BIGEST evil ever

[True believer]

Hello members :D


To make the long story short i am a DM and i am begging a new campaign.

Players: 4 , 10 level players with undecided races and classes
Theme: Post-apocalyptic , true horror , Just survive mode is on !!!!!!!!!!

So i will destroy the world and i will present the opportunity to my players to lead the "last survivors"

My problem is the cause of these situation. Can anyone suggest me an "evil" that could manage to took over all the world and slay the 99% of humanity ??????

[sideswipe]

look in the elder evils book. some of them are horrible almost-gods.

[BilltheCynic]

An ancient and powerful lich performed a terrible ritual that, for a brief moment in time, merged the Prime Material plane with the Negative Energy plane. While this only lasted for a few seconds, all but the strongest of souls were killed during this time. In addition, those who died were infused by the negative energy and turned undead. If they were lucky, their souls were merely utterly destroyed and their bodies rose as zombies, ghouls, skeletons, or the like. If they were unlucky, their souls were twisted and corrupted into wraiths, allips, and other such undead.

When casting the spell, the lich had intended to take advantage of the chaos and new found circumstances to swoop in and rule the world. Unfortunately for him, when the planes merged a voidstone happened to materialize in the same spot as his phylactery, killing him and destroying his soul. Now, instead of a single undead overlord ruling over a world of undead, there are countless undead warlords squabbling in the power vacuum. Meanwhile, the few surviving living are desperately trying to stay alive as well as rebuild their crumbled world.

So yeah, I know that an undead post-apokaliptic scenario can be a bit cliche, but they are still very effective at what they do. Just be sure to vary it up a bit more than just a bunch of humanoid zombies, such as zombie animals, skeletal dragons, or if you are feeling particularly evil, zombie rust monsters. Plus, the backstory allows you to include lots of creatures that players fear most: stat and level draining monsters. Maybe you could have a couple of more powerful undead waging war against each other with your PCs caught in the middle. For added points, perhaps the infusion of negative energy has made it harder for mortals to contact the gods, making it harder to cast divine spells or to turn undead (perhaps a -2 turn undead penalty or something).

[Flickerdart]

Can anyone suggest me an "evil" that could manage to took over all the world and slay the 99% of humanity ??????
The standard easy-bake "kill everyone" way is a Wightpocalypse - every time a wight kills a creature with negative levels, that creature rises as a wight, creating more wights, and so on until everything is wights.

Another could be a dragon that abused Enlarge Breath to set the entire world on fire, leaving only those in mountain cities as survivors - and because their food supplies from the valleys have been destroyed, things aren't so rosy there either.

You could also have both at the same time, triggered by a dragon who can cast enervating breath.

[Karl Aegis]

How big do you want it to be? I've seen universe-sized giga-beings that used galaxies as throwing weapons before.

[HolyCouncilMagi]

How big do you want it to be? I've seen universe-sized giga-beings that used galaxies as throwing weapons before.

Hey, these aren't the Exalted boards.

On-topic, you could always make it a "post-failure" game. The adventure where four heroes fought to prevent the revival of the sleeping Dark God is over, and those heroes (one of whom might now be a current PC) failed. So the world had to deal with the consequences, namely being blasted to bits by the formerly sleeping Dark God.

[Tvtyrant]

I always loved the Gammaroid from Spelljammer. It was the length of the Dubai Tower, but about 10x larger in width.

[Th3N3xtGuy]

One word ATROPUS aka Still-born Gods. These pseudo-deities are the opposite of gods. The primordial gods were born from the Positive Plane's energy and sought to create. Atropus's came from the Negative Plane's energy seeking destruction. Perfect ugly monstrosities to destroy a world then hibernate afterwards for the cycle to restart eventually.

[(Un)Inspired]

Have the plane the PCs are on be a gigantic demiplane created by a wizard to see how a planet would develop after a tremendous cataclysm.

The cataclysm the wizard used to set the plane to the appropriate condition was an anti osmium bomb. The bomb knocked a nice size chunk out of the planet that the PCs are on, (And which is basically the entirety of the demiplane) killed off countless beings directly, changed weather patterns, warped ecospheres etc etc.

The wizard has used kissed by the ages and Astral project to observe the progress of his experiment for hundreds or thousands of years.

He created all the life that inhabits the plane using origin of spiciest spells and seeded the sentient life with different social cultures all to create this grand experiment.

[Sam K]

The obvious: Pun-Pun.

The less obvious: Tippyverse gone bad. A world where magic-as-technology caused a rapid development of society and standard of living, but which fell appart somewhere along the transition. Maybe magic went haywire (all those powerfull spells used to build and safeguard city states exploded), causing the magical equivilent of a nuclear wasteland? Or the abuse of magic caused it to "run out of power", meaning that all those people who depended on magic to survive died off: the survivors where the dregs and monsters in the countryside, and maybe a handful of wizards that made the transition to undead and waited it out. Now you have a wasteland full of ruins, where the handful of humans that still live are hunted by monsters, and the great undead evils (long ago driven utterly bonkers by the fall of their utopian civilization) plot their return in the shadows. Maybe magic is just returning to the world. Maybe, if the PCs have spellcasting abilities, some of the undead casters want to make use of them...

[holywhippet]

You could borrow a bit out of a Raymond E. Feist book. Basically there was a BBEG making it's way through the levels of reality and was about to arrive on a planet. Someone trying to stop it was a very powerful magician with a lot of skill in creating portals. He evacuated most of the planet then put a huge portal in the direct path of the planet's moon with the output end directly above where the BBEG was going to appear. Goodbye BBEG and pretty much all life on the planet.

Another option, the world was actually an egg for a massive being that has since hatched and flown off.

You could possibly go the Dark Sun route but push it even further with the defilers who stole the magic having managed to flee the world after bleeding it dry.

[sideswipe]

the sun (same on all planes) it actually a sleeping elemental god. it wakes up and comes to rule the plane of fire as an indisputable king of the plane.

1. all crops and stuff like that die on all planes causing peasants to resort to cannibalism and killing 99% of in 2 years.

2. the plane of fire is waging war against other planes that would be "lesser" effected by the loss of the sun.


have the fire god have a Divine rank of 18-20 and immense abilities. so that it can feasibly overthrow things like the abyss if it concentrated forces hard enough, just cant yet due to fighting on too many fronts.

the party are to sway the fights in all the planes against the fire elemental's to help eventually overthrow the god/ put it dormant again as the sun.

fill in blanks and adapt and boom all good.

[True believer]

You people are monsters .......



those were some bad-ass ideas !!!! Thank you !!!

[PraxisVetli]

The standard easy-bake "kill everyone" way is a Wightpocalypse - every time a wight kills a creature with negative levels, that creature rises as a wight, creating more wights, and so on until everything is wights.

Another could be a dragon that abused Enlarge Breath to set the entire world on fire, leaving only those in mountain cities as survivors - and because their food supplies from the valleys have been destroyed, things aren't so rosy there either.

You could also have both at the same time, triggered by a dragon who can cast enervating breath.

As brutal as it is wonderful.
Would totally dig a campaign world like that!

[T.G. Oskar]

One word ATROPUS aka Still-born Gods. These pseudo-deities are the opposite of gods. The primordial gods were born from the Positive Plane's energy and sought to create. Atropus's came from the Negative Plane's energy seeking destruction. Perfect ugly monstrosities to destroy a world then hibernate afterwards for the cycle to restart eventually.

Minor tidbit, though - ATROPUS is the Elder Evil. Atropals (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/monsters/abomination.htm#atropal) are the still-born gods.

On topic, though - mythology has a cool way to handle things, particularly Nordic and Native American myths. In both cases, the former world is destroyed, usually by a great and terrible war of the gods. The new world is ruled by the victorious god, which remakes the world into a Paradise. If you see themes from other major religions, well...that's a thing they seem to share.

Anyways - picture the Blood War. Demons and devils fighting each other, endlessly, as the less numerous but better trained Devils are trying to fend off the ever-numerous Demons, with the Yugoloth fighting as mercenaries for both sides in order to get souls for their own ends. Celestials are relatively untouched, vigilant that the Blood War doesn't reach the Upper Planes but trying to nudge the end result to their benefit. And, of course, Gods plotting on their own. There's this unstable balance where any change can alter the course of history.

And, that was what happened, but it ended up in disaster. Nobody knows what really happened, but one thing is certain - there is no more Blood War. Which is good, except...there's no more Lower Planes, no more Upper Planes...no more gods, either. Every single creature in the multiverse was decimated, and a few were utterly obliterated. Well, all creatures save one - the undead. For some strange reason, undead are just as numerous, if not more - more numerous than all other creatures combined.

Aberrations are somewhat numerous too, and are the only creatures crazy enough to engage in war over what's left of the Multiverse. Beholder, mind flayer, aboleth...all dwell in their own pockets of the Multiverse, gathering mad cultists desperate to find purpose to the senseless disaster, and promising a "purification" of sorts once they rule over all other races and undead are finally exterminated. What few "benign" aberrations are left are but legends, if they existed at all.

There's still Celestials and Fiends, but never at the strength they were before. Celestials got the worst hit - most of them, serving the gods of Good, perished as the gods did, and what few survive are shocked to the core and have turned into fatalists, preserving what little hope they have in order to protect what's left, and maybe reconstruct. Most Celestials have fallen, though, becoming as the Yugoloth, in their own twisted way of seeing the world. Demons simply didn't felt it that much - the Abyss still exists, but demons are far, FAR less numerous than before, and haven't been seen that much. Devils were affected as much as Celestials: with a great number of their ranks lost, and all Archdevils dead or missing, the massive power vacuum would have meant their doom, if it weren't because of two things - the massive loss of devils caused them to reconsider backstabbing in order to reconstruct, and playing as the "good guys" to the few mortal survivors could mean a way to harness their hopes and use them in order to become the rulers of this new, devastated multiverse - then, and only then, their plans to take over could bear fruit. So, for now, Devils lie in wait, and offer their aid to desperate mortals and even to Celestials, making true to their word (just as long as they conveniently forget the fine print...) Yugoloth keep their mercenary ways, and actually managed to survive relatively intact, but found that wanton destruction wouldn't do much, and now offer their services to anyone...for the right price, of course. Mortal, Celestial, Devil, even Undead and Aberration...if the price is right, the Yugoloth is willng to serve.

Other beings suffered a worse fate. Plants are withering and barely cling to life, while the few remaining animals are feral and dangerous. Magical beasts and dragons are not seen, and are thought to be extinct. The Fey suffered great losses, and are being tainted by this new world, but some say that the realm of the Fey had their doors closed, and thus they were relatively unharmed. Giants are also largely unknown, but the rumors regarding their existence are more numerous.

And that leaves the rest. Humans managed to survive, and of the purely mortal races, they outnumber the rest at large proportions; of course, their ability to adapt makes them the hardiest survivors. Halflings also managed to survive, but because they clinged to humans - however, while humans are trying to reconstruct, Halflings are now the undisputed masters of the road, and a valuable asset to any creature who wishes to survive. Elves are all but extinct, their ancestral homes destroyed, and what few lived with humans and bare witness to the destruction behave no different than the mindless undead; still living, but the shock of the destruction left all but the strongest willed almost catatonic, and without the will to live. Dwarves, on the other hand, while still decimated, managed to resist the impact a lot more, and try their best to survive in this new world. And Gnomes? Well, incredibly enough, they are in a way to Dwarves what Halflings are to Humans - travelers extraordinare of the underworld, and highly sought as their technological advancements may have the key to survival of the living. If anything, Gnomes are far, far more important than any other race...and whaddya know, they happen to know that. You don't mess with Gnomes, period - the last thing you want is to have the most advanced civilization, even more advanced than the Human race, messing with you. However, treat them well, and Gnomes may help your community to thrive, in as little as you can.

And what about magic? Well, the gods are gone, and the average mortal has cast away all faith, but divine magic still exists. Some of that power is granted by Devils in exchange for worship, some are given to the cultists of Aberrations, and some are shared by what few Celestials exist that are willing to sponsor champions. Arcane magic still exists, but is horribly unstable - Conjuration spells are a risk as they induce horrible backfires, spells of Abjuration are nowhere near as strong as they were before, Evocation spells are also quite unstable, Divinations are inaccurate...if anything, only the spells of the Enchantment school are relatively untouched (though their masters are dangerous to behold), and spells of Necromancy are incredibly powerful and stable - if anything, the only "safe" magic to cast, though its "safety" is merely on the technique - but prone to attract the attention of the roaming undead. One thing is for certain - magic as it existed is long gone, and what remains is a threat to the already ailing multiverse. And before you ask - no one has seen a true Druid in years. Just so you know.

But, the big question remains...who did all of this?

--

That's for you to answer. A reason why Eberron is so awesome is because it gives you the framework, but leaves enough blanks for you to fill. Something must have caused all that disaster - it has to do with magic, because magic is unstable. It has to deal with the Blood War, because it's over and with horrible results. It has to deal with negative energy, because everything that relies on Negative Energy is actually thriving. It has to deal with aberrations, because they happen to be numerous. Whatever you figure out it is, think of one thing - was it ONE Evil...or many? Perhaps the Blood War reached a point where one side was approaching a decisive victory, and the only way to stop the innumerable Demons was to create a horde of powerful Undead, which ended up ravaging everything. Perhaps, in a last ditch effort to rule over all, Orcus essentally delivered a death-blow to the Multiverse, and is only moments close to achieve total domination over undeath as a god-like being (perhaps reclaiming its mantle as the god Tenebrous?), but a few heroes managed to stop it and ruin its plans for years to come? Perhaps the undead are powerful because of an incomprehensible Aberration that represents Entropy (Tharizdun?) broke loose, and now the Negative Energy Plane touches all parts of the Multiverse? Perhaps the Positive Energy Plane imploded?

That should give you a few examples - Orcus and Tharizdun are just plain scary, and enough of a threat to cause a multiversal apocalypse. What matters is the frame of reference: once that's done, you'll get who's the main force behind it easily.

[Flickerdart]

But, the big question remains...who did all of this?
Asmodeus is behind everything. Everything.

[atemu1234]

Hey, these aren't the Exalted boards.

On-topic, you could always make it a "post-failure" game. The adventure where four heroes fought to prevent the revival of the sleeping Dark God is over, and those heroes (one of whom might now be a current PC) failed. So the world had to deal with the consequences, namely being blasted to bits by the formerly sleeping Dark God.

So Cthulhu, woke up, and he's pissed? I like this idea.


Asmodeus is behind everything. Everything.

Except when he's not.

[Hamste]

I like vampire clowns myself. Not only do they have the ability to make spawn but they can also make Wights which they are completely immune to(unless I'm mistaken any creature killed by negative levels become a Wight). That and undead clowns are almost as creepy as children or dolls.

[MrSinister]

In my first 3.0 campaign, I had a cabal of vampires, drow, and illithid hatch some wacky magical planar plot to put out the sun so all the sun-sensitive jerks could roam around freely and take over the surface world. The PCs failed to stop the plot and out went the sun, much to the Cleric of Pelor's chagrin. Cue undead and drow rampages and a growing global winter.

This blotting out of the sun (I think we ended up saying it was encased in it's own demiplane or something) ended up weakening Pelor so much that the PC cleric was his last disciple with access to magic because Pelor was basically haunting him, for lack of a better word. (This was his RP reasoning for entering the Contemplative PrC)

During this chaos, a new upstart technology-based pseudo-deity (basically an unstatted bad guy, really) stole Pelor's place in the pantheon and launched this new green sun by using technology and magic. So, he ascended as the new Sun god, and the players (at this point knocking on the door of level 21) were going to dethrone him and restore Pelor.

The campaign broke up before we could run with this, but my pal is running a new 5e campaign 200 years into the future of this world where the epic level PCs failed AGAIN to stop the green sun god.

The current PCs are going to try their best to reinstate Pelor, but the twist is that if they succeed in this, it'll be Pelor, the Burning Hate that comes back from the brink.

Man, D&D is fun.

[Flickerdart]

I like vampire clowns myself. Not only do they have the ability to make spawn but they can also make Wights which they are completely immune to(unless I'm mistaken any creature killed by negative levels become a Wight). That and undead clowns are almost as creepy as children or dolls.
Creatures killed by level drain become wights unless specified otherwise. vampires do specify otherwise - when they drain something to death, it becomes a vampire spawn.

[LoyalPaladin]

Asmodeus is behind everything. Everything.
Now let's not start another Asmodeus thread!

I think Pelor should be behind it all. I mean, all the conspiracies about him secretly being evil? What if they were true? Best villain ever.

[whisperwind1]

Setting Crushing evil eh? I would say play Midnight but something tells me that you want to homebrew it.

Other than evil god or cosmic forces, why not go for the iconic? An asteroid strikes the setting but it wasn't just any asteroid, it was called down by a nefarious sorcerer or aberrant creature, who unfortunately ate his own spell in the worst way possible. Now the world is devastated, and even worse, the asteroid turns out to have contained giant monsters, aberrations that can do a passable impression of Godzilla. So now the challenge is to rebuild a shattered world and contend with evil space Kaiju.

[MrSinister]

evil space Kaiju.

Dragon Magazine #289 has a Kaiju template so you could literally make anything into an evil space Kaiju. Oh, the asteroid fell into the forest and tainted the drinking water and that bear drank it and OH SWEET BOCCOB LOOK AT IT!

Kaiju Space Bear