Badlands Question

Are there any setup rules for badlands available? Do they already start on the island or only added to the standard map through cards and abilities? Thank you in advance.

Badlands don’t start on the map. At least not at the moment, testing changes are still possible.

So they only start on the thematic map?

I'm sure this is answered somewhere else but if there is 1 badland in an area and you do 1 damage to 2 different towns in that area, does the badland do 1 more damage to each town and destroy both towns?

No. Each badland does one damage per effect.

To amplify what Paul said, you would end up destroying 1 Town and leaving the other with 1 damage.

Each Badlands does 1 extra damage per “Action”, which is a term that will be carefully defined in the Jagged Earth rules; this includes one Spirit Power, for instance.

I think basically it's like a wider-affecting version of Flame's Fury (the Wildfire power that buffs a selected spirit's damage for the rest of the turn), affecting all instances of damage that would hit that one land.

…except damage to the land itself.