Tundra

A harsh and unforgiving environment, filled with both a biting cold and a thrilling beauty, and enough of both to fill three lifetimes. In the Tundra, enormous mountains rise above a frosted valley like stone guardians, watching over and preserving this place of natural wonders. In the Tundra, it is freezing cold at all times; so cold that few creatures are capable of living with the harsh chill. But despite its external hostility, the Tundra is still host to native life, creatures which thrive in this environment, rather than fighting tooth and nail to hold on. In a rarity for such a far-flung plane, the Tundra does still experience seasons, quite similar to those found in the icy reaches of the Material Plane- daylight hours stretch slightly longer in the summer, and the winter months bring unbroken stretches of night. And just like in the Material Plane, many of the Tundra’s creatures attempt to entirely avoid winter, hibernating for its length as best they can. As Autumn comes on and the temperatures begin their sharp drop, most of the Tundra’s inhabitants experience a feeding frenzy as they all prepare to stockpile against the encroaching darkness.   In the Tundra’s central valley, temperatures drop to incredible lows at night, and harsh blizzards are common weather. During the day, the sunlight brings only temporary relief from the ice and snow, with the tall mountains at the valley’s edge ensuring the sun’s rays touch the valley for only a few hours each day. The snow-capped peaks of the mountains still reflect the light of the sun for several hours longer, providing light to see and live by for a full day, but without the warmth that would otherwise accompany it. It is the natural shape of these mountains which creates the valley below where the majority of the Tundra’s creatures reside. The valley holds snow-covered fields and icy streams, fed from underground wellsprings, but the peaks hold no such benefits, and even the smallest of them rise thousands of feet into the air. The largest of the mountains, a behemoth given the title Cloud Peak, rises so high that its pak has never been seen, eternally covered by the clouds of the atmosphere. The biting cold winds found in the mountains prevent creatures from flying far above the valley, and the strength of the winds quickly cause anything resistant to the chill to crash into the jagged rocks. Because of this, the area beyond the Tundra’s valley, past the peaks of the mountain, has never been explored. Attempts to enter the Tundra in other locations fail entirely, and no other method of crossing the mountain range has yet proven successful.   The rock of the mountains is a tough, gold-brown stone, on which no forestry grows. The few mages who bother to investigate the Tundra believe the rock itself may be magical, as even the boulders that fall into the valley resist the growth of moss or vines, and remain bare for centuries as they wear away. The slopes of the range rise at incredibly steep angles, a dangerous trek without specially crafted equipment, and some are entirely vertical, stretching so high that it’s impossible to see the tops of them when standing at the base. To enter the mountains, the few small paths which exist must be found and traveled, each of them with some degree of difficulty. More often than not these paths end in sudden cliffs which drop into the depths of the mountain, or terminate in impassible rock faces which almost seem so smooth as to have been cut out of the rock. Venturing into the mountains through these paths is discouraged, for little sunlight reaches them and the temperature never rises above freezing, resulting in extraordinary ice structures that can collapse without warning to spear the unsuspecting traveler. Even worse, in these small nooks and crannies where the sun never touches, creatures may be found which are otherwise native to the Underdark, instead living a strange life on the surface. Unable to burrow past sheets of ice and into the tough ground, these monsters live a strange surface life instead, rising during the night and stealing into the valley to hunt. During the winter months, when the sun disappears for weeks at a time, such beasts become a terrible danger to those without the means to hide themselves away where they won’t be found.