What follows is a brief summary of animals, plants, and phenomena found in this place that everyone should be aware of. Names are in-character, descriptions are not entirely.
Phenomena:
The Winter Steam Rains: Perhaps the most obvious local phenomenon is that during the winter, cold rain constantly comes down, only to instantly turn to steam upon contact with the earth. There's also a bit of ash in it. Any way you look at it, it's really odd and prevents most farming of plants during the winter.
The Poison In Everything: Everything contains trace amounts of some sort of slow acting poison. It adapts to most magic and cannot be detected or defeated for long by anything except the Golden Grass, and its cultivated descendant, maize.
Draugr: This isn't unique to here, but just remember everyone that if one of our people meets his Fated Day and no runestone is raised to remember them, they will probably eventually rise as a draugr and wreak vengeance upon us.
The Calming Bog: To the North is a bog that makes you feel eerily calm and at ease when near it. If you get into it, then it will trap you, like quicksand but utterly unescapable and devour you. We don't know more than that, but as long as you're careful to avoid it, it doesn't move or anything.
Plants:
The Mouth Trees: Moving trees that will try and eat you, probably actually an animal or fungus or something rather than a real tree.
The Golden Grass: A local grass with anti-poison properties vital to our survival.
Maize: A cultivated variant of golden grass making it a much better food crop. Best planted with squash, beans, and a fish head (all of which we have access to). Maintains the golden grass's anti-poison effects.
Flax: Provides cloth and oil. An essential plant for us to cultivate long term.
Bananas: We have bananas here, worth noting.
Animals:
Giant Cows: The onigar have cows, but giant. About twice as tall at the shoulder and with other proportions to match.
Egging Frogs: Temperamental but not dangerous 3' tall egg-laying frogs. Used as livestock (to provide eggs) by the Feeding Ones and now us.
Mushlings: Humanoid-ish mushroom creatures capable of following simple instructions. Made or modified by our shapecrafter, we use them as thralls.
Flatsquito: Gigantic mosquitoes, can drain a man to death, but not dangerous if you're paying attention as doing so takes a bit. According to the Feeding Ones can pull out 'bad blood' first, making them potentially medicinal.
Tree Octopi: Camouflaged shelled octopi that wish to feast on your brain. Not a problem for a prepared Norseman.
Clawed Lizards: Velociraptors ala Jurassic Park. No known powers.
Storm Toads: Giant toads that can throw lightning bolts. A common feature in our diet, as they are one of the better game animals.
Exploding Hedgehogs: What they sound like. They blow up when startled with enough force to kill a Norseman. Probably eusocial.
Crest Heads: Parasaurolophus dinosaurs. Can create lethal vibrations with their crests and make enemy creatures explode.
Time Lizards: Time-stopping alligators that travel in large groups. Can only effectively stop time at range, though not unlimited range, but not in-close without freezing themselves so mines and pit traps can be used to kill them if you get them to walk over such things.
Tatzlwurm: Cat-headed snake creature that can exhale poison gas. From actual mythology, and something our characters might actually be familiar with.
Muspel-Birds: Penguins with a Godzilla-style nuclear breath weapon. Rikard has one as a pet and they havent bothered us, so we probably shouldn't bother them. Live to the East, probably.
Gravity Tyrants: Tyrannosaurus Rexes but with gravity sensing and control powers. Seemingly not quite an apex predator here, but happy to eat people.
Void Eagles: Eagles big enough to carry off a man and eat him and inclined to do so, though they prefer children. Can teleport and replaces parts of their body with ice facsimiles if needed, along with having an ice breath weapon. Can also sense spirits.
The Beardra: A gigantic bear-hydra creature that lives in a cave to the North. Takes trophies of Gravity Tyrants and at least one Void Eagle. Probably intelligent, definitely enormous and dangerous.
Intelligent Peoples:
The Feeding Ones: Mortal humans with no magical abilities except maybe a talent for growing things, they are generally abused and used for their agricultural talents. They are likely originally Mesoamerican, possibly Mayan, but whatever cultivators they have back home, they have none here. Basically friendly, but kept under the harsh rule of whoever the big cheese is this week (right now it's the onigar). We probably want to recruit them eventually...working as our farmhands would be a lot better for them than their current situation. A lot better. They are found West of us, with the nearest village about 15 miles out by a river.
The Onigar: Oni from Japanese myth, basically. Found to our North and West they are red in color, 12' tall, and with horns (we'll get to that in a moment). The onigar are intelligent and have some sort of translation magic (they have magic dubbing, to be specific), but are also wildly arrogant and somewhat gluttonous at least in the case of low ranking ones. They are all armed with 100 lb iron clubs and can swing them fast enough to cause a sonic boom. Their cultivation seems highly based on speed and strength, with their durability not being as high (though it's a relative lack...they're still within standard Norse bounds on toughness). Their soldiers wear brass lamellar armor, and they seem to worship lightning and storms to some degree. Their power level seems to correlate with horn length, with the following categories (that we know of):
No-Horns/Flat Horns are not super impressive all things considered. They'll kill you if they hit you and you don't have a shield, but they die pretty readily. No major tricks beyond just being fast and strong.
Half-Horns have 6" horns or thereabouts can do things like supersonic dodges of Aspect boosted attacks, though only occasionally, not every attack. They are also stronger, faster, and better in general.
Full Horns have 12" horns and are a threat to an entire group of experienced Norsemen, able to kill multiple Norsemen before they can even react. Some of them have artifacts, lightning powers, or both. So far it was one with artifacts and one with powers.
The Crabmen: The Crabmen are Cosplay Powered Hermit Crab people. One wearing a wizard costume will have magic powers, for example, while one dressed as a warrior would gain battle skill. They appear to be run by a Crabsortium and have access to advanced technology including guns and a more modern set of sensibilities. 'Nakeds' may be their equivalent of mortals. They are found to our East, at least probably.
The Rattock: Physically weaker than even mortal humans, they make up for it with magic and possibly mad science technology, as well as numbers. The one we met was a necromancer capable of fielding hundreds of skeletal troops and working on a giant monster. That said, he was probably an exile (they regularly use exile to keep population pressures manageable), so how representative he was is unclear. That said he had a communication orb which seems to indicate there are more like him out there. Mostly live underground, except for the aforementioned exiles.
The Horned Ones: Basically the pop culture conception of demons. Actually 600 feuding city states and several servitor species under the leadership of the seldom seen Damaskari. The most common local variant are the Impari, who have red skin, horns, and fight with fire magic and pitchforks and seem to enjoy blood and pain. We have not met them, only heard about them from the Feeding Ones.
The Jaltuar: A warrior-people with animal heads and khopeshes. They are likely Egyptian in origin and have a caste based society based on animal head commoners have heads like Pig or Donkey, rulers have things lick Crocodile or Hippopotamus. Also not a group we've met only been informed of by the Feeding Ones.
