will-o'-Wisp Trail, Catoblepas Eye Gland, Hag Moldy Heart, Naga Perfect Scale, Wandering Mound Mother Root, Adult Dragon Tonsils, Dragon Tongue, Froghemoth Tongue, Hydra Bile, Witch's Eye

To fish

Bog Lungfish, Bullfrog, Freshwater Crayfish, Mud Catfish, Swamp Leech Cluster, Reed Otter, River Pike, Tench, Marsh Crocodile, Sorrow Pike, Sunken Reliquary, White Lotus Bloom, Black Lotus Bloom

The same milieu, otherwise

Marsh, Cursed Marsh, Corrupted Marsh, Haunted Marsh, Enchanted Marsh, Eldritch Marsh, Toxic Marsh

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