What sort of things do you find up in the Northern wastelands? Lovecraftian horrors lurking under the ice...

Only if it's complete with it's mythical murderous mermen.

In my setting? White Walkers and Winter Witches.

An idea for lovecraftian horrors in the frozen wastes youtube.com/watch?v=0Y-hfG-6OFA

An NPC is drawn to a far off landmark unseeable due to its distance from the party. If the players track the NPC they may find the lifeless bodies of others who have been drawn to the landmark but were to weak to make it on their own. At a certain point have the NPC collapse and die, if the party tries to turn around at that point tell them that they are unable to as they are drawn to the same unknowable distant goal. Eventually a mountain range appears in the distance and they continue towards it until they find an ancient ruin atop the tallest peak. There they uncover a tomb for some ancient dark entity and the mutated creatures that have been drawn towards it. Incorporate sanity checks from other systems to maximize the fun since the PCs are as enthralled by the unholy being as the mutants are.

Wendigos

Be like my super imaginative previous DM:

Ice Trolls
Ice Dragons
Ice Ogres
Ice Orcs
Ice Elves
etc

Literally no part of his setting was actually different. Go to the south and it's all desert/sand xyz, go to the north and it's all snow/ice xyz. Nothing behaves differently, the dragons just have different breath attacks and the people dress differently.

Which I suppose might make sense in some very logical way but fuck me if it isn't boring in a game about made up imaginationland.

That video just makes laugh every single time.

Mostly because of /r9k/

Little Johnny Frostbite
Hole Drillers
The Tundra (which is no respector of fashion)
Arctic Lizards
sick Fire Dragons who've come to try to recuperate from a bad case of The Overheat
Axe Fish
Ghost Sharks
Commughasts weilding Living-Ice-Sickles
Living Ice
Surprise Huskies
Vampire Mounties
Frankensteins
Frankensenses
Cracks
The Klu Klux Klan (who attack anything non-white)
SantaClaws
Elves
a single box half buried in the snow full of Advanced Reader Copies of the final Game of Thrones books.
The Cats That Walk Like Men.
youtube.com/watch?v=9IjGNJPNyzU

Would arctic lizards be warmblooded?

>A Kappa, with his head-puddle frozen

Greenland Sharks are cold-blooded despite the extreme cold of their environment. I could buy a cold-blooded snow lizard in a fantasy setting.

...

Arctic fish create a natural antifreeze in their blood. Realistically in an arctic environment you're more likely to find extremely large mammals covered in insulating layers of blubber and specialized fur. Could make for good trolls/giants.

Whoa, how do they survive?

Is that a wendigo?

See They're very large; one of the larger predatory shark species. And they move about as ponderously as you'd expect a giant cold-blooded fish living in the arctic would move.

Oh and their flesh is toxic so nothing really eats them.

Ice wraiths
Angry spirits of men and women who perished in the deep northern tundras, they manifest in the form of ice constructs, taking an appearance similar to their former selves. The legends tell that they are silent, and in an area with heavy snowfall they are nigh invisible. They have the ability to walk atop the snow without leaving a single footprint, and make no sounds other than piercing cries of agony during snowstorms.

Ice wraiths tend to haunt the area around their corpse, lashing out with frozen claws that could give someone frostbite with merely a scratch. They are the bane of northern fishing towns, stalking the houses during times of heavy snowfall and attacking anybody that steps foot outside their home. It is unclear whether the snow brings the wraiths, or the wraiths bring the snow. Ice wraiths do not enter houses in which hearth fires burn, but they do tent to linger just outside, peering in through the window and tapping on the glass, offering only senseless rambling and what has been described as a hateful grimace.

If the ice construct is destroyed, the wraith will remain inactive until the next significant snowfall, during which the body will regenerate and the wraith will continue its haunt. If the place of death is far enough south that the summer is with out at least a foot of snow, the ice wraith will disappear until the snows return.

The only way to banish an ice wraith without a highly experienced exorcist is to discover its original body and either give it a proper burial or burn it until it is nothing but ash.

>Northern
>Penguins

Living in such a land myself, I can say that we have a healthy variation of creations both mythical and mundane, extrodinary and ordinary! Let me start by introducing you to my friend, the Wendigo. Not to be confused with the Yeti which it has a superficial resemblance to, though you likely wouldn't want to encounter either.

The Kooshdakhaa is an otter that can shapeshift into a humanoid. Or a humanoid that likes shapeshifting into an otter. Nobody really knows which is which, but they're on the whole gamut when it comes to behavior; some will help you out of the kindness of their hearts, while others will lead you to your death for amusement. If you suspect a nearby otter is a Kooshdakhaa, exercise caution!

I was under the impression Wendigo are typically depicted as very emaciated humanoids

The Adlet, or dogman; much like the Minotaur, the product of beastiality. Said to be cannibalistic (eats wolves, men, wolf-men), and generally not something you want to run into in the woods. Think a Winter Wolf with weapons.

Even in the original legends, conflicting accounts on the appearance of the Wendigo have been made; generally, they all share the same insatiable hunger which makes them a good thing to avoid, regardless of origin.

That's because Wendigo's don't have a singular appearance. They're shapeshifters. They turn humans into monsters once possessed.

This, motherfuckers.

Does anyone else just takes Magic card's art and homebrews monsters out of their design?

I know I do.

Glacier Worms! These biological anomalies can easily be up-scaled in order to provide a formidable encounter your party won't soon forget! It is theorized that they are able to secrete a substance similar to anti-freeze, though D&D (Which calls them "Frost Worms") has them spitting the generic ice breath that EVERY cold-alligned monster must possess!

Most wendigo legends agree on the basic "emaciated, monstrous human" appearance.

That's bullshit. Shapeshifting is not traditionally part of the wendigo legend, beyond the human form being distorted.

>graboids

...

Yesterday we got a guy asking for desert monsters. We gave them a bunch of Sand ____ monsters. I hope your DM is the same guy.

I was referring to the fact that because they're spirits, and because they possess humans and distort their features, they don't have a singular appearance.

So they aren't shapeshifters. But it was the closest thing that came to mind to explain it.

Okay, that's fair, but kind of misleading.

Dang, wish I was here for that, I know a bunch of good desert monsters from myth and folklore.

>But it was the closest thing that came to mind to explain it.

As opposed to:

>they have no uniform appearance because they're spirits

>Dat's the joke,jpeg

It'll totally throw off any players trying to be smart, "oh we're in the frozen north, then how can there be penguins? wouldn't the polar bears eat them all?"

and then the GM drops the hammer:
>no, my penguins are 6 foot tall ambush predators who eat polar bears.
>you ain't in frozen kansas anymore mother fucker

-Rotund, sanguine walrus men that lure you into their lavish homes for dinner. Fun fact: walruses have vaulted mouths, which they press their tongues against to blast the sea bed with jets of water. According to some field biologists, a walrus will use that in reverse to lobotomize a seal. Wrap dem walrus lips around the seal's nose and SCHLUUURRRP.

-Exotic trader-amazons with big booties. Both on their feet and on their hips. Blubber protects against the cold. Anyone that tries to attack them has to deal with cudgels made from walrus penis bones, sling bullets, and strange magics.

-The insular humanoids known as the Guidolio. They have skin that's so oily they wipe the oil off their pockmarked faces to use in their lamps. They breed a particularly vicious kind of dog with bandy legs that they ride around on. The dogs form a huge part of the Guidolio diet. Armed with darts and push daggers, the Guidolio are always fighting amongst themselves.

Just like real life to be quite honest my family man.

We have
>jungle bears
>snow bears
>forest bears
>river bears (the regular bears)
>water bears
I mean, the only thing we miss is a sky/flying bear and we have the whole collection.

>implying the area in discussion is the Arctic or even on Earth and not just a northern ice wasteland open to worldbuilding
>implying there is any reason why penguins could not survive in a northern ice wasteland
>implying the great auk, which is physiologically and ecologically similar to a large penguin, did not survive in the Arctic
>implying you're not a faggot

>The penguins are receiving delayed broadcasts from E3
>They see that mountain
>They're going to climb it

Snowflake Slimes! For when you need more style than a generic "ice slime".

Ice Elementals come in many sizes, and contrary to their overlord dwelling in the Elemental Planes, aren't really inherantly evil: they just don't like hot stuff.

But why?

And many shapes as well.

Mother.

Fucking.

Utburds.

NOOT NOOT MUTHAFUCKER NOOT NOOT

>multibears!

>sanguine

Oo, you know what rhymes with Sanguine? Penguin. Vampire Penguins all belly sliding through the air at you is gonna put the fear of the ice into even the most resolute of men

The friendlier type of ice fairy; don't underestimate regardless unless you've got frost resistance; Cone of Cold from a 1d10 HP fae is still Cone of Cold.

Not to be confused with the significantly less hospitable cold fey, which you should stay clear of under most circumstances.

Ghosts of sailors who died trapped in the ice.

Because it just works user.

Ice fairies are all bakas.

>cold fey

...

Which is why it's quite important you don't confuse them for this guy.

Cold Rider is not a super hero; these dudes are ex-fey princes turned into dark messengers. These tough customers can quickly regenerate wounds so long as they or the mount they're in contact with snow; which is virtually always.

In fact, their prime purpose is to corrupt the less evil types of fey to bolster their number; they're bad eggs of the worst kind!

Water bears are disgusting.

I hope so! He was a great guy and was always a players-first kind of guy, he was also always the first to admit he wasn't innovative. No crime there. I've since moved to a new city.

It's true. It's very logical.

>A Fighting Fantasy Gamebook in which YOU are the hero!
>YOU

As opposed to whom?

Some other asshole.

For some reason it amuses me this is a selling point. Like, as if the devs thought this was the first game ever to have players.

Reminds me of some Facebook RPG which advertised the existence of an inventory function as a key feature.

Also how come no one in this thread suggested a winter wizard?

who blasts Christmas-themed rock opera

You've clearly never seen the EA features list for Scrap Mechanic.

Confused and senile but powerful druid who centuries ago saved the world by stoping a massive heat wave and its author by magically cooling everything in his radius and mantaining it that way.

Nowadays its no longer necessary but hes stubborn and not many people visit him.

In my homebrew I have the north inhabitated by Eskimo-like people with an animistic religion and mighty shamans being able to do rituals to speak with the dead or to leave their body.

I thought he was the Winter Warlock?

Damn hope my Demonica has the Demon Summoning Program.

>Fun fact: walruses have vaulted mouths, which they press their tongues against to blast the sea bed with jets of water. According to some field biologists, a walrus will use that in reverse to lobotomize a seal. Wrap dem walrus lips around the seal's nose and SCHLUUURRRP.
When I was trying to verify this, I started reading the walrus wikipedia page and they're pretty fascinating.

One of the Wraith supplements had a pretty good introduction story about a team of archeologists coming upon strange, ancient mystic mechanism, used by spectres, in an arctic setting. I think it was Doomslayers: Into the Labyrinth or Book of Legions...

Yes, it's true: that land is forgotten now, even to the people who once lived there. Ice covers it. Fog hangs in the sky. But if you could only remember...

>What sort of things do you find up in the Northern wastelands?
Something that Google doesn't think you should see.

Bagpipers.

So what is there? Russian base?

None of your fucking business apparently

Ice. Metric fucktons of ice. And, occasionally, of you're lucky, some snow. If you're unlucky, swarms of shape shifters. If you're really, really unlucky, everlasting life

>The frozen wastes actually freeze time
Stealing that idea.

It's the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago off of Russia's northern coast.

It's unknown what's covered up there.

A race of sentient mammoths with domesticated hominids.

Crystalline bards.

You're disgusting. Water bears are awesome.

Barioth

>no one's mentioned brain worms

You would have to be sadistic to send these things after your party.

>>they have no uniform appearance because they're spirits

Clearly referring to the fact that when they possess people, their forms are never identical.

Jackass.

It's not the only weird arctic alien I can send after my players...

Remants of an ancient empire buried beneath the ice.

>eldritch horrors
yes

...

...

A mysterious monolith in the ice.

Indigenous life form spotted!

Just imagined a setting with both mind worms from SMAC and the Thing. One massive nope.
But at least in both cases flamethrowers work pretty well.

?

Don't go past 2000 meters down the hill!