It was gonna be Kraken vs Leviathan in a waterworld god-fight showdown, but then i learned about the Phyrexians from Magic the Gathering, and suddenly all shall be one.
MTG lore has a lot of great examples for supernatural scourges. The Eldrazi being my favourite
4 місяці тому+2
Just started a campaign based in Faerun but it’s multi planar. In the campaign, I am using the Astral Bonecloud. The premise is that an illithich conquered a whole planet converting every living thing into undead. Long ago he set out to make a global sized gate that all these undead would pass thru to move on to Toril. Blaster and a couple other powerful spell casters manipulated the gate causing it to dump this planet’s worth of undead into the Astral Sea. Becoming a timeless threat. Cut to 1499, the illithich made patched together an alliance of dark gods (who are all backstabbing each other) to create a relic centered on the Crown of Horns to bring these legions of undead to Toril. The relic is in the hands of a hapless NPC bard. And she’s cursed so she can’t get rid of it. Each time she is threatened she can use the relic to open a gate and “summon” undead. But the gates are progressively bigger , pulling more and more powerful undead thru. Worse, the zombies are the infectious husk variety. So anyone they kill may rise as a zombie. So as it becomes clear what’s happening, the PCs may end up with some strange bedfellows. And there’s competition to kill the bard and seize the relic (inducing her to use it more often). May have to reset the world after this. 😂 We’ll see. 😁😈
This is incredible. I love the idea of an NPC forced to hurt the world to survive because they are shackled to the Evil artifact. Great overarching story too.
I think the most fun answer to 'what is the minion of the threat getting out of serving it?' I've ever done is "Preventing the end of the world." I... may have gone overboard for the campaign I did it in though, what with the whole 'that, but three times.' thing. Layer one, the one that doesn't fit your categories neatly. This one was the PC's fault. The PC's gave an isolationist empire that would pay enormous sums of wealth for a handful of an ultra rare material, twelve tons of the stuff. This caused their long term plan to go from 'slowly conquer the world with the army we made from the stuff' to 'declare war on the entire world at once with our brand new army of Warforged _hundreds of millions_ strong.' It's a world ending threat because all the wars and conflicts in the world that mattered to the people of the world (and the players) before this were thrown out the window in the face of Creon's declaration of war. But what would motivate Creon to do this? "To prevent the end of the world from-" Layer two, the BBEG's bringing Pure Destruction. Creon wanted to conquer the world to prevent a laundry list of ancient magi-tech practices from being implemented, lest those wake the Lunar Dragons. Said half dozen magi-tech nightmare fuel engines would inflict destruction when fighting felt on the global scale. Think Krakatoa erupting* for the force of their breath weapon equivalents, and couldn't be permanently killed or imprisoned by any means at the Gods disposal. (Fortunately a few artifacts of seemingly middling power the PC's had been collecting could each do the trick of making it stick.) But why would anyone work with these nightmare fuel engines of biblical destruction? "To prevent the end of the world from-" Layer three, The BBEG implementing a Paradigm Shift. The Lunar Dragons were made by the ancient civilizations greatest achievement, housed on the Moon. IBIS. IBIS is essentially a Magitech Overgod so comedically more powerful than the 'gods' as to not even be funny. If a Lunar Dragon (or all of them.) were to be permanently killed, a tiny sliver of IBIS's attention will be turned away from it's great working to deal with the problem. Because that would mean some civilization might start using too much magic again, and the Lunar Dragons had failed to prevent it. This could include such things as 'resurrections no longer functions. Wish is no longer a functional spell, the Gods salient divine abilities are now limited' or other 'austerity measures during this time of crisis' such as 'no teleportation, no precognition, The entire illusion school of magic isn't working this week.' Etc. But why would anyone work with that literal deus ex machina? "To prevent the end of the world from *Atropus, the World Born Dead* ." Because the ancient civilization had made IBIS to defend them, and when it spotted Atropus, it warned them to implement austerity measures for a few thousand years while it turned the rest of the star system into an incomprehensibly large fortification network and the asteroid belt into a comedically large Stellar Dragon war engine to drive Atropus off. Because Atropus wasn't the only horrifying world ending threat out there, just the one on course to arrive in less than 20,000 years. *_Hadar, The Star That Hungers_* was next on the list, incidentally. Naturally the ancient civilization couldn't agree on ending their utopia for a span of time that meant their great grandchildren wouldn't live to see it and you can guess how that went. *Roughly 200 megatons is that estimate en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent
Love these categories as well as how creative people can be on how one envisions the worlds end. To honor my dearest friend and dm who has lost his fight to stage three brain cancer ill share one of his campaigns here. " for it sailed across the endless skies, across the blood betwixt the stars on the astral. For it knew not the bounds of stillness nor seek ever granduer seas masked away in the deeps. For those splendid souls it was a home to the ever scholars with yearning curiosities in pursuits of greater treasures never in material possessions or keepsakes, it can only be taught. " here... across the forgotten lands we have fallen, our home. Broken, scattered to the wastes of dead grounds, lifeless and vile to be so still, victims in our quiet hubris as we ourselves now wait in stone... many a fiends journey made its halls, squatters all the same to our written treasures, our... secrets we will never share to any soul. " " witnesses in the passing of grains painstakings. Naive in claden blue makes itself known to us. Fixated gaze well stern, her scales radiant yet dense, the cackles of thunder luminescent in violent stream sunders the sacred halls... oh gods above, she knows of us. " " what have we done... our collected wisdoms raided for years upon years in our vast arrays of research across the worlds and studies... now her very weapon, our last guardian now slain, her soul communing to our very bodies... all we have to make pursuing thought itself... hapless, weeping statues now lost for bring despair to this unrecorded world, yet now made weapons to herself in pursuits of immortality now endangers the living of essences... for we unknowingly brought this young plain of reality... a redemptionless doom... may the gods punish us well for our brightly lit ambitions... " - Forstorall englaive, last of the mindflays - This is how derek opened our campaign, how a ancient blue dragon became so dangerous with soul magic that it was distorting and depriving life itself to extend hers indefinitely, and the worlds kingdoms spending its generations and its riches to find this continent wide fortress homed to the mindflays now turned den with millions of gargoyles in a desperate war to preserve our right to live. It was the last campaign that spand for five years before he was diagnosed and a hell of a adventure that still to this day now sends chills.
Thank you so much for sharing. Great storytelling. I sadly had a similar situation happen with a friend of mine. Their adventures live on in all of us!
@@dmofmanyfaces craziest part was, he nailed all these categories, he brought his all to this one, captured the emotions, the struggles, our losses and triumphs yet by the end killing the dragon didn't change the world that was destroyed by it, for life needs time. All we did as bitter sweet as he entailed it was give life a chance to continue
Back in the 2nd edition the campaign was ending as we were all going off to university. So our DM had the world invaded by a witchlight marauder. We failed to discover what was going on in time, and within a year, the marauders had overrun the world. We lost, but it was an awesome campaign.
@@dmofmanyfacesnaw, we had a blast tbh. It was full of desperate battles and last stands. Only 2 of us made it, escaping in a spelljammer. great way to end 5 years of playing.
Who's to say that the wizard player character broke the world? Maybe it was already broken when he got there. Lots of fun ideas, and helpful organization in this video, I'll have to come back to this video if I ever need some prompts to help progress my writing.
My DM has a lot going on. He has my character trying to bring Tiamat to the Material plane while his homebrewed BBEG is trying to first raise and then absorb Ashardalon
@@dmofmanyfaces it's his own Homebrew setting. It's his first time as DM, we're fairly new to the hobby. We all joined just before the catastrophe that was 2023 and until he picked up the books I was forever DM
I've been loving the framing of these videos - in both terms of the visual structure of them, and the framing within the video that establishes what we're talking about. Excellent build up. Huge fan of the possession angle within the discussions of the specific means of sharing the threat!! Might have to steal that one ;)
So a concept thats for my next campaign that I am going to be running for my players is set in the pathfinder universe and they are outsiders or high tier followers of deities that find out that something is going on, A deity jsut suddenly swapped Alignments and over the cource of the game deities all over will start swaping alignments with seemingly no cause, there goal is to go throught the planes talking to deities and entities of power and breaking into places and dungeons in the planes to find out why and either stop it or use it to there advantage. An example I gave was Asmodeus might change from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Good or Iomade to from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil and so on. Defiantly a paradigm shift :)
@@dmofmanyfaces Yeah and then my players decided they were going to play off the horsemen of the apocalypse there main goal is to try and find the source and use it to help the horsemen usher in the end (But they have a thing of changing ideas before game sometimes so im waiting but I have ideas for this already incase they stick with it.)
In the previous chapter of my campaign the party succeeded in stoping the destruction of magic itself, however it has now become unstable and a mad god that was sealed away has awakened, due to the seal on him weakening. So inbthe next chapter they have to deal with fallout if that, while investigating various cults that have appeared that are granting common folk magic powers.
New to Dnd im still going down each Session to minons. It's both terrifying and amazing. How many other ways I'm going to die Before the end of the campaign l o l
Okay, it is kinda based on DnD, but with Oracles of Odroia, the comic my cousin and I are working on, the BBEG is an evil god that was imprisoned for its crimes. It wants to destroy the world, and it almost succeeded once 3000 years ago. Thing is, the evidence of what it's capable of doing is everywhere. There are large patches of Odroia, the planet that the comic takes place on, that are rendered uninhabitable by the destruction, there is technology that has aged out of use, with the means to make it forgotten, even the materials to make it no longer available. There are crumbling ruins everywhere, reminders of past civilizations that were more powerful than anything the Odroia of today has seen. While the history has been lost to time, what happened goes by one name: The Cataclysm. Oracles is a cheerful post-apocalypse, think Adventure Time. The mystery is initially about figuring out what happened, as there's clues from day one, like ancient ruins in the desert surrounding the town the characters live in. Early on, like the third episode, as it starts out episodic, but slowly shifts to being serialized, the main group, Pipi, the smart but impulsive wizard, Vince, the timid but caring tailor, and Angus, the reliable but reserved bard, venture into this ruined castle, and there is the evidence of war. Weapons, armor, and bones, all left to rot under the twin suns, proof some scuffle happened here. They go deep under the castle, and they find this chamber. Inside the chamber is one of the last living ancients, an warrior preserved magically in crystal. Her name is Gladly, but she doesn't know much more about who she is, due to losing her memories, even though her psychometry helps. Gladly being amnesiac keeps her from speedrunning the plot and spilling the beans, as the consequences of what if her and her new friends fail are literally everywhere you look. Pipi, Vince, and Angus decide to promise to restore the memories of a woman they've known for less than an hour, and keep good on that promise. Gladly's lost and found memories act as a way to dripfeed information, so there's enough time between each reveal and clue to process it. To go through what each character is going through. Speculation, arriving at a hypothesis, before collecting more evidence, until you arrive at the conclusion. Perhaps laugh at yourself for what you got wrong, perhaps congratulate yourself for what you got right, perhaps a bit of both.
If anyone likes to slip B Movie elements into their game like I do, there's this adventure; Escape from Skullcano Island it's based off the Godzilla series and there are all these Kaiju that makes the Tarrasque cry. The nastiest one is simply a black ooze. One so large that if left unchecked will cover the entire world and eat everything. That's my world ending event.
@@dmofmanyfaces It's easy to get everyone hyped for it without having it be a looming presence. I plan on having a red star appear, then as they get closer, the red star gets larger, with that being a message for a cult of doomsdayers to get more and more active. The giant ooze is asleep, it can't do anything. The villains pulling the strings are the cult. Start them off just like a crazy guy wearing a sandwich board. Then a few more pop up, not any worse than the harmless cults littering my campaign, if a bit more eccentric about the heralding red eye that sees for her. As we get closer, they're growing larger and more demanding, and far more violent until a survivor gives Them a treasure map (running a pirate campaign). That will point the way, with one of the cult leaders killing the survivor in their arms. What does the cult want? Actually to be eaten first. If you've seen the Chick Tract parody, you'll know.
The setting I’m currently working on mostly takes place at the tail end/aftermath of the apocalypse. The gods postponed volcanic eruption’s and earthquakes way too long To get points with mortals. gods were also neglecting a lot of the infrastructure of the afterlife. Eventually the guns that were postponing volcanoes and earthquakes couldn’t kick the can down the road any longer lost control and a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruption‘s racked the entire planet Followed by tsunami‘s and a global cooling. From all of the volcanic debris. This began a mini Ice Age, and lead to mass die off of crops. Mass migrations from places that could no longer support their populations as well as the general chaos from before that led to a series of wars and diseases breaking out. The massive influx of dying people, as well as infighting between the gods throwing blame at each other, led to the neglected afterlife infrastructure massively breaking. This released many of the last 10,000 years of vengeful spirits back onto the living plane. My stories then take place after that following people going on adventures to try picking up the pieces. While simultaneously trying to prevent the whole thing from getting any worse.
Annoyingly, the one arcane magic user who understands what's happening hasn't told anyone what anything means, but... The creator of the world is sleeping at the center of the world. Eventually it will awaken and start over again. The inside of the world is hollow; nothing is *supposed to* be there. The whole pantheon is set up to stop people from digging too deep. Someone is building an antitower to the creator, apparently to wake it up.
That’s a pretty cool overarching plot. I imagine a lot of organizations would be for or against the creator waking. You can do a lot with that setup, good for you.
It was gonna be Kraken vs Leviathan in a waterworld god-fight showdown, but then i learned about the Phyrexians from Magic the Gathering, and suddenly all shall be one.
MTG lore has a lot of great examples for supernatural scourges. The Eldrazi being my favourite
Just started a campaign based in Faerun but it’s multi planar. In the campaign, I am using the Astral Bonecloud. The premise is that an illithich conquered a whole planet converting every living thing into undead. Long ago he set out to make a global sized gate that all these undead would pass thru to move on to Toril. Blaster and a couple other powerful spell casters manipulated the gate causing it to dump this planet’s worth of undead into the Astral Sea. Becoming a timeless threat.
Cut to 1499, the illithich made patched together an alliance of dark gods (who are all backstabbing each other) to create a relic centered on the Crown of Horns to bring these legions of undead to Toril. The relic is in the hands of a hapless NPC bard. And she’s cursed so she can’t get rid of it. Each time she is threatened she can use the relic to open a gate and “summon” undead. But the gates are progressively bigger , pulling more and more powerful undead thru. Worse, the zombies are the infectious husk variety. So anyone they kill may rise as a zombie.
So as it becomes clear what’s happening, the PCs may end up with some strange bedfellows. And there’s competition to kill the bard and seize the relic (inducing her to use it more often).
May have to reset the world after this. 😂 We’ll see. 😁😈
This is incredible. I love the idea of an NPC forced to hurt the world to survive because they are shackled to the Evil artifact. Great overarching story too.
I think the most fun answer to 'what is the minion of the threat getting out of serving it?' I've ever done is "Preventing the end of the world." I... may have gone overboard for the campaign I did it in though, what with the whole 'that, but three times.' thing.
Layer one, the one that doesn't fit your categories neatly.
This one was the PC's fault. The PC's gave an isolationist empire that would pay enormous sums of wealth for a handful of an ultra rare material, twelve tons of the stuff. This caused their long term plan to go from 'slowly conquer the world with the army we made from the stuff' to 'declare war on the entire world at once with our brand new army of Warforged _hundreds of millions_ strong.' It's a world ending threat because all the wars and conflicts in the world that mattered to the people of the world (and the players) before this were thrown out the window in the face of Creon's declaration of war. But what would motivate Creon to do this? "To prevent the end of the world from-"
Layer two, the BBEG's bringing Pure Destruction.
Creon wanted to conquer the world to prevent a laundry list of ancient magi-tech practices from being implemented, lest those wake the Lunar Dragons. Said half dozen magi-tech nightmare fuel engines would inflict destruction when fighting felt on the global scale. Think Krakatoa erupting* for the force of their breath weapon equivalents, and couldn't be permanently killed or imprisoned by any means at the Gods disposal. (Fortunately a few artifacts of seemingly middling power the PC's had been collecting could each do the trick of making it stick.)
But why would anyone work with these nightmare fuel engines of biblical destruction? "To prevent the end of the world from-"
Layer three, The BBEG implementing a Paradigm Shift.
The Lunar Dragons were made by the ancient civilizations greatest achievement, housed on the Moon. IBIS. IBIS is essentially a Magitech Overgod so comedically more powerful than the 'gods' as to not even be funny. If a Lunar Dragon (or all of them.) were to be permanently killed, a tiny sliver of IBIS's attention will be turned away from it's great working to deal with the problem. Because that would mean some civilization might start using too much magic again, and the Lunar Dragons had failed to prevent it. This could include such things as 'resurrections no longer functions. Wish is no longer a functional spell, the Gods salient divine abilities are now limited' or other 'austerity measures during this time of crisis' such as 'no teleportation, no precognition, The entire illusion school of magic isn't working this week.' Etc.
But why would anyone work with that literal deus ex machina? "To prevent the end of the world from *Atropus, the World Born Dead* ."
Because the ancient civilization had made IBIS to defend them, and when it spotted Atropus, it warned them to implement austerity measures for a few thousand years while it turned the rest of the star system into an incomprehensibly large fortification network and the asteroid belt into a comedically large Stellar Dragon war engine to drive Atropus off. Because Atropus wasn't the only horrifying world ending threat out there, just the one on course to arrive in less than 20,000 years. *_Hadar, The Star That Hungers_* was next on the list, incidentally. Naturally the ancient civilization couldn't agree on ending their utopia for a span of time that meant their great grandchildren wouldn't live to see it and you can guess how that went.
*Roughly 200 megatons is that estimate en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent
Many layers of doom to go around! I can tell you put a lot of thought into the plots and how they mesh together
I think a demon lord invasion would be a hell of a thing for a party to fight
I’ve never played the Out of the Abyss adventure, but it does sound like fun
If you haven’t already, the game Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is an excellent example of this
Love these categories as well as how creative people can be on how one envisions the worlds end. To honor my dearest friend and dm who has lost his fight to stage three brain cancer ill share one of his campaigns here.
" for it sailed across the endless skies, across the blood betwixt the stars on the astral. For it knew not the bounds of stillness nor seek ever granduer seas masked away in the deeps. For those splendid souls it was a home to the ever scholars with yearning curiosities in pursuits of greater treasures never in material possessions or keepsakes, it can only be taught.
" here... across the forgotten lands we have fallen, our home. Broken, scattered to the wastes of dead grounds, lifeless and vile to be so still, victims in our quiet hubris as we ourselves now wait in stone... many a fiends journey made its halls, squatters all the same to our written treasures, our... secrets we will never share to any soul. "
" witnesses in the passing of grains painstakings. Naive in claden blue makes itself known to us. Fixated gaze well stern, her scales radiant yet dense, the cackles of thunder luminescent in violent stream sunders the sacred halls... oh gods above, she knows of us. "
" what have we done... our collected wisdoms raided for years upon years in our vast arrays of research across the worlds and studies... now her very weapon, our last guardian now slain, her soul communing to our very bodies... all we have to make pursuing thought itself... hapless, weeping statues now lost for bring despair to this unrecorded world, yet now made weapons to herself in pursuits of immortality now endangers the living of essences... for we unknowingly brought this young plain of reality... a redemptionless doom... may the gods punish us well for our brightly lit ambitions... " - Forstorall englaive, last of the mindflays -
This is how derek opened our campaign, how a ancient blue dragon became so dangerous with soul magic that it was distorting and depriving life itself to extend hers indefinitely, and the worlds kingdoms spending its generations and its riches to find this continent wide fortress homed to the mindflays now turned den with millions of gargoyles in a desperate war to preserve our right to live. It was the last campaign that spand for five years before he was diagnosed and a hell of a adventure that still to this day now sends chills.
Thank you so much for sharing. Great storytelling. I sadly had a similar situation happen with a friend of mine.
Their adventures live on in all of us!
@@dmofmanyfaces craziest part was, he nailed all these categories, he brought his all to this one, captured the emotions, the struggles, our losses and triumphs yet by the end killing the dragon didn't change the world that was destroyed by it, for life needs time. All we did as bitter sweet as he entailed it was give life a chance to continue
I’m using a lich that is trying to bring Tiamat into the world to rule it and he gets the underworld
Classic D&D right here. What level is the party?
@@dmofmanyfaces 20th now
That sounds about right 👍
Just came across this video I love the idea and will borrow these ideas in a campaign for years to come.
Fantastic, thanks for watching!
Intelligent, attractive, charming, and already subscribed! XD
Really comprehensive video, I'm always a fan of the supernatural scourges myself.
That one might be my favourite, honestly
Great video, plenty of food for thought here
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it
Back in the 2nd edition the campaign was ending as we were all going off to university. So our DM had the world invaded by a witchlight marauder. We failed to discover what was going on in time, and within a year, the marauders had overrun the world. We lost, but it was an awesome campaign.
Bittersweet to think back on I imagine
@@dmofmanyfacesnaw, we had a blast tbh. It was full of desperate battles and last stands. Only 2 of us made it, escaping in a spelljammer. great way to end 5 years of playing.
Loved the references in this video! Great edits too
Thank you so much!
Who's to say that the wizard player character broke the world? Maybe it was already broken when he got there. Lots of fun ideas, and helpful organization in this video, I'll have to come back to this video if I ever need some prompts to help progress my writing.
Thank you so much!
My DM has a lot going on. He has my character trying to bring Tiamat to the Material plane while his homebrewed BBEG is trying to first raise and then absorb Ashardalon
That’s a busy campaign! Im guessing it is an Avernus adventure?
@@dmofmanyfaces it's his own Homebrew setting. It's his first time as DM, we're fairly new to the hobby. We all joined just before the catastrophe that was 2023 and until he picked up the books I was forever DM
Just came across your channel. Currently on the binge. You put out good stuff. Can't wait to see more!
Thank you so much!
I've been loving the framing of these videos - in both terms of the visual structure of them, and the framing within the video that establishes what we're talking about. Excellent build up. Huge fan of the possession angle within the discussions of the specific means of sharing the threat!! Might have to steal that one ;)
Thank you, go for it
I appreciate a high-grade deadpan snarker
Possibly the greatest compliment I’ve ever received
So a concept thats for my next campaign that I am going to be running for my players is set in the pathfinder universe and they are outsiders or high tier followers of deities that find out that something is going on, A deity jsut suddenly swapped Alignments and over the cource of the game deities all over will start swaping alignments with seemingly no cause, there goal is to go throught the planes talking to deities and entities of power and breaking into places and dungeons in the planes to find out why and either stop it or use it to there advantage. An example I gave was Asmodeus might change from Lawful Evil to Chaotic Good or Iomade to from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil and so on. Defiantly a paradigm shift :)
That sound super interesting! I’ve never heard of any plot like this one, good for you :)
@@dmofmanyfaces Yeah and then my players decided they were going to play off the horsemen of the apocalypse there main goal is to try and find the source and use it to help the horsemen usher in the end (But they have a thing of changing ideas before game sometimes so im waiting but I have ideas for this already incase they stick with it.)
My players are from earth, transported to the dreamlands. The world ending event is Nyarlathotep coming to destroy earth so they have to stop him
After a quick google search of Nyarlathotep, that is a terrifying entity. Good luck to your players 😬
In the previous chapter of my campaign the party succeeded in stoping the destruction of magic itself, however it has now become unstable and a mad god that was sealed away has awakened, due to the seal on him weakening. So inbthe next chapter they have to deal with fallout if that, while investigating various cults that have appeared that are granting common folk magic powers.
I like the idea of using magic as a temptation and incentive to join a cult
Anybody knows where the video fragment at 12:05 is from?
Halo Wars 2 cutscene for the “Awakening the Nightmare” DLC
New to Dnd im still going down each Session to minons. It's both terrifying and amazing. How many other ways I'm going to die Before the end of the campaign l o l
Okay, it is kinda based on DnD, but with Oracles of Odroia, the comic my cousin and I are working on, the BBEG is an evil god that was imprisoned for its crimes. It wants to destroy the world, and it almost succeeded once 3000 years ago. Thing is, the evidence of what it's capable of doing is everywhere. There are large patches of Odroia, the planet that the comic takes place on, that are rendered uninhabitable by the destruction, there is technology that has aged out of use, with the means to make it forgotten, even the materials to make it no longer available. There are crumbling ruins everywhere, reminders of past civilizations that were more powerful than anything the Odroia of today has seen. While the history has been lost to time, what happened goes by one name: The Cataclysm.
Oracles is a cheerful post-apocalypse, think Adventure Time. The mystery is initially about figuring out what happened, as there's clues from day one, like ancient ruins in the desert surrounding the town the characters live in. Early on, like the third episode, as it starts out episodic, but slowly shifts to being serialized, the main group, Pipi, the smart but impulsive wizard, Vince, the timid but caring tailor, and Angus, the reliable but reserved bard, venture into this ruined castle, and there is the evidence of war. Weapons, armor, and bones, all left to rot under the twin suns, proof some scuffle happened here. They go deep under the castle, and they find this chamber.
Inside the chamber is one of the last living ancients, an warrior preserved magically in crystal. Her name is Gladly, but she doesn't know much more about who she is, due to losing her memories, even though her psychometry helps. Gladly being amnesiac keeps her from speedrunning the plot and spilling the beans, as the consequences of what if her and her new friends fail are literally everywhere you look. Pipi, Vince, and Angus decide to promise to restore the memories of a woman they've known for less than an hour, and keep good on that promise. Gladly's lost and found memories act as a way to dripfeed information, so there's enough time between each reveal and clue to process it.
To go through what each character is going through. Speculation, arriving at a hypothesis, before collecting more evidence, until you arrive at the conclusion. Perhaps laugh at yourself for what you got wrong, perhaps congratulate yourself for what you got right, perhaps a bit of both.
Thank you for sharing this! Perfect example of being in between two distant world-ending events.
@@dmofmanyfaces My cousin came up with the foundation, I’m building the house.
If anyone likes to slip B Movie elements into their game like I do, there's this adventure; Escape from Skullcano Island it's based off the Godzilla series and there are all these Kaiju that makes the Tarrasque cry. The nastiest one is simply a black ooze. One so large that if left unchecked will cover the entire world and eat everything. That's my world ending event.
Sounds right up my alley
@@dmofmanyfaces It's easy to get everyone hyped for it without having it be a looming presence. I plan on having a red star appear, then as they get closer, the red star gets larger, with that being a message for a cult of doomsdayers to get more and more active. The giant ooze is asleep, it can't do anything. The villains pulling the strings are the cult.
Start them off just like a crazy guy wearing a sandwich board. Then a few more pop up, not any worse than the harmless cults littering my campaign, if a bit more eccentric about the heralding red eye that sees for her.
As we get closer, they're growing larger and more demanding, and far more violent until a survivor gives Them a treasure map (running a pirate campaign). That will point the way, with one of the cult leaders killing the survivor in their arms.
What does the cult want? Actually to be eaten first. If you've seen the Chick Tract parody, you'll know.
The setting I’m currently working on mostly takes place at the tail end/aftermath of the apocalypse. The gods postponed volcanic eruption’s and earthquakes way too long To get points with mortals. gods were also neglecting a lot of the infrastructure of the afterlife.
Eventually the guns that were postponing volcanoes and earthquakes couldn’t kick the can down the road any longer lost control and a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruption‘s racked the entire planet Followed by tsunami‘s and a global cooling. From all of the volcanic debris. This began a mini Ice Age, and lead to mass die off of crops. Mass migrations from places that could no longer support their populations as well as the general chaos from before that led to a series of wars and diseases breaking out. The massive influx of dying people, as well as infighting between the gods throwing blame at each other, led to the neglected afterlife infrastructure massively breaking. This released many of the last 10,000 years of vengeful spirits back onto the living plane.
My stories then take place after that following people going on adventures to try picking up the pieces. While simultaneously trying to prevent the whole thing from getting any worse.
I love the idea of incompetent gods causing the world to break, very fun premise
Annoyingly, the one arcane magic user who understands what's happening hasn't told anyone what anything means, but...
The creator of the world is sleeping at the center of the world. Eventually it will awaken and start over again.
The inside of the world is hollow; nothing is *supposed to* be there. The whole pantheon is set up to stop people from digging too deep. Someone is building an antitower to the creator, apparently to wake it up.
That’s a pretty cool overarching plot. I imagine a lot of organizations would be for or against the creator waking. You can do a lot with that setup, good for you.
Actually my current entire world build is based on the world itself being eventually being shut down (literally). Or you might say "harvested".
Wow very ominous!
Useful
Thanks
Welcome
I'm using leviathan, one of the Elder Evils, currently causing random weather events across the world.
I think it’s a sign of a good DM if you can make any of the elementals interesting, given the comparative lack of lore. Good on you!