For mine, it's "Why does one of the stars move across the sky at random, moving in different directions and speeds, never moving in any predictable way?"
Three years in, and I have never mentioned the sun. Why? Because the entirety of the world is on the inside of the planet’s crust. Being residents of that world nothing seems odd to the characters. I can’t wait for the players to ask THAT question! Imagining their facial expressions, I seriously can’t wait!
@@valiensr1037 seriously on several occasions the players have made assumptions, but not once has a character come close to asking in game about the sun.
I really want to run a game where the society is centered around defending the world from the creatures that invade through The Maw. lots of demons and metal skinned creatures. the plot twist is that they're on a generation ship, but no one remembers, The Maw is a hull breach, and all of the 'creatures' are repair drones, combat chassis, and cloned monstrosities, trying to defend the repair drones, because the ship's AI is trying to fix things but is also a little messed up, and the lull between attacks is the ship building a new set of drones and growing new clones to attempt repairs again.
In one setting I made, the biggest mystery was the chief deities known as "the Light;" a trio of maidens that never showed themselves or acted separately, so might as well be one deity. The Light drove the denizens of the dark (demons) back to the worlds they had come from. At least that's what everyone knew about them. I had played up the trio angle, making them sound like the Hecate of Greek legend, but hit the players with a simple bombshell, which they sadly did not pick up on, and that was that there were no truly divine beings in the setting. Had they followed that line of questioning, they would've found out that the Light were actually three of the denizens of the dark themselves who were underdogs that came across the ancient home of deities that had died off and used their tools to drive back the others of their kind. However, the tools only work if they work in tandem.
I've been watching your videos for a year now and I'm about to enter my first D & D campaign with my wife, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law. Wish me luck!
Both campaigns that I've run (are secretly set in the same universe, but the second campaign hasn't made it there yet) has a goose. This goose is basically the goose from Untitled Goose Game, but it can appear ANYWHERE at ANY time, no exceptions. If the characters look away for a moment, it disappears, even if it's tied up or locked in a cage or something. If they kill the goose, another identical one shows up later. Divinations don't take it into account, even the gods, when asked, say that they have no idea what the PCs are talking about when they mention the goose. And there will never be an explanation for the goose, but my players don't know that
The world itself not acknowledging the goose is what makes this one for me. Usually in-jokes like this tend to become universally known about after a single adventure/tier of play, which really messes with the seriousness of the setting. Suddenly all NPCs also think something weird like that is natural, so inevitably the world becomes sillier.
In the dark fantasy campaign I'm apart of, the fae had banished elves from their domain for a crime they have commited and has resulted in all elves to face discrimination/hate from all other forms of Fae creature. However, what the crime is and if it was done by elves are both unknown. So much so that much younger elves and half elves are likely to question if it was even fair or not. Which makes sense with how details of such event can be easily lost over time. Plus, for survival elves had developed a magic ability which is now natural to them. That ability being to disguise themselves as humans, this is because humans are aware that the elven races has fae ancestry and they're scared of that. Causing the ability to be quite good for when travelling. But does mean that elven settlements such as towns and villages are far apart and isolated, while being unable to become cities due to how it would draw attention. This caused a long time goal that my character, a half human half elf knight name Z, to become figuring out the truth about the crime which his people were believed to have done and to reveal it to the entire world. And I swear, if it was just a prank gone wrong....he's going to have an aneurysm. Now then, my friend who is the GM knows the answer to what the crime was and who did it. But, they're not going to reveal it till the time is right. Which makes sense, as the build up needs to happen.
In my setting I call “Rift World” the big mystery is what’s causing the rifts that connect the mortal realm to the other plains. It’s a phenomenon with less than a thousand years of history, and some elves remember the start, which gave rise to several new sapient races. The explanation is that the gods are basically using the mortal realm as a battlefield of sorts, with whoever “wins the game” becoming the next overgod, as Apothis, the current overgod has long since left the universe leaving only a seed of power that can only be taken by one who has the approval of all other gods.
The world was created by the equivalent of God clicking “fill” on empty space when dirt was selected. So many major story hooks all due to that, from magic existing due to weaknesses within the universal code and the existence of data liches, to Lovecraftian galaxy sized voidworms and remnants of sunken worlds.
2:35 that is 100% a reference to the series Beyonders. It is a bit different than the lurkers in that series, but a completely black 'living shadow' sort of thing called a lurker makes me think its a reference.
For mine, it's "What spell turned the bulk of the Empire of Tiir into an inhospitable dark land?" As for whether or not I know, I like to view it as similar to the question of what happened to the Dwemer.
My world actually has several big mysteries. To just name a few: The identity and origin of the Deathsinger, the identity and origin of the Lightreaper, and what happened during the First Capital War. Obviously, the answers are not known by the general public in-world. The first two are very simple. The Deathsinger is an ancient hero that descended the depths of the Abyss to seal the source of abyss rifts that had been opening across the world and to also hide the abyss lantern. This did not end well for him, and he and his pet bat had gotten possessed by the energy of the abyss itself, and became a true neutral entity that mysteriously appears on only the most bloody of battlefields to cull both sides indiscriminately. The First Capital War I personally haven’t even written up, as I like leaving it ambiguous. The only important details are that a country was leveled, 60% of the world’s population died, and Saint Vim and the Unnamed Belligerent killed each other and their weapons were sealed away. As for the Lightreaper, their origin will be revealed in my book I’m writing, “A Ballad of Fire”, so stay tuned!
only recently discovering this channel, can i just say the little moving bar that completes along with the post reading is probably the most genius thing ive seen for this sort of thing
Love this question. For my current campaign, set at a magical school in a dimension connected to Brooklyn, NY, it is "What are the Invasives?". An invasive is an incredibly powerful magical being that is tied to a specific invasive species, and typically appear when and where they do (think Kudzu in the South, Emerald Ashborers in the midwest or Japanese Lantern Flies on the East coast). The Invasives appear humanoid, dressed in late 1800s British fashion, but the surface of their skin is hidden behind a twisting mass of the invasive species they associate with. They have a powerful anti magic and anti kinetic energy field around them, and also some other nasty tricks to get their way. In the world, no one knows where they come from, or what their motives are. No one knows if they cause the invasive species, if they are created when a species becomes invasive, or if they are something else entirely. While I'm still defining all their details, I do know their end goal, which is my fun trump card if the players ignore the threat and go do other stuff. When there are enough Invasives in a realm, they will destroy it, and remake it in their eldritch masters image. So worse comes to worse, the Invasives will TPK the party, kill everyone else, destroy society and remake the natural order of the world, and I start my players in a new campaign in the post-apocalyptic twisted world they unleashed, and the big mystery in that one will be what led to the Great Unraveling. And they'll then know to never ignore the Big Bad. Honestly, its a Win-Win for me.
I think the big secret for my current campaign is the how/why does it all exist. I tried explaining it in this comment, but it was just too long, so here's a vastly simplified version. Basically advances in things like AI, neural technology, computing power, and storage space allowed us to create a fully immersive set of AI worlds (kind of like ready player one). Then some kind of apocalypse happened that killed off humanity in short order without really destroying our infrastructure so this global VR server is still running. The campaign world and everyone in it (pcs and npcs) are all AIs living in a virtual world that's completely real to them. The more powerful AIs responsible for creating/maintaining this world don't really know the truth either. They know there were created to make and maintain this world for the millions of "visitors" from another reality that came to live/play in their world, and that suddenly they stopped coming. But they have no idea their existence was a game for those visitors. After centuries of just keeping things going they're going insane from boredom and have figured out a way to shut down/destroy the server that is their world so they can finally stop existing. What the PCs know atm is that reality is going to cease to exist if they can't stop it, that they've been chosen to do that by something extremely powerful (one of the AIs that hasn't gone insane) who has granted them each very powerful boons, and that at one point visitors from another plane used to come to this world. Eventually they'll learn the world was created for those visitor's amusement. I doubt they'll ever learn the why of it though, there's no one left alive who knew.
Well, I have a campaign centered around said mystery. The main structure of the land, The infinite Obelisk, has recently been acting up with random bursts of uncontrolled magic, worrying the King's court, the people, and even the gods. But as to what's causing them, no one knows. Now not saying when I say infinite I mean "pierces the heavens beyond" infinite, but something up with that yeah
My world is separate universe which is given life by a lich phylactery which acts like our sun. The bbeg is a wizard who sacrificed her self to enter this relm to find and destroy it.
Well in the campaign that we just started (tomorrow is our third session) there seems to be some kind of magical weapon, and the party is incapable of hearing anything of use from the only person who seems to be knowledgeable about it, but before the campaign started, I planted the seed mystery that there used to be 243 gods and then about 406 years ago they all vanished without a trace, and to this day nobody knows that happened to them, and then seven months later half-mortal children of these gods appeared, became immortal and became the new gods. So obviously the mystery in question is "what happened to the old gods?" The new gods either don't know or just refuse to tell anyone. In actuality, the secret is that this campaign is an indirect sequel to the last campaign that I ran (which ended in June of last year). In that campaign, the BBEG (who was secretly one of our Paladins' "god", but not actually a god, just their imprisoned former maid-type guy pretending to be one) had the end goal of rendering the gods mortal, killing them, establishing himself as the only god of the multiverse, then destroy the multiverse and rebuild it from the ground up. He did manage to render the gods mortal and kill all of them except for one (whom was worshipped by our other paladin, with both the paladin and that former god set to make an appearance in my campaign later down the line), but then the paladin who worshipped him sacrificed himself to lock them both inside a cage of pure anti-magic which would slowly fold in on itself and eat away at them for about a millennium until the both of them are literally unmade. Said BBEG in his last act did manage to unleash a huge wave of anti-matter and wipe out about 60% of the multiverse, but due to the multiverse's nature, it was back to full size in about nine months. As for that magical weapon I mentioned earlier, there's ten of them, and their origin also ties back to the previous campaign. See, in the Halls of Eternity (where the gods live), the old gods had something called The Light of Creation, which is what they used to create living things, and after the previous BBEG killed the old gods, the Light of Creation was inadvertently thrown out into the universe in which these two campaigns take place, and then the last living old god, as well as her paladin split the Light of Creation across these weapons. The reason for this is because someone (this campaign's BBEG) broke into the cage containing the previous BBEG and stole his magic powers, and also absorbed the energy of his entire home universe, and plans to do the same with The Light of Creation and the universe in which it resides, in order to transcend existence
my next campaign is set about 20 years into a blight that is causing the shadow realm and undead realm to bleed into the prime material plane and shadow creatures run amok. a few cities survived, but the darkness keeps attempting to creep in. history knows that a group of knights long ago fought a titan, defeated it, but they all died. what isn't known is that the titan exploded, killing all the knights, and causing the blight, but it came on slowly, so they haven't connected the blight to the titan. days are dim and hazy, nights are dark and terrible, and only the lights and a certain type of rune keeps the shadow creatures at bay.
highest level transmutation wizard. whatever the mystery, he creates it himself first or reverse engineers it. otherwise he just visits the inventors at the time of creation and annoys the hell out of them. just a little bit of molecular alteration here, some minor adjustments for improvement there...and the second the priests, paladins, warlocks, barbarians start screaming of blasphemy or the craftsmen start throwing tools and try to strangle him, time stops for a while until the wizard literally enthralls a few gods or animates all the inventions. passionate complains often fall short in front of the thing in question obeying the offenders to the letter. cultists and scientists getting beaten and hung up upside down by their gods and science projects are seemingly hilarious. and then he starts lecturing again until their bodies run out of nourishment and exhaustion lets them fall asleep even though their eyes are forcibly held open...well, this wizard loves talking about a topic of interest to the very bitter end...
Six months before my adventure started (it was a Modern Day Earth-Like world) all major sources of power ceased working. It was like they shut down. No nuclear power, no windmills, no hydroelectric dams, etc. At the same time, somewhere between 75-90% of humanity vanished. All in the blink of an eye. In the six months between the Vanishing and the start of the game, people and animals began mutating, getting strange powers, or both. I know why it all happened, and it CAN be discovered and possibly even reversed... if the PCs dare to investigate, or even can investigate since survival is the name of the game currently.
In my current campaign, godhood is an achievable possibility, to the point that some creatures have become gods in a way (A tribe worships a griffin as being a god of sky and storms, it gains a measure of control over those things. Just as an early sub boss example) But that begs the question, what is real, capital letter God Hood? The beings that made the sun and the stars and the sea? The first planned major antagonist is a nature cleric cult leader that is trying to achieve immortality and godhood with the established, known route of belief, and by assimilating as much life force as possible to try and break a barrier that may or may not exist. In four or five sessions I will know if he succeeds, but as of now he's just overgrowing settlements to make a big summoning circle.
In the mystical world of Feyloria, a figure sits atop a frozen throne on the highest peak of the tallest mountain. The Frozen King of Mt. Monstrum is a mystery that goes back all the way to when the gods first came into existence. Home to all monstrosities that plague the land, Mt. Monstrum is a death trap to all who dare ascend the cold shivering peaks, not because of the monstrosities, but the King himself. A robe crafted from the skin of his fallen enemies drapes across his shoulders. His face obscured by black, light-absorbing fur, his only visible features are the cold, blue glowing eyes that stare straight through your soul. A crown of bones and twigs sits atop his head. When you see him, death is all but certain. Some say he is the child of cursed Goddess, others say he is a warlock that discovered true, purified, unlimited power. Whatever the case, the Frozen King remains a mystery that may never be solved.
My World has a Cult, rather simple, they revere the shadow, the darkness itself, as the Light in the world is "too strong" and they act as foil to my players. Behind the entire thing lies a great old one tho
I've been making a setting that is cut off from the planes, so certain spells like plane shift and resurrection haven't been discovered yet. So, from an in-world perspective, the mystery is "What is beyond this world?" or "Are the Gods real?" There's also an ancient super-advanced progenitor race that mysteriously vanished, but I feel like that's par for the course for fantasy worlds.
How to make everyone survive the apocalypse. Over the course of a ten year campaign little seeds of different end of days scenarios have been picked away at by different players bit by bit. One guy released 5/7 deadly sins, another has freed Loki and Fenrir and are trying to shape Ragnorak, you get the picture. It's to the point where they are trying to find what apocalypse leaves a way to get through unscaved. I do not know, and am purely letting then come up with something wonderfully overthought. It will have a happy ending.
The godly thrones are empty, the celestial gates lie open, and the Angels are simply aping at being the gods they serve so that the mortals NEVER find out. Oh, and no one knows Why The Cleric and Paladin of the first campaign were gobsmacked, and now the epic level party is investigating.
In my world, there was a major even some 300-400 years ago, where mages across the world saw a massive increase in power and rose up to conquer and destroy as much as they could. This increase in power was of such magnitude that that even level 1 wizards could call down meteor swarms. Of the various nations of the world, only two survived, The Drakeholt, an ancient nation protected by dragons, and a fledgling nation-state (that I haven't named yet) of dispossessed peoples who survived through making warlock pacts en mass. What caused the mass increase of power and why most if not all of the mages affected went mad is unknown and I still haven't decided on it myself though I do have a few ideas, the two most prevalent are 1.) that a rogue god wanted to wipe the world clean and start from scratch, and 2.) that some very powerful liches caused it in an effort to become death gods, but nothing.
For my most recent campaign it's the "3 Strands of reality". They are small but long pieces of string, each one caries massive powers but need some thing to power them. In order of which one I intend my PCs to find are, the "Soul Strand", this traps souls that are unfortunate to have their living host die nearby. It allows the wielder to channel the energy into strong dark magic based attacks, some of which being homebrewed like the powerful "World Tear" which creates mini blackholes that last a couple turns depending on the roll. The "Palisade Strand", this can instantly wrap around the target creating an almost invincible defense by warping the space around it to create a place of sorts. The last is the strongest the "Reality Strand". It lets the user make one wish with an equal punishment for using. No one knows where they came from but they are well protected. But coincidentally about a month before the start of the campaign, they were stolen. And the weirdest part is that everyone forgot about them except for a few people, all my PCs remembered but their were also some others like the "Grand Wizard" who dies very quickly so, basically no one knows about it that can make an influence.
So in my homebrew pf2e based setting which have two active campaigns (one in person one online, running on the same concurrent timeline) the big mystery is how the kingdom of Elka which spanned the entire continent fell, all that is known is that it was a civil war no other details as well as why elves are a dying race. I know the reasons why for both as the former will be explained in the in person campaogn and the later will be found out by asking a multitude of elves over time as well as little tidbits sprinkled in when looking into rumors
In my Radiant Citadel campaign, the question was 'what happened to the original iteration of the Radiant Citadel?' In canon, the Citadel is the second version of it, but there was a previous version that was destroyed and no one really knew why. Also, in the myth arc I homebrewed into the campaign, four Dragonborn also kept observing things from afar with the party not knowing who they are, but they're somehow directly involved with disasters happening in the Citadel civilizations throughout the campaign. In my campaign, it turns out it was four, evil Elder Elementals collectively called the Primal Forces who were sealed away by a group of heroes, but too late to stop the damage of their rampage. This included the dead Wyvern Incarnate in the Preserve of the Ancients, which was representing the civilization that the Primal Forces utterly destroyed upon emerging in the first place. The four Dragonborn are the leaders of a cult dedicated to releasing the Primal Forces and the disasters they're causing are all dedicated to that end. They didn't figure that out until a couple of levels ago, and didn't figure out the cult's actual plan until last session. We've been running the campaign for probably over a year now, so recent reveal.
I'm pretty sure there are some mysteries in my DM's world that he doesn't even know about) He already admitted that the surplus of fire in his world doesn't mean anything, it's just a part of his idea of game balance (I was convinced that it's related to the fact that the world was created from fire). Me as a GM - well, kinda almost everything, and no, I don't know. I just started GMing a few months ago, and I'm approaching it one step at a time.
In the campaign I host for my friends there is a creepypasta/horror story about the "red riding hood" which lurks in the forests of the world and preys on the people that go in the woods. It has never actually made an appearance in the sessions but I always remind them of the presence of this thing.
I'll throw my hand in the ring. I have had my DnD world called Tyria for nearly 9 years at this point. I even have the map of it hanging on my wall. My players have often asked me was their anything else to the Tyria beyond what the map said, because they were trying to get from the lower eastern part of the map to the lower western part of the map and wanted to see if they could go around. I always told them that this side of the map was undiscovered lands that would be discovered eventually, and even after 2 campaigns and a currently ongoing third campaign, they have yet to discover what's on the other side. The real reason as to why is because of how I flavored the idea of the different planes in DnD. I initially decided to go with a "snow globe" approach in which the plane/world is flat and is encased in its own globe that would provide whatever things are needed such as air. I instead went with a slightly scarier approach. There was a place in the world of Tyria that was a Giant triangular depth in the middle of the ocean that would take you directly to the Shadowfell should you go in. This gave me the idea that each realm had an inverse in order to create balance. As a result, on one half of the planet is Tyria, but the other half is the Shadowfell, and no one has made the connection yet. I am planning on revealing this at the end of my current campaign which is looking like it will end around Spring/Summer 2025 so when I reveal this, I might come back and give an update.
So my basic idea for my self wrote Transformers campaign is that multiple Cybertrons (the Transformers home world) have been plucked out of time, space, and reality into a void-like universe, with some Cybertrons having large swaths of their population dead. The players will likely figure out quickly that this is a plot by Unicron to both feed him infinitely and stem any future defeats. The cause of the mass amounts of deaths though? A version of Tarn who became a herald of Unicron and maintains his debut power of talking people to death and has been using communications (ie. Radio, television, hologram communicators) to kill en mass.
I'll have to explain this so the multiverse in my campaign is in some sort of layer setting where there the multiverse and below that there is clusters of similar universes and then the universes themselves. But at some point in time the majority of them just collapsed in on each other for no apparent reason. Only the true gods the DM, Time, and Magic know and they won't tell. this resulted in a singular universe forming and every god and mortal that survived had a war that led to most of the greyhawk gods alive and everyone blaming it on Vecna (I'm going to change this because one of my players can't shut up). This will be retconned and replaced with someone much worse. Anyways I'll return in a year possibly.
There was the mystery of the first queen Annarose, from my first campaign. She was the first to use magic and conquered all the tribes to bring the continent together under her rule. Then she disappeared leaving icons and statues in her image, and if you looked hard enough you'd find a copy of her suspended in time by magic. And if you failed a dexterity save and touched the body, you would be transformed into her with only a wish spell able to reverse it unless you could find the immortal Annarose to undo the spell. Sadly, the campaign fell apart before they could even find out that she was possibly still around
In one of my older D&D 4th edition campaign settings, which I never got to use, I had a massive landmark that could be seen across the entire world, well the known world of the campaign since it wasn't flat. In the world of Appuntito, there is a mystery that no mortal or immortal knows. For untold ages, since before the age of men, dwarves, elves, or even dragons, it had stood there. No one knows what purpose it holds. Is it a monument? A statement.? An impending doom? A stalled disaster? The first murder? It was called Damocles, the Worldsplitter. A massive sword so massive its length reached above the atmosphere. It was in the shape of a singular massive iron sword with no handle, it looked more like a massive bar of iron rather than a sword. But its edge and handle proved its nature. It stands in the center of what is called the 'Sundered Isles', which had once been a continent the size of Africa but was shattered into pieces when the sword stands. A massive fracture of canyon-sized fissures called the Abyssal Wound expands from the point of impact of the massive sword, lining out in ten different fractures to every corner of the world. Each canyon is referred to as a World Scar and it is said that it connects to the afterlife as the winds from the canyon often sound like the cries and howls of lost souls bleeding out of the scar. OR falling in. It can be seen from all the known lands. From the vast forests and frost-covered mountains of the north. From the dense jungles and sea-sized deserts of the west. From the floating islands and seas of the south. From the golden fields and black marshes of the east. All of the known world has witnessed Damocles in all its glory and horror. By scholar's calculations is only one-fourth of the sword in sight, the rest is impaled into the depths of the world. Nobody knew where the sword came from or why it was impaled into the world where it is. Only that it has stood there for untold eras. Long enough for various creatures and even civilizations to adapt around the World Scars and the energy leaking from them and the sword itself. Many think the sword is a weapon from a higher entity who tried to destroy the world. Other things it was dropped during the God War in ancient times, but no deity has ever claimed to ever seen the sword fall. Some have even said that magic did not exist in the world until the sword appeared, but few recognize this theory as possible. The truth is that Damocles the Worldsplitter is not a weapon but a vessel. A sword-shaped dimensional vessel constructed to fly through the Astral Sea as a means to transport an entire world's worth of lifeforms away from certain doom. During its trans-dimensional jump away from the doomed reality the sword-shaped vessel flew through the astral sea for an unknown time, but it didn't slow down. As nobody had considered needing breaks. So when the sword vessel flew out of the astral sea it slammed into the world known as Appunito at full speed, liquefying its crew and piercing halfway through the planet before stopping. Shattering a continent and shifting the planet off its axis in the process. The planet was Earth during the era of the Dinosaurs, and the Sword of Damocles became the disaster that ended the Jurassic Era. The supernatural energies of the still undamaged but crewless vessel began to leak and alter the world itself. Releasing the souls of the crew within it as well as various manners of energy into the world of Earth. Slowly but surely altering it into Appuntito, the Scarred World. I wanted to play it out as an alternative Earth where humanity didn't exist until far later when created by gods. As it was the portion of the world that was Africa that got shattered to pieces. So history went vastly different but most of the shapes of the world and the most common portions of our history were the same. Here are some examples of various events in this AU Earth's History. Humans were created by the Christian God as in the myths and never evolved from monkeys. Ancient Greece founded democracy, but they were mostly halflings/hobbits and various types of fey. Many ancient Greek heroes were of a halfling or fey nature. Ancient China was founded by warring clans of dragonborns, goliaths, and birdfolk. They never migrated to Japan. Ancient natives of the American continent from various nations and tribal states, most of them are some variations of beast folk. Ancient Rome was created and ruled by Gnomes who integrated other cultures and races into their empire. On the American Continent is the nation of FSA, the Free States of America, founded by colonists and natives who abolished slavery. Genghis Khan invaded the world with his Mongol horde, but he was an Orc. Ancient Egypt existed but was mostly ruled by Elves, with a caste system based upon race rather than nobility, but was an island nation sort of like Britain ruling over a large number of islands. The Jews were freed by Moses from slavery but rather than crossing the Red Sea they were taken to safety by Jehovah who lifted up the island they fled to and made it fly in the sky. Thus born was Jerusalem the Promised Land. The Romans failed to take Britain because of the druids and the priests of the Celts, Picts, and Brits, causing severe storms and sinking the majority of their fleet. The Kingdom of Camelot becomes the new British Empire under the bloodline of King Arthur Pendragon. The nation of Japan is a mixture of youkai-like races, like Kenku, Tortle, Trollkin, and so on. The Western nations are unable to gain influence and power over Japan as Japan already has a lot of power and knowledge of gunpowder from their encounters with China. The environments were completely different as well. But I didn't manage to finish it all before 5e came out and I haven't thought of making another campaign with this setting ever since. But I might do so in the future.
Fourth year into the campaign and were still nowhere closer to the one were currently thrown into. " no night has ever come, no wish to grant. We the shadowless shall shine across all the astral. " our group has to a conclusion that what were dealing with involves the mad god somehow with a forever sun prophecy.
I don't think I'll be using it for d&d again any time soon because it kind of conflicts with new bugbear lore which I think is super cool (medium creature able to go anywhere a small creature can. Yes please) but in Luxophen probably the biggest mystery is why are orc formed? Because in this setting they aren't exactly born, unlike every other living creature they aren't born of other life, but instead death. Specifically any sufficiently large mass of dead biomass or even slightly transformed biomass like ash, has a seemingly random chance of combining together into an orc infant. Also this is technically separate from magic in the sense it still happens in anti-magic zones and doesn't show up on detect magic or anything The answer is reincarnation. Specifically that 200 years after you die(when you can nolonger be brought back by true resurrection) you are reincarnated in the first available vessel and if there are none the universe makes one.
Why the world was created in the middle of the Abyss in the first place. I know when it was created, and a few of those who were instrumental in creating it, but not _why_ a section of the Abyss was carved out to make a planet.
I will say, in the setting with Keres and Killian and all that... it sounds like in that setting, Keres literally invented the concept of the Lich. A Goddess of Death storing her soul in an object that can recreate her body should she be "killed"? Though the fact that they claim she told no one it was even possible suggests that this isn't actually the origin of the concept of the Lich in this setting... simply because, while she did it first, the knowledge would never have spread from her, so someone else would have to figure it out on their own to become the "First Lich".
in my case, my world's secret lore is being little by little known by my players. It has a lot to do with a sickness that is infecting all the world, with a certain faerie witch that want's to free civilization from those god's that are bad for it's development, and with two of those god's. The Chaos God, and the Storm Goddess, the first because he stopped civilization development for almost two milenia with constant war, and the first because she is the empress of a nation and wouldn't let technology advance if her nation didn't already have something similar or even better
Roughly one elven generation (900 years ago) which is two Dwarven generations ago a conclave of elves competed with dwarves for rare resources underground. A rare mineral used to craft "instruments" that can alter the vibrations of the universe and change the fabric of reality is used by two elven brothers, they wanted to remove the dwarves love for treasure so they could have the resources to themselves. Something went wrong and they cause a massive cave in that killed (some were trapped but this is also a secret for now) 90% of the Dwarven population and caused an exodus of the dwarves to a mountain. There's exactly two people that know exactly what happened, the brothers and one is the vampire BBEG and the other is his aged brother living an unnaturally long, cursed life The bbeg is a quest giver and is subtley using the party to increase his power and fuel his research to become an immortal dragon and sever the connection of the gods to the world. So he can rule it unopposed
My world also has the universe's creation as one big mystery, even though people have supposedly known how it happened for centuries. According to the divine histories of every deity's religion - one of the only things all the gods seem to agree upon - the world was formed when the divine gained their portfolios through a game of chance, picking their domains with each winner. Afterwards, they all gave a piece of their divinity to craft the planes of existence. The kicker comes with modern day magical theory: laws of magic that even the gods must abide by, based on evidence, with the very first law being the Law of Concepts - that everything in creation has an inborn "concept" that drives what it is and what it's meant to do. The more mystically-powerful something is, the closer it has to abide by its concept, which is why outsiders tend to be defined by their alignment and purpose, while mortals can have such strong free will. As such, it stands to reason that the gods, as the greatest mystical forces in the known universe, must be the most strongly tied to their concepts - and so, it drives a sort of "chicken or the egg" conundrum between theists and scholars. Did the gods tie themselves to their concepts when they chose their domains? Were they predestined to acquire them? Are any of the gods NOT reigning over domains that fit their concept, weakening them? Is the divine origin story of the universe even true? It's easily the biggest point of contention between classical theologians and scholars of magical theory, and the gods don't seem intent on giving anyone any answers.
The biggest mystery in the campaign I'm a part of is how tf did my characters even come in. the first one just kinda appeared from the void, and when he died the void just spat out my other character. This has yet to be explained
One of my world's is a giant, multi levelled dungeon. The entire thing is a game show. Party vs party combat is a thing. All the events are televised via oculus and magic mouths, to those that can afford the set up (yes, I know it's a bit hunger games). All participants are invited to appear one time only, and have an emergency device given to them freely, that will transport them back to where they came from, with all that they are carrying. (Although it has been known for some to creatively make their way back) The big mystery is the actual host of the show. You see, all this takes place on its own plane, and the gods dare not tread here or interfere here. Yes. It makes some classes unplayable. Y'see, this glasses wearing five foot, frail human, is actually the seeder of life, the father of gods. But the gods butchered him and cast him to the void, because he only seeded life, for life to worship, and create deities. He feasts on deities. And with every adventurer that dies on this plane of his own making, he slowly returns to strength. It's not just endless puzzles and encounters. There's a lot of politics, mystery and intrigue. One party was curious as to how the plane is populated by all manner of creatures that should naturally prey upon one another, but dont, have never beem observed feeding, and will override their instinctive behaviour to work together. This party were also very curious upon discovering a beloved party NPC, being absolutely fine and dandy at an inn, after they had all observed them get brutally smashed against the floor into a red paste the session before. This led the party to discover the existence of the deep spawn farms
Who destroyed humanity's home star system? (All of it, not just Earth.) I created a whole science fiction setting around this and I don't even have a definitive answer! There are lots of other Deep Cosmic Mysteries out there, but that's the big one.
I have a few mysteries asked about Emanon, but I'm not answering them: • Why does the owl prison guard sound like Samuel L.Jackson? • How do the Shit-Stalking Bears have the capability of Invisibility, even after attacking? • Why do the Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears, Minotaurs, and other barbaric races don't go after the other civilizations and formed a fraternity town. • Why do the Drow and Duregar get along, but not Elves and Dwarves or their respective counterparts? • Why does Death have a surfer accent and is chill? • Why are the older and rich dragons all lawyers? • Why is there a town full of previously evil creatures now turned good?
The main factions that rose from the ashes of the civilization before are all survivors of a cataclysmic event. World was based on a lot of edgy wants and wishes so originally the "cataclysm" was an invasion by Phyrexia during the Apocalypse story arc. When Phyrexia's god Yawgmoth was destroyed by a weapon called the Legacy, all Phyrexians essentially ceased to function without his will to guide them. Each faction has a "win condition" capable of wiping out one other faction that are tools leftover from the invasion by the Phyrexians. More recently I shifted that to being an internal power struggle instead of magical interstellar war and the groups that caused it locked their doomsday devices away--most of which now dwell among the heart of each new faction. In any case the big mystery and its answer are known by one entity whose entire goal is to bring back the old ways and whatever survives this purge will form a new world order under its control.
Spoilers: First civilization: creates a hollow world around a tiny star, Dyson sphere, earth sized. And place it, three moons, and their "that's no moon," next to a binary star system. The world is made from two interlocking spheres which rotate as the keys are used... Downfall when the system gets trappped in a slowly decaying orbit around a black hole above the Milky Way. Many hundreds of Thousands of years pass. Second civilization: colonists from Earth Downfall as the system orbits away from the galaxy and the world freezes, but they find the paths to the innerworld, and caves and deep tunnels in the outer world landscaping Two-hundred thousand years pass, the world warms. Known: Third civilization fights among themselves, slavery, disease, poverty, discovering magic.... Downfall in a plague, slave revolt, and (a key being turned causing) a thousand years of quakes..... Fourth civilization is the current one, in its second age. Magic abounds, and the world is mostly at peace. Spoilers: There is a council that of psyonics that rewrite history, physical evidence and memories of certain events and people, using giant moon stones in a geometric pattern around the world to rewrite people's minds. (If it were a tv show, the "Last time on..." would be slightly or majorly different than what actually happened the previous episode, and the characters would remember it the different way...) There are some who are immune, or have figured out the lie, they are targeted for assassination. (The story starts as one character returns home to find out everyone thought he'd been killed...a failed assassination and coverup)
I have something called the commetfell in my world. It's an orb that fell from the sky like 600 years before the campaign started and would give god-like powers to whoever wielded it. But a massive war broke out over it and nearly destroyed the planet. The victors of the war took it and raised the habitable pieces of land into the sky and now live on floating islands. So I have two main mysteries I don't really have answers for and I kinda need an answer to one. 1. What is the Commetfell? 2. Why are the islands slowly starting to sink from the air?
In the setting I'm preparing, Kïrrond, is a post post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy. In a war between an ancient civilization and the first gods, that happened so long ago, to the point that only the survival gods remember, fractured the material plane itself. That fracture allowed individuals or large groups to arrive there; be by accident, luck, or intentionally (is also a way to not limit the races to the players). But it is very difficult to leave, incentivating the creation of star vessels to sail through the stars to find paths to others' materials planes. The cultures that arrive allow their gods to go there or the birth of a God based on the collective memory and believe, no one know the answer; except few chooses ones. The truth is both, a god is born when enough people belief on them, and the faith give them gives sustain; and if more people there beliefs in a god, than the original place, it is dragged to Kïrrond dooming the other part. And why did the ancient civilization and the original gods be at war? The gods used to walk on the world at will, and depending on the type of god, the consequences for the mortals varieties a lot. So, to protect themselves, the ancient civilization used the power of the faith to create his own gods. That was the catalyst for war. After erasing all registers about the power of the faith, the survival gods placed a restrain on the world, no god can ever walk through the world, and no mortal can ascend to godhood with support from a certain number of gods (I didn't wanna determine a exact number). Some mortals have the potential, be it by raw power and knowledge or be connections, these are called "portentus", beings with incredible importance and power, but in a statement, not being able to fight others; be it to not anger a god that they need support, lose support or become exposed to attack from others "portentus". And not being capable of telling, directly or indirectly. Today, they fight indirectly in the shadows, by politics, commerce, patronage, alliances, or even adventurers. If the players choose to have a patron, there is a chance to get involved partially on this. And I don't have the intention to let one ascend easily, only if the party changes too much the balance or if they discover it somehow and make it their objective alongside the events of the campaign.
My world’s biggest mystery is: after the unwitting release of Tharizdun from his imprisonment, and the subsequent trapping of Talona into the place beyond the great celestial divide…(crickets) they are both evil gods in the finale of my very first campaign… playing or running… by a brave pc named (identifying him not ok) sacrificing and trapping himself with talona by being polymorphed into an elephant an squeezed through the portal like a mozzarella ball through a cheese grater. It was quite a moment, being that he almost clawed his way back out to safety before being betrayed by another pc (with a history of lying on dice rolls and murder hobo behaviors) and let him to fight for his life against a wounded god and as the portal closed another pc who spent an entire session early in the campaign desperately seeking a divine intervention wedding ring(not his wedding either) and then for every session after treated it like the ONE RING, actually threw the ring in after him, WHO FREAKING CAUGHT IT!!! And used it in the most amazing end game showdown ive seen to date that resulted in heat metal on the ring after talona finally got her hands on it that actually killed her. Following so far? Ight, well the secret is coming, but, after receiving blessings from the other gods he was able to free, they sent him back to fight a new impending darkness on the world. Now, everyone assumes they meant tharizdun, It was actually the villain of a completely unrelated campaign and now is an easter egg the party is close to discovering!!!! (Its a lore swap thing, where i take his character and insert it into an already established plot without overly adapting the story to fit a character backstory that doesn’t quiiiite fit perfectly. I cant wait till i get to say his real name after they research the history behind his name. Not to fond of telling him he’s captured, incapacitated, and being drained of his immense god infused soul energy and if they dont hurry and put the pieces together he will die and the bbeg will consume him to grow even stronger. 😮 🎤
Once, Giants ruled the world. They kept all other civilizations in their iron grip, enslaving them in the names of their gods. Similar to Forgotten Realms. And just like on Toril, the Dragons began a war against them. However, this time, the Dragons lost. They were driven to the corners of the plane. Yet less than a century later, the Giants' empire lay in shambles. A great mist rolled across the land, leaving nature revitalized where it went... and the ruins of Giant civilization in its wake. There were mountains of Giant corpses, and only when the Giants had been banished to the furthest reaches of the world, did the mist disappear. Humanoid empires rose in the wake of the destruction. The Thundering Mist has yet to roam the plane again, though sightings have been reported in times of conflict. Only when the Frost Giants attempted to retake their empire was the secret of the Mist uncovered. It was no god or outsider who called it down. It was hundreds of thousands of spells channeled together by a single humanoid race. It was the Firbolgs, who until recently, had kept to themselves in their forests. They were recently drawn out by a large-scale war, where they aided Gnomes and Wood Elves against the aggressive High Elves. There's some other mysteries the world has, such as the identity of the Night People and the origins of the Twilight Dome over the kingdom of Elcor, the ladder of which I haven't given more than a vague answet to myself.
In my world, there's a region that people are forbidden from entering, because those who do tend to essentially disappear from existence itself. All that's left behind for those who knew them are their names and a blurred, uncanny picture of what they looked like.
The question is what is our purpose. the answer is, absolutely nothing. We simply happened, and our purpose is really whatever we decide it is, individually.
biggest mystery in my world is what caused the "magic jolt" (this is a working name right now, i may change it later).. the magic jolt is basically an event where magic broke for about an hour. during this period of time wild magic surged uncontrollably, all magic users lost their ability to cast, and all magic items failed or went wild with power. people who have studied the effects have come to the conclusion that a leyline nexus was involved but none have been able to determain what happened to the nexus nor which nexus it was.. the latter is just because the leyline involved is in an unexplored region but what happened is both quite simple and quite complicated and cannot be repeated as it changed some of the very laws of magic. to understand the "how" of the jolt, you must understand two things first.. 1) manabeasts in my world are created in several ways.. the important one for this discussion is that when a normal beast dies near or steps into a nexus point the soul of the beast is captured by the nexus and infused with high concentration of mana before being planted back into the body, causing it to be reborn as a manabeast. 2) before the magic jolt there was true souless undead. these undead only had necrotic mana animating them and no spirit/soul as a driving force. the magic jolt, then, was caused by a souless undead stepping into a nexus. the magic lashed out trying to grasp onto a soul that was not there and caused a feedback loop in the planet's leyline network which caused the breaking of magic. this resulted in the magic to grasp onto a soul from another world and implant it into the undead body. the body and soul would take about 200 years to adjust and be born (that plays into how a race known as manaborn are created but that explanation is for another time). this manaborn is the mc of a story im eventually gonna write. now, back to the magic jolt and how i mentioned it changed laws of magic.. true souless undead can nolonger exist.. in order for an undead to be created, a sudo-soul must be formed by weaving necrotic and life mana together. this sudo-soul can then be infused into a corpse to raise the dead.. magic no longer allows a body to be raised by necrotic mana alone. this prevents a magic jolt from ever happening again as the sudo-soul is something a nexus can latch onto.. but since most people never knew of how undead worked and its been a few hundred years since the change (and since necromancy from before the jolt died out since their magic seemed to have broke perminately.. no one knew the new requirements so they couldnt use them.. and current necromancy is thus viewed as a "new" and "modern" magic), the mystery of the jolt can pretty much not be solved as it'd require a (currently) impossible factor to occure.
Really it's a bunch of mysteries all combined in one. In Hexas, the presiding authorities are simply known as The Sisters. Each one corresponds to a certain element and season. Lorewise they're known to become the literally embodiment of the sun while in their season. However, there is a 5th that has become taboo to talk about. My players will soon learn that Space Dwarves from the world's moon crashed into the sisters' brother who was the true wielder of the sun. Seizing the opportunity, The Sisters gave him the coup de grace and stole his station over the world. The crash also created the BBEG. He used to be The Son's steed riding with him across the sky, but the impact and influx of magic energy corrupted him and his blood. Did I mention this is all a western?
"What caused the emergence of the ATF zones? Is there a way to stop the collapse of space-time in this reality? Does this have anything to do with the leader of Ferrus?" For context: ATF stands for Altered Time Flow, and as the name implies they're areas in Amerin (my continent) where time acts in a weird or unpredictable way. One of those areas is the Crystal Forest at the north, where glimpses of different futures and alternate pasts are shown to those that traverse its paths, and people disappear and reappear in places they've already been, or will be in the near (or far?) future. Ferrus is a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist (heh) by an unknown figure, who will be revealed as time goes on, to be a Necromaton/Mecha-Lich (Pointy Hat, TYSM) that hails from the far future and is trying to take control of the ATF zones to prevent the collapse of reality (yeah, he's gonna be a bit of a tragic figure). I'm still working on building the rest of the world, but that's the gist of my setting and I hope I can share it with people that enjoy some LOOOOOOOORE!
So my world which I'm working on and am trying to turn into a full fledged setting takes place on a series of planet sized "islands" in space all held together by great chains. Each one bears a different great rune upon it. There are hundreds of these islands. At the center is a crystalline "star". None of the races that dwell upon the islands know who or what created the structure or the purposes of the entire structure in general. There are no native races that anyone knows of to the structure and the majority of those that has settled found it after fleeing their homeworlds. Another big mystery is where did the humans go? In this world humans are a elder race and are directly responsible for the existence of several "new" species. Now that said the people of the setting don't know what happeed to them but I of course do. They basically bred themselves out of existence over millenia of getting freaky with aliens. So there are a lot of near human races but no pure blooded humans left. Or is there? Who knows! We'll just have to wait and see!
The world has enormous magical gems/orbs called "Aspects" that is considered the very essence of an elemental power (fire water earth air, void, radiance cold, ooze, lightning, thunder, acid, mineral, sand, salt and even more minor elements like that) The only ones the world knows about is the aspects of fire water, earth and air, everyone knows where they are and knows any mortal that even touches it, or harness their power, will die no one knows their origins, their purpose or even if they are sentient or not However my character recently discovered a secret aspect the aspect of space, and it is connected and has control over all the other aspects the secret of it is, every universe has one aspect of space, even your campaign, you reading this comment, it doesn't mean its on your world map orbthat its integral to your lore but its somewhere in the infinite expanse of space somewhere that no one can reach typically let alone know about The aspect of space is the linch pin of creation, if its destroyed, so is the universe, no afterlife, no gods, just gone The other aspects i mentioned like fire were artificially created by the guardian of the aspect of space in the game im in, in order to act similar to cosmic wave breakers from the elemental chaos coming to destroy the material plane with its very nature the aspects absorb that elemental power and stores it indefinetly thus is more a conduit or a lightning rod then anything else No one knows this except my party as my dwarf found a broken fragment of the aspect of space and in a one in a Trillion chance, he survived and became a star druid in that instant as part of his backstory so that broken fragment means that aspect of space is broken and soon the universe will end so now amongst us, if any of the players DM a game now, there is always a reference or a direct nod to the aspect of space in some fashion
My world is both a dream and a nightmare. In the void there were two beings, Arum and Mura, Arum created reality by dreaming of it and Mura wanted to devour his brother's dream so he went to sleep and projected himself as a nightmare in Arum's dream. Mura's nightmare is death, terror and despair, Arun's dream is life and magic
In my homebrew D&D world of Andaria, the biggest mystery is what the actual structure of the multiverse is. Even the gods don't know. Neither the Old Gods who forsook the world and caused the Sundering nor the newer Solaric, Heroic, and Monstrous Gods know. Related to said mystery is why the Sundering happened in the first place. Why did some number of ancient deities removing themselves from the world cause the planar borders to become exceedingly fragile? I know. I wish it to remain a mystery to anyone else until it becomes part of a campaign. I will say that the answer was not known to even gods due to it not wanting to be known, at least at first...
In my world, every year, someone unknown to the public places a red rose and a letter on the grave of Bovar Tzech (pronounced Check) a proud warrior who died centuries ago. The letter simply says, "with greatest love and admiration, Teague." No one knows who this "Teague" is. It happens once every year but the day always changes. It's prophesized that Teague will return before a great disaster occurs. To this day, no one knows who it is.
I like to play different ttrpgs with the same group of friends and we usually have references or running jokes across all of our games. But what if those weren't just references? Is our DnD campaign real, or just an active matrix node in our Shadowrun campaign?
The biggest mystery in my world currently is “who is the mastermind” the mastermind is a mysterious person who has been manipulating the worlds events to start wars. Test heros who may be “useful” or destroy people that get in their way.
Most people in my current campaign do not know that the great entities they worship are created and fueled by belief in them. It's a similar concept to the Warp in Warhammer 40k where sentient beings' emotions and thoughts manifest in the Warp as greater daemons with enough belief. Those who get too close to the truth are physically punished by the great powers to prevent the knowledge from getting out.
In Cybermechout... How to restore the environment enough to make the world habitable again. That and is there any way to unify humanity and other sentients to work towards that goal? Perhaps the real mystery is figuring out the history of those who survived, who set off the nukes, and how anyone survived.
In the common year 1822; archaeology is under way and so the fossil record was beginning to become uncovered but here lies the problem. Priamtes and normal creatures were beginning to be seen but then 5.7 million years ago (subject to change), plasmoids suddenly emerged and disappeared but just as quickly was the fantasy races. Centaurs, Minotaurs, dwarves, goblins, kobolds, orcs, elves, etc and this also includes millions of years of evolution of modern man in the span of a geological second or hundreds of years. Just who were these plasmoids? Why has modern beings come into existence and to a degree; capable of interspecies breeding and what does the mural; a terra cotta mural showing a three headed hydra being attacked by blocky shapes, the hydra biting a gray circle in half, a blue ball shooting at the hydra with a green line and the hydra being in the circle that is on fire, trying to tell?
In the Abyssal Gardens, the multiverse is in an infinite loop of creation, destruction, and recreation, of which even the Gods are unable to escape, with the exception of one; to an extent. Ouroboros, the God of the Cycle. The mystery is; how did this loop even begin in the first place? Even the God of Cycles, Ouroboros, does not know the answer to this question, despite being the oldest God by an unimaginable margin.
So in my world the 2 main gods, Order and Chaos have been destroyed simultaneously a few millennium ago but no one know exactly why, not even at the time. The most prominent theory is that they had a conflict and destroyed themselves, since one was the only powerful enough thing to harm the other, this idea deviates the worshipers views from the true relation between the two gods, but that is other story. What happened actually is that this reality caught the attention of cosmic creatures that feed on divine power so to protect it the two gods destroyed themselves, spreading their essence through the world. This both reduced the divine presence, and ensured that there would be a residual presence of their domains so this world could survive long enough to find a solution.
I've got one. My world has an ancient artifact known as the Cauldron of Creation that was gifted to the original Deities by the Creator and contained a shard of his power. It was later a key component of the Rift War, a war between the Deities that spanned centuries and eventually resulted in the near extinction of all the mortal races. When the good Deities finally won out, they were distraught by the damage they had caused, and so used the Cauldron to rebuild the mortal world before deciding that it was far too big a risk for anyone to have access to it. A neutral Deity was chosen to hide the Cauldron somewhere no other creature would find it, and hid both themselves and the Cauldron away. This Deity's very existence was stricken from history and the memories of all who knew them, leaving only the knowledge of what had been done. Nearly a thousand years later, they remain unknown, and the Cauldron remains hidden despite any attempt to find it. The only one with any clue how to begin in finding it is a Wood Elven Druid whose scale of longetivity and proximity to the events has left her as the only mortal with any knowledge of what happened between the Deities on that day.
Spoilers past the bump in case somehow this gets revived, but...probably not happening. An old campaign that never progressed very far that I was running, there was a gigantic forest that had grown up over the span of nearly a thousand years. Not strictly feywild though at some point that might have become at least part of the explanation for how _all this_ area turned into woodland, since the area was so huge. Not really the big mystery of the setting, though it could have become one down the line. The intent was that the forest basically outlined the map of an ancient kingdom that had been wiped out a thousand years ago. The culture of that kingdom lingered, of course, but a thousand years of so there was a lot that just wasn't known, including what actually caused the kingdom to fall. As the story progressed, hints were going to be dropped about how this wasn't the first cataclysm in the land, how there's a thousand year cycle of the area's kingdoms falling, etc., and how this time's situation is only unusual in that the territory never really recovered in the time since. There's a castle in the heart of the forest which had been built to contain a great destructive force. It eventually became the set of power for the kingdom, the people in charge stopped worrying, the people around just kinda took it as a folk tale. The last king was a former adventurer who took the legends seriously and, after taking the throne, started putting effort into stopping the cycle from repeating. He failed, and the cycle repeated: The tarasque sleeping under the kingdom woke up. The king and his adventurers eventually managed to subdue the tarasque and recontain it, but they couldn't kill it and they couldn't prevent it from ravaging the inner kingdom. Also the king's still alive: He's been using divine magic to extend his life so he could maintain the wards keeping the tarasque contained. The combined factors of a decimated population and a lack of governance resulted in the kingdom never recovering.
In this world I'm building, there was an ancient civilization that just disappeared. They had tremendous technology, even compared with the current-day world (in some ways), but for some reason, they just WEREN'T anymore. The real truth is, they got complacent. They got so obsessed with their own technology, and then arrogant in their place in the world, that they simply foisted all the work of maintaining their society onto a minority of "underclass" people. Those people themselves worked less and less, and disease began to be on the rise as eventually, nobody was willing to take the trash out for them. Food supplies fell off and became poorer quality, magnifying disease and ill health. A combination of narcissism and plain old ignorance resulted in them pretending it wasn't a problem. And then, when the conquerors inevitably came, they met with so little resistance that it wasn't even a challenge. Many of the civilization died, and the rest--knowing what was good for them--simply integrated into the conquering population. But the technology was too broken to function anymore--nobody who used it knew how to fix it--and can never be restored. But the enlightened, learned modern scholars of antiquities know the truth. They know that all of that dusty junk is CLEARLY all fertility idols in service of odd-shaped gods, because what ELSE would ancient people ever use things for?
Everyone who's ever existed in the world existed in another world. The real world, a cartoon world, a video game world, doesn't matter. Some were born there, others were pulled directly into it from their home world. Your best friend from middle school? Yeah, they existed there. Your Saints Row character? Yeah, he's somewhere in the world's history. Bugs Bunny? Oh you'd better believe he's out there, be careful what rabbits you go after. The real kicker is that two of the same people existing at the same time is a very real possibility, and things get really messed up whenever they get close enough to each other.
What caused the titan of creation to want a perfect universe and how many times did she reset the timeline? In truth this is the driving force behind what the third campaign in the setting is about. As reality breaks down around them timelines long past begin to merge into 1, creating glitches and exploits in reality, as well as bringing in alternate versions of characters such as the players or their allies.
In a sci-fi world I've been writing, at some point in the 32nd century, a scientist figured out how to put a dead person's soul into a cybernetic body. This isn't the mystery as the tech to do it has been used a few times in the story. The real mystery is the afterlife connected to it. It turns out that some of the people who are brought back have memories of the time they spent in the afterlife. many talk about how it was death, darkness, and then life again. but about 1 in every 20 thousand people brought back speak of a place called "The Dark Forest" which is described as a planet sized forest where everything once living must wander for a time before being brought to an afterlife or reincarnation, this could be a minute or a millennium. It also seems that the Dark Forest you appear in seems to be connected to the planet or moon you were born on. What is the mystery here? people who were born in space, aren't able to be brought back to life, and therefore the afterlife they go to is completely unknown. After hearing about this, the governments of the galaxy have made it a law that all children are to be born on a planet. but its been like this for so long that very few people even know about the real reason for the law's existence, governments now believe the law was made to make keeping track of passports easier. and the people who illegally have children in space to spite the governments of the galaxy may unknowingly be damning their children to an unknown fate.
An event called "The Faceless Year". One year, 700 Years ago, that nobody in the multiverse remembers. They went to bed one night, and woke up a full year later. The answer; An NPC from the first campaign in that setting became a psychopathic Over Diety, and wiped the universe's memories of the entire lead up, in order to keep his existence secret, and control all reality without interference. I had them play through an entire second game with new characters, and then, once the villain was revealed to be the NPC God from the previous game, I handed them their previous sheets, and said, "Context is necessary to continue with Campaign Two. Welcome to Arc Three of Campaign One." They lost their minds. Proudest moment as a DM.
My setting was a world much like our modern one, until an event called the First Calamity, wherein powerful storms scourged every civilization simultaneously and deposited meteors of magical golden metal upon the planet. This metal has become the source of all magic, but no one actually knows where it comes from and why it continues to fall with every Calamity Storm that follows. The answer is, it's alive. It's intelligent. And it's reproducing like a virus across every metal-rich celestial body it can reach by turning every metal it touches into more of itself and then launching offshoots into space. They hit the atmosphere and release magical power, resulting in the storms. At present, the planet of my setting hasn't fully "come online" because critical mass hasn't been reached. When will that happen? Maybe soon. Maybe not for a long while. But it's coming. And no one on the planet knows.
My big mystery is "why did all the ancient pantheons suddenly come to earth?" and "why does one planet need so many gods?" The gods themselves don't even know the answer. The truth: the gods and pantheons don't really exist. They are the manifestation of human imagination. After a great calamity befell humanity the energy of the dead condensed together, and their shared beliefs took form in the minds of the remaining people. It's basically a mass hallucination.
"Mystery" is - how Reflection, second and last plane, "dream plane" exists. I took Earth, our Earth, where in 2049, thanks to one dreamer that dreamed about apocalypse, there was actual apocalypse. Then was first age - almost medieval, low-fantasy setting for 290 years, and then, where the actual campaign going, second age - "middle-fantasy", where magic is still forming (verbal, somatic, material comps were invented in first age) so there's a lot of spells doesn't exist. So, Reflection. Plane of dreams, where dead souls going, taking form as a wisps that later becoming demons or spirits - depends on their past wishes and deeds. Demon can become spirit with enough "good" influence and spirits can become demons with "bad" influence. GMing this world on heavily homebrewed 5E and on 6E Shadowrun, campaign that takes place in 2032, when there was some magic virus outbreak all over the world. Another mystery yet to be revealed - who the f is trying to push peaceful second age world into world war.
If the names Atlas Veyland, Autobot Spectre, and Spectre means anything to you. READ NO FURTHER!!!!! The Yuun Magocracy was the most powerful nation to ever exist. Imagine the Roman empire except with beyond 9th level magics at their disposal. By the age of 8, a Yuun student would be able to cast almost any spell of 3rd level or lower. Then 25,000 years ago, everyone in the multiplanar empire disappeared overnight literally. Now all that's left of their ancient civilization is their legendary Yuun-gates that are within an hour's walk to and from every single city. (For reference having every single Yuun disappear is like disappearing every single human in Warhammer 40k within the same time period). The mystery is twofold- What happened to them? and what does the ascension of "The Ascendent 4" have to do with it? "The Ascendent 4" are the 4 gods of death that ascended to their positions in the last century of their civilization (Bhaal, Bane, Myrkul followed by the Raven Queen.)
For mine, it's "Why does one of the stars move across the sky at random, moving in different directions and speeds, never moving in any predictable way?"
How likely is it that its alive?
My players can't find out my world's secret lore if I don't know my world's secret lore
Or if they come up with something amazing you tell them "Omg I can't believe you noticed", you can't lose
Not your world sir, belongs to the table. (Metaphorically schpeekin)
For my old campaign it was gonna be "What lies in the house on the hill at the end of time and space"
Nobody showed up to session 2
Im sorry for your player's lack of commitment.
Ooohh...that sounds good. Don't sweep that aside. I'm sure you'll be able to use it someday.
Three years in, and I have never mentioned the sun. Why? Because the entirety of the world is on the inside of the planet’s crust. Being residents of that world nothing seems odd to the characters. I can’t wait for the players to ask THAT question! Imagining their facial expressions, I seriously can’t wait!
How have you managed to keep this reveal from your players? 😂 Surely the players must have found some environmental descriptions weird
@@valiensr1037 seriously on several occasions the players have made assumptions, but not once has a character come close to asking in game about the sun.
I really want to run a game where the society is centered around defending the world from the creatures that invade through The Maw. lots of demons and metal skinned creatures. the plot twist is that they're on a generation ship, but no one remembers, The Maw is a hull breach, and all of the 'creatures' are repair drones, combat chassis, and cloned monstrosities, trying to defend the repair drones, because the ship's AI is trying to fix things but is also a little messed up, and the lull between attacks is the ship building a new set of drones and growing new clones to attempt repairs again.
In one setting I made, the biggest mystery was the chief deities known as "the Light;" a trio of maidens that never showed themselves or acted separately, so might as well be one deity. The Light drove the denizens of the dark (demons) back to the worlds they had come from. At least that's what everyone knew about them.
I had played up the trio angle, making them sound like the Hecate of Greek legend, but hit the players with a simple bombshell, which they sadly did not pick up on, and that was that there were no truly divine beings in the setting. Had they followed that line of questioning, they would've found out that the Light were actually three of the denizens of the dark themselves who were underdogs that came across the ancient home of deities that had died off and used their tools to drive back the others of their kind. However, the tools only work if they work in tandem.
I've been watching your videos for a year now and I'm about to enter my first D & D campaign with my wife, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law. Wish me luck!
Both campaigns that I've run (are secretly set in the same universe, but the second campaign hasn't made it there yet) has a goose. This goose is basically the goose from Untitled Goose Game, but it can appear ANYWHERE at ANY time, no exceptions. If the characters look away for a moment, it disappears, even if it's tied up or locked in a cage or something. If they kill the goose, another identical one shows up later. Divinations don't take it into account, even the gods, when asked, say that they have no idea what the PCs are talking about when they mention the goose. And there will never be an explanation for the goose, but my players don't know that
The world itself not acknowledging the goose is what makes this one for me.
Usually in-jokes like this tend to become universally known about after a single adventure/tier of play, which really messes with the seriousness of the setting. Suddenly all NPCs also think something weird like that is natural, so inevitably the world becomes sillier.
I carried over something from my childhood. In my world the question is, who is Candle Ja
CANDLE JACK!
Ah, Freakazoid. One of the best shows to ever come out of the 90s.
In the dark fantasy campaign I'm apart of, the fae had banished elves from their domain for a crime they have commited and has resulted in all elves to face discrimination/hate from all other forms of Fae creature. However, what the crime is and if it was done by elves are both unknown. So much so that much younger elves and half elves are likely to question if it was even fair or not. Which makes sense with how details of such event can be easily lost over time.
Plus, for survival elves had developed a magic ability which is now natural to them. That ability being to disguise themselves as humans, this is because humans are aware that the elven races has fae ancestry and they're scared of that. Causing the ability to be quite good for when travelling. But does mean that elven settlements such as towns and villages are far apart and isolated, while being unable to become cities due to how it would draw attention.
This caused a long time goal that my character, a half human half elf knight name Z, to become figuring out the truth about the crime which his people were believed to have done and to reveal it to the entire world. And I swear, if it was just a prank gone wrong....he's going to have an aneurysm.
Now then, my friend who is the GM knows the answer to what the crime was and who did it. But, they're not going to reveal it till the time is right. Which makes sense, as the build up needs to happen.
My world's biggest mystery is why do all the PCs disappear after ~10 sessions.
Cuz ur campaign isn’t heavily tailored to the people playing. Players dont play in a campaign, a campaign happens around players… ❤
In my setting I call “Rift World” the big mystery is what’s causing the rifts that connect the mortal realm to the other plains. It’s a phenomenon with less than a thousand years of history, and some elves remember the start, which gave rise to several new sapient races. The explanation is that the gods are basically using the mortal realm as a battlefield of sorts, with whoever “wins the game” becoming the next overgod, as Apothis, the current overgod has long since left the universe leaving only a seed of power that can only be taken by one who has the approval of all other gods.
The world was created by the equivalent of God clicking “fill” on empty space when dirt was selected. So many major story hooks all due to that, from magic existing due to weaknesses within the universal code and the existence of data liches, to Lovecraftian galaxy sized voidworms and remnants of sunken worlds.
2:35 that is 100% a reference to the series Beyonders. It is a bit different than the lurkers in that series, but a completely black 'living shadow' sort of thing called a lurker makes me think its a reference.
For mine, it's "What spell turned the bulk of the Empire of Tiir into an inhospitable dark land?"
As for whether or not I know, I like to view it as similar to the question of what happened to the Dwemer.
My world actually has several big mysteries.
To just name a few: The identity and origin of the Deathsinger, the identity and origin of the Lightreaper, and what happened during the First Capital War.
Obviously, the answers are not known by the general public in-world.
The first two are very simple. The Deathsinger is an ancient hero that descended the depths of the Abyss to seal the source of abyss rifts that had been opening across the world and to also hide the abyss lantern. This did not end well for him, and he and his pet bat had gotten possessed by the energy of the abyss itself, and became a true neutral entity that mysteriously appears on only the most bloody of battlefields to cull both sides indiscriminately.
The First Capital War I personally haven’t even written up, as I like leaving it ambiguous. The only important details are that a country was leveled, 60% of the world’s population died, and Saint Vim and the Unnamed Belligerent killed each other and their weapons were sealed away.
As for the Lightreaper, their origin will be revealed in my book I’m writing, “A Ballad of Fire”, so stay tuned!
What book?
A tentative title would be appreciated so those interested could search it up later
@@valiensr1037 just updated my comment 👌
"A Ballad of Fire", huh? I'll keep an eye out.
only recently discovering this channel, can i just say the little moving bar that completes along with the post reading is probably the most genius thing ive seen for this sort of thing
Love this question.
For my current campaign, set at a magical school in a dimension connected to Brooklyn, NY, it is "What are the Invasives?". An invasive is an incredibly powerful magical being that is tied to a specific invasive species, and typically appear when and where they do (think Kudzu in the South, Emerald Ashborers in the midwest or Japanese Lantern Flies on the East coast). The Invasives appear humanoid, dressed in late 1800s British fashion, but the surface of their skin is hidden behind a twisting mass of the invasive species they associate with. They have a powerful anti magic and anti kinetic energy field around them, and also some other nasty tricks to get their way. In the world, no one knows where they come from, or what their motives are. No one knows if they cause the invasive species, if they are created when a species becomes invasive, or if they are something else entirely.
While I'm still defining all their details, I do know their end goal, which is my fun trump card if the players ignore the threat and go do other stuff. When there are enough Invasives in a realm, they will destroy it, and remake it in their eldritch masters image. So worse comes to worse, the Invasives will TPK the party, kill everyone else, destroy society and remake the natural order of the world, and I start my players in a new campaign in the post-apocalyptic twisted world they unleashed, and the big mystery in that one will be what led to the Great Unraveling. And they'll then know to never ignore the Big Bad. Honestly, its a Win-Win for me.
I think the big secret for my current campaign is the how/why does it all exist. I tried explaining it in this comment, but it was just too long, so here's a vastly simplified version.
Basically advances in things like AI, neural technology, computing power, and storage space allowed us to create a fully immersive set of AI worlds (kind of like ready player one). Then some kind of apocalypse happened that killed off humanity in short order without really destroying our infrastructure so this global VR server is still running. The campaign world and everyone in it (pcs and npcs) are all AIs living in a virtual world that's completely real to them.
The more powerful AIs responsible for creating/maintaining this world don't really know the truth either. They know there were created to make and maintain this world for the millions of "visitors" from another reality that came to live/play in their world, and that suddenly they stopped coming. But they have no idea their existence was a game for those visitors. After centuries of just keeping things going they're going insane from boredom and have figured out a way to shut down/destroy the server that is their world so they can finally stop existing.
What the PCs know atm is that reality is going to cease to exist if they can't stop it, that they've been chosen to do that by something extremely powerful (one of the AIs that hasn't gone insane) who has granted them each very powerful boons, and that at one point visitors from another plane used to come to this world. Eventually they'll learn the world was created for those visitor's amusement. I doubt they'll ever learn the why of it though, there's no one left alive who knew.
Well, I have a campaign centered around said mystery. The main structure of the land, The infinite Obelisk, has recently been acting up with random bursts of uncontrolled magic, worrying the King's court, the people, and even the gods. But as to what's causing them, no one knows.
Now not saying when I say infinite I mean "pierces the heavens beyond" infinite, but something up with that yeah
My world is separate universe which is given life by a lich phylactery which acts like our sun. The bbeg is a wizard who sacrificed her self to enter this relm to find and destroy it.
Well in the campaign that we just started (tomorrow is our third session) there seems to be some kind of magical weapon, and the party is incapable of hearing anything of use from the only person who seems to be knowledgeable about it, but before the campaign started, I planted the seed mystery that there used to be 243 gods and then about 406 years ago they all vanished without a trace, and to this day nobody knows that happened to them, and then seven months later half-mortal children of these gods appeared, became immortal and became the new gods. So obviously the mystery in question is "what happened to the old gods?" The new gods either don't know or just refuse to tell anyone.
In actuality, the secret is that this campaign is an indirect sequel to the last campaign that I ran (which ended in June of last year). In that campaign, the BBEG (who was secretly one of our Paladins' "god", but not actually a god, just their imprisoned former maid-type guy pretending to be one) had the end goal of rendering the gods mortal, killing them, establishing himself as the only god of the multiverse, then destroy the multiverse and rebuild it from the ground up. He did manage to render the gods mortal and kill all of them except for one (whom was worshipped by our other paladin, with both the paladin and that former god set to make an appearance in my campaign later down the line), but then the paladin who worshipped him sacrificed himself to lock them both inside a cage of pure anti-magic which would slowly fold in on itself and eat away at them for about a millennium until the both of them are literally unmade. Said BBEG in his last act did manage to unleash a huge wave of anti-matter and wipe out about 60% of the multiverse, but due to the multiverse's nature, it was back to full size in about nine months.
As for that magical weapon I mentioned earlier, there's ten of them, and their origin also ties back to the previous campaign. See, in the Halls of Eternity (where the gods live), the old gods had something called The Light of Creation, which is what they used to create living things, and after the previous BBEG killed the old gods, the Light of Creation was inadvertently thrown out into the universe in which these two campaigns take place, and then the last living old god, as well as her paladin split the Light of Creation across these weapons. The reason for this is because someone (this campaign's BBEG) broke into the cage containing the previous BBEG and stole his magic powers, and also absorbed the energy of his entire home universe, and plans to do the same with The Light of Creation and the universe in which it resides, in order to transcend existence
my next campaign is set about 20 years into a blight that is causing the shadow realm and undead realm to bleed into the prime material plane and shadow creatures run amok. a few cities survived, but the darkness keeps attempting to creep in. history knows that a group of knights long ago fought a titan, defeated it, but they all died. what isn't known is that the titan exploded, killing all the knights, and causing the blight, but it came on slowly, so they haven't connected the blight to the titan. days are dim and hazy, nights are dark and terrible, and only the lights and a certain type of rune keeps the shadow creatures at bay.
highest level transmutation wizard. whatever the mystery, he creates it himself first or reverse engineers it. otherwise he just visits the inventors at the time of creation and annoys the hell out of them. just a little bit of molecular alteration here, some minor adjustments for improvement there...and the second the priests, paladins, warlocks, barbarians start screaming of blasphemy or the craftsmen start throwing tools and try to strangle him, time stops for a while until the wizard literally enthralls a few gods or animates all the inventions. passionate complains often fall short in front of the thing in question obeying the offenders to the letter. cultists and scientists getting beaten and hung up upside down by their gods and science projects are seemingly hilarious. and then he starts lecturing again until their bodies run out of nourishment and exhaustion lets them fall asleep even though their eyes are forcibly held open...well, this wizard loves talking about a topic of interest to the very bitter end...
Right now the biggest mystery of my world is if I will ever actually finish the world
The homebrew world i played in was an icy world with maybe 3 hours of sun every day. The mystery was how it got that way/how to reverse it
Six months before my adventure started (it was a Modern Day Earth-Like world) all major sources of power ceased working. It was like they shut down. No nuclear power, no windmills, no hydroelectric dams, etc. At the same time, somewhere between 75-90% of humanity vanished. All in the blink of an eye. In the six months between the Vanishing and the start of the game, people and animals began mutating, getting strange powers, or both.
I know why it all happened, and it CAN be discovered and possibly even reversed... if the PCs dare to investigate, or even can investigate since survival is the name of the game currently.
In my current campaign, godhood is an achievable possibility, to the point that some creatures have become gods in a way (A tribe worships a griffin as being a god of sky and storms, it gains a measure of control over those things. Just as an early sub boss example) But that begs the question, what is real, capital letter God Hood? The beings that made the sun and the stars and the sea? The first planned major antagonist is a nature cleric cult leader that is trying to achieve immortality and godhood with the established, known route of belief, and by assimilating as much life force as possible to try and break a barrier that may or may not exist. In four or five sessions I will know if he succeeds, but as of now he's just overgrowing settlements to make a big summoning circle.
In the mystical world of Feyloria, a figure sits atop a frozen throne on the highest peak of the tallest mountain. The Frozen King of Mt. Monstrum is a mystery that goes back all the way to when the gods first came into existence. Home to all monstrosities that plague the land, Mt. Monstrum is a death trap to all who dare ascend the cold shivering peaks, not because of the monstrosities, but the King himself. A robe crafted from the skin of his fallen enemies drapes across his shoulders. His face obscured by black, light-absorbing fur, his only visible features are the cold, blue glowing eyes that stare straight through your soul. A crown of bones and twigs sits atop his head. When you see him, death is all but certain. Some say he is the child of cursed Goddess, others say he is a warlock that discovered true, purified, unlimited power. Whatever the case, the Frozen King remains a mystery that may never be solved.
PANR has tuned in.
As with many tables, the big mystery at mine is "will there be pizza" 🤷🏼♀️😄
My World has a Cult, rather simple, they revere the shadow, the darkness itself, as the Light in the world is "too strong" and they act as foil to my players. Behind the entire thing lies a great old one tho
I've been making a setting that is cut off from the planes, so certain spells like plane shift and resurrection haven't been discovered yet. So, from an in-world perspective, the mystery is "What is beyond this world?" or "Are the Gods real?"
There's also an ancient super-advanced progenitor race that mysteriously vanished, but I feel like that's par for the course for fantasy worlds.
How to make everyone survive the apocalypse. Over the course of a ten year campaign little seeds of different end of days scenarios have been picked away at by different players bit by bit. One guy released 5/7 deadly sins, another has freed Loki and Fenrir and are trying to shape Ragnorak, you get the picture. It's to the point where they are trying to find what apocalypse leaves a way to get through unscaved. I do not know, and am purely letting then come up with something wonderfully overthought. It will have a happy ending.
The godly thrones are empty, the celestial gates lie open, and the Angels are simply aping at being the gods they serve so that the mortals NEVER find out.
Oh, and no one knows Why
The Cleric and Paladin of the first campaign were gobsmacked, and now the epic level party is investigating.
In my world, there was a major even some 300-400 years ago, where mages across the world saw a massive increase in power and rose up to conquer and destroy as much as they could. This increase in power was of such magnitude that that even level 1 wizards could call down meteor swarms. Of the various nations of the world, only two survived, The Drakeholt, an ancient nation protected by dragons, and a fledgling nation-state (that I haven't named yet) of dispossessed peoples who survived through making warlock pacts en mass. What caused the mass increase of power and why most if not all of the mages affected went mad is unknown and I still haven't decided on it myself though I do have a few ideas, the two most prevalent are 1.) that a rogue god wanted to wipe the world clean and start from scratch, and 2.) that some very powerful liches caused it in an effort to become death gods, but nothing.
For my most recent campaign it's the "3 Strands of reality". They are small but long pieces of string, each one caries massive powers but need some thing to power them. In order of which one I intend my PCs to find are, the "Soul Strand", this traps souls that are unfortunate to have their living host die nearby. It allows the wielder to channel the energy into strong dark magic based attacks, some of which being homebrewed like the powerful "World Tear" which creates mini blackholes that last a couple turns depending on the roll. The "Palisade Strand", this can instantly wrap around the target creating an almost invincible defense by warping the space around it to create a place of sorts. The last is the strongest the "Reality Strand". It lets the user make one wish with an equal punishment for using. No one knows where they came from but they are well protected. But coincidentally about a month before the start of the campaign, they were stolen. And the weirdest part is that everyone forgot about them except for a few people, all my PCs remembered but their were also some others like the "Grand Wizard" who dies very quickly so, basically no one knows about it that can make an influence.
So in my homebrew pf2e based setting which have two active campaigns (one in person one online, running on the same concurrent timeline) the big mystery is how the kingdom of Elka which spanned the entire continent fell, all that is known is that it was a civil war no other details as well as why elves are a dying race. I know the reasons why for both as the former will be explained in the in person campaogn and the later will be found out by asking a multitude of elves over time as well as little tidbits sprinkled in when looking into rumors
In my Radiant Citadel campaign, the question was 'what happened to the original iteration of the Radiant Citadel?'
In canon, the Citadel is the second version of it, but there was a previous version that was destroyed and no one really knew why. Also, in the myth arc I homebrewed into the campaign, four Dragonborn also kept observing things from afar with the party not knowing who they are, but they're somehow directly involved with disasters happening in the Citadel civilizations throughout the campaign.
In my campaign, it turns out it was four, evil Elder Elementals collectively called the Primal Forces who were sealed away by a group of heroes, but too late to stop the damage of their rampage. This included the dead Wyvern Incarnate in the Preserve of the Ancients, which was representing the civilization that the Primal Forces utterly destroyed upon emerging in the first place.
The four Dragonborn are the leaders of a cult dedicated to releasing the Primal Forces and the disasters they're causing are all dedicated to that end. They didn't figure that out until a couple of levels ago, and didn't figure out the cult's actual plan until last session. We've been running the campaign for probably over a year now, so recent reveal.
I'm pretty sure there are some mysteries in my DM's world that he doesn't even know about) He already admitted that the surplus of fire in his world doesn't mean anything, it's just a part of his idea of game balance (I was convinced that it's related to the fact that the world was created from fire).
Me as a GM - well, kinda almost everything, and no, I don't know. I just started GMing a few months ago, and I'm approaching it one step at a time.
In the campaign I host for my friends there is a creepypasta/horror story about the "red riding hood" which lurks in the forests of the world and preys on the people that go in the woods. It has never actually made an appearance in the sessions but I always remind them of the presence of this thing.
“Is the Ember Queen Knocking?” is a good start. I don’t know the answer, but it’s at least plausible.
I'll throw my hand in the ring.
I have had my DnD world called Tyria for nearly 9 years at this point. I even have the map of it hanging on my wall. My players have often asked me was their anything else to the Tyria beyond what the map said, because they were trying to get from the lower eastern part of the map to the lower western part of the map and wanted to see if they could go around. I always told them that this side of the map was undiscovered lands that would be discovered eventually, and even after 2 campaigns and a currently ongoing third campaign, they have yet to discover what's on the other side.
The real reason as to why is because of how I flavored the idea of the different planes in DnD. I initially decided to go with a "snow globe" approach in which the plane/world is flat and is encased in its own globe that would provide whatever things are needed such as air. I instead went with a slightly scarier approach. There was a place in the world of Tyria that was a Giant triangular depth in the middle of the ocean that would take you directly to the Shadowfell should you go in. This gave me the idea that each realm had an inverse in order to create balance. As a result, on one half of the planet is Tyria, but the other half is the Shadowfell, and no one has made the connection yet. I am planning on revealing this at the end of my current campaign which is looking like it will end around Spring/Summer 2025 so when I reveal this, I might come back and give an update.
So my basic idea for my self wrote Transformers campaign is that multiple Cybertrons (the Transformers home world) have been plucked out of time, space, and reality into a void-like universe, with some Cybertrons having large swaths of their population dead.
The players will likely figure out quickly that this is a plot by Unicron to both feed him infinitely and stem any future defeats. The cause of the mass amounts of deaths though? A version of Tarn who became a herald of Unicron and maintains his debut power of talking people to death and has been using communications (ie. Radio, television, hologram communicators) to kill en mass.
I'll have to explain this so the multiverse in my campaign is in some sort of layer setting where there the multiverse and below that there is clusters of similar universes and then the universes themselves. But at some point in time the majority of them just collapsed in on each other for no apparent reason. Only the true gods the DM, Time, and Magic know and they won't tell. this resulted in a singular universe forming and every god and mortal that survived had a war that led to most of the greyhawk gods alive and everyone blaming it on Vecna (I'm going to change this because one of my players can't shut up). This will be retconned and replaced with someone much worse.
Anyways I'll return in a year possibly.
There was the mystery of the first queen Annarose, from my first campaign. She was the first to use magic and conquered all the tribes to bring the continent together under her rule. Then she disappeared leaving icons and statues in her image, and if you looked hard enough you'd find a copy of her suspended in time by magic. And if you failed a dexterity save and touched the body, you would be transformed into her with only a wish spell able to reverse it unless you could find the immortal Annarose to undo the spell. Sadly, the campaign fell apart before they could even find out that she was possibly still around
In one of my older D&D 4th edition campaign settings, which I never got to use, I had a massive landmark that could be seen across the entire world, well the known world of the campaign since it wasn't flat.
In the world of Appuntito, there is a mystery that no mortal or immortal knows.
For untold ages, since before the age of men, dwarves, elves, or even dragons, it had stood there.
No one knows what purpose it holds. Is it a monument? A statement.? An impending doom? A stalled disaster? The first murder?
It was called Damocles, the Worldsplitter. A massive sword so massive its length reached above the atmosphere.
It was in the shape of a singular massive iron sword with no handle, it looked more like a massive bar of iron rather than a sword. But its edge and handle proved its nature.
It stands in the center of what is called the 'Sundered Isles', which had once been a continent the size of Africa but was shattered into pieces when the sword stands. A massive fracture of canyon-sized fissures called the Abyssal Wound expands from the point of impact of the massive sword, lining out in ten different fractures to every corner of the world.
Each canyon is referred to as a World Scar and it is said that it connects to the afterlife as the winds from the canyon often sound like the cries and howls of lost souls bleeding out of the scar. OR falling in.
It can be seen from all the known lands. From the vast forests and frost-covered mountains of the north. From the dense jungles and sea-sized deserts of the west. From the floating islands and seas of the south. From the golden fields and black marshes of the east. All of the known world has witnessed Damocles in all its glory and horror.
By scholar's calculations is only one-fourth of the sword in sight, the rest is impaled into the depths of the world.
Nobody knew where the sword came from or why it was impaled into the world where it is. Only that it has stood there for untold eras. Long enough for various creatures and even civilizations to adapt around the World Scars and the energy leaking from them and the sword itself.
Many think the sword is a weapon from a higher entity who tried to destroy the world. Other things it was dropped during the God War in ancient times, but no deity has ever claimed to ever seen the sword fall. Some have even said that magic did not exist in the world until the sword appeared, but few recognize this theory as possible.
The truth is that Damocles the Worldsplitter is not a weapon but a vessel. A sword-shaped dimensional vessel constructed to fly through the Astral Sea as a means to transport an entire world's worth of lifeforms away from certain doom.
During its trans-dimensional jump away from the doomed reality the sword-shaped vessel flew through the astral sea for an unknown time, but it didn't slow down. As nobody had considered needing breaks.
So when the sword vessel flew out of the astral sea it slammed into the world known as Appunito at full speed, liquefying its crew and piercing halfway through the planet before stopping. Shattering a continent and shifting the planet off its axis in the process.
The planet was Earth during the era of the Dinosaurs, and the Sword of Damocles became the disaster that ended the Jurassic Era. The supernatural energies of the still undamaged but crewless vessel began to leak and alter the world itself. Releasing the souls of the crew within it as well as various manners of energy into the world of Earth. Slowly but surely altering it into Appuntito, the Scarred World.
I wanted to play it out as an alternative Earth where humanity didn't exist until far later when created by gods. As it was the portion of the world that was Africa that got shattered to pieces. So history went vastly different but most of the shapes of the world and the most common portions of our history were the same.
Here are some examples of various events in this AU Earth's History.
Humans were created by the Christian God as in the myths and never evolved from monkeys. Ancient Greece founded democracy, but they were mostly halflings/hobbits and various types of fey. Many ancient Greek heroes were of a halfling or fey nature. Ancient China was founded by warring clans of dragonborns, goliaths, and birdfolk. They never migrated to Japan.
Ancient natives of the American continent from various nations and tribal states, most of them are some variations of beast folk. Ancient Rome was created and ruled by Gnomes who integrated other cultures and races into their empire. On the American Continent is the nation of FSA, the Free States of America, founded by colonists and natives who abolished slavery.
Genghis Khan invaded the world with his Mongol horde, but he was an Orc. Ancient Egypt existed but was mostly ruled by Elves, with a caste system based upon race rather than nobility, but was an island nation sort of like Britain ruling over a large number of islands. The Jews were freed by Moses from slavery but rather than crossing the Red Sea they were taken to safety by Jehovah who lifted up the island they fled to and made it fly in the sky. Thus born was Jerusalem the Promised Land.
The Romans failed to take Britain because of the druids and the priests of the Celts, Picts, and Brits, causing severe storms and sinking the majority of their fleet. The Kingdom of Camelot becomes the new British Empire under the bloodline of King Arthur Pendragon.
The nation of Japan is a mixture of youkai-like races, like Kenku, Tortle, Trollkin, and so on. The Western nations are unable to gain influence and power over Japan as Japan already has a lot of power and knowledge of gunpowder from their encounters with China.
The environments were completely different as well. But I didn't manage to finish it all before 5e came out and I haven't thought of making another campaign with this setting ever since. But I might do so in the future.
Fourth year into the campaign and were still nowhere closer to the one were currently thrown into. " no night has ever come, no wish to grant. We the shadowless shall shine across all the astral. " our group has to a conclusion that what were dealing with involves the mad god somehow with a forever sun prophecy.
Killian sounds a bit like the Nameless One from The Dark Eye.
I don't think I'll be using it for d&d again any time soon because it kind of conflicts with new bugbear lore which I think is super cool (medium creature able to go anywhere a small creature can. Yes please) but in Luxophen probably the biggest mystery is why are orc formed? Because in this setting they aren't exactly born, unlike every other living creature they aren't born of other life, but instead death. Specifically any sufficiently large mass of dead biomass or even slightly transformed biomass like ash, has a seemingly random chance of combining together into an orc infant. Also this is technically separate from magic in the sense it still happens in anti-magic zones and doesn't show up on detect magic or anything
The answer is reincarnation. Specifically that 200 years after you die(when you can nolonger be brought back by true resurrection) you are reincarnated in the first available vessel and if there are none the universe makes one.
Why the world was created in the middle of the Abyss in the first place.
I know when it was created, and a few of those who were instrumental in creating it, but not _why_ a section of the Abyss was carved out to make a planet.
I will say, in the setting with Keres and Killian and all that... it sounds like in that setting, Keres literally invented the concept of the Lich. A Goddess of Death storing her soul in an object that can recreate her body should she be "killed"? Though the fact that they claim she told no one it was even possible suggests that this isn't actually the origin of the concept of the Lich in this setting... simply because, while she did it first, the knowledge would never have spread from her, so someone else would have to figure it out on their own to become the "First Lich".
in my case, my world's secret lore is being little by little known by my players. It has a lot to do with a sickness that is infecting all the world, with a certain faerie witch that want's to free civilization from those god's that are bad for it's development, and with two of those god's. The Chaos God, and the Storm Goddess, the first because he stopped civilization development for almost two milenia with constant war, and the first because she is the empress of a nation and wouldn't let technology advance if her nation didn't already have something similar or even better
Roughly one elven generation (900 years ago) which is two Dwarven generations ago a conclave of elves competed with dwarves for rare resources underground. A rare mineral used to craft "instruments" that can alter the vibrations of the universe and change the fabric of reality is used by two elven brothers, they wanted to remove the dwarves love for treasure so they could have the resources to themselves. Something went wrong and they cause a massive cave in that killed (some were trapped but this is also a secret for now) 90% of the Dwarven population and caused an exodus of the dwarves to a mountain.
There's exactly two people that know exactly what happened, the brothers and one is the vampire BBEG and the other is his aged brother living an unnaturally long, cursed life
The bbeg is a quest giver and is subtley using the party to increase his power and fuel his research to become an immortal dragon and sever the connection of the gods to the world. So he can rule it unopposed
To the Red-Blue-Black Story:
...And they probably will!!!
My world also has the universe's creation as one big mystery, even though people have supposedly known how it happened for centuries. According to the divine histories of every deity's religion - one of the only things all the gods seem to agree upon - the world was formed when the divine gained their portfolios through a game of chance, picking their domains with each winner. Afterwards, they all gave a piece of their divinity to craft the planes of existence.
The kicker comes with modern day magical theory: laws of magic that even the gods must abide by, based on evidence, with the very first law being the Law of Concepts - that everything in creation has an inborn "concept" that drives what it is and what it's meant to do. The more mystically-powerful something is, the closer it has to abide by its concept, which is why outsiders tend to be defined by their alignment and purpose, while mortals can have such strong free will.
As such, it stands to reason that the gods, as the greatest mystical forces in the known universe, must be the most strongly tied to their concepts - and so, it drives a sort of "chicken or the egg" conundrum between theists and scholars. Did the gods tie themselves to their concepts when they chose their domains? Were they predestined to acquire them? Are any of the gods NOT reigning over domains that fit their concept, weakening them? Is the divine origin story of the universe even true? It's easily the biggest point of contention between classical theologians and scholars of magical theory, and the gods don't seem intent on giving anyone any answers.
The biggest mystery in the campaign I'm a part of is how tf did my characters even come in. the first one just kinda appeared from the void, and when he died the void just spat out my other character. This has yet to be explained
Won't say.
I still haven't run my new world, yet.
Not sure if I'll ever get around to it, but I don't want to take the chance of it getting spoiled.
One of my world's is a giant, multi levelled dungeon. The entire thing is a game show. Party vs party combat is a thing. All the events are televised via oculus and magic mouths, to those that can afford the set up (yes, I know it's a bit hunger games).
All participants are invited to appear one time only, and have an emergency device given to them freely, that will transport them back to where they came from, with all that they are carrying. (Although it has been known for some to creatively make their way back)
The big mystery is the actual host of the show. You see, all this takes place on its own plane, and the gods dare not tread here or interfere here. Yes. It makes some classes unplayable.
Y'see, this glasses wearing five foot, frail human, is actually the seeder of life, the father of gods.
But the gods butchered him and cast him to the void, because he only seeded life, for life to worship, and create deities. He feasts on deities.
And with every adventurer that dies on this plane of his own making, he slowly returns to strength.
It's not just endless puzzles and encounters. There's a lot of politics, mystery and intrigue.
One party was curious as to how the plane is populated by all manner of creatures that should naturally prey upon one another, but dont, have never beem observed feeding, and will override their instinctive behaviour to work together.
This party were also very curious upon discovering a beloved party NPC, being absolutely fine and dandy at an inn, after they had all observed them get brutally smashed against the floor into a red paste the session before.
This led the party to discover the existence of the deep spawn farms
Who destroyed humanity's home star system? (All of it, not just Earth.) I created a whole science fiction setting around this and I don't even have a definitive answer! There are lots of other Deep Cosmic Mysteries out there, but that's the big one.
I have a few mysteries asked about Emanon, but I'm not answering them:
• Why does the owl prison guard sound like Samuel L.Jackson?
• How do the Shit-Stalking Bears have the capability of Invisibility, even after attacking?
• Why do the Orcs, Goblins, Bugbears, Minotaurs, and other barbaric races don't go after the other civilizations and formed a fraternity town.
• Why do the Drow and Duregar get along, but not Elves and Dwarves or their respective counterparts?
• Why does Death have a surfer accent and is chill?
• Why are the older and rich dragons all lawyers?
• Why is there a town full of previously evil creatures now turned good?
The main factions that rose from the ashes of the civilization before are all survivors of a cataclysmic event. World was based on a lot of edgy wants and wishes so originally the "cataclysm" was an invasion by Phyrexia during the Apocalypse story arc. When Phyrexia's god Yawgmoth was destroyed by a weapon called the Legacy, all Phyrexians essentially ceased to function without his will to guide them. Each faction has a "win condition" capable of wiping out one other faction that are tools leftover from the invasion by the Phyrexians.
More recently I shifted that to being an internal power struggle instead of magical interstellar war and the groups that caused it locked their doomsday devices away--most of which now dwell among the heart of each new faction. In any case the big mystery and its answer are known by one entity whose entire goal is to bring back the old ways and whatever survives this purge will form a new world order under its control.
In Deotas no one knows where the half formed and the dreamlands came from, there is speculation but no one besides the big three know.
Spoilers:
First civilization: creates a hollow world around a tiny star, Dyson sphere, earth sized. And place it, three moons, and their "that's no moon," next to a binary star system. The world is made from two interlocking spheres which rotate as the keys are used...
Downfall when the system gets trappped in a slowly decaying orbit around a black hole above the Milky Way.
Many hundreds of Thousands of years pass.
Second civilization: colonists from Earth
Downfall as the system orbits away from the galaxy and the world freezes, but they find the paths to the innerworld, and caves and deep tunnels in the outer world landscaping
Two-hundred thousand years pass, the world warms.
Known:
Third civilization fights among themselves, slavery, disease, poverty, discovering magic....
Downfall in a plague, slave revolt, and (a key being turned causing) a thousand years of quakes.....
Fourth civilization is the current one, in its second age. Magic abounds, and the world is mostly at peace.
Spoilers:
There is a council that of psyonics that rewrite history, physical evidence and memories of certain events and people, using giant moon stones in a geometric pattern around the world to rewrite people's minds. (If it were a tv show, the "Last time on..." would be slightly or majorly different than what actually happened the previous episode, and the characters would remember it the different way...)
There are some who are immune, or have figured out the lie, they are targeted for assassination. (The story starts as one character returns home to find out everyone thought he'd been killed...a failed assassination and coverup)
I have something called the commetfell in my world. It's an orb that fell from the sky like 600 years before the campaign started and would give god-like powers to whoever wielded it. But a massive war broke out over it and nearly destroyed the planet. The victors of the war took it and raised the habitable pieces of land into the sky and now live on floating islands. So I have two main mysteries I don't really have answers for and I kinda need an answer to one. 1. What is the Commetfell? 2. Why are the islands slowly starting to sink from the air?
In the setting I'm preparing, Kïrrond, is a post post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy. In a war between an ancient civilization and the first gods, that happened so long ago, to the point that only the survival gods remember, fractured the material plane itself.
That fracture allowed individuals or large groups to arrive there; be by accident, luck, or intentionally (is also a way to not limit the races to the players). But it is very difficult to leave, incentivating the creation of star vessels to sail through the stars to find paths to others' materials planes.
The cultures that arrive allow their gods to go there or the birth of a God based on the collective memory and believe, no one know the answer; except few chooses ones. The truth is both, a god is born when enough people belief on them, and the faith give them gives sustain; and if more people there beliefs in a god, than the original place, it is dragged to Kïrrond dooming the other part.
And why did the ancient civilization and the original gods be at war? The gods used to walk on the world at will, and depending on the type of god, the consequences for the mortals varieties a lot. So, to protect themselves, the ancient civilization used the power of the faith to create his own gods. That was the catalyst for war. After erasing all registers about the power of the faith, the survival gods placed a restrain on the world, no god can ever walk through the world, and no mortal can ascend to godhood with support from a certain number of gods (I didn't wanna determine a exact number). Some mortals have the potential, be it by raw power and knowledge or be connections, these are called "portentus", beings with incredible importance and power, but in a statement, not being able to fight others; be it to not anger a god that they need support, lose support or become exposed to attack from others "portentus". And not being capable of telling, directly or indirectly. Today, they fight indirectly in the shadows, by politics, commerce, patronage, alliances, or even adventurers.
If the players choose to have a patron, there is a chance to get involved partially on this. And I don't have the intention to let one ascend easily, only if the party changes too much the balance or if they discover it somehow and make it their objective alongside the events of the campaign.
Cool thread 👍
My world’s biggest mystery is: after the unwitting release of Tharizdun from his imprisonment, and the subsequent trapping of Talona into the place beyond the great celestial divide…(crickets) they are both evil gods in the finale of my very first campaign… playing or running… by a brave pc named (identifying him not ok) sacrificing and trapping himself with talona by being polymorphed into an elephant an squeezed through the portal like a mozzarella ball through a cheese grater. It was quite a moment, being that he almost clawed his way back out to safety before being betrayed by another pc (with a history of lying on dice rolls and murder hobo behaviors) and let him to fight for his life against a wounded god and as the portal closed another pc who spent an entire session early in the campaign desperately seeking a divine intervention wedding ring(not his wedding either) and then for every session after treated it like the ONE RING, actually threw the ring in after him, WHO FREAKING CAUGHT IT!!! And used it in the most amazing end game showdown ive seen to date that resulted in heat metal on the ring after talona finally got her hands on it that actually killed her. Following so far? Ight, well the secret is coming, but, after receiving blessings from the other gods he was able to free, they sent him back to fight a new impending darkness on the world. Now, everyone assumes they meant tharizdun, It was actually the villain of a completely unrelated campaign and now is an easter egg the party is close to discovering!!!! (Its a lore swap thing, where i take his character and insert it into an already established plot without overly adapting the story to fit a character backstory that doesn’t quiiiite fit perfectly. I cant wait till i get to say his real name after they research the history behind his name. Not to fond of telling him he’s captured, incapacitated, and being drained of his immense god infused soul energy and if they dont hurry and put the pieces together he will die and the bbeg will consume him to grow even stronger. 😮 🎤
Once, Giants ruled the world. They kept all other civilizations in their iron grip, enslaving them in the names of their gods. Similar to Forgotten Realms. And just like on Toril, the Dragons began a war against them. However, this time, the Dragons lost. They were driven to the corners of the plane. Yet less than a century later, the Giants' empire lay in shambles.
A great mist rolled across the land, leaving nature revitalized where it went... and the ruins of Giant civilization in its wake. There were mountains of Giant corpses, and only when the Giants had been banished to the furthest reaches of the world, did the mist disappear. Humanoid empires rose in the wake of the destruction.
The Thundering Mist has yet to roam the plane again, though sightings have been reported in times of conflict. Only when the Frost Giants attempted to retake their empire was the secret of the Mist uncovered. It was no god or outsider who called it down. It was hundreds of thousands of spells channeled together by a single humanoid race.
It was the Firbolgs, who until recently, had kept to themselves in their forests. They were recently drawn out by a large-scale war, where they aided Gnomes and Wood Elves against the aggressive High Elves.
There's some other mysteries the world has, such as the identity of the Night People and the origins of the Twilight Dome over the kingdom of Elcor, the ladder of which I haven't given more than a vague answet to myself.
In my world, there's a region that people are forbidden from entering, because those who do tend to essentially disappear from existence itself. All that's left behind for those who knew them are their names and a blurred, uncanny picture of what they looked like.
The question is what is our purpose. the answer is, absolutely nothing. We simply happened, and our purpose is really whatever we decide it is, individually.
biggest mystery in my world is what caused the "magic jolt" (this is a working name right now, i may change it later).. the magic jolt is basically an event where magic broke for about an hour. during this period of time wild magic surged uncontrollably, all magic users lost their ability to cast, and all magic items failed or went wild with power. people who have studied the effects have come to the conclusion that a leyline nexus was involved but none have been able to determain what happened to the nexus nor which nexus it was.. the latter is just because the leyline involved is in an unexplored region but what happened is both quite simple and quite complicated and cannot be repeated as it changed some of the very laws of magic.
to understand the "how" of the jolt, you must understand two things first..
1) manabeasts in my world are created in several ways.. the important one for this discussion is that when a normal beast dies near or steps into a nexus point the soul of the beast is captured by the nexus and infused with high concentration of mana before being planted back into the body, causing it to be reborn as a manabeast.
2) before the magic jolt there was true souless undead. these undead only had necrotic mana animating them and no spirit/soul as a driving force.
the magic jolt, then, was caused by a souless undead stepping into a nexus. the magic lashed out trying to grasp onto a soul that was not there and caused a feedback loop in the planet's leyline network which caused the breaking of magic. this resulted in the magic to grasp onto a soul from another world and implant it into the undead body. the body and soul would take about 200 years to adjust and be born (that plays into how a race known as manaborn are created but that explanation is for another time). this manaborn is the mc of a story im eventually gonna write.
now, back to the magic jolt and how i mentioned it changed laws of magic.. true souless undead can nolonger exist.. in order for an undead to be created, a sudo-soul must be formed by weaving necrotic and life mana together. this sudo-soul can then be infused into a corpse to raise the dead.. magic no longer allows a body to be raised by necrotic mana alone. this prevents a magic jolt from ever happening again as the sudo-soul is something a nexus can latch onto.. but since most people never knew of how undead worked and its been a few hundred years since the change (and since necromancy from before the jolt died out since their magic seemed to have broke perminately.. no one knew the new requirements so they couldnt use them.. and current necromancy is thus viewed as a "new" and "modern" magic), the mystery of the jolt can pretty much not be solved as it'd require a (currently) impossible factor to occure.
Really it's a bunch of mysteries all combined in one. In Hexas, the presiding authorities are simply known as The Sisters. Each one corresponds to a certain element and season. Lorewise they're known to become the literally embodiment of the sun while in their season. However, there is a 5th that has become taboo to talk about. My players will soon learn that Space Dwarves from the world's moon crashed into the sisters' brother who was the true wielder of the sun. Seizing the opportunity, The Sisters gave him the coup de grace and stole his station over the world. The crash also created the BBEG. He used to be The Son's steed riding with him across the sky, but the impact and influx of magic energy corrupted him and his blood. Did I mention this is all a western?
"What caused the emergence of the ATF zones? Is there a way to stop the collapse of space-time in this reality? Does this have anything to do with the leader of Ferrus?"
For context: ATF stands for Altered Time Flow, and as the name implies they're areas in Amerin (my continent) where time acts in a weird or unpredictable way.
One of those areas is the Crystal Forest at the north, where glimpses of different futures and alternate pasts are shown to those that traverse its paths, and people disappear and reappear in places they've already been, or will be in the near (or far?) future.
Ferrus is a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist (heh) by an unknown figure, who will be revealed as time goes on, to be a Necromaton/Mecha-Lich (Pointy Hat, TYSM) that hails from the far future and is trying to take control of the ATF zones to prevent the collapse of reality (yeah, he's gonna be a bit of a tragic figure).
I'm still working on building the rest of the world, but that's the gist of my setting and I hope I can share it with people that enjoy some LOOOOOOOORE!
So my world which I'm working on and am trying to turn into a full fledged setting takes place on a series of planet sized "islands" in space all held together by great chains. Each one bears a different great rune upon it. There are hundreds of these islands.
At the center is a crystalline "star".
None of the races that dwell upon the islands know who or what created the structure or the purposes of the entire structure in general.
There are no native races that anyone knows of to the structure and the majority of those that has settled found it after fleeing their homeworlds.
Another big mystery is where did the humans go?
In this world humans are a elder race and are directly responsible for the existence of several "new" species.
Now that said the people of the setting don't know what happeed to them but I of course do.
They basically bred themselves out of existence over millenia of getting freaky with aliens. So there are a lot of near human races but no pure blooded humans left.
Or is there?
Who knows! We'll just have to wait and see!
The world has enormous magical gems/orbs called "Aspects" that is considered the very essence of an elemental power (fire water earth air, void, radiance cold, ooze, lightning, thunder, acid, mineral, sand, salt and even more minor elements like that)
The only ones the world knows about is the aspects of fire water, earth and air, everyone knows where they are and knows any mortal that even touches it, or harness their power, will die
no one knows their origins, their purpose or even if they are sentient or not
However my character recently discovered a secret aspect
the aspect of space, and it is connected and has control over all the other aspects
the secret of it is, every universe has one aspect of space, even your campaign, you reading this comment, it doesn't mean its on your world map orbthat its integral to your lore but its somewhere in the infinite expanse of space somewhere that no one can reach typically let alone know about
The aspect of space is the linch pin of creation, if its destroyed, so is the universe, no afterlife, no gods, just gone
The other aspects i mentioned like fire were artificially created by the guardian of the aspect of space in the game im in, in order to act similar to cosmic wave breakers from the elemental chaos coming to destroy the material plane with its very nature
the aspects absorb that elemental power and stores it indefinetly thus is more a conduit or a lightning rod then anything else
No one knows this except my party as my dwarf found a broken fragment of the aspect of space and in a one in a Trillion chance, he survived and became a star druid in that instant as part of his backstory so that broken fragment means that aspect of space is broken and soon the universe will end
so now amongst us, if any of the players DM a game now, there is always a reference or a direct nod to the aspect of space in some fashion
My world is both a dream and a nightmare. In the void there were two beings, Arum and Mura, Arum created reality by dreaming of it and Mura wanted to devour his brother's dream so he went to sleep and projected himself as a nightmare in Arum's dream. Mura's nightmare is death, terror and despair, Arun's dream is life and magic
In my homebrew D&D world of Andaria, the biggest mystery is what the actual structure of the multiverse is. Even the gods don't know. Neither the Old Gods who forsook the world and caused the Sundering nor the newer Solaric, Heroic, and Monstrous Gods know.
Related to said mystery is why the Sundering happened in the first place. Why did some number of ancient deities removing themselves from the world cause the planar borders to become exceedingly fragile?
I know.
I wish it to remain a mystery to anyone else until it becomes part of a campaign. I will say that the answer was not known to even gods due to it not wanting to be known, at least at first...
In my world, every year, someone unknown to the public places a red rose and a letter on the grave of Bovar Tzech (pronounced Check) a proud warrior who died centuries ago. The letter simply says, "with greatest love and admiration, Teague." No one knows who this "Teague" is. It happens once every year but the day always changes. It's prophesized that Teague will return before a great disaster occurs. To this day, no one knows who it is.
I like to play different ttrpgs with the same group of friends and we usually have references or running jokes across all of our games. But what if those weren't just references? Is our DnD campaign real, or just an active matrix node in our Shadowrun campaign?
The biggest mystery in my world currently is “who is the mastermind” the mastermind is a mysterious person who has been manipulating the worlds events to start wars. Test heros who may be “useful” or destroy people that get in their way.
Most people in my current campaign do not know that the great entities they worship are created and fueled by belief in them. It's a similar concept to the Warp in Warhammer 40k where sentient beings' emotions and thoughts manifest in the Warp as greater daemons with enough belief. Those who get too close to the truth are physically punished by the great powers to prevent the knowledge from getting out.
In Cybermechout... How to restore the environment enough to make the world habitable again.
That and is there any way to unify humanity and other sentients to work towards that goal?
Perhaps the real mystery is figuring out the history of those who survived, who set off the nukes, and how anyone survived.
Anyone notice that Mr Von V8 sounds exactly like Ambiguous Amphibian?
For the final one: Togethaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
In the common year 1822; archaeology is under way and so the fossil record was beginning to become uncovered but here lies the problem. Priamtes and normal creatures were beginning to be seen but then 5.7 million years ago (subject to change), plasmoids suddenly emerged and disappeared but just as quickly was the fantasy races. Centaurs, Minotaurs, dwarves, goblins, kobolds, orcs, elves, etc and this also includes millions of years of evolution of modern man in the span of a geological second or hundreds of years.
Just who were these plasmoids? Why has modern beings come into existence and to a degree; capable of interspecies breeding and what does the mural; a terra cotta mural showing a three headed hydra being attacked by blocky shapes, the hydra biting a gray circle in half, a blue ball shooting at the hydra with a green line and the hydra being in the circle that is on fire, trying to tell?
I'm running a campaign in FR. And I (we) still don't know what the evil Tyranthraxus actually is 🤣😅🤔
In the Abyssal Gardens, the multiverse is in an infinite loop of creation, destruction, and recreation, of which even the Gods are unable to escape, with the exception of one; to an extent.
Ouroboros, the God of the Cycle.
The mystery is; how did this loop even begin in the first place? Even the God of Cycles, Ouroboros, does not know the answer to this question, despite being the oldest God by an unimaginable margin.
So in my world the 2 main gods, Order and Chaos have been destroyed simultaneously a few millennium ago but no one know exactly why, not even at the time. The most prominent theory is that they had a conflict and destroyed themselves, since one was the only powerful enough thing to harm the other, this idea deviates the worshipers views from the true relation between the two gods, but that is other story. What happened actually is that this reality caught the attention of cosmic creatures that feed on divine power so to protect it the two gods destroyed themselves, spreading their essence through the world. This both reduced the divine presence, and ensured that there would be a residual presence of their domains so this world could survive long enough to find a solution.
I've got one. My world has an ancient artifact known as the Cauldron of Creation that was gifted to the original Deities by the Creator and contained a shard of his power. It was later a key component of the Rift War, a war between the Deities that spanned centuries and eventually resulted in the near extinction of all the mortal races. When the good Deities finally won out, they were distraught by the damage they had caused, and so used the Cauldron to rebuild the mortal world before deciding that it was far too big a risk for anyone to have access to it. A neutral Deity was chosen to hide the Cauldron somewhere no other creature would find it, and hid both themselves and the Cauldron away. This Deity's very existence was stricken from history and the memories of all who knew them, leaving only the knowledge of what had been done. Nearly a thousand years later, they remain unknown, and the Cauldron remains hidden despite any attempt to find it. The only one with any clue how to begin in finding it is a Wood Elven Druid whose scale of longetivity and proximity to the events has left her as the only mortal with any knowledge of what happened between the Deities on that day.
Spoilers past the bump in case somehow this gets revived, but...probably not happening. An old campaign that never progressed very far that I was running, there was a gigantic forest that had grown up over the span of nearly a thousand years. Not strictly feywild though at some point that might have become at least part of the explanation for how _all this_ area turned into woodland, since the area was so huge. Not really the big mystery of the setting, though it could have become one down the line. The intent was that the forest basically outlined the map of an ancient kingdom that had been wiped out a thousand years ago. The culture of that kingdom lingered, of course, but a thousand years of so there was a lot that just wasn't known, including what actually caused the kingdom to fall. As the story progressed, hints were going to be dropped about how this wasn't the first cataclysm in the land, how there's a thousand year cycle of the area's kingdoms falling, etc., and how this time's situation is only unusual in that the territory never really recovered in the time since.
There's a castle in the heart of the forest which had been built to contain a great destructive force. It eventually became the set of power for the kingdom, the people in charge stopped worrying, the people around just kinda took it as a folk tale. The last king was a former adventurer who took the legends seriously and, after taking the throne, started putting effort into stopping the cycle from repeating. He failed, and the cycle repeated: The tarasque sleeping under the kingdom woke up. The king and his adventurers eventually managed to subdue the tarasque and recontain it, but they couldn't kill it and they couldn't prevent it from ravaging the inner kingdom. Also the king's still alive: He's been using divine magic to extend his life so he could maintain the wards keeping the tarasque contained. The combined factors of a decimated population and a lack of governance resulted in the kingdom never recovering.
In this world I'm building, there was an ancient civilization that just disappeared. They had tremendous technology, even compared with the current-day world (in some ways), but for some reason, they just WEREN'T anymore.
The real truth is, they got complacent. They got so obsessed with their own technology, and then arrogant in their place in the world, that they simply foisted all the work of maintaining their society onto a minority of "underclass" people. Those people themselves worked less and less, and disease began to be on the rise as eventually, nobody was willing to take the trash out for them. Food supplies fell off and became poorer quality, magnifying disease and ill health. A combination of narcissism and plain old ignorance resulted in them pretending it wasn't a problem.
And then, when the conquerors inevitably came, they met with so little resistance that it wasn't even a challenge. Many of the civilization died, and the rest--knowing what was good for them--simply integrated into the conquering population. But the technology was too broken to function anymore--nobody who used it knew how to fix it--and can never be restored.
But the enlightened, learned modern scholars of antiquities know the truth. They know that all of that dusty junk is CLEARLY all fertility idols in service of odd-shaped gods, because what ELSE would ancient people ever use things for?
Everyone who's ever existed in the world existed in another world. The real world, a cartoon world, a video game world, doesn't matter. Some were born there, others were pulled directly into it from their home world. Your best friend from middle school? Yeah, they existed there. Your Saints Row character? Yeah, he's somewhere in the world's history. Bugs Bunny? Oh you'd better believe he's out there, be careful what rabbits you go after.
The real kicker is that two of the same people existing at the same time is a very real possibility, and things get really messed up whenever they get close enough to each other.
What caused the titan of creation to want a perfect universe and how many times did she reset the timeline?
In truth this is the driving force behind what the third campaign in the setting is about. As reality breaks down around them timelines long past begin to merge into 1, creating glitches and exploits in reality, as well as bringing in alternate versions of characters such as the players or their allies.
In a sci-fi world I've been writing, at some point in the 32nd century, a scientist figured out how to put a dead person's soul into a cybernetic body. This isn't the mystery as the tech to do it has been used a few times in the story. The real mystery is the afterlife connected to it.
It turns out that some of the people who are brought back have memories of the time they spent in the afterlife. many talk about how it was death, darkness, and then life again. but about 1 in every 20 thousand people brought back speak of a place called "The Dark Forest" which is described as a planet sized forest where everything once living must wander for a time before being brought to an afterlife or reincarnation, this could be a minute or a millennium. It also seems that the Dark Forest you appear in seems to be connected to the planet or moon you were born on.
What is the mystery here? people who were born in space, aren't able to be brought back to life, and therefore the afterlife they go to is completely unknown. After hearing about this, the governments of the galaxy have made it a law that all children are to be born on a planet. but its been like this for so long that very few people even know about the real reason for the law's existence, governments now believe the law was made to make keeping track of passports easier. and the people who illegally have children in space to spite the governments of the galaxy may unknowingly be damning their children to an unknown fate.
An event called "The Faceless Year". One year, 700 Years ago, that nobody in the multiverse remembers. They went to bed one night, and woke up a full year later.
The answer; An NPC from the first campaign in that setting became a psychopathic Over Diety, and wiped the universe's memories of the entire lead up, in order to keep his existence secret, and control all reality without interference.
I had them play through an entire second game with new characters, and then, once the villain was revealed to be the NPC God from the previous game, I handed them their previous sheets, and said, "Context is necessary to continue with Campaign Two. Welcome to Arc Three of Campaign One."
They lost their minds. Proudest moment as a DM.
My setting was a world much like our modern one, until an event called the First Calamity, wherein powerful storms scourged every civilization simultaneously and deposited meteors of magical golden metal upon the planet. This metal has become the source of all magic, but no one actually knows where it comes from and why it continues to fall with every Calamity Storm that follows.
The answer is, it's alive. It's intelligent. And it's reproducing like a virus across every metal-rich celestial body it can reach by turning every metal it touches into more of itself and then launching offshoots into space. They hit the atmosphere and release magical power, resulting in the storms. At present, the planet of my setting hasn't fully "come online" because critical mass hasn't been reached. When will that happen? Maybe soon. Maybe not for a long while. But it's coming. And no one on the planet knows.
My big mystery is "why did all the ancient pantheons suddenly come to earth?" and "why does one planet need so many gods?" The gods themselves don't even know the answer. The truth: the gods and pantheons don't really exist. They are the manifestation of human imagination. After a great calamity befell humanity the energy of the dead condensed together, and their shared beliefs took form in the minds of the remaining people. It's basically a mass hallucination.
"Mystery" is - how Reflection, second and last plane, "dream plane" exists. I took Earth, our Earth, where in 2049, thanks to one dreamer that dreamed about apocalypse, there was actual apocalypse. Then was first age - almost medieval, low-fantasy setting for 290 years, and then, where the actual campaign going, second age - "middle-fantasy", where magic is still forming (verbal, somatic, material comps were invented in first age) so there's a lot of spells doesn't exist. So, Reflection. Plane of dreams, where dead souls going, taking form as a wisps that later becoming demons or spirits - depends on their past wishes and deeds. Demon can become spirit with enough "good" influence and spirits can become demons with "bad" influence.
GMing this world on heavily homebrewed 5E and on 6E Shadowrun, campaign that takes place in 2032, when there was some magic virus outbreak all over the world.
Another mystery yet to be revealed - who the f is trying to push peaceful second age world into world war.
If the names Atlas Veyland, Autobot Spectre, and Spectre means anything to you. READ NO FURTHER!!!!!
The Yuun Magocracy was the most powerful nation to ever exist. Imagine the Roman empire except with beyond 9th level magics at their disposal. By the age of 8, a Yuun student would be able to cast almost any spell of 3rd level or lower. Then 25,000 years ago, everyone in the multiplanar empire disappeared overnight literally. Now all that's left of their ancient civilization is their legendary Yuun-gates that are within an hour's walk to and from every single city. (For reference having every single Yuun disappear is like disappearing every single human in Warhammer 40k within the same time period).
The mystery is twofold-
What happened to them?
and what does the ascension of "The Ascendent 4" have to do with it?
"The Ascendent 4" are the 4 gods of death that ascended to their positions in the last century of their civilization (Bhaal, Bane, Myrkul followed by the Raven Queen.)