I wrote previously about using puzzles and about playground rooms. This is another toy for fantasy heroes to explore.

Snow Bear in the Desert

The heroes are traveling thru a blazing desert in search of a lost temple only to stumble into a polar bear. The bear is ferocious and attacks immediately. Assuming they survive, the heroes realize the bear was half-starved. They can track it in the general direction they were already traveling. Not too far along, the heroes see it: a bold outcropping of rock with the ancient temple carved right into it.

Inside the temple, among the other things you’d expect to find in an ancient, abandoned temple, the heroes encounter another polar bear. It’s vaguely possible they don’t have to fight this one, as it’s not half-starved. But it certainly wants food….

They probably also encounter desert monsters in or around the temple. In this way, you get to use two little-used environment’s creatures in the same adventure: desert and arctic.

The Secret

In the chambers beyond, the heroes find there’s a magic portal in one chamber that’s still open after several centuries. They can see thru the portal that it connects to, of course–an ice cave in the far north. From time to time, harsh winds blow thru the portal, actually connecting the two locations, but normally it’s as if the portal is a closed window, not an open door. Stains on the floor attest to snow and ice having come thru the portal–often carried by the bears, obviously–and dried up, leaving only a little residue of minerals.

Of course, if the heroes test it, they can pass thru the portal into the cave in the frozen tundra. They could already see that there were no bears there, but now they see that there are broken barrels once filled with figs and dates and fish, stored in the deep freeze, as it were, by the ancient priests.

Likewise, the heroes can easily pass back thru the portal to the lost temple and can even carry blocks of ice or snowballs–which will naturally start melting immediately. Of course, this might be helpful or even necessary for something in the temple, such as refilling a sacred pool with water in order to get a secret door to open.

Remember not to put the portal behind any secret doors or puzzles, since the polar bears need to be able to just wander out of the portal chamber and get outdoors for the opening encounter to make sense.

Variations

Perhaps the thing they’re looking for was carried thru the portal and can be seen in the snow or locked in ice in the ice cave, tantalizingly close. Perhaps it’s even cradled in the arms of a frozen corpse–the priest who carried it thru and froze to death. This might hint to the heroes that they need to be bundled up against the cold, because they aren’t polar bears either.

Perhaps (1 on a 1d6?) there’s a polar bear cub in the ice cave for the heroes to adopt. Or perhaps, while they’re in the ice cave, another arctic creature enters to attack them: a snowy owlbear, furry ice serpent, yeti, frost giant, etc.

Perhaps the portal is a big part of the reason the heroes came here. There might be an ancient imperial portal back at the palace in their own realm, and the king wants the old connections renewed. So the heroes could, with a little luck and trial-and-error, dial the portal to connect to the palace and return home instantly in triumph!