Niflheim

Gray Wastes Layer
Order:	Second
Realms:	Death of Innocence Annwn Niflheim The Palace of Loss Shadow Keep

Niflheim, the second layer of the Gray Wastes, has a bit more variety than Oinos. It's not just rocky terrain and scorched, pockmarked earth. Free of the disease that ravages the first layer, it has abundant trees and underbrush. As a matter of fact, the layer looks like a verdant prime world - except that it's still completely gray.

The cooler air gives rise to a constant mist that twists and swirls around the branches of the trees and the strange bluffs that rise from nowhere to fall away just as quickly. The fog's thickness makes it difficult to see more than 100 feet. The mist also distorts sound and sight, and any sort of missile combat's nearly impossible - a body has to get up close and personal to fight here.

The fog also imparts constant dampness to anything brought here. Dry clothes become damp, and metal rusts. Only objects wrapped tightly against the intruding fingers of the mist, or maintained despite the mist, escape its effects.

Naturally, all manner of predators use the mist as cover to approach their prey. If the victim can't see what's coming, he can't prepare very well, can he? Thus, this land fosters loosened sword and lightning reflexes - at least, until the Waste's influence makes a body wonder why he bothered to worry. The major predators of the layer are wolves (both dire and normal) and trolls, neither of which being particularly afraid of humans.

Though the towns and realms here suffer despair like the rest of the Waste, they're also places that keep a small flame of hope cherished against the dark.

Gray Wastes Layers

Oinos . Niflheim . Pluton