Bloody Badlands

The Bloody Badlands

There's always a badlands, some kind of desert, and this one is no different. It's vast, it's dry and, for the most part it's pretty empty. Nomadic bands of gnoll druids rove about slaying creatures, intelligent or not, to feed the hungry desert, goblins, as always, have found their own near suicidal means of existing in the desert. Darkly oppressive things lie at the top of this desperate and razor wired food chain. 

Giant Succulents 

Dotting the desert every hundred or so yards are massive succulents with fleshy water storing pods easily the size of a halfling. Some are passive, relying on their massive reserves of water to see them through dry spells between druidic visits or the infrequent drenching.

Many have evolved more active means of acquiring water.

Crawling Doom

The cactus commonly reffered to as "Crawling doom" typically preys on unobservant goblins and the occasional bird. It has a movement speed of 15'/round and will attempt to Engulf any creature it can reach. (DC 14 Dex or 8d4 piercing/round, anyone attempting to pull free a trapped ally makes a STR check and takes 4d4 piercing unless they're smart enough to not fucking stick their god damn arm into a writhing mound of cactus) when it remains still the only chance you have of distinguishing Crawling Doom from a normal cactus is probably going to be a goblin corpse tangled in the center.

Dart Fruit

The Dart Fruit is a (relatively) small cactus, it only grows to about 3 feet across and 4 tall, but it's dark purple quills can grow as long as 6 inches. The dart fruit gets it's name from it's ability to hurl these quills up to 60' Dart fruit quills are a slow and painful way to die, each quill is sticky with a long lasting and powerful anti-coagulating poison. (Range 30'/60', plant fires 1d4 quills, at +4 to hit, dealing 2d4 piercing damage, DC 16 Con Save (once) or take additional 2d4 piercing for 1 hour or until you regain 1HP or are bandaged in some way, as bleed damage. Bleed damage incurred this way stacks.) Dart fruit is easy to spot and avoid, if you know what you're looking for, but the fruit which grows atop this cactus is a near miraculous cure all. Anyone with advanced enough herbological or alchemical knowledge could use Dart Fruit to cure plagues or do all kinds of weird maguffiny shit. 

Too bad the fruit is rendered useless if the cactus takes any damage before the fruit is harvested.

Gnolls

Can't have a desert without Gnolls! As I mentioned before, I don't believe in racial alignments and the same (this time) is true of the humble desert gnoll. In the Bloody Badlands, gnolls serve as nomadic druid clans. These druids tend their desert plants with blood and bone meal, but how they acquire these resources varies clan to clan. Some tribes prefer to war with desert goblins or occasionally fight the warlords of the steppe, using the fallen from both sides of these battles as ample offering to the desert food chain, others, near the edges of the vast expanse, prefer ambushing the few trade caravans and wayward travelers that pass through the deserts outer edges. Deeper, in the heart of the desert, powerful gnoll archdruids will often barter in slaves blood (usually goblin slaves but they really don't see much of a difference between human or dwarven blood and goblin blood, elven and gnomish blood however is especially valuable for it's latent magical properties.) Usually the slaves are alive during this bartering process, but that's not inherently important since the currency is more about their blood as a resource than them as slave labor. Few but far between you will find druid enclaves who prefer taking down great beasts and unintelligent wildlife, though their traditionalist cousins would mock them as "civilized." This won't seem important until later, but Gnoll druids will always know if a cloud of Floating Mage Death is nearby and will factor this into tactical decisions at all stages of combat. They prefer not to fight when this threat is nearby. 

Goblins

As always, goblins manage to exist here through semi-suicidal and incredibly stupid lifestyle adaptations, keep in mind that goblins, as a race, are basically chaotic stupid. They average about 6 year lifespans, and female goblins breed INCREDIBLY fast (Matrons have gestation periods of 20-30 days and will birth up to 9 goblins at a time, and can be impregnated again minutes after giving birth. Yea. Goblins are gross.) so they can, as a species, afford to take more risks, more often, than most species around. This leads to things like Goblin rough riders (Goblins who "ride" giant geckos in what can only be called half deadly drag race, half rodeo style bull riding) in the desert. They've also developed an ingenious tactic of running directly perpendicular to Dart Fruit Cactus while just inside their range in order to harvest Dart fruit spines. Usually only one or two goblins die during such events, and if a Matron was paying enough attention to send a shamanic healer then it's basically just free stuff. Goblins of course weaponize these spines as blowdarts that they use in their typical hit and run tactics, making them especially deadly (stacking bleed damage hitting you from stealth is not a fun way to die) Rumors say some goblins have even "Tamed" a Crawling Doom mount. But people say a lot of shit about goblins.

Goblin shamans can probably figure out how to cure like strokes and heart attacks and shit using anti-coagulants.

The Floating Death 

The floating death are the pinnacle of evolution in the desert, they come in two varieties, Floating Mage Death, and Floating Red Death. Both strains are nearly the same, they're large semi-intelligent carnivorous plants with lighter than air bladder which allow them to float. When they're flowering the floating death can form beautiful red or blue "fields" in the sky. Whether they're flowering or not, floating death hunt by floating through the air at heights as high as 200 feet up. The main difference between the two types lay in how they find and consume their food. 

Floating Red Death can detect blood at up to 150' away, and will shower down like needles from the sky, their hollow stems stabbing down at anything within reach, hoping to drain victims to death via dehydration and rapid blood loss. If Red Death is above a battlefield (DC 10 to spot, only if asked) they will rain down on any creature which ends its turn "bloodied" in an AoE with a radius of 1d4 * 5', each creature in the radius that isn't wearing the equivalent of full plate is punctured by 2d4 plants, each one dealing a d4-1 Con damage per turn as they suck the life out of them. Dex save DC 16 for half the number of plants to deal with. Removing a plant requires a bonus action, removing any additional beyond the first requires a full round action and only removes a total of 1d4 plants) 

Floating Mage Death has a limited form of Detect Magic running at all times, and can detect spell casting up to 60 feet away. Floating mage death is much more single target oriented and will pierce any spell caster they detect for 3d4 plants, Dex save for half. But each plant will instead deal 1d4-1 damage to the casters casting stat as his or her magical essence is drained. If a plant rolls a 4 on die, it will also consume a random spell slot as though you cast the spell that was in it.