The Wastes can be beautiful. Here the land is toxic: slowly corrosive to the touch, causing illness and death with prolonged contact. The bubbling sulfur and ectomass pools (HellPits too) are especially lovely, if you have the right aesthetic. The soil is soft and any heavy object slowly sinks. If it was not for the special resources here (dyes, alchemical elements, resins, Grimrock, Verner glands, etc), it would be a place that no one would come.
Codex introduction
"This is a Stub"
Actually it was a stub, but now it is a bit out of control. The Wastes used to be a place holder place, where I could put terrible toxic things and have a fantasy post apocalyptic area. It became the background for quite a few submissions.
Now, this is a coordinating submission. It links together the various part of a toxic fantasy land and paints a (somewhat) coherient picture. You will need to read the various linked submissions and stubs for this to make much sense. (So mouse over everything underlined or check the upper right ID box.)
Description
The Wastes can be beautiful to look at. The land has a wide variety of chroma, ranging across from dark chocolate, to burnt sienna, to blood red, to sandy oranges, to pale yellow sand. Some is matte, while other parts sparkle with minerals. Wisps of fog slide across these colors. Sometimes that fog glows with an elegant light. There are rocks of many hues as well. Some solid, while others are striped with layers of color. Some are massive, islands in The Wastes. Others form standing stones, as the soil has slide away around them. Each exposed stone is rounded; some eroded by sand, others eroded by the waste tainted winds. The water is found in the form of high spouting geysers and warm sulfur springs with colorful rings at their edges. Some of it is even safe to drink. The sunsets here are unlike anywhere else in the world. They have more color than anywhere else in the world. And as the sun's brightness and angle changes the hues of the very land. Some parts of the land even glow gently, counterpointing the on coming darkness. Those of artistic bents will travel to The Wastes just to see the sunsets and rises here.
It is beautiful to look at.
It is not as nice to the touch.
The soil here is like no where else. The soil is soft and spongy. It is not quite mud as it is not really wet, but has that consistancy Any heavy object will slowly sink into it, never to be seen again. It is almost always slowly corrosive to the touch. Anything left out on it will eventually decay. Prolonged direct exposure can lead to illness as well.
Those that live in and around here, and yes people do, are careful about direct exposure to the soil or the various odd materials in The Wastes.
In addition to the watery pools and geysers, The Wastes have other pools. There are hot and raw sulfur pits here and Hellpits are scattered about The Wastes as well. These pools project gentle light into the sky and fog here. The effect can be quite stunning as the tule fog quickly slides along. (Note: some of the opaque fog is just a release of some gas from The Wastes.)
If it was not for the special resources here (dyes, alchemical elements, rare metals and stones, resins, Grimrock, Verner glands, etc), it would be a place that no one would come.
Lifeforms
The Wastes is full of life. Most things here are uniquely adapted to the paraliquid soil. Of note are the carnivorous mobile mutant plants, Floaters, various passing birds, Soarers, changed rodents, Waste Spiders, and Verners. The scroll below will list some of the lifeforms not worthy of a full sub.
Flora
Creepers
Drooping Trees
Flute Grass
Sky Pods
Thorn Rolls
Most non adventurous plants here are poisonous.
*Note: There is no strong, hard wood in the wastes. All the wood used for construction in these parts is from the boundary zones.
Fauna
Crawlers of The Wastes
Waste Knights
Soarers
Verners
Waste Rats
Waste Spiders
*Note: There are a lot of various medium sized monsters in the Wastes. Populate them as you see fit. If you need a good idea, take a standard medium sized monster or animal and mutate it.
Society In and Around The Wastes
There are people who live in the area around The Wastes. They travel into The Wastes searching for various rare and important material (Grimrock for example).
Feature Piers
: Borrowing from their Ocean side brethren, piers and paths were made out into the wastes. Wooden Planks set on glass balls survived the longest. Eventually they would corrode and fall away and the glass spheres would not carry much traffic, so they were temporary at best. They did manage to extend the reach into the wastes.
These were also the starting points for the Moving Cities of the Wastes.
The Moving Cities
are not actually mobile like a cart or ship. They are mobile because they slowly move across The Wastes as the inhabitants build new city parts to replace those that are destroyed by the corrosion of The Wastes.
There are several mobile cities in The Wastes. The best known is Carnous (See City Image - Carnous). There are several others about the wastes.
Feature Islands
: These are small stationary islands of huts made of wood and bamboo that are spread around The Wastes for navigational and rest purposes. They don't last long, but they are easy to replace.
Some islands are actually built on large standing boulders after they have scared the Soarers off, or huge sand coral patches. Sand Coral here is much like Ocadian SandCoral, except the animals that inhabit it are all stinging creatures that make standing on it without thick boots dangerous.
The best known rock based Island is Deadman's Rock.
Other Notes
Some say this is this is where The City of Caulderon once was. Actually it was the location for one of the cities.
Scrolls
Twists, chapters, and details meant to stream with the submission — not general discussion.
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Discussion
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Continue the path
Three more steps through the hall.
- City Image - Carnous by MoonHunter Bound
Other takes
No other takes yet — the best compliment on the Citadel is a Retelling.
Bonds
Outbound links for this Codex live in the gathered list above. Bind as Codex to add another piece to the shelf after you sign in. Kindred Favors gather here too.
Echoes 5
Pieces that link here
- 30 Legendary Antidotes/Cures valadaar linked by valadaar
- City Image - Carnous MoonHunter linked by MoonHunter
- Deadman's Rock MoonHunter linked by MoonHunter
- Soarers MoonHunter linked by MoonHunter
- Verner MoonHunter linked by MoonHunter
This Stub has seen a lot of traffic between people following the links and my own editing. The stub did what it was ideally supposed to do, grow in size and complexity into a real submission.
Note this submission has about 10 stubs associated with it. Most of them are flora and fauna of the non monsterous type, (well non monsterous for The Wastes anyways). So follow them along, they are kind of fun.
Strolen, stubs are not addable to a codex. However, if they are included in the submission via a name link, and you edit the text updating it, they show up. In fact they don't even seem to back link consistantly either.
Beautiful-but not a good place to live.
Updated: Updated for one tense error and three capitalization errors.
I like it. The terrain description is excellent.
Follow the links (especially those in the texts - flora and fauna for example), there is a ton of stuff attached to this.
Which pools/springs are safe to drink?
None. You have to pack most of your water in.
Well not completely true. You can run a distiller (boil and condense) and purifier (i.e. carbon/ charcol leach) and make most water "safe". However that means you have to carry a heavy distiller and purifier. You might cache one somewhere on a rock island or such, if you know where a water source is.
You might have other chemicals to make the certain pools safe. However, that is more random experiment.
pretty neat, GM voiced and a little meta, but the concept not the writing is strong
It is a stub, an organizational point for the GM to use the various Waste posts. It is not really an artistic submission.