Legends of Tolria The Galactic Game

Environments · Regional environment

Frozen Sea

Sea ice is a floor over an ocean, and the two behave as a single environment: what happens on the surface decides what can happen beneath it. The ice drifts with the wind, opens leads without warning and closes them the same way. Under it the water is liquid, dark and stable. On a world where the ice never breaks, the under-ice ocean is the only habitat.

Regional environment Aquatic (water)
Polar
Lowland Subsurface

Crossing it

Navigate
DC 15
Forage
DC 15
Notice
DC 12

The ice usually supports weight. A diver under it has one way out, the hole the diver entered by.

Exposure

  • Extreme Cold

    Temperatures below about zero degrees Fahrenheit, or any water near freezing, made worse by wind.

    CON save, DC 10, rising by 1 for each hour after the first. End of each hour. One level of exhaustion.

    • Cold-weather gear

      Proper layers, a sealed suit or a heated shelter removes the save. Wet layers give disadvantage on it instead.

    • Immersion

      A creature in near-freezing water makes the save each minute instead of each hour, and is Incapacitated at three levels of exhaustion.

    • Gear

      Unheated power cells lose half their charge, and any check made with bare hands after an hour of exposure has disadvantage.

    • Adapted

      A creature native to a cold world, or with resistance to cold damage, ignores the save.

In play

  • Thin ice

    A DC 12 Wisdom (Survival) check spots new or rotten ice. The ice holds a Small or smaller creature. A Medium creature that moves onto it makes a DC 12 Dexterity save and breaks through on a failure. A Large or larger creature breaks through automatically. A creature in the water is subject to the Immersion rule of Extreme Cold (a Constitution save each minute). Climbing back onto the ice takes an action and a DC 12 Strength (Athletics) check.

  • Open leads

    The ice pack moves. Once a day a lead of open water 1d6 x 10 feet wide opens across the route, and it closes somewhere else.

  • Return route

    A diver under continuous ice who loses the guide line makes a DC 15 Wisdom (Survival) check to find the entry hole. On a failure, the diver cannot find it and must be rescued or find another way out.

  • Sealed ocean

    Water under permanent ice has no light and no open surface. All life in it feeds on what rises from the sea floor.

Variations

  • Pack ice

    Seasonal, moving, broken ice with leads and pressure ridges. The route differs each day.

  • Shelf ice

    Hundreds of feet thick and grounded. It behaves like land until it calves.

  • Subglacial ocean

    Found on ice moons. Liquid water under miles of ice, warmed from below and sealed off from the surface.

Worlds it occurs on

  • Rime A frozen world with a crystalline ice surface, cold enough that most of its atmosphere has condensed onto the ground.
  • Terran (Arctic) A rocky world covered in ice for most of the year but habitable, with open water at the margin in summer.
  • Terran (Oceanic) A world of ocean from pole to pole, with land only where a volcano has kept up.
  • Terran (Verdant) A rocky world with liquid water, breathable air and a magnetic field to protect them, rare and the cause of most wars.
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