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stenver
2017-06-28, 04:53 PM
So my players had a last stand battle in their home city Khart. The enemy had broken through all lines of defences and they were in their last keep holding their ground. They needed to survive 1 more night and then they had a plan how to turn this whole thing around. But the enemy snuck in while they were sleeping and made an attempt to open the keep gates. The players heard the fighting near the gates and rushed in to save the night. Alas, the fight went badly and the enemy managed to destroy the barricades of the gates and call the army sieging outside. Giants rammed at the door and smashed in. The players were exhausted, spent and unable to defeat the 4 giants and army waiting outside. One player was knocked out and general retreat started to the secret escape hatch. But one player had drawn 3 wishes from deck of many things and he still had 1 wish left. He wished:

"I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

The giant's disappeared, gates were closed and night was saved. But as you can imagine, this is just a goldmine for a story! Throw me all the ideas you have.

Khart is a jewel of dwarven city built next to volcano. It has access to the top of the volcano and deep mines below. The mines lead to underdark and all it's riches and horrors. It was sieged and breached by Duergars(They didn't come to annex. They came to raze and burn the city in a grudge-war that players caused), there is a blood crusade from drows going on nearby, there is an army of orcs marching from north, players recently defeated a beholder deep underground who was spreading plague that drove everybody mad and much more. The area is ripe for disruption. What could have possibly killed all those giants?

Karl Aegis
2017-06-28, 05:12 PM
Your player didn't exclude themself from the calamity. I feel like that was a bad idea.

Misereor
2017-06-29, 06:00 AM
So my players had a last stand battle in their home city Khart. The enemy had broken through all lines of defences and they were in their last keep holding their ground. They needed to survive 1 more night and then they had a plan how to turn this whole thing around. But the enemy snuck in while they were sleeping and made an attempt to open the keep gates. The players heard the fighting near the gates and rushed in to save the night. Alas, the fight went badly and the enemy managed to destroy the barricades of the gates and call the army sieging outside. Giants rammed at the door and smashed in. The players were exhausted, spent and unable to defeat the 4 giants and army waiting outside. One player was knocked out and general retreat started to the secret escape hatch. But one player had drawn 3 wishes from deck of many things and he still had 1 wish left. He wished:

"I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

The giant's disappeared, gates were closed and night was saved. But as you can imagine, this is just a goldmine for a story! Throw me all the ideas you have.

Khart is a jewel of dwarven city built next to volcano. It has access to the top of the volcano and deep mines below. The mines lead to underdark and all it's riches and horrors. It was sieged and breached by Duergars(They didn't come to annex. They came to raze and burn the city in a grudge-war that players caused), there is a blood crusade from drows going on nearby, there is an army of orcs marching from north, players recently defeated a beholder deep underground who was spreading plague that drove everybody mad and much more. The area is ripe for disruption. What could have possibly killed all those giants?

Dunno what ruleset you are using, but that's 25 words and two sentences. That could be relevant.

Be sneaky and find some way to turn the words "when Khart fell" on them.
Did it actually fall? Or was the first time it fell 100 years ago, meaning all the giants' ancestors were killed, thus disastrously upsetting the local eco-system?

Or "the first to fall". Fall how? To debauchery? For a pretty giantess? Into a pit?

If relevant, decide on some cause of death.
Mutated disease that affects giants first. Necromancer looking for giant zombies. Eaten by dragon. Poisoned by the enemy they were actually trying to escape. Insane paladins on a rampage. Struck by meteor. Murdered by criminal mastermind in bid to manipulate prices on giant-slaying devices. Caught in collapsing mine that is henceforth unusable.

goto124
2017-06-29, 06:47 AM
The Deck of Many Things is the reason the PC was able to cast the wish in the first place. Probably some form of DnD.

Quertus
2017-06-29, 08:34 AM
"I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

The giant's disappeared, gates were closed and night was saved. But as you can imagine, this is just a goldmine for a story! Throw me all the ideas you have.

What could have possibly killed all those giants?

The wish requires that Khart fall, so fall it must.

Personally, based on the 2e Time of Troubles, when the God of Assassins sacrificed all his followers for power, I'm liking the idea that the God of Giants sacrificed all the giants within 100 miles to power something - something big. Perhaps a new breed of Giants? Perhaps the creation of some powerful artifact, like a rebigulator. Or perhaps this sacrifice was to hold off some greater calamity, like an incursion by the Far Realms.

Or perhaps, especially if Khart still stands, Khart, and the areas within 100 miles, have fallen into another plane. The four giants yet live, and are the magically infused living McGuffin required to bring Khart back to the Prime Material. But where are they, and why?

Lvl 2 Expert
2017-06-29, 08:49 AM
What could have possibly killed all those giants?

A racist balrog? Those things from Pitch Black? Giantpox? Al ultragiant stamping on all vermin? An owl the size of a mountain? Some form of undead that turn their giant and monstrous humanoid victims into more of them (and only eat anything else ones they run out of those)? A wizard casting familicide? A complicated storm pattern? Time traveling giant hunters firing "magic lead beans"? The queen of England sending helicopters? A very nasty fungus? A giant child listing all his friends and family in this little black notebook he found? An invasion of gnomes?

Aneurin
2017-06-29, 08:51 AM
Time loop!

The player specifically said "when Khart fell", right? But from what you've said... as soon as the giants died, Khart no longer fell. Which means the wish never happened. So the giants are alive again. Except when they're alive, the city falls and the wish happens, so the giants die but the city doesn't fall and so the wish never happens...

You get the idea.

The characters are now stuck in ground-hog day. They relive the night the city fell, over and over, until they can come up with a way to stop it falling other than the wish (which they no longer have access to, at least for the duration of the loop, to prevent them basically using a better worded wish as a cop-out).



As for things that could kill the giants? What about that spell-plague thingy the beholder was spreading, turned up to 11.

Anxe
2017-06-29, 10:18 AM
I would rule that as two wishes, but the 100 mile radius is kind of unimportant for the effect they wanted.
If I were adjudicating that wish I would have an earthquake start that broke the outer areas of Khart first, swallowing the giants into the abyss, followed by the good guys at the central keep. Throw in a bit of volcanic eruption and lava for good effect.

You've already gone down a different path by having the giants disappear. At this point I would curse the city in a manner similar to Thebes in Oedipus Rex. The city slowly declines and there's nothing you can do about it. The PCs might try to piss against the tide, but its too late. For every problem they fix, three more have arisen while they were busy.

Mastikator
2017-06-29, 11:37 AM
It's pretty obvious what you have to do, the calamity that killed the giants is pyroclastic flow from the volcano, everyone dies. Instantly. With no save, no "I'm immune because bla", you ded

Narkis
2017-06-29, 12:34 PM
"I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

So the wish essentialy asks for this sequence of events: Some calamity, giants die, city falls.

Way I would've done it: Volcano explodes, fragments hit all giants within 100 miles with unerring precision, killing them simultaneously. And then lava slowly engulfs the city, leaving some time for an evacuation but not without casualties. Result: City falls, giants fell first, some calamity ensues, players get a warning about badly worded wishes.

But it's too late for that. Your calamity needs to be slower. Perhaps some kind of Beholder plague that affects bigger humanoids first. So the giants died first, then the ogres, then orcs and burly humans, normal humans and elves and finally the dwarves and gnomes. Players are now in a race against time to find the cure before everyone dies.

LibraryOgre
2017-06-29, 12:42 PM
It's pretty obvious what you have to do, the calamity that killed the giants is pyroclastic flow from the volcano, everyone dies. Instantly. With no save, no "I'm immune because bla", you ded

Agree, here. Simplest explanation is something killed everyone, starting with the giants.

My money is on the Tarrasque that happened to be near the city of Khart. It awakened and ate the giants, first (being biggest), and then proceeded to destroy everything else.

goto124
2017-06-29, 12:48 PM
the Tarrasque

I'm voting for this just for the possibility of an epic Tarrasque battle.

stenver
2017-06-29, 03:28 PM
Time loop!

The player specifically said "when Khart fell", right? But from what you've said... as soon as the giants died, Khart no longer fell. Which means the wish never happened. So the giants are alive again. Except when they're alive, the city falls and the wish happens, so the giants die but the city doesn't fall and so the wish never happens...

Awesome idea. Really gave me something to think about


As for things that could kill the giants? What about that spell-plague thingy the beholder was spreading, turned up to 11.

That was one of my thoughts as well - basically reversed the time a bit and a comeback. Thanks for the idea!


My money is on the Tarrasque that happened to be near the city of Khart. It awakened and ate the giants, first (being biggest), and then proceeded to destroy everything else.

Hah! That was one of my first thoughts - a great tarrasque awoken or purple worm rolling around


The wish requires that Khart fall, so fall it must.

Indeed, but fallen it already has. The players are rulers of ashes. Only a handful of the city remains


Personally, based on the 2e Time of Troubles, when the God of Assassins sacrificed all his followers for power, I'm liking the idea that the God of Giants sacrificed all the giants within 100 miles to power something - something big. Perhaps a new breed of Giants? Perhaps the creation of some powerful artifact, like a rebigulator. Or perhaps this sacrifice was to hold off some greater calamity, like an incursion by the Far Realms.

Hmm... Good things to think about


Or perhaps, especially if Khart still stands, Khart, and the areas within 100 miles, have fallen into another plane. The four giants yet live, and are the magically infused living McGuffin required to bring Khart back to the Prime Material. But where are they, and why?

That could be a really drastic twist. Thanks for the idea!


It's pretty obvious what you have to do, the calamity that killed the giants is pyroclastic flow from the volcano, everyone dies. Instantly. With no save, no "I'm immune because bla", you ded

I believe D&D is about story building and fun not punishing players. Please refrain from all suggestions of "You should have instantly killed them". In my opinion, this doesn't build memorable and heroic stories. In my game, the player deaths come from poor tactical choices or bad luck. And they die a lot. But they always get a chance.

TeChameleon
2017-06-29, 04:05 PM
Well, if you're still taking ideas...

The wording of the wish rather strongly suggests a mucking about with the timestream. Do you have a record of how the giants affected the battle between the fall of Khart and their attack on the gates of the keep? Because if they suddenly *blipped* out of existence some hours prior to the actual wish being made (somewhat arbitrarily assigning the 'fall of Khart' to when the outer defenses went down), then some things are going to have changed, possibly rather drastically.

If, for example, the giants were the Duergar's primary siege weapons, them going 'poof' before they breach the castle's curtain wall is going to mean that, instead of a sacking, this is suddenly a siege. Certain houses may have remained standing that would otherwise have been stomped flat, or perhaps a flank of the army that would have been annihilated by the giants would survive, altering the balance of forces.

And, if you really want to mess with the players' heads, maybe the giants were eaten in the past by pissed-off Inevitables (or whatever the local Clockroaches (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClockRoaches) are called) trying to get rid of the time disturbance at its chronological start, and they retroactively erased all the giants that the Duergar would have brought along/captured, depopulating all giant villages or whatever for a hundred-mile radius.

Now the players have inadvertently turned themselves into living Paradox Bombs, hunted by the guardians of time, and, as things shift and alter more and more radically and chaotically around them, the forces of Law itself.

Kantaki
2017-06-29, 04:41 PM
Simple. The character just killed a verifiable army of giants in a instant.
That's gonna draw attention to both him and the city.
And not the good kind.
Giants who want vengeance for their murdered kin, denizens of the Underdark who want to prevent they are next- and have a direct access to the city, people who want that power for themselves, Inevitables who are rather unamused by the wish messing with causality, agents of... lower, darker places than the Underdark who are very interested in the character's (and quite possibly the city's) future...
All kinds of unpleasant folks will come after the party now that they put themselves- and Khart -on the proverbial map with this little feat.

ATHATH
2017-06-30, 03:22 AM
I'm liking the "fall into a pocket plane" idea.

Since Khart never fell, despite being under siege by a massive enemy force... Perhaps the Wish spell erected a shield. Cue an Under the Dome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series)) scenario.

Also, the Inevitables are going to be very unhappy with the players' time shenanigans. Perhaps you should send one or two over as a boss fight.

ATHATH
2017-06-30, 03:24 AM
Has Khart been fought over in the past? If so, "when Khart fell" may have been hundreds of years ago, if not more.

Aidan305
2017-06-30, 12:13 PM
Well, one thing that's going to happen as a result of this is Inevitables, more specifically Quarats, those Inevitables charged with the protection of the timelines. You do not want to mess with a Quarat.

Aside from that, in terms of calamities able to effect such a large area (200 mile diameter) there's not much, particularly not much that won't effect where the players are based. Natural disasters, volcanoes, earthquakes, those tend to be fairly small scale.

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-30, 02:45 PM
Your player didn't exclude themself from the calamity. I feel like that was a bad idea.

That is my first reaction as well.

FreddyNoNose
2017-06-30, 02:49 PM
I believe D&D is about story building and fun not punishing players. Please refrain from all suggestions of "You should have instantly killed them". In my opinion, this doesn't build memorable and heroic stories. In my game, the player deaths come from poor tactical choices or bad luck. And they die a lot. But they always get a chance.

Well, it depends on how open minded you want to be about it. A great cataclysm happened due to the wish, sure they died, but their next characters start in the new campaign you have as a result. Think of the first book of Dragonlance and how there was a cataclysm in the past. IMO, a major benefit of this, is the players get to see what happened as a result of their action.

Jay R
2017-06-30, 03:35 PM
"I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

If I'm the DM, I would say, "As you began to speak, all the casters could see a slight mystical glow all around you as you said, "I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants." The glow stopped suddenly and no magic was detected while you said, "And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously."

All the giants that fell in the original story fell before anybody else. That was the wish. Trying to kill all the others within 100 miles is a second wish. But they're safe for the night. The living giants won't get here seeking revenge until morning.

But if you didn't do that, then I recommend the following.


What could have possibly killed all those giants?

A high-level necromancer who saw an available resource. He is now going around making more and more giant zombies.

stenver
2017-07-02, 04:27 AM
Really love the reference to inveitables and quarat. Thank you guys! I had never heard of them. This opens up an entire new threat to the world yet again :)

Draconi Redfir
2017-07-02, 05:24 AM
surprised this hasn't come up before, but Wishes are not in written text. "Khart" spoken aloud could sound an awfull lot like "Cart", as in, wheeled devices pushed or pulled by animals or people to store items.

so now, any time a Cart falls off a cliff, or even falls down a small 1/2ft bump in the road, ALL THE GIANTS IN THE WORLD SPONTANEOUSLY TRIP.

maybe that could be the calamity if you want too. all the giants "fall", meaning they trip over. and all the giants within 100 miles crack their skulls and die from the fall.,

Hopeless
2017-07-02, 05:54 AM
How about everybody inside the city were transported a century later with the city reduced to a forested overgrown ruin with the giants aged to skeletal remains by the same effect?
So when Khart fell the giants died first but now the survivors are stuck in a future they never expected you could even turn it into a fairy story the inhabitants of the outside world tell to explain how the now mythical city fell?

Deliverance
2017-07-02, 07:34 PM
The player could have tried to use a wish to save himself, or to save himself or his friends, or temporary protection to gain time to find another solution, but he went for targeted mass murder.

That's a damn stupid wish. Way beyond the limits of safe wishing in all game systems I know, and with a Deck of Many things we are probably talking D&D where killing a single being without a saving throw is already venturing into unsafe and dangerous wishing territory. So this player's wish is so far out that the player dying for making such a poor tactical choice would be well deserved and I'm agreed with those who consider a volcanic mutually assured destruction scenario with future generations learning cautionary tales of "legend has it this devastation was caused by an unwise wish" to be an appropriate response. The fantasy version of sci-fi classic "and where this plain of glass is once stood the city of Wah-shin-ton".

Anyhow, your game, your rules. Apparently "The giant's disappeared, gates were closed and night was saved.", so no matter how the wish is rules-lawyered it had a major effect considerably beyond what is safe D&D wishing - which suggests that any secondary effects can be as huge as the GM wants to create a nice story tie in without giving the impression that he wants to reward attempted "kill all enemies with a single wish" tactics.

So taking the wish apart I'll stick with the simpler scenario where the "giants very the first to fall when the city fell" and the second clause would be a second wish, which was not fulfilled.

How about this - the surface layer of the city and several layers of the mines below have been magically teleported into the sky without anybody noticing and is now hovering a kilometer above the surface. Nothing neat about it - think a giant genie with a giant magic toy shovel scooping out a shovelful containing most of the city - or whatever mechanic you want. Below them there's a chasm where this part of the city used to be.

The giants who were in the city as if fell were not included in the teleport/scoop and fell/dropped into the chasm as the surface they were standing on disappeared.

The army outside noticed the chasm where the city used to be and possibly went to investigate any layers of the mines under the city that remained and weren't scooped up into the sky. Any survivors in the lowest levels that remained behind then the city was scooped up had better flee.

The giant army might/might not - notice the new city in the sky at night, though by daylight they surely would. What they'd do then is anybody's guess.

In the dark of night the city's survivors at first noticed nothing wrong - the giants were gone, they could close their gates, and they didn't at first notice that the city was now airborne. Only when daylight returned or people explored the lower levels for survivors and discovered that the tunnels opened unto open air did anybody know that they were in an entirely new kind of trouble.

So you've got a stationary floating city (no movement controls, sorry) with whatever supplies of food and water it had when it was scooped out of the earth. How many people survive up there? What are their options? Is it cool to have a floating city located exactly 1 km over the chasm in which it used to located (even if some passages in its lower levels need to be blocked for safety) or is this just begging for future problems? (Or both?) It is certainly colder and the air is thinner, but these are hardly the most severe challenges involved. Is the magic keeping the city floating stable or will it deteriorate with time? Will the giants give up and go home?

Or do you add a touch of nightmare fuel to this? What powers the magic that keeps the city floating? Perhaps the soul of the person who made that unsafe wish? Perhaps the lifeforce of everybody within the city when the magic was enacted (everybody aging a little bit faster all the time or one at a time aging a lot, perhaps one aged to death per day)? Or perhaps "just" draining the judgment and emotions or the inhabitants?

Perhaps these magic ties are permanent and disregard distance? And regardless, perhaps nobody will know of this until they eventually start noticing that something weird is happening (people fading/aging rapidly/becoming less emotional depending on choice). After all, they have plenty of more immediate problems to worry about, so finding out exactly what powers that magic is probably something the players will delay dealing with.

And how about making it so finding a way to break the magic bonds will only prevent further draining, not restore anything that was lost? Put some sense of urgency to the whole situation once it is realized what is going on.

TheYell
2017-07-03, 01:28 PM
I'd have the father god of the giants, Annam, intervene directly with a Miracle.

He decrees your Wisher is a genocidal maniac and your party is a bunch of cowards for wishing death on his people because you can't beat them in battle. He strips you of your wishes as a starter punishment.

He turns back time two days, sparing the lives of all giants and keeping Khart intact. He then grants your party life for a thousand years (not of youth, so decline is inevitable) and puts a magic geas on them to wander the earth magically marked as cursed by a god and not to be killed, visible to anybody with arcane or divine spellcasting powers. Then he teleports the whole party a thousand leagues away from Khart, and turns them to stone for a thousand days. So they all wake up on the same day in a totally different wilderness.

He then stays put in Khart to make his sentence known in tones of sonorous thunder, and bids the duergars depart because their causus belli has been dispatched.

That leaves it up to the party to try and come back to Khart, if they're really crazy.

Ninjadeadbeard
2017-07-03, 02:33 PM
An asteroid lands on one of the giants, causing a massive shockwave to destroy everything within the range specified.

ExLibrisMortis
2017-07-03, 03:18 PM
As long as Khart is ruled by a dwarf, all giants within 100 miles of it cannot die.

The moment a non-dwarf rules Khart, all giants within 100 miles of the city die.

LordCdrMilitant
2017-07-03, 04:42 PM
This is fascinating.

If the wording is indeed "I wish that when Khart fell, the first to fall were the giants. And all giants within 100 miles also died in some calamity simultaneously," to the letter, then they didn't save the city. The city has to be lost for the wish to trigger at all.

It's not worded as to provoke a time loop either, because it doesn't revert time back to before the gate was breached, nor does it prevent the gate from being breached. It guarantees that the first people slain when the city is captured/destroyed will be the giants, and that it will be a calamity that kills the giants, and that it will be of radius at-least 100 miles.


The easiest solution here is that the calamity is/causes the fall of the city, such as the city and the surrounding 100 miles collapsing into a maelstrom of magic, or a volcanic eruption devastating the area, etc, or a plague sweeping through the city that is particularly destructive to giants.


Of course, breaching the city could cause a calamity that doesn't directly affect the city but does slay all the giants, but it can't stop the city from falling, since the city must fall.

TeChameleon
2017-07-06, 03:56 PM
Well, one thing that's going to happen as a result of this is Inevitables, more specifically Quarats, those Inevitables charged with the protection of the timelines. You do not want to mess with a Quarat.

Oh... oh my. How clearly did the wisher enunciate when making the wish? Because if they mumbled even a little, 'Khart' and 'Quarat' can sound surprisingly similar... :smallamused:

Dunno where exactly you could take that, but this could jump the rails into Timey-Wimey territory with amusing suddenness.

Pex
2017-07-06, 04:43 PM
How about Side effect: None for a change? Just because a Wish was used doesn't mean there must be punishment for it.