Tundra

The land

• Ground: snow, rippled by the wind, with dark peat, rust-coloured and yellow lichen where it thins, and dry grass poking through. Paths are packed snow. Snow lies everywhere, so you leave footprints wherever you go.
• Height: the tundra lies flat, with frozen faces where the land does step up.
• Water: many small, shallow pools of cold slate-blue water instead of deep lakes, with pancake ice on them; ice floes ride the deeper water. See Fishing and Legendary Fish (the tundra's is the Aurora Char, fought among the floes).
• Trees and plants: snow-laden spruce, frosted rime firs, low dwarf birches, lingonberry bushes, Cotton Grass on the shores, Frostbloom growing out of the snow, brown caps under the trees, and wild potatoes. Far out grow the silver-blue rimewood pines, the tundra's sister tree, which give Rimewood. See Trees and Wild Plants.
• Peat banks, capped with snow, give Peat.

Snow, cold and the aurora

• Snow always falls. Whatever the weather, a few flakes are in the air, and rain falls here as snow. Snow lies on roofs, walls and open floors while you are in the tundra. No leaves blow here. See Weather.
• Chilled: out in falling Snow weather under open sky, or soaked at night in the open, you grow Chilled and move and swing up to 18% slower (see Weather and Status Effects). The tundra adds sharper chills of its own:
  • a Yeti's frost breath chills you fully for 3 seconds;
  • three snowballs from Snowkin within 6 seconds chill you fully for 2 seconds;
  • frost traps in the tundra's dungeons chill you fully for 3 seconds.
  These sharp chills end at once by a fire, or if you are Warm or spiced by an Emberpepper.
• Keeping warm: stand by a fire or go into a cozy home. The tundra's warm drinks, Lingonberry Tea, Char Broth and Spruce Toddy, make you Warm: you can't be chilled while it lasts. Keepsakes from the Hearthfolk help too (Old One's Tusk: snow and wind chill you 50% slower; Crooked Carrot: snowballs can't chill you). See Keepsakes.
• The aurora: after dark, on a clear night, curtains of green and violet light sway across the sky. It fades in slowly, is fainter indoors and is hidden by cloud.
• The light is cold and clear: a little greyer and bluer than other lands, with a glare by day.

Animals

Arctic foxes and snow hares (white foxes and rabbits, most of them), birds and a few ravens (Bird, Raven). Frogs live only by the villages' warm springs, two at each. White wolves and polar bears roam here, and Mermaids may rise from deep water.

Night things

At night (Day and Night) the tundra sends out, as well as the common four (Gnawlings, Longlegs, Crawlers, Scuzz):

• Snowkin, hiding as snowmen (up to 6 about);
• Rime Owls (up to 2);
• rarely, a Yeti (one at a time).

Villages: the Hearthfolk

The Hearthfolk are woodcutters, ice fishers and woolworkers. Their villages are a little square with small cottages spread out round it, each on its own with paths between. The cottages are painted red with white trim, green shutters and doors, and turf roofs heaped with snow. In each square a steaming hot spring stands in place of a well. Through the long nights they keep the hearth-hall's fire lit, and when the aurora dances the whole village comes out to watch. Folk have names like Ilsa, Nils, Sanna, Oskar and Frida, in villages like Snowfold or Rimeby. See Villages, Village Quests and Keepsakes.

What it gives

The tundra's trade is peat and warm drinks: Rimewood, Peat, Cotton Grass and Yeti Pelts come from here, and its stalls sell Glue and Oilskin. These go into quicker furnaces, bows and poles from iron up, Olympian's coats, and the warm drinks. On a Spirit Wager, the tundra's water favours Water.

Dungeons

• The tundra's dungeon mouths are doorways hewn in glacier ice, with broken ice pillars and rubble round them.
• Inside: pale cold flagstones with frost in the joints, slate walls hung with icicles, frozen pools you can walk across, snow drifted against the walls, glowing frost crystals, and braziers and torches of cold blue rimefire.
• Frost-wolf statues spit shards of ice, and a hit chills you for 3 seconds.
• Besides the common creatures, Mild and harder dungeons hold Snowkin; Grim and harder may hold a Yeti.

See Dungeons and Chests.

The lair: Nivora

Each tundra region has one lair near its middle, its gate made of glacier ice in an outcrop of blue glacier. Its boss is Nivora, fought in a square hall with pillars of glacier ice and a frozen waterfall. Clearing your first tundra lair wins the Tear of the Glacier, the tundra's ice-blue Jewel.

Creatures

What its traders sell

A village trader here carries some of these, more as you hold more Jewels:

Fish found here more often