Northern Reaches

World Guide

Zones

In this section of the World Guide, you will find explanation of the zones available within Season 4 of Northern Reaches. These are intended to serve as inspiration and exciting backdrops for the sessions held throughout the Reaches with suggestions on common creatures or types of adventures by zone, but these suggestions do not preclude adding whatever creatures or themes are desired to a given session.

Every Zone also provides an OPTIONAL perk to players to reinforce the themes of the zone presuming the GM considers it appropriate for the session they are running. The GM gets to decide if the Perk is active or inactive in any given session.

Frostclaim

Government: Mayor elected to a 4-year term by the residents of Frostclaim.
Population: Approximately 4,000 people of various ancestries.
Law Enforcement: A constabulary, with the Head Constable appointed by the Mayor.
Legal System: Magistrates appointed by the Northport City Council.

Description: Frostclaim is a rough boomtown that sprang up less than ten years ago to send the wealth of the frontier back to Northport. Rendered whale oil, countless chunks of precious ore, and glittering magical jewels are but some of its treasures. Frostclaim's rail lines once screamed with cargo and its teleportation circles hummed with merchants, priests, and prospectors until, "The Pale", a magic blizzard of mysterious origin, halted the trains and blocked all forms of teleportation to Northport. Now the depot district is crowded with bunkhouses, the streets are blanketed with snow, and warehouses sit locked while the town waits out the storm.

Zone Perk: At the start of each session in Frostclaim, each player automatically receives one common alchemical food consumable of their level or lower as part of the town’s daily rations. This consumables are special and use the higher of your Class or Spell DC. It is also temporary and lost at the end of the session if not consumed. The meal is picked up from one of the town's many bustling food stalls, where frypans sizzle with lakefish and sweet rolls glaze over coals.

Common Creatures: Frostclaim is home to a mix of frontier humanoids such as laborers, traders, scavengers, and opportunists. The isolation caused by The Pale has lead to an increase in unscrupulous operators running underground enterprises such as gambling rings. The watch is constantly on alert for threats from nearby wilds, including frost drakes, elementals, and beasts driven toward the town by the The Pale.

Common Terrain: Urban, Plains

GM Notes: Sessions in Frostclaim can lean into themes of intrigue, factions, and frontier politics as the town struggles under isolation. Adventures might be focused on understanding and undoing the magical forces sealing the teleportation circles or perhaps mediating disputes between churches, guilds, and labor unions. There is always ample work to do helping the city watch protect the citizens of Frostclaim and maintain order as fear and unease grow within the population.

Shatterspine Ridge

Description: Shatterspine Ridge rises in jagged spears of black stone and blue ice, a long, brutal chain carved around a narrow valley traversed by the locomotive that serves as the primary artery connecting Frostclaim and its bounty to Northport. At its heart lies the immense tunnel known as Hanog’s Gate, carved through the tallest of Shatterspine's mountains and named after the legendary hero of Northport. Today, these critical rail lines lie buried beneath The Pale, a ceaseless blizzard that fills the valley with white. Signal towers lean in drifts, half-buried depots creak under the snow, and scattered mine entrances, some yet still active, perforate the mountainsides.

Zone Perk: Each adventurer is standard issued a Frost-etched Wayfinder keyed to Frostclaim. The device’s built-in compass always points toward the town regardless of weather or terrain, grants a +1 circumstance bonus to Survival checks, and can be used at will to cast Detect Metal, automatically heightened to half the character’s level (rounded up), helping locate buried rails, lost equipment, and veins of ore hidden beneath snow and ice.

Common Creatures: Frost drakes, white and storm dragons, fiends, ice elementals, desperate mountain beasts, miners, hunters. and occasional scouts seeking to protect the rail line.

Common Terrain: Arctic, Mountain, Underground

GM Notes: Sessions in Shatterspine ridge might consider themes focused around exploration, survival while traveling through dangerous conditions, monster-hunting expeditions, and uncovering the mystery of The Pale.

The Prismwoods

Description: The Prismwoods glow like a shattered rainbow grown into trees. Crystal-veined trunks pulse with light, scattering color through chiming petals and glassy moss. Some life thrives within the glow. Foxes with amethsyst eyes hunt by starlight, beetles signal with vibrant sparks, and certain mineral-rich vines grow stronger than ever. But the same magic runs unevenly: branches can snap under sudden crystal growth, roots knot around glittering seams, and a stag’s quartz antlers might grow too heavy for them to lift.

Zone Perk: Once per session, as a 2-action activity, players may choose to regain Hit Points equal to (4 + their level × 2). Your wounds close with temporary and faint prismatic scars that glow for 5ft as dim-light in the color of your choice for the remainder of the session.

Common Creatures: Animals and Plants infused with crystals, crystalline elementals, genieken heritages, and other humanoids such as the clan of centaurs that call the forest their home despite its challenges.

Common Terrain: Forest

GM Notes: Sessions in the Prismwoods can consider focusing on exploration of a unique, diverse atmosphere or perhaps focusing on the mystery of the forest itself and what is behind the crystaline growths. A GM could consider presenting moral choices about helping or exploiting altered wildlife. They may consider how the unusual growths in the forest affect the flora, fauna, and the local humanoid populations of the woods.

Thornhearth

Description: Thornhearth is a golden-warm cradle amidst icy ridges, where flowering trees and thick hedges hide weathered stonework beneath their roots. Warm mist drifts across orchards and tall grass, and in scattered places the earth sinks just enough to reveal sealed passages leading into quiet halls below. The ruins' etchings speak to an older time, a more chaotic time, one shaped by the early migrants from the First World. Their halls silently awaiting the return of the ones who created them while much of life continues above in the valley’s gentle warmth, blissfully unaware of the secrets below .

Zone Perk: Once per session, when a player attempts any skill check, they may choose to reroll it, regardless of if it was a success or failure. A harmless prank of lingering valley magic follows soon after and lasts until the end of the session (voice permanently echoes in birdsong harmonies, shadow mimics exaggerated emotions, or clothes slowly shift colors with mood). This is considered a fortune effect.

Common Creatures: Fey, ancient stone or vine-bound constructs, grippli tribes living amongst the warm marsh, native beasts thriving in the mild climate, and woodland dragons nesting along the cliffs and groves.

Common Terrain: Forest, Swamp, Underground

GM Notes: Sessions within Thornhearth could choose to explore varied stories amongst the feyfolk, the exploration of the natural life of the valley, or the culture and challenges of the grippli tribes above ground. GMs may also instead consider delving into the quiet ruins below to uncover hints of the valley’s forgotten past. The many scattered entrances make the area ideal for large, sprawling dungeon adventures, where passages may connect or perhaps lead to entirely different depths altogether.

Rimeveil depths

Description: The Rimeveil Depths are a vast arctic inland sea of steel-gray water and drifting white ice, stretching beyond sight beneath a sky of pale light and storm-hung clouds. Frostclaim’s sailors brave its frozen surface for fishing and whaling, threading narrow channels between grinding floes and glacial islands while longboats shelter in cathedral-like ice caverns carved into the coast. Beneath the dark water, shapes larger than ships are sometimes glimpsed, and the lake’s deep currents whisper of ancient things stirring even further below.

Zone Perk: Each adventurer is issued a talisman that can be affixed to their armor known as a Leviathan’s Lure. Once per session, when you successfully hit a creature larger than you with an attack roll or when a creature larger than you fails a saving throw against one of your spells, you may activate the talisman as a free-action to lash a spectral line onto that creature using the higher of your Class DC or Spell DC. For 1 minute, the creature cannot move more than 20 feet away from you in a single round unless it Escapes the line, and you gain temporary Hit Points equal to your level as adrenaline surges from your catch.

Common Creatures: Frostclaim fishermen and whalers, dockhands and salvagers, spirits of drowned sailors, enormous aquatic beasts, rumored leviathans beneath the floes, and strange denizens lurking in the glacial caverns.

Common Terrain: Aquatic, Arctic

GM Notes: Sessions in Rimeveil Depths could consider centering on dangerous voyages through drifting ice, encounters with massive creatures of the deep, and survival against brutal arctic conditions. GMs could consider themes such as aiding whaling crews, investigating sightings of massive shapes beneath the ice, exploring cavernous glacial tunnels, rescuing lost ships trapped in icy floes, or uncovering what ancient forces might dwell in the lake’s deepest trenches.

windscar bluffs

Description: The Windscar Bluffs trace a broken coastline of pale cliffs and ice-cut inlets overlooking the vast, steel-gray waters of the Rimeveil Depths. Low spruce and hardy willow cling to the wind-scoured uplands above the cliffs, where narrow trails thread between scrub forests and rocky bluffs. Small villages perch along these heights, their watchfires and halls sheltering hardy folk of many kinds such as hobgoblin fisher enclaves, wandering tengu traders, and tight-knit lycanthrope clans. The upland surrounding the bluffs are regarded as a sacred landscape, marked by weathered cairns and ancient burial grounds, many of which have recently began to stir with supernatural activity.

Zone Perk: When adventuring in the Windscar Bluffs, each player may choose to carry a Thoughtstone, a palm-sized runestone commonly used by the cliff settlements to keep peace amongst many peoples. Once per session, a Thoughtstone can be invoked to grant the ability to speak and understand one chosen common or uncommon spoken language for 1 hour (though it does not grant the ability to read or write in that language). When using the chosen language to perform a Diplomacy action, a player may add a proficiency bonus equal to their level + 1 even if they are untrained. If already Trained or better, they instead gain a +1 circumstance bonus to the action.

Common Creatures: Humanoid settlers such as hobgoblin fisherfolk, tengu traders, and lycanthrope clans; restless undead tied to cairns and shrines; and unusual beasts drawn to the bluffs’ lingering spiritual presence.

Common Terrain: Plains, Urban, Forest

GM Notes: Sessions in the Windscar Bluffs might consider a focus on diplomacy and cultural exchange among the many cliffside communities, where trade agreements, old grudges, and shared survival shape fragile alliances. At the same time, the recent rise in spiritual activity offers deeper mysteries to investigate such as awakened cairns, restless dead, and questions about what has disturbed the uplands sacred ground.

regional information

The Pale

The Pale is a ceaseless blizzard of unknown origin blanketing the Shatterspine Ridge. It started as an ordinary storm six months ago but has continued to strengthen and spread across the region. Beyond halting all rail traffic and making travel extremely dangerous, it also seems to be interfering with magical communication and teleportation, effectively isolating The Northern Wilds from Northport and the other boomtowns. There are even terrifying rumors of an open-water boomtown whose saltwater seaport completely froze over just before communications went dark.

Mark of the Pale

A few weeks after the start of The Pale, some settlers have been experiencing a series of weird symptoms. Their skin becomes paler, their wounds heal more slowly, and misfortune seems to follow in their wake. While there is no evidence that this condition is directly linked to The Pale, and it doesn’t seem to spread like other documented diseases, its timing and seemingly random pattern of spread have caused a stir within the community. The only known connection, the sickness seems to preferentially target those with an audacious spirit.

The Tavern of Last Call

Over the years the Tavern of Last Call in Northport has seen the coming and going of many a legendary adventurer. It serves as the meeting ground for the largest Adventuring Guild of the region, the Knights of Last Call. While it is not the original tavern, the Tavern of Last Call in Frostclaim continues the legacy by providing a place for adventurers to gather, drink, and find work.

The Knights of Last Call come from all walks of life, the main commonality between them being a sense of adventure. Whether in the pursuit of power, wealth, or the public good, the knights have played an unmistakable role in the history of the Northern Reaches.

The majority of player characters will be a Knight of Last Call; however, knights frequently have affiliations with other organizations. Below are some of the common factions found in the region of the Northern Wilds.

FACTIONS

Arcanium Expedition

The Arcanium College is the premier center of magical learning in the Northern Reaches. Based out of Northport, the organization provides specialized education and houses the largest research library in the region. The Arcanium Expedition is a small detachment of scholars from the Arcanium College trained to survive on the frontier, providing magical services and knowledge on a vast array of topics. They delve into ancient ruins seeking artifacts, study the magic-infused Prismwoods, and recently have led the charge in attempting to understand The Pale.

Player Character: Consider having your character be a member of the Arcanium Expedition if they received an education at the Arcanium College in Northport or had the skills to be recruited by them in Frostclaim.

Blackspear Mercenary Company:

The Blackspear Mercenary Company is an organization that has worked to maintain the peace and prosperity of the Northern Reaches for over twenty years. While the Constabulary handles domestic law enforcement and the military protects the state, Blackspears provide an organized means to train, equip, and deploy groups of adventurers on behalf of the government of Northport. They handle jobs not suited to large formations of troops, and are compensated with a salary from the state.

While some members of this mercenary company frequent the Tavern of Last Call, not all adventurers in the Northern Reaches are members. Some adventurers join other organizations, while others choose to remain independent. The Blackspears maintains a platoon of merceries in Frostclaim to protect the governments interests in the region.

Player Characters: Consider having your character be a member of the Blackspear Mercenary Company if they received formal training at their academy in Northport, or were recruited by them in Frostclaim. If your character is a member of the Blackspears, some custom backgrounds related to this organization are unlocked.

Merchant's Alliance:

The Merchant's Alliance is a large consortium of crafters and merchants that forms the backbone of commerce in the Northern Reaches. In the Northern Wilds, the most influential part of the Alliance is the Whaler's Guild, an organization that promotes the fishing and whaling industry within Frostclaim, Windscar Bluffs, and the Rimeveil Depths. Their deep pockets and control of the flow of critical resources give them an influential voice in the Northern Wilds.

Player Characters: Consider having your character be a member of the Merchant's Alliance if they are a specialized crafter. If they are heavily invested in the fishing and whaling industry, consider having them be a dues-paying member of the Whaler's Guild.

Cradle of the Lost:

The Cradle of the Lost is an organization that reveres The Mother of the Lost, a splinter sect of Lamashtan worship that emphasizes the goddess’s more charitable and nurturing aspects. While they are one of the smaller faiths in the Northern Reaches, members of the faith commonly take part in community activism, striving to ensure that everyone has access to food, shelter, and medicine without expecting payment. While the bulk of the faith is centered in Northport, the organization maintains temples near each of the boomtowns.

The temple in Frostclaim is located outside the town's walls in a nearby cave complex. A central chamber is open to the sky with a stone obelisk bearing the symbol of The Mother of the Lost located at its heart.

Player Characters: Consider having your character be a member of this organization if something about them kept them from fitting into society, they desire to shelter and uplift the broken, or they are a follower of The Mother of the Lost.

The Syndicate

Northport has always had a criminal element present within the city, so it stands to reason that the frontier boomtowns do as well. The Syndicate is a vast network of criminal families and street gangs who form tenuous alliances to further their illicit goals that operates across the Northern Reaches. Even in a town like Frostclaim, where there is money to be made there are people to ready to bend the rules for a piece of the pie.

Player Characters: Consider having your character be a part of The Syndicate if they are a member of a criminal organization that is trying to establish a firm foothold in Frostclaim.

Deities

The Mighty Flame Gut:

The followers of Flame Gut focus on strengthening and improving the community; however, the religion doesn't discriminate against the means and welcomes those of Holy or Unholy sanctification. Temples to Flame Gut contain dragon motifs and prominently feature a pair of braziers that are used during religious rites.

Reaper’s Creed:

A jotunborn who goes by the moniker Reaper, ascended to become a Demi-God by harvesting the souls of mythic enemies and claiming shards of the Starstone. He is currently said to reside in the Twilight Peaks near the Shatterspine Ridge, surrounded by a community of giants, hobgoblins, and warriors of all ancestries. Those who thirst for honorable combat may find themselves receiving his blessing. Many followers wonder if Reaper will eventually achieve full godhood, and some actively adventure to help him reach that goal.

The Mother of the Lost:

Naila Tar'Ket sought to build a refuge for those who were broken and forgotten by the rest of society, to provide them a place to survive, prosper, and grow. She embraced the motherly aspect of Lamashtu, fighting to protect while not spurning the demonic aspects of corruption and destruction. After obtaining a Starstone Shard, Naila was able to commune with the goddess and received tacit approval for The Mother of the Lost sect of the faith.

Embrace that which makes you special and tear down those who would prey on the helpless. Everyone is welcome in the Mother's warm embrace.

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