Setting up an End-Of-The-World event

[Silus]

So I like having scenarios ready to deploy should I ever get called to DM a game, and I've been thinking of working on an End Of The World type scenario/campaign for my little Homebrew world. Thing is, I can't figure out how to proceed.

Some quick things about the Homebrew world:
1. Low Fantasy: No dragons or pixies or other mythical creatures beyond the core races, Drow (mad scientists), Centaur (City and tribal variants) and Orcs (noble savages). The deep reaches of what would be the Underdark are another story though.

2. Medium Tech: Pathfinder Advanced Firearms are just starting to be produced, steam, coal and clockwork power are becoming rapidly more widespread and mechanical creations that mimic lifeforms and magic items are fairly common.

3. High Magic: Magocracy is a legitimate form of government and low level arcane magic is taught as extracurricular studies. Divine magic is less common, but still prominent enough to not warrant in-game restrictions.

Obvious clashing between magic and tech. World is also "locked" to the other Planes of the multiverse (no demon/angel/other incursions and the like).

Anyway, what I'm trying to figure out is how can I bring about the end of the world. And I'm not looking for a "Big monster wakes up and eats everything" kinda end. Something more of a Book of Revelations/Supernatural kinda world ending.

The only moderately concrete idea I have is for the end result to not be "world explodes" but rather end in a "end of an era" kinda way by having the world become accessible to all the planes which would bring about untold racial and political upheaval.

Anyway, assistance and suggestions are appreciated.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Have you considered using Elder Evils? They are custom made for End-of-the-world scenarios and they have enough variety there is one bound to interest you. In particular Sertrous, he is the one that taught mortals that they don't need gods to get divine power. His return might also mean that the Plane is no longer "locked".

[Kaveman26]

Emergence of Psionics. Strange behaviors begin being exhibited and eventually entire cities go missing as someone begins mind controlling mass populations. A whole new branch of power that differs from magic and tech threatens reality itself as a psionic wilder shaper begins to fracture the plane with Genesis ability.

[Randomguy]

A few things off the top of my head:

1. Apocalypse from the sky. (http://dndtools.eu/spells/book-of-vile-darkness--37/apocalypse-from-the-sky--131/) A 20th level caster can wipe out a 200 mile radius. (For reference, that's bigger than the U.K.) An epic level caster can do the same thing but make it fell draining to start a wightpocalypse, since all creatures killed by negative energy rise again as wights.

2. Locate city bomb. It's adding a bunch of metamagic on the locate city spell to make it kind of like a lesser version of the above spell. I think it deals more damage, actually. Most of the metamagic feats just make the spell deal damage, and then you add on Explosive Spell to do some more damage + eject them to the outside radius.

3. The global warming epic spell. Cast it once on each pole and soon the ice caps melt, flooding the earth.

4. The patient method. Enough decanters of endless water will flood the earth eventually, and self-resetting magic trap of flash flood will get it done faster.

5. Father Lymnic. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=258840) The world is sealed from other planes now, but if it were unsealed then binding or gating him would blot out the sun.

[Toy Killer]

What kind of arch enemies are you planning on revolving around?

Aberration; The surge of technology allows mages and the kin to start tampering with the basic foundations of life. Underground workshops are being found all over the world with various governments funding research into the next big weapon to bear on their side. Callista is breeding huge behemoths, while Disentra is blurring the lines of natural creatures and creating various oddities, all while Uldura is trying to improve the process of making super soliders...

Beasts: various druidic sects have banned together and decided that it's time to start The Third Reaping. Every so often, when races start to advance their capacities too far, the druids come by to reset natural order. Burning scrolls, shattering powerful weapons and items, leveling cities, until the humanoid races have to suffer through the wilderness again and start from scratch. Kingdoms can pay the players to hide their valuable secrets from the encroaching wilds and players can come to understand why the world is so much more dangerous when its NPCs at danger...

Constructs: Think I, Robot.

Dragons: While people tend to think that something as powerful and unbreachable as a dragon may feel fit to live without a society of their own, they would be wrong. Dragons don't have a need to have a governed society and spend their time doing their best not stepping on each others toes. however, when humanity starts to develop [X] they realize it may be time to band together and put the monkeys back in their place...

Elementals: The need for more constructs has expanded on to the need for more bound elemental spirits. The elemental's don't take to it kindly.

and so on and so forth... :smallcool:

[Slipperychicken]

An cult has learned a ritual to create small openings to the Negative Energy plane (they're probably trying to contact their dark god or something). By the campaign's beginning, it's opened a little. The dark energy is leaking into the world, corrupting the land's plants and wildlife, giving them power but making them act strangely, lashing out at anyone. Soon people begin succumbing to the corruption too, it warps their minds and drives them insane. Those affected begin taking on compulsive, often extremely violent and antisocial behaviors like cannibalism, domestic violence, self-mutilation, and writing strange runes in blood on their walls. It also raises the dead and encourages necromancers and vampires to rise.

Eventually, the PCs (and their allies) track the source of the corruption down to some cave-ruins from a bygone era, after beating down this cult for a while. Inside, they find the cultists and their vile leader, and have their showdown where they defeat the leader and destroy the portal to the negative energy plane.

The PCs save the day in time to prevent the complete corruption of the Material plane, but the amount of negative energy already leaked will have dramatic implications for centuries (at least) to come, ushering in the Age of Monsters and/or the Age of The Dead.

Or the rift between the Material and the Negative Energy plane deepens/widens, quickly "unlocking" the rest of the planes, and ushering in the Age of Gods.

[Henryj]

The plain of your setting was in fact created by a god that was trying to make a better version of the "material plane".
This god saw that his experiment was a failure, so decided to cancel all the plane, but the life energy developed in it was way too big to be eradicated with a will action..
The god decided to send his Avatar to collapse the pillars of exintence of this plane, but since the plane evolved from the original idea he does not know where this mistical centers actually are.
His messenger created a new religion wich purpose is to find them.

The party is recruited by the God's messenger church to find out these pillars of plane existence, until they understand why it is so important to the avatar to find them out and fight against the Avatar to protect their native plane, or help him and migrate to the normal material plane (more likely evil party i guess)

Obviously it's to develop, but it's an idea...

[Fable Wright]

This was originally an idea one of my friends and I worked on, and are using in our own homebrew game, but I changed it up a bit to match your idea.

There was a man who wanted to change the world. He was born in a different place, long ago; a place where magic was rampant, the church ruled the world, and where dragons would tread. It was a primeval, savage time by modern standards, but it was what he was born into.

And he loved it.

In life, he devoted himself to the study of vestiges; fantastical beings that could not exist and would manifest and give power to the people who would bind them. Think of it! Something that only mortals could do, something the Gods couldn't touch; something new. He threw himself into his studies whole-heartedly, hoping to bring something new to the world. As he studied, the world changed around him; times began to move on, he began to grow old, technology began developing. Still he studied. His time was coming, and he new it, so he devised a ritual to keep himself able to work- he crucified himself, and rose as a Necropolitan. And he continued his work.

What was his work? He wanted to bring something new to the world. The fantastical. The impossible. He wanted to give the Vestiges he studied form, give them bodies, and give them a place in this world. This would be his Legacy. He began to succeed, too; devising a ritual, he Spellstitched himself, granting him the power he needed. Through experiment after experiment, he would use Soul Jar to store his soul in a receptacle acceptable to the Vestige, and then bind the vestige, not to his soul, as he normally does, but to the body. And so he began the first of his creations. He succeeded, making the pact creatures in Tome of Magic. It was a tired, and old prospect, and after a while, he could not bear it anymore. He devised a ritual to bring all of the vestiges into the world at once, give them all bodies and races. He would carve a massive hole in the universe, and all that could not be, all that was outside of reality, would return. And he came damn close, too. His stitches gave him the magic he needed to escape magic detection, and he discovered an Incantation to tear a hole in reality. It was a ritual that took months from its beginning to end, and on the final day, he began to tear open the void. Before he pierced the veil, though, he was finally apprehended by a coalition of clerics from all faiths, and his soul was bound below the crypt of the deity of death. He could not simply be killed; his soul was tied to no body. (Mechanically, he can use Soul Jar as an SLA. That means, no material component, no focus, no verbal or somatic components; as long as he can cast the Jar again before the duration on the first one expires, he can body hop indefinitely. Something as simple as a grain of sand or salt could house his body.) Thus, his body and soul had to be trapped deep below the crypts of the deity of death, far away from any body for him to possess, a single grain of sand encased on all sides by 200 ft of solid bedrock. The man who wanted to change the would could do nothing but keep himself from dying by hopping between the grains of sand and salt that he was buried as.

And now he was set free.

He, himself, poses little threat as an individual. He's damn hard to kill, for sure, but he's one man. The threat is in his plan. If his ritual were to succeed, it would be the end of the world. The vestiges, and the uncounted thousands still undiscovered, would flee into reality, converting bodies into forms like theirs. Many humanoids would be turned into abominations, dragons with the hearts of demons would rise out of the deeps, and monsters would crawl out of every rock and tree on the planet. A new age would begin. The remnants of the old order would be there. It just wouldn't be the place of humans to rule. And he isn't alone in his quest.

With his return, the Karsites and Deadly Dancers would aid him. The pact beings would begin to organize, launching attacks to secure parts of the ritual, or stealing ritual components. Entire communities, resistant to the magocracies and mundane guards, would rise up to aid him in his quest, guided by the will of Karsus. And worst of all? The man behind it all has no face. He could be anyone. The only way to tell would be the signs of vestiges marking his body; as the body wasn't the one he made the pact in, he cannot suppress them. And if he didn't body swap that day, you can't even tell by that.

Left unstopped, he would cause the end of the world. Even as the ritual begins, the fabric of the planes begins to weaken, and demons, angels, and all other forms of extraplanar life are beginning to leak into the plane. He will not be stopped. The scrolls containing the rituals the church used to find him were lost, the magic used to prevent his soul from hopping around was lost as forbidden magic (it prevents souls from ever moving on to the afterlife, denying them their eternal rest, torturing them as their bodies grew old before their eyes, and had horrible consequences on the caster), and the churches are beginning to fall into decay, a shadow of the strength they put together to bind him in the Pit in the first place. What hope does a band of plucky adventurers have to stop him? The world will end, and a new one rise in its place.

[OverdrivePrime]

War Of The Worlds
A race from far beyond the solar system visits the world in their spacecraft. This alien race has no experience with magic, but once they encounter it, they are desperate to study and harness it's astounding potential. They quickly begin kidnapping mages and clerics.

This goes badly for them.

Several high level mages quickly break free from their captors and run amok on board while trying to escape. Unfortunately for the mages, only a very few of them are powerful enough to be able to cast a teleport spell that puts them back on the planet. (Teleport is 'only' 100 miles per level, low earth orbit is about 200-1200 miles out. Geosynchronous orbit is about 26,200 miles, which is completely out of the question. Lunar orbit is about 20 times more ridiculously out of the question. I'd guess that most alien spacecraft would keep a bit outside of low earth orbit, so only mages of 15th level or better could teleport home.)

In any case, if the P.O.ed mages cause enough damage and casualties aboard the space ships, the ships themselves lose the ability to stay in orbit.

And alien ships start dropping out of the sky.

Now for the fun part! You get to run this Impact Simulator (http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/) and figure out how much gets wiped out by each alien ship that crashes. Let's go with something about the size of an Star Trek NX class ship and and put the size at 225, with a density of about 9000 kg/m^3. Put the impact angle at maybe around 60, set the velocity to 20 k/s and then see how far away from the impact you'd need to be to survive.

If that's not disastrous enough, up the size of the ships to something more along the lines of an aircraft carrier (333m), and things get a lot messier. Pay attention to the Thermal Radiation and Airblast reports. They're a lot of fun for PCs. :)

[Elvenoutrider]

I have a couple of ideas:

1) astronomer finds evidence of a world shattering cataclysm approaching but his work is covered up by the church. Help him reach the right people with his evidence while fighting church inquisitors. Turns out that the approaching object is a sleeping god that is attracted to the mass hysteria that results. This is a great opportunity for good to fight good

2) mad scientist or archaeologist discovers a gate to another planet in a ruin. This is a gateway to a hostile plane. Cue globe trotting adventure as pcs try to race the bbeg to each part of the gate in an attempt to stop the apocalypse

3) one mad scientist finds a way to eradicate magic from the world in order to set his steam tech army as the most powerful force in the world with him as king

4) undead apocalypse - hey it's a classic for a reason