Icewalker
2008-10-11, 03:14 AM
"In all my travels, it was the most inhospitable place I've ever seen, and possibly the most dangerous. I've been to the Nine Hells, the harshest spots of the elemental planes, and untold layers of this horror which is the Abyss. But I've always regretted this one journey and no other. The seven of us left from this very city, on the third of the month...I'm the only one who made it back. Six good men, the toughest and smartest I've ever known, and it took the damn tempest two hours..."
-Vor Rusiv, the only survivor of the first recorded expedition to The Red Rage.
The Red Rage
The Red Rage, also known sometimes as The Red Hurricane or The Red Tempest is one of the infinite layers of the Abyss. Very little is known about The Red Rage because its extremely hostile environment has stopped almost all research, and there are few enough living researchers of the Abyss as is.
The Red Rage is known to be much large than many other layers, extending greatly in all directions. To known knowledge it is naught but a titanic windstorm of stinging red dust in an already unbreathable environment. There are no proven denizens of the storm, although the few explorers have reported seeing figures in the dust, and one of the members of the famous Rusiv Expedition was suspected to have been taken by a demon of the layer.
Environment
"The storm was the worst, obviously. We've all faced the worst weather before, everything from the necrotic flaywinds of the Eastern Desert to the death hail in the Frost Wastes, but nothing could have prepared us for what we faced here. It tore at us as soon as we arrived, worse than we could have imagined. Clarke...he wasn't prepared for the strength of the wind, and it blew his mask to the side for just a moment, and we saw the crimson winds eat out his eyes before we could move. He was screaming as the wind devoured the rest of his face. We couldn't hear him in the tempest, but he was screaming. We all were."
The all-permeating whipping sands of The Red Rage are finer and harsher than any found on the material plane. They tear at any creature or object with hardness less than 10, dealing 2d6 points of lethal damage per round instead of the nonlethal damage dealt by material sandstorms. Wearing heavy clothing (or any form of armor) reduces the damage to 1d6 points per round, but it cannot protect creatures entirely. A barricade or enclosed space is the only sure protection, but no such structures have been found on the layer, only solid protections brought by explorers. It is hypothesized that any outcropping or solid object would be quickly reduced to a fine sand and added to the storm by the eternal sourceless winds.
The constant wind sends anyone unanchored rolling away, with little hope of getting up. Every round, anybody on the layer must make a Balance check, DC 10 +5 per two squares moved in the round or fall, and if fallen prone in the wind, a creature is blown 40 ft. per round. To stand up, the fallen creature must make a DC 30 balance check which can be attempted once per round.
This layer is not only a massive storm of stinging red, but even the air is not potable to the material lung. There is no known method that allows the breathing of the atmosphere of The Red Rage, and explorers are forced to find ways to bring their own air sources, or to use magical methods to eliminate the need to breathe altogether.
"Jacobs was lost late. The cold got him. We all felt it, there would've been frost all over us if it weren't for the tearing winds. He's always been the weakest when it came to that kind of thing, tended to skip the trips to the colder lands. He couldn't pass up the unexplored storm though, always loved tempests. He collapsed. We couldn't grab him in time, he was hurled away by the winds as soon as he lost his balance."
Despite its desert nature, The Red Rage is Unearthly Cold, below -50 degrees. Unprotected characters take 1d6 cold damage and 1d4 points of nonlethal damage per minute (no save). Partially protected characters take damage once per 10 minutes instead of once per minute. For complete protection against the effects of unearthly cold, a character must have a level of protection of 4 or higher as per the supplemental book Frostburn. Level 2 or 3 is considered partial protection, and level 1 is no protection at all.
Environmental Hazards:
"Cordell was the next. We had only been there for a quarter of an hour, and were setting up our shelter for the expedition. We'd just finished getting the last wall up and were heading inside when it happened. There was a sudden streak of yellow in the storm, it didn't last half a second, and he was gone. All that was left of Cordell was a darker red smear on the sand where he had stood, and that was scoured by the cyclone within a second."
As if the layer was not hostile enough, there is one record of a gust of sands that were streaked with yellow, and highly acidic. These Acid Gusts burn at anything in their path, traveling in streaks swirling throughout the layer. An acid gust travels at a speed of 100 ft. per round, generally moving in a straight line for long distances, curving very slowly. Any being in a square passed through by an acid gust is generally reduced to nothing by the piercing dissolving sands, which deal 6d6 acid damage to any being in a square they pass in addition to the normal damage from the whipping storm.
"It had been an hour. We'd managed to get our shelter up, and me and Wiker went out with our prepared flasks to get samples of the sand. I have no idea where the fire came from. The massive pillar of red spiked straight through Wiker's chest. He was dead before the blast wave tore him apart, the pieces that were once a man scattered to dust before they hit the ground. The inferno tore my hand clean off, and blew away my sleeve, letting the wind take the rest of my arm before I could make it the three feet back into the shelter."
The second recorded specific hazard of The Red Rage is the pyrenail. A streak of fire, ignited by some spark, traveling through the whipping flammable gasses that scatter the layer. A pyrenail strikes with no warning in a single five-foot square, dealing 8d6 fire damage to anything occupying the square, and a blast wave dealing a 3d6 fire damage to everyone else in a 10 ft. radius, as well as increasing the DC of their balance check to remain upright by 10.
Denizens
"The expedition had already failed. Worse than any I'd ever led. It took the Rage just over an hour and five of us were already gone. It was Baur who was the fifth. We'd underestimated the place, and our shelter fell before the battering winds, leaving us out in the storm again. We were preparing to leave when something moved behind him. There was barely a silhouette, but it was there. It flicked something right through Baur, and his head clean left his shoulders and was picked up by the wind. His body fell, but didn't roll. It slid away against the wind. Dragged."
There are no definitively known denizens of The Red Rage. Rusiv has recorded seeing something on the layer having decapitated one of his companions and dragged it away, but the wind was too thick for him to identify it as anything but a faint silhouette.
"Strayton saw it too. Something killed Baur. It was just the two of us left, and we were getting out. We dug the emergency return amulets from our packs in a frenzy. Strayton was always a little shaky when he was scared. The amulet slipped from his fingers as he pulled it out and before he saw what happened it was but a sliver of gold in the air and then nothing at all. He turned to me then. I had mine in hand. The spell can only take one."
[hr]
Well...I wasn't feeling like I could do work on my current projects, but I felt like writing something, so I skimmed around wikipedia for some quick homebrew inspiration. Ended up here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot#Great_Red_Spot).
...I'm really scared by my own story actually.
-Vor Rusiv, the only survivor of the first recorded expedition to The Red Rage.
The Red Rage
The Red Rage, also known sometimes as The Red Hurricane or The Red Tempest is one of the infinite layers of the Abyss. Very little is known about The Red Rage because its extremely hostile environment has stopped almost all research, and there are few enough living researchers of the Abyss as is.
The Red Rage is known to be much large than many other layers, extending greatly in all directions. To known knowledge it is naught but a titanic windstorm of stinging red dust in an already unbreathable environment. There are no proven denizens of the storm, although the few explorers have reported seeing figures in the dust, and one of the members of the famous Rusiv Expedition was suspected to have been taken by a demon of the layer.
Environment
"The storm was the worst, obviously. We've all faced the worst weather before, everything from the necrotic flaywinds of the Eastern Desert to the death hail in the Frost Wastes, but nothing could have prepared us for what we faced here. It tore at us as soon as we arrived, worse than we could have imagined. Clarke...he wasn't prepared for the strength of the wind, and it blew his mask to the side for just a moment, and we saw the crimson winds eat out his eyes before we could move. He was screaming as the wind devoured the rest of his face. We couldn't hear him in the tempest, but he was screaming. We all were."
The all-permeating whipping sands of The Red Rage are finer and harsher than any found on the material plane. They tear at any creature or object with hardness less than 10, dealing 2d6 points of lethal damage per round instead of the nonlethal damage dealt by material sandstorms. Wearing heavy clothing (or any form of armor) reduces the damage to 1d6 points per round, but it cannot protect creatures entirely. A barricade or enclosed space is the only sure protection, but no such structures have been found on the layer, only solid protections brought by explorers. It is hypothesized that any outcropping or solid object would be quickly reduced to a fine sand and added to the storm by the eternal sourceless winds.
The constant wind sends anyone unanchored rolling away, with little hope of getting up. Every round, anybody on the layer must make a Balance check, DC 10 +5 per two squares moved in the round or fall, and if fallen prone in the wind, a creature is blown 40 ft. per round. To stand up, the fallen creature must make a DC 30 balance check which can be attempted once per round.
This layer is not only a massive storm of stinging red, but even the air is not potable to the material lung. There is no known method that allows the breathing of the atmosphere of The Red Rage, and explorers are forced to find ways to bring their own air sources, or to use magical methods to eliminate the need to breathe altogether.
"Jacobs was lost late. The cold got him. We all felt it, there would've been frost all over us if it weren't for the tearing winds. He's always been the weakest when it came to that kind of thing, tended to skip the trips to the colder lands. He couldn't pass up the unexplored storm though, always loved tempests. He collapsed. We couldn't grab him in time, he was hurled away by the winds as soon as he lost his balance."
Despite its desert nature, The Red Rage is Unearthly Cold, below -50 degrees. Unprotected characters take 1d6 cold damage and 1d4 points of nonlethal damage per minute (no save). Partially protected characters take damage once per 10 minutes instead of once per minute. For complete protection against the effects of unearthly cold, a character must have a level of protection of 4 or higher as per the supplemental book Frostburn. Level 2 or 3 is considered partial protection, and level 1 is no protection at all.
Environmental Hazards:
"Cordell was the next. We had only been there for a quarter of an hour, and were setting up our shelter for the expedition. We'd just finished getting the last wall up and were heading inside when it happened. There was a sudden streak of yellow in the storm, it didn't last half a second, and he was gone. All that was left of Cordell was a darker red smear on the sand where he had stood, and that was scoured by the cyclone within a second."
As if the layer was not hostile enough, there is one record of a gust of sands that were streaked with yellow, and highly acidic. These Acid Gusts burn at anything in their path, traveling in streaks swirling throughout the layer. An acid gust travels at a speed of 100 ft. per round, generally moving in a straight line for long distances, curving very slowly. Any being in a square passed through by an acid gust is generally reduced to nothing by the piercing dissolving sands, which deal 6d6 acid damage to any being in a square they pass in addition to the normal damage from the whipping storm.
"It had been an hour. We'd managed to get our shelter up, and me and Wiker went out with our prepared flasks to get samples of the sand. I have no idea where the fire came from. The massive pillar of red spiked straight through Wiker's chest. He was dead before the blast wave tore him apart, the pieces that were once a man scattered to dust before they hit the ground. The inferno tore my hand clean off, and blew away my sleeve, letting the wind take the rest of my arm before I could make it the three feet back into the shelter."
The second recorded specific hazard of The Red Rage is the pyrenail. A streak of fire, ignited by some spark, traveling through the whipping flammable gasses that scatter the layer. A pyrenail strikes with no warning in a single five-foot square, dealing 8d6 fire damage to anything occupying the square, and a blast wave dealing a 3d6 fire damage to everyone else in a 10 ft. radius, as well as increasing the DC of their balance check to remain upright by 10.
Denizens
"The expedition had already failed. Worse than any I'd ever led. It took the Rage just over an hour and five of us were already gone. It was Baur who was the fifth. We'd underestimated the place, and our shelter fell before the battering winds, leaving us out in the storm again. We were preparing to leave when something moved behind him. There was barely a silhouette, but it was there. It flicked something right through Baur, and his head clean left his shoulders and was picked up by the wind. His body fell, but didn't roll. It slid away against the wind. Dragged."
There are no definitively known denizens of The Red Rage. Rusiv has recorded seeing something on the layer having decapitated one of his companions and dragged it away, but the wind was too thick for him to identify it as anything but a faint silhouette.
"Strayton saw it too. Something killed Baur. It was just the two of us left, and we were getting out. We dug the emergency return amulets from our packs in a frenzy. Strayton was always a little shaky when he was scared. The amulet slipped from his fingers as he pulled it out and before he saw what happened it was but a sliver of gold in the air and then nothing at all. He turned to me then. I had mine in hand. The spell can only take one."
[hr]
Well...I wasn't feeling like I could do work on my current projects, but I felt like writing something, so I skimmed around wikipedia for some quick homebrew inspiration. Ended up here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Red_Spot#Great_Red_Spot).
...I'm really scared by my own story actually.