Well met wonderful wanderers! Join me today on a journey through a roiling landscape of chaotic disharmony. This week you will discover a D66 list full of weird effects that can befall a land beset by chaos magic. Wherever demons mass and chaotic magic is cast with wild abandon you will find chaos's corruption writ large upon the country side. Enjoy these weird and wonderful effects, implement them as travel encounters, or use them to spice up a battle with a demon or other chaotic forces. If you're looking for more chaos and pain to inflict on your players check out my article on evil cults, it's full of danger and fun in equal measure. If that's not to your liking, have a look at another take on landscape effecting magic with my article on ten magical weather phenomena to use in your next session!
Chaotic Landscapes
The corrupting powers of chaos
have ever sought to remake the material plane in their image. The corrosive
effects of this chaos magic has long plagued the world, laying once-prosperous
kingdoms low and causing untold tragedies brought on by starvation, disease, and
war. When an area becomes the site of repeated chaotic influences, the land
itself will start to warp and change. What was once a seemingly normal forest
road can rapidly transform into an alien landscape, and once-familiar items and
friends can become warped and menacing.
While traveling through chaos-corrupted
landscapes, roll a d6 for every two hours of travel. A roll of a 1 or 2
indicates that the landscape here has been effected by chaotic influences. Roll
on the table below to determine what the PCs are experiencing. Alternatively,
ignore rolling every two hours and instead use your preferred random encounter
method and then roll on the table below to add an additional element of chaos
and weirdness to the encounter.
Chaotic Influences on the Countryside
11. The surrounding area that the characters are
traveling through starts to take on hues of purple, pink, and blue, and the
ground starts to become wet mud that painfully chills all flesh it touches.
12. The vegetation in the area has large golden
fruits hanging from it. If eaten, the fruits immediately restore 1d4 HP. (The
next day upon waking, characters lose 1d4 HP.)
13. The wind in this area is very strong and
steady. If they listen for a time to the wind, player characters can hear the
voices of loved ones begging to be rescued from the afterlife.
14. All food in the characters’ possession is
spoiled and turned into wet sand replicas of the actual food.
15. Characters cannot shake the feeling that they
are being watched.
16. The ground periodically shakes and at the same
time the sound of distant wailing can be heard upon the breeze.
21. If characters stop to talk or rest while
traveling through this area, they quickly find themselves wrapped up and held
to the ground by grass and other low-lying plants. (STR save to pull free.)
22. Florescent black lightning from out of a
cloudless sky strikes the ground around the characters without actually
striking any of them. This will spook any animals that are traveling with the
party, forcing characters to succeed at CHA tests to regain control of their
animals before the poor creatures run off. This bizarre phenomena lasts for at
least half an hour.
23. Blood rains down from the sky, pooling on the
ground and staining everything it touches.
24. The landscape around the characters shifts in
the blink of an eye. What once was flat is now hilly, and what once was hilly
is now flat. Mountains are raised or lowered randomly. This altered landscape
will last for 1d4 hours before everything switches back to the way it was. (The
player characters have a 3-in-6 chance of becoming lost due to this.)
25. A sticky mucus coats everything in the area
including the flora and fauna.
26. PCs' voices seem to be coming not from their
mouths, but from a meter to the right of their persons.
31. Shadows seem to move in the opposite direction
from where they are being cast.
32. The player characters experience a temporal
anomaly as though they are re-experiencing every event over again a few seconds
after it has occurred. This makes it very difficult to perform most actions,
especially those that require mental focus like spell casting.
33. The roles of predators and prey seem to be
reversed in this area. Animals seen while traveling act in opposition to their
normal behaviors. Lambs eating wolves, foxes nibbling on grasses, etc.
34. All the fauna in the area have a bloodshot
third eye growing from the middle of their forehead.
35. All the trees and other vegetation in the area
seem to be made of stone.
36. The sun casts a swirling green and red light
during daytime. Gazing at the shifting light for too long will make one
nauseous.
41. All animal life in the area seems to have burst
apart from the inside out. The trees and other fauna are covered in the
exploded remains of wild and domestic animals alike.
42. All living creatures in the surrounding area
are found to be transformed into trees and bushes with small maroon leaves. People-
and horse-shaped trees dot the roadside.
43. It begins to rain, but the drops are falling
in slow motion.
44. A massive fissure splits the ground ahead in
half. The crack in the ground is in the shape of a player character’s name.
45. Ancient flagstone buildings flicker in and out
of existence on the horizon.
46. The atonal hum of insects seems to shift into
the song a player character’s parents used to sing to them.
51. A choking cloud of hot soot and sulfur picks
up suddenly and blankets the area, making it hard to see and even harder to
breath.
52. Shadows in the area move with a ten second
delay.
53. The sky turns a sickly green color, and the
smell of burnt hair perfumes the air.
54. The PCs begin to see their companions’ faces
warp and twist out of the corner of their eyes.
55. The ground surrounding the player characters
transforms into a sucking mud that starts to swallow characters who try and
struggle to leave the area. After a few seconds the ground becomes hard again
and the characters will have to dig themselves out.
56. A faded image of a 35 foot tall demon rises
from the ground 100 feet away and starts to silently yell at the player
characters as it charges at them. Once it makes it to the PCs the demon
pounces, but before it can strike it fades away to nothingness.
61. The clouds, hills, and vegetation all resemble
the faces of demons.
62. A small spring is discovered flowing out of a
cleft in a rock. Instead of water though, bile pours out of the spring.
63. The clothes of 10 to 12 people can be found
strewn about, but no one can be seen in the area except the PCs.
64. Flames in the surrounding area change color as
they burn, from red all the way to purple and back again.
65. A thick blue mist rises from the ground and
appears to form the shape of a demonic fortress.
66. Piles of bones 20 feet high start to erupt
from the earth all around the player characters.
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