This article is part of a series for both the April 2020 RPG Blog Carnival and the 2020 Blogging A to Z Challenge.

Life, passion, community, and the wild — these are what flourish without the influence of black or blue mana. In this lush land, life is celebrated and nature is revered. Naya is a glorious tropical jungle-plane peopled with perfect specimens of the human, elven, leonin and minotaur races. Naya boasts the most varied forms of life of all the shards. It seems like a paradise, but that is a deceptive view. Naya tremors with peril. Behemoths taller than buildings lumber through Naya’s rainforests, crushing acres of vegetation — or civilization — casually underfoot. Yet somehow, Naya’s sentient races revere these gargantuans, venerating them and ascribing to them a sacred ineffability.

In the lower elevations, the jungle is the undisputed king. With heavy, intermittent rainfall as the lifeblood of the jungle, the rampant vegetation is in a constant race, always clawing upwards in the competition for sunshine. The canopy of leaves is laced together by massive lianas — thick, woody vines that connect the trees together and can grow up to five feet in diameter. Animals, humans and elves use these lianas as highways to travel across the jungle. Amid the massive buttress roots are termites, fungi, and oversized logger-ants who hunt by scent using coordinated movements and can easily take down an unsuspecting human or elf. A permanent, pale mist known as the Whitecover hangs over the rainforest, punctured by ranges of steeply sloped mountains.

Whatever lives on the jungle floor must survive on what falls from or through the canopy. When a tree falls it creates an opening in the canopy, and thousands of seeds fight for the chance to grow in the rare shaft of sunlight. The jungle is constantly trying to outgrow itself: whatever can get the highest has the best chance of survival.

«There is always something bigger.»

For your campaign

Gargantuans dominate life on Naya. Most are mammalian carnivores that wander where they please and crush villages without warning. During a rampage, they can aven alter the course of a river or shave off a large section of a mountian. The elves believe these creatures are manifestations of the will of Progenitus, the Soul of the World.

The best warriors of the elves are known as Godtrackers, as they track the movement of the gargantuans, ignoring all territorial boundaries. They tend to stir up skirmishes wherever they go. Godtrackers report the activities of the gargatuans to the Anima, the elves’ high priest. Their purpose is to hold as much as they can any advance of a gargantuan, at least to give some invaluable time for the rest to flee.

New options: Hunter archetype

Emulating the Hunter archetype means accepting your place as a bulwark between civilization and the terrors of the wilderness. As you walk the Hunter’s path, you learn specialized techniques for fighting the threats you face, from rampaging ogres and hordes of orcs to towering giants and terrifying dragons. The following options are available to you as a Hunter.

• 3rd level – Resounding Roar: You can choose to use a bonus action to make yourself noticeable to any Large or larger creature. That creature can make an attack towards you as a reaction, but if it does so, all its attacks are made with disadvantage until the end of its next turn. If it doesn’t, only the next attack against you is made with disadvantage.
• 7th level – Soul’s Might: When you take the Dodge action, you gain resistance to all bludgeoning, slashing and piercing non-magical damage.
• 11th level – Titanic Ultimatum: As an action, you can make as many attacks to a creature as that creature made against you.
• 15th level – Soul’s Majesty: When you take the Dodge action, you gain resistance to all bludgeoning, slashing and piercing damage.

So… just out of curiosity: what is the biggest creature you have faced in combat? Did you defeat it?