Adventure hooks for the "great blackout of 2003"

With the recent blackout, I was curious to see what ideas people could come up with to explain it as a d20 Modern adventure hook.

Here's a link with info on it.

Here's mine for an Urban Arcana setting.

Ten years ago a weakening of the shadow wall brought an entire Drow city to our world. This Drow city is miles below the modern city of Cleveland, Ohio. Up until two years ago, the Drow in this city hadn't ventured to the surface world. The passageways they had always used to wreak havoc on the surface world no longer existed. The Drow believed this was caused by some powerful magic used by surface dwellers to keep them trapped below the surface. Through the years the Drow dug new passageways and tunnels leading them once again to the surface. When they emerged two years ago, however, they saw a world that did not resemble the one they came to seek revenge upon. They spent the next two years researching this new world looking for a weakness to exploit in their plans to dominate or destroy those on the surface. They found this weakness in the form of electricity. The Drow have in their employ, a force of Dopplegangers, whom they use to replace key prominent figures in the surface world to further their plans. The Drow planned a massive power outage so that they could take advantage of the confusion and place their dopplegangers throughout the various cities. This is only the start of their path to dominating the surface world.

Secret Canadian special forces have decided to start using high-power transmission lines as giant bug zappers to combat a growing dragon infestation. This was their first "test".... There's still a few kinks in the system.

I'm using the blackout as a convenient way of getting my characters out of a sticky situation. In our upcoming urban arcania game the players (who have only just become aware of shadow) are going to get put in a psychiatric hospital for gibbering about seeing a bunch of bugbears. I intend to help them escape by all the doors being locked via electromagnitism and when the power cut hits all the locks are sprung (of course the hospital would have a backup generator, but a friendly poltergeist will take care of that - ah it's a tangled web we weave). The escape won't be that easy however as the head psychiatrist is in actual fact a Drow who has a vested interest in keeping all those who can see through shadow locked up.

What I'm not going to do is pander to the stereotype that patients of a mental health hospital are dangerous. It's the staff that my characters are going to have to worry about.

If, by any chance the players don't gibber about the bugbears, then I intend to slam them in prison instead. I'm a nasty man.

When I get a game started, the Blackout of 03 will be a bit of backstory.

Cultists of an unnamable evil have been planning to perform the incantation that will bring their god-demon into our plane of existance. The ritual, however, centers around a gate artifact that requires massive amounts of energy to operate.

To that end, the cult infiltrates Unit 5 of the Eastlake power plant in Cleveland, intending to perform the ritual with the artifact connected to a main transmission trunk.

The ritual works, the doorway appears, the dark shape of the demon begins to shoulder it's way through ... and then something goes wrong. The gate draws too much power from the plant, causing it to trip ... the flow of energy dims, the gate begins to shut on the outsider. It gets trapped in the energy latice and drawn into the transmission wires as pure energy.

This is sort of like dropping an asteroid into lake Erie ... power is displaced, and has to have somewhere to go. A sudden flood of power travels along the network, literally melting transmission lines in places, tripping emergency failsafes all over the north east, causing a cascading black-out.

So now you have an angry god-demon in the Ohio power grid. Sweet.



--fje