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View Full Version : DM Help How would this change the world?



Pinjata
2015-07-14, 10:31 AM
Allrigthy. Standard D&D setting, kingdoms, villages, wizard towers, dragons, etc ...

Then something happens. A wizard gives birth to enormous astral worms, tunnel-sized astral creatures who, with their touch, kill all living things, including plants. And they slowly breed, being ever-more popolous. These things slowly cruise just under the flat surfaces, are unable to "climb" mountains or enter seas/large bodies of water. In a few decades, mountain ranges are super-overpopulated, I guess, while surrounding areas are desert ddue to dead plants. Entire world is "moving out" via portals to Sigil and other places and there is lack of oxygen due to lack of trees.

D&D pesudosience and predictions, I need them, guys :) What other consequences would this have, guys?

Shadurak
2015-07-14, 12:05 PM
How about travel between inhabited areas? Is your world technologically advanced enough that hot air balloons exist? Or is there an order of wizards that maintains aerial routes? This can also mean the advent of sky piracy. The possibilities are endless - go wild!:smallwink:

AxeAlex
2015-07-14, 12:55 PM
Water-world.
People start living mostly on ships, most food now comes from the sea. Most land is considered "cursed".

The Aboleths take over the water-world.

Land Cities become city-states (One city per isolated mountain). Central governments like realms and empires only exist in mountain ranges.

Wizards try to come up with a way to create floating islands and give birth to floating magic kingdoms ruled by Wizard-Lords, where plants can actually live, away from the oblivion worms.

MrZJunior
2015-07-14, 01:22 PM
Lots of terraces and reservoirs on the mountains to allow farming. You can find some pictures of terracing in the Andes to give you an idea. Actually, learning about the Incas might give you some ideas about how a mountain based country would organize itself.

Sith_Happens
2015-07-14, 08:19 PM
A wizard gives birth to... tunnel-sized astral creatures

How'd she pull that off?:smalltongue:

bulbaquil
2015-07-14, 08:37 PM
Because you'd still have oceanic plant life, you wouldn't have an ENTIRELY anoxic atmosphere, but you'd still have atmospheric issues--especially on mountaintops.

Slipperychicken
2015-07-15, 04:49 PM
Allrigthy. Standard D&D setting, kingdoms, villages, wizard towers, dragons, etc ...


A ragtag band of heroes rises to defeat the wizard and his monsters before they do too much damage.

golentan
2015-07-15, 05:11 PM
I don't think the atmospheric oxygen would be that much of a problem, guys. 70% of atmospheric oxygen is generated by marine plants and algae on earth, and the living animals that'd be wiped out by the worms would probably counterbalance the death of the land phytovores.

I'm wondering why the worms can't handle mountains?

Also, a lot of people are going to die. Most, even. And with the deep earth off limits, I would say that even if a few smiths and other folks survived with the knowledge, the available sources of workable metals are going to dive. Expect non-magical sources of post-bronze age equipment to dry up, unless the equipment is made of something still readily available (I.E. clay/stone from mountains or waterbeds, bone, etc. Wood is probably unavailable, forests and mountains don't play well together past a certain point on the slope). Travel should be by airship made with such available materials (to and from mountains) and boats (oceans and lakes) but without a ready source of wood or some other light-but-strong, tough-but-workable material nobody's gonna have a large fleet: Wars might be fought over copses of trees capable of producing a ship a decade.


How'd she pull that off?:smalltongue:

See my answer to the Hedonistic Space Gypsies thread. :smalltongue:

BWR
2015-07-15, 05:49 PM
tunnel-sized astral creatures

How big is a tunnel?
Really, unless we are given something more in the way of actual stats, it's hard to say how dangerous and problematic these things are. Do they have 1 HD, only move 1 inch an hour and the kill-touch is only DC 11 and they breed one child once a decade, or do they have 100 HD, immunity to all magic, move 1 mile a round and have a no-save kill-touch?
Almost no matter what, they can be just another random encounter or a plot focus, depending on what you want to do with them.

ShaneMRoth
2015-07-15, 05:52 PM
...
D&D pesudosience and predictions, I need them, guys :) What other consequences would this have, guys?

The mountain areas would still have some living trees, and the oceans would still have plankton, so a lack of oxygen might not need to come into play.

The destruction of the foundation of the food chain would be a catastrophe that is difficult to overstate. Almost every living thing on land would die.

This would be a global extinction event.

Fish becomes the staple food for the survivors of the event.

The dead trees would be harvested without being replaced, so wood is no longer a truly renewable resource.

The druids will lay down their lives preventing the remaining stands of trees in the mountains from being harvested. Their ability to make what little arable land remains to become harvestable renders them even more powerful players in politics that they were before. No living tree will be harvested in the foreseeable future without provoking a war.

Wood and lumber will quickly become intrinsically valuable. Possibly as valuable as silver or salt. Possibly even more valuable than that.

Slings will become the ranged weapon of necessity, as wood is too precious to use to make arrows and bolts.

Alchemists and wizards will, out of necessity, develop a material to replace wood as a building material. Aluminum might have to become a thing.

The Druid Spell Transmute Metal to Wood will become a very popular spell.

Hiro Protagonest
2015-07-15, 06:03 PM
A ragtag band of heroes rises to defeat the wizard and his monsters before they do too much damage.

/thread whitespace

Scientific answer: the world isn't just flat area + mountains. They can only kill off whatever's in the deepest open-air chasm in the world.

erikun
2015-07-15, 06:45 PM
I'm wondering why the worms can't handle mountains?
I would assume it's a Tremors(movie) reference.

Also, I would assume that you are looking at something like Skies of Arcadia, but where the ground is visible. That is, small isolated villages where people use airships to get around. Actually, it would probably be a lot more advanced than that - people would take on the dwarven way of life, digging out tunnels and living inside.

Depending on how these things move around, islands may be completely safe or you may only see some rocky, volcanic islands as safe havens. Those that are will probably be where the largest aboveground cities are, since that's the largest amount of solid ground to build a city. Think Machu Picchu.

LibraryOgre
2015-07-15, 06:56 PM
Their restrictions (no mountains, no oceans) mean they're likely to be limited to a single continent. If you placed the wizard in Chicago, the Central plains north of Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains probably die, but stuff south of the Arbuckle/Ozark band of mountains would be OK (no pun intended).

Place it in Dallas, and you clear out the South from just east of Santa Fe to the Appalachians, with a chunk of Mexico's East Coast also dying. You'd have a blasted hellscape, but unless they find a way to travel the ocean and pass the mountains, they're not going to be too severe.

Octopusapult
2015-07-16, 12:00 AM
Their restrictions (no mountains, no oceans) mean they're likely to be limited to a single continent. If you placed the wizard in Chicago, the Central plains north of Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains probably die, but stuff south of the Arbuckle/Ozark band of mountains would be OK (no pun intended).

Place it in Dallas, and you clear out the South from just east of Santa Fe to the Appalachians, with a chunk of Mexico's East Coast also dying. You'd have a blasted hellscape, but unless they find a way to travel the ocean and pass the mountains, they're not going to be too severe.

This is a good point. Your world would only be in danger if your world consists of one continent or the worms are capable of crossing these barriers eventually.

A Pangea-like world would be interesting though. An endgame campaign may be to barrier off several chunks of land and use a powerful ritual to split the land into several worm-free pieces effectively making continents a thing. (which doens't answer your question, but there's my two-cents)

golentan
2015-07-16, 12:20 AM
The comment was they had an upper altitude limit, not a lower one. Maybe though they can't for whatever reason enter the ocean they can traverse the crust or even the mantle beneath?

NRSASD
2015-07-16, 01:43 AM
Questions for Pinjata: when the worm kills something, how much is left behind? Is it like a death spell, where the victims just die mysteriously and completely unharmed physically, or does it eat them Tremor's style? If it's the former, does the area where the worm passed through remain dangerous to living things, or is it safe once the worms are gone? Do the worms kill magical creatures? What about constructs? Or the Undead?

If the worms' victims remain untouched, you would wind up with recovery teams coming down from the mountain strongholds, gathering the immensely valuable wood from the dead forests, and trying to lug it back to base before the worms come back. Likewise, destroyed farm fields grow wild with unharvested crops and abandoned cities brim with treasure and supplies, all tempting targets for salvage crews. Evil city states may rely on slave gangs for this work, solving the issue of gathering supplies and reducing the number of hungry mouths in the same stroke.

If the worms are noticeable on the surface (raised ground coming towards you, etc.), nomadic clans will likely form, to take advantage of the abundant-yet-risky resources that fill the deadly abandoned plains between the mountains. Permanent settlements would not survive, but mobile clans would do alright.

One fun concept would be that the worms are drawn to magic (being magic beasties themselves). Not only would any lowland natives be highly suspicious/superstitious/attempt to murder any magic users, but the cities with the most treasure would also be the most dangerous places due to worm activity.

If bodies are left behind, necromancers would have an absolute field day with the cities of corpses left behind. Sufficiently powerful necromancers might dodge the worms by living inside leomund shelters/force cubes, or having portals to other pocket dimensions on hand.

All of this relies on the worms leaving their victims intact, no ill effects after the worm's have left, and that there are few enough worms that some areas might be missed for a year.

Hope this helps!

LibraryOgre
2015-07-16, 10:23 AM
The comment was they had an upper altitude limit, not a lower one. Maybe though they can't for whatever reason enter the ocean they can traverse the crust or even the mantle beneath?

I figured it was "can traverse dirt, but not rock."

Pinjata
2015-07-19, 11:19 AM
Splendid input all of you.

Yeah, the altitude thing is kind of silly ... And with water limitations, they WOULD only take over ONE continent. This is really really cool notion. Nomadic tribes! How did I not come up with that? Also, waterworld ...

An idea is for a worm to kill a creature without actually mauling it. So looting also. All in all, a great idea! thanks guys.

Mr Beer
2015-07-19, 06:57 PM
The worms must be super tough if an entire D&D world doesn't have enough adventurers/archmages/liches/dragons/demigods to wipe them out.