Fantasy uses for the North Pole

[Michael Hopcroft]

I don't recall how many people were openly disappointed when explorers went to the North Pole and found no elves, workshop or reindeer there. Too bloody cold for Saint Nick, apparently. So two really unrelated questions concerning the North Poles of our fantasy worlds....

 

Is one of the Poles a really good place to hide something of importance to the world as a whole? In the classic Max Fleischer silent cartoon Koko's Earth Control the title character and his dog found an uninhabited control center that monitored and could control conditions all over the world. Then the dog his the Apocalypse switch and everything went to hell from there (quite literally). Someplace as inhospitable and remote as a pole would be a perfect place to hide a headquarters for a group of beings with that kind of power. Perhaps the PCs have to locate and find these people in order to obtain their aid -- or perhaps they simply want to loot the place....

 

Planetary poles are great places to put portals. Portals to other worlds can be the basis for innumerable "Inner Earth" legends -- the world isn't really hollow, but that hardly makes a difference to you if you've fallen down the portal and have to run for your life from dinosaurs and Sleestaks. Perhaps there are many other portals, but only the most remote of them haven't been destroyed or shut down over the years because of the people disappearing and the nasty things coming out.

 

Finally imagine that your fantasy world actually does have a powerful someone living at the North Pole with the capability to observe events on a global scale. Does he intervene? How? And what are his motives?

[csyphrett]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

It depends on whether or not your proposed character has a motive for doing anything. Is it a job, is it a condition for existence? And if he is stuck watching, he'll need the means to do something. Is he stuck like Baron Winter, or does he have the lightning to smite evildoers?

CES

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

The North Pole has always been a great place to secrete fictional things from the far past, preserved in the ice in suspended animation. Extinct monsters, crashed alien spacecraft, lost Viking longships, and so on. Especially now that global warming is melting the ice pack...

[Cancer]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

I haven't got anything at the poles in my worlds. I'm most likely to set up the poles as red herring sites. That is, there are false stories of things happening at places that aren't explicitly named but might (in a certain interpretation) be the poles. Not that getting there would be safe or easy, of course.

[Escafarc]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

When I saw the title of this thread the only thing that came to mind involved NSFW images of Santa and a sexy elf wench.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

When I saw the title of this thread the only thing that came to mind involved NSFW images of Santa and a sexy elf wench.

 

I think we know which list you're on....

[assault]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

Where else would the Frost Giants live?

[Badger]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

When I saw the title of this thread the only thing that came to mind involved NSFW images of Santa and a sexy elf wench.

 

*writes down sexy elf wench, on what I want Santa to get me for Christmas*

 

Anyhow, I always think more of these things as being the South Pole more appropriate. 1) Being on land 2) North Pole is always thought of first, nobody seems to give the South Pole its due

[Badger]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

Where else would the Frost Giants live?

 

Saskatchewan?

[Midas]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

*writes down sexy elf wench, on what I want Santa to get me for Christmas*

 

Anyhow, I always think more of these things as being the South Pole more appropriate. 1) Being on land 2) North Pole is always thought of first, nobody seems to give the South Pole its due

 

I don't recall the name of the Christmas special, but in one there was an off the cuff slang for what happened to elves who were screw ups.

"Sent South."

"To our polar opposites?!!" (tone of horror)

 

The implication that some kind of Unseelie court was located at the South Pole.

[Midas]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

The Call of Cthulhu campaign Walker in the Wastes climaxes at a fight at the North Pole. It takes place in a giant castle that appears only at the Winter solstace (why? no one knows). I've been tempted to have the heroes helped out by volleys of arrows from dark corridors, if I ever ran that campaign. (Note that I would run it more as a standard pulp than a Lovecraft adventure - Nick and his helpers are a last ditch defense keeping Ithaqua locked up).

[dmjalund]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

I'm thinking of the big whell/gear in Lost - maybe it can be used to relocate earth to a different solar system

[Badger]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

I'm thinking of the big whell/gear in Lost - maybe it can be used to relocate earth to a different solar system

 

Actually, that might be the start of a good adventure for the magnetic pole locations.

[lapsedgamer]

Re: Fantasy uses for the North Pole

 

Back in the olden days, the North Wind was though to be an entity, was were the winds coming from all the other cardinal directions. In the comic Fables, he is Bigby Wolf's father. Anyway, perhaps the players have to steal an item from this entity. They have to travel to his realm, which is only accessed through the North Pole, take the item, and return safely with it.

 

There is also the Snow Queen storyline from the Narnia movies. There is an entity that is trying to enforce permanent winter on the Earth, and the players have to intercede.

 

I would do that with some kind of Sun Princess that has to be rescued before spring returns to the Earth. If you're going to steal, steal from the classics. "Whoa, qood myth."