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Jimp
2008-05-25, 02:12 PM
In a game I want to run the main plot will basically be that the end of the world is arriving in the setting in full blown epic fantasy style.
WARNING: FLUFF BLOCK
The background of the setting has 2 previous 'apocalypses' where nearly everything was destroyed. The first was a massive war destroying a previously technologically advanced world, the second was after the emergence of magic where basically the same thing happened except swap bombs for spells. The two previous disasters are known about to scholars and the second one is a folk tale among commoners. Both events are often refered to by various churches as 'Cleansings' or what have you that brought about change for the sins of heathens, so on and so forth.
This time, the end is coming about once again! It has been several thousand years since the last one, magic is widely used but the mass populace are a still suspicious of it. Arcane magic users are around, but rare since only people of extrordinary ability are able to learn the art. Divine magic is more common, but a decent chunk of that populace is made up of Adepts. Druids and Clerics and such are rarer since, like with Arcane magic, it takes great ability to truly master it. Common casters are very low level (1-6 at most), skilled casters are higher levels but the higher you get the much rarer they are, in an exponential curve sort of way. Technology exists in some circles but it's very basic. Nowhere near strong magi-tech or steam punk. Just the odd mechanical machine or the rare maic powered machine.
So, forumites, I ask you for signs of the apocalypse! I'm thinking of having different things happen in different parts of the world so that I can use as many ideas as can fit.
Idea 1: The dead rise from their graves [zombie apocalypse]

Albonor
2008-05-25, 02:18 PM
Idea two: A few dozens stars start to glow red, so much that they can be seen during the day. Then, one by one, they start to fade away, one every night. What will happen when the are all gone?

Emperor Tippy
2008-05-25, 03:01 PM
A Pink Panther proudly proclaims possession of this planet for his Purple Pony patron?

Riva
2008-05-25, 03:06 PM
Idea three; Fatestorm. Small tornado lookin' things rove around the world, attracted to population centers and changing everyones day. The young sometimes become old, babies fall out of windows on freak accident but bounce perfectly safe, strong men break backs falling on ledges that weren't there moments ago, plus the usual safe bet of squid rain. The fatestorm isn't intelligent, but does gravitate towards population centers. No one knows why. They come and go without rhyme or reason, altering probabilities and realities willy-nilly.


Idea four; Squid storm! Swarms of tiny (think three inches or so) flying, glowing squid appear all around. At worst they are a nuisance. More often they become adopted as pets as they eat bugs and are very gentle. Alternatively, they can be part of something much more malevolent. If the PC's are supposed to avert the End Times that is. Squids come, everyone is all "wtf? they uz soooo adurable!"

A few weeks pass when a great chime is heard. It isn't deafening, but everyone everywhere hears it clearly. Deaf old men are hoarsely crying "Ah heard sumfing!" and even ancient liches, lost deep in the earth, look up from their studies for a moment. As the chime peters out each squid stops moving and hangs in the air silently, as if wating for instructions. Slowly they start floating to roughly the same point in the sky. As they merge they start to form... (you guessed it!) SKY KRAKEN!!! Devourer of you and all around face eater.

The reason the entire world isn't being ravished like a cow near a drunk viking is that SKY KRAKEN!!! needs all of the little squids and one is trapped. Depending on your players, that squid is trapped by a little girl who adopted it and caught it in a pot or jar or whatever and the squid stays quiet out of love for the girl and the vauge desire to not become part of the giant SKY KRAKEN!!! and facerape everything. Alternatively, same little girl, father is wizard who caught it magicaly. The first way, SKY KRAKEN!!! sends out little squids to feed on stray power and emotion, but they are essentially independant creatures that are created and used for specific reasons. Or the SKY KRAKEN!!! is just stylish and thinks mini-cephalopods are awesome.

Anyway you dice it, PC's need to get the squid and find a way to avert terrifying tentacle torture. Maybe this can be done by just keeping the little squid safe and away for long enough, or maybe they can activate a super weapon to kill the SKY KRAKEN!!! before it gets a chance to become complete, hitting everything for over 9000 damage.


Idea Five; The Weeping Bard. The wind no longer howls with the imagined scream of demons, The Weeping Bard now plays its lonely song. Some say the being is a vestige that has grown too close to this world, other say it is a fallen god that is dead but not gone. The wind now plays a beautiful, sad tune with words that are almost, but not quite, comprehensible. This has put everyone on edge, but the real problem is the dissapearances. More and more often people start to hear the words grow more clear, as if they are approaching the source. As if it would be just down the lonely alleyway. As if it would be just behind that tree, as if it would be just down that cave. People that follow the music are never seen again.

Alternatively, it mood/personality based. Those who are lonely and depressed follow the song, feeling it echo in themselves. Those who may be stronger willed instead hear a terrible sobbing and pain filled laughter. This fills them with incredible fear, and they flee the percieved source.




Anyway, hope you can use something I threw out there. Also I hope that it was comphrensible =D

Randel
2008-05-25, 03:20 PM
Kind of taken from the Discworld novel 'Sourcery'.

Magic becomes easier to use, powerful mages begin to find themselves with more spells and have an easier time casting. Adepts and such can begin casting like wizards or clerics, and even those with non-magical abilities start to use them. Wait about a week before everyone starts blowing the planet up.

Alterativly, a massive influx of life energy starts building up. People start getting bonuses to strength, constitution and fort saves. They find that they have less need for sleep or eating. Also, vermin and monsters begin breeding rapidly and getting stronger. Common cats are powerful but the average commoner now has fighter-level strength. A scholor studying the phenomenon discovers that the planets core is glowing with a buildup of unstable energy... if the don't stop it the planet will explode and kill the now super-powered population. meanwhile a wizard tries building an escape pod to let some evacuate the planet... but he only has enough time to build a small one that can carry his only son.


Or, Magic and wonder are filling the world and physics are breaking down. At first its just odd things like floating lights (like dancing lights) or that tasks start to do themselves (prestidigitation effects to clean rooms and flavor food) more fey begin entering the world and wild magic makes the place like a dreamland. Pigs start to fly, volcanoes erupt in strawberry jam or snow depending on the day. It is decided that the dreams and whims of sentient people are shaping the wild magic and a group of 'killjoys' a stoic group of wizards, monks, and paladins form and try to contain the magic by either 'locking' peoples emotions (so they can't dream or have imagination) or fighting the fey creatures they think are behind the event.


Primordial ooze starts to awaken, the shapeless slimes from which all other life had formed begin to multiply and absorb other life forms. Black puddings, gelatinous cubes and all other types of oozes become common and they attack. First plants and vermin and later moving on to larger prey, the oceans begin to be over run with oozes devouring fish, the green slimes sweep across swamps and forests devouring trees and crops. While they don't at first attack humans their assault upon nature drives up food prices and makes the roads dangerous. Only when the people are starving and livestock famished do the oozes attack en-mass like a flood of death to consume those with the sheer gall to possess limbs and eyes. The controler behind them all is of course a massive slime like a lake left forgotten beneith the earths crust. Possesing corrosive all-consuming flesh and a powerful warped mind it just waits to consume all things into itself.


Aberrations and spirits from another dimension discover the material plane and wish to live in it. Though without form or shape they try to exist in it. At first there is just a larger occurance of aberrations, a few more monsters to slay. Then people start having disturbing dreams as the monsters try to invade their minds and steal their bodies so that they may live and breath and taste and feel. more monsters begin to form and summoned monsters have a chance of instead being aberrations who had stolen the shape of the summoned creature (they don't return after the spell expires and act strangely. Either acting Insane, fleeing from all moving things, rushing to the nearest 'edible' thing to taste it or smell it, or just standing in wonder at its new form) people have to make will saves while they sleep to avoid being possessed by by the aberrations. To defeat the threat, the heros must seal off the cracks in reality so that new aberrations can't enter... expect resistance by countless possessed or summoned beings alongside the twisted shapes who had entered in the flesh.... though some of them might help you as long as they are promised that they personally will be allowed to keep their form.


The modrons have decided to attack other planes and reshape them like their own plane of Mechanus. Creating armies of constructs, they invade the world and take all the metal they can find to build giant machines connected to Mechanus. As the fight goes on, more constructs are seen doing battle, metal gets rarer in non-modron controlled areas and chaotic spells are imeded as the modrons reshape reality with their extention of mechanus. With machines that cast 'transmute stone to mud' and fabricate they are slowly destroying all mountains, valleys and caves to make a perfectly flat world and killing all plants and animals in their area.


Rust monsters and other creatures that destroy metals, stone, or disrupt magic items begin to multiply and ruin society. if magic items, metal tools, gold, and other things are destroyed then society will revert to a primitive living. Some monks and barbarians don't see a problem with this and take the opportunity to conquer more technology-dependent civilizations.

Zenos
2008-05-25, 03:20 PM
Suggestion 4. There is heavy rain for weeks on end and the oceans start flooding major coastal cities.

Guildorn Tanaleth
2008-05-25, 03:28 PM
What exactly causes the "end of the world" this time? Knowing that would make it easier to come up with appropriate signs.

Riva
2008-05-25, 03:35 PM
Another idea; Rain Of Text. It starts off small, school children notes. Letters. Informational brochures, asking if you've accepted Pelor into your heart. Then trashy romance novels, moving up to dictionary's and all manner of other large wordy things. Maybe a whale with a story writ on him with paint will fall from the sky. Entire districts falling to heavy philosophical treatises and ream upon ream of mathematical computations referencing a being known only as 'Pun-Pun'.

Illiterate Scribe
2008-05-25, 04:13 PM
Finally, the great astral reserves of postive, negative, fire, water, air, and earth energy are depleted, and 'peak magic' is reached: the Laws of Multi-Planar Thaumaturgodynamics finally kick in.

The result?

Magic becomes zero-sum, and can neither be created nor destroyed, stealing energy from other places on the Prime to fuel spells. Fireballs suck heat out of the world, to keep the total amount of thermal energy constant; resurrection spells steal life from others, while spells such as rope trick snip away portions of space.

Xuincherguixe
2008-05-25, 04:30 PM
People could be finding out the ancient secrets to some of those things that destroyed the world in the past.

There could be a Psionic Apocolypse.

Could be natural, rather than man made disasters. (Plague or such)

Ancient nasty things could wake up.

Also. Maybe, there's some ancient evil thing that engineers these apocalypses every thousand years or so.

Albonor
2008-05-26, 05:51 PM
Idea #Ilostcount: Chaotic and evil (stacks) people start gain unusual power, oriented towards destruction (maybe they all gain a level of Doomlord? (Planar Handbook)), while lawful and good people gain are eternaly fatigued and eventually exausted?