Making History: what events might happen to a city?

[Aotrs Commander]

Okay. I've suddenly got about six weeks less quest-writing time than I thought and my current quest is progressing at the typical snail's pace required from an exploration-type adventure, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a brain-storming session on the boards...

The short version is that the PCs are going to find what, for the sake of arguement is a load of memory-crystals, charting the progress of a city-state's history and I need a few ideas for events for a selected sample. In particular, there are seven events of note that warrented special attention in storage (the first of these is basically the memory of the guy who created the first one).

These stones are somewhere between a crystal ball, a memory-stone (a la Harry Potter's pensieve) and diary entry, part Senate-stone from Planescape Torment. The idea is that the PC will experience a fairly short vision of an event; some of it will have a narration of sort; though the PCs won't understand the language, even telepathcally, but they will be able to gain a sort of empathy from the creator of the memory as to the intent and importance.


So, what I'm looking for is basically a few ideas of events that might have come along over the course of one to three hundred years important enough to be enshrined in particular and/or some more generic things that might have been recorded in this manner for posterity.



Background of said city in more detail:

The city is located in high desert (think Colorado Plateau) in a canyon river valley. In the city's heyday, a system of locks took a tributary from the mountains to the east down to the main river in this canyon (which would have been used, for example, to transport wood).

The denizens of the city were humanoids, though not quite human and the planet may be (for brevity) be considered a Generic Fantasy RPG-world (i.e. the sort of world you play D&D on) where this race would have akin to one of the more fringe races from later bestiaries or something.

The ancient city-dweller culture was initially forced into the canyons (probably before the memory stones were created) by a combination of drought and enemies - a faction of their relgious order that, when the droughts came, demanded human(ish) sacrifice to sate the gods and resorted to force. The people abandoned their original city (located elsewhere in this desert and scattered to the canyons, building settlements against the walls (like the ancient Puebloans did, something I would have said you couldn't make up, but until they were pointed out to me, I nearly DID).

The group that came to this particular canyon remained, and this city became more and more powerful become a veritable Pueblo Bonito of its own, streching back up to the top of the cliff and getting powerful and rich enough to create the locks. (Perhaps originally, the task of getting the wood from the tributary to the canyon floor was done by back-breaking labour - or perhaps clerical magics.) This civilisation would have lasted for a few hundred years.

The planet's entire pletotha of races abruptly vanished in some unknown cataclysm about 900-1200 years ago. At the time coming up to that grand disappearance, this civilisation was starting to have new troubles and was already on the decline. A new drought was starting and causing more friction among the populace, an element (in a cultue where religion had a strong influence in power) were starting to hint the old searcifical priests had the right idea....

And then, they caught wind of the coming cataclysm. Not knowing what sort of thing it would be, they assumed it was something they could fight. Desparate to keep their control, the priests and mages concocted these demon-summoning chambers, using the deepest and most sacred - and secret - kivas as the basis, so that when the cataclysm came, the demons would be released to fight for them against it. But when it came, it was not something that they could fight, and they vanished before the chambers could be opened.

(Skip 900-1200 years, and the PCs detect the emanation coming off from one of these now-malfunctioning chambers when they use their off-world Gate and go to investigate, which is main thrust of the quest.)

The memory stones associated with the last part in particular will be elsewhere (basically, the really plot-important ones havig been foreshadowed by the archive of 'em the PCs find first.) These later stones will basically give the PCs more of a clue as to what actually happened.

Suggestions would be welcome!



Edit: Suggestions are now written up in post 12 for perusal.