Thinking up Signs of the Apocalypse in my Campaign

[The Red King]

You could have strange effects like magic being tinted for all but the most holy clerics and palidins....

Magic healing doing -1, -2, or -3 per dice while fire damage magic gets a corosponding bump in damage.

Areas of the sky at night have the stars blotted out for no reason that the PC's can identify.

Normal magic effects turn more evil.... Magic Missile looks like an evil spirit as it seeks its target. etc...

Standard humans can coms down with a strange ilness that causes them to grow demonic parts... Scales, horns, etc...

 

[Hand of Evil]

Look to your gods and their domains. Think of those domains being pulled away from the material plane, bubbles moving away from each other. You could also do a lava-light world (book by Farmer) where the domains and prime run together, one day clerics have great power, the next little. Creatures cross over...only to disappear.

 

[Janx]

I asked Johnny for his thoughts, and this is what he had to say:

There's a man going around taking names
And he decides who to free and who to blame
Everybody won't be treated all the same
There will be a golden ladder reaching down
When the man comes around

He also said:
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts,
And I looked and behold, a pale horse:
And his name that sat on him was Death,
And Hell followed with him.

I take Mr. Cash to mean you should have a Man in Black, riding on a pale horse. Taking peoples' names and writing them down in his book. His book is big, but no so big that it can actually hold all the names of all the people. Yet when he opens it, it always has room for a few more names.

He passes through towns, collecting names. Cordial, but a man of few words. Much like Clint Eastwood. When he asks you your name, he already knows the answer. He speaks your name as he writes it in his book. By the next dawn after he leaves, everybody is dead. Some died in their sleep. The others are torn apart in a bloody mess.

 

[Dragonwriter]

As mentioned above, looking at the Book of Revelations is probably a good idea.

You might also look at some of the prophecies regarding Ragnarok (yes, I know there's debate about Christianity inspiring Ragnarok, and I'm not going to delve into that, as plenty signs of Ragnarok are different enough).

• Winter, winter, winter, winter. Winter is the Season of Death already. So make it Extreme Winter. Blizzards on a weekly basis, snow enough to bury horses, people freezing to death because they were trapped in their own little cottages. Ragnarok had 4 different winters before the actual Final Battle happened (if memory serves), so you could use one or two of them for inspiration. Fimbulwinter (The Winter of Wolves) could unleash hordes of snarling, ravenous Dire Wolves with Half-Fiend or Brood (Elder Evils, Father Llymic) templates.
• Terrible creatures rising from ancient slumber. The Tarrasque itself could be a mere sign of Worse Things To Come! (In Norse mythology, Fenrir and Jormungandr both would break free/wake up and slay gods.)
• The Horsemen of Revelation are a classic symbol. You might consider tweaking them... Death, War, Hatred, and Agony/Pain, for instance.
• Undead rising in mass numbers is another classic. For powerful or exceptionally evil people, they rise as something way stronger than the usual skeletons and zombies.
• Plagues of rats, locusts and worse, plus the diseases they all carry, spread like wildfire through the entire world.
• Natural disasters shake the world to its very core. Volcanoes suddenly appearing (or even forming), geysers in the middle of a desert city, earthquakes and tsunamis hitting everywhere, the forests of the world burning to ashes.
• Gates to the various pits of Hell and the Abyss open up at random, spewing fiends into the midst of the unsuspecting and unprepared population. (And perhaps to combat this, celestials come to the Material Plane in force... and some may not care about crossfire or even truly believe the best way to save the people is to end their suffering, if you want a Good isn't always so Good approach. Or even have the celestials afflicted with madness, like the populace.)
• Magic becomes fickle, both to arcanists and priests. Spells can randomly explode in your face, work as normal, or make viciously-thorned roses grow out of the target's ears.

There are some things that come to mind... You might also consider looking into other games that deal with the End Times, if you don't mind spending a little bit.
Dread and Spite (the Books of Pandemonium) are oozing flavor. Armageddon: The End Times is also really interesting, as it has Demons and Angels teaming up to fight something even worse.

 

[Scott DeWar]

Hmm... let's see, really quick while I pass through on lunch, a few ideas that connect to the story...

* Smell of Hatred. People begin describing a "smell", described as something strange... perhaps even something pleasant like mint. It may even be that only the young and the elderly experience this smell, but before long these same people begin acting aggressively/violently. The world is essentially bleeding with hate.


Anyway, I need to run - just some quick ideas

the blood of those who die with the hatred infused blood, they are founf completely exsanguinated. Their blood has soaked into the ground into the catacombs below-coalescing and forming creatures of the abyss . . . . .

 

[Coce05]

Since the theme of your Far Realms is many beings one pulse, maybe you should try to explore a path where children leave their homes at night to wonder into the jungle/forest. And if you find their hiding place in the caves under the forest, you can see that they are becoming a part of some giant mass of meat and brain, interconnected with some transparent tentacle thing - pulsing synchronously.

Skin is pealed of them and the bones are scattered around, so it just uses the muscle and brain. What you get is a monstrous apparatus that has psionic powers and is worshiped by cultists as a spawn of Tharizdun.

If it grows to sufficient size, it can begin to control the minds of people of nearby settlements. People gather in holy places that are now desecrated, to let blood into large containers, to feed the spawn.

 

[DnD_Dad]

Thrazidune could be held in place by 6 artifacts that represent each of the six directions on each axis, and when they are brought together unchains him. Each artifact, when removed from its shrine changes an aspect of nature. West(sun stops moving) east(winds stop) north(birds stop flying) south(plants die) up(sun disappears) and finally down(the dead rise.). Just ideas.

 

[The Red King]

Since the theme of your Far Realms is many beings one pulse, maybe you should try to explore a path where children leave their homes at night to wonder into the jungle/forest. And if you find their hiding place in the caves under the forest, you can see that they are becoming a part of some giant mass of meat and brain, interconnected with some transparent tentacle thing - pulsing synchronously.

Skin is pealed of them and the bones are scattered around, so it just uses the muscle and brain. What you get is a monstrous apparatus that has psionic powers and is worshiped by cultists as a spawn of Tharizdun.

If it grows to sufficient size, it can begin to control the minds of people of nearby settlements. People gather in holy places that are now desecrated, to let blood into large containers, to feed the spawn.

I LOVE this.

I might have to steal it.

 

[Janx]

there is a many bodied entity that is infecting the population.

It sends its agents to seek out new people, the agent tells the person "I have a secret for you" and whispers the true name of the entityinto their ear. That person is now infected and has joined the network of minds.

The entity does not refer to itself as "us" or "we". To its perspective, each individual is not an individual, it is the entity. So the entity's agents do not speak to each other, as there is no need to transfer knowledge. When speaking to the unaffected, each body refers to itself as "I"

To detect these infected people, you could make a lense out of a piece of amber and look through it. The properties of an amber lens will show a stream of particles travelling very fast between infected bodies. There is no central host, merely lines of traffic between every infected body.

The effect is a neural network of minds linked together. Because even a single mind has sufficient brain power to be clever, devious and powerful, killing the bodies does not offer any immediately obvious change in behavior.

Thus, if the PCs managed to catch the infection early, and wade through 100 infected down to the last 3, there would not be any functional difference in their behavior from the perspective of the current combat.

From the strategic and long term view, this massive neural network (which is basically merging and rewiring each brain's neural network into a larger one) means this system is able to process all the channels of sensory input from each body and use that data to make plans and coordinate the bodies as a force, better than non-infected entities.

This means the agents do not make mistakes because they are operating on superior intel. This can be reflected by being able to send reinforcments immediately, or to counter the PCs new direction and have agents ready to meet them because they anticipated such a move.

As noted before, the entity refers to itself as I, regardless of which body it is speaking through. The I has a goal of integrating every intelligent being. It is in competition (as in survival, not sports) with other massive entities, like the one Coce05 described.

 

[Janx]

The Leviathan lives in the deepest part of the ocean. It has been sleeping there for a millenia. So long, that it has been covered by sediment, and other lifeforms have taken up residence on his surface, unaware that he is NOT the ocean floor.

Once, the world was covered in water, and the Leviathan could feed on the lesser beings at will. Leviathan feeds on souls as much as meat. So just eating unintelligent sealife is not enough to sustain him.

Leviathan has not been idle. In his dreams, he has been working. Long ago, he saw what he needed in the depths of space. He has drawn a massive body of ice from elsewhere in the star system to this world. He has carefully set about changing its motion and trajectory to bring it into close orbit with this world. And thus begins his second stage.

The astronomers have long known about The Wanderer, a stellar body passing through the system. Records are incomplete to know that it was once a frozen moon of a gas giant. By the time observers had the technology to see it, it appeared to be a comet or some such.

In recent days, The Wanderer has grown in size and everyone has noticed it. It's tail has formed a rainbow like stream, that initially trailed away behind it. Now, the tail forms an arc that bends back to this world in a rainbow display.

As days progress, it becomes more obvious that The Wanderer has entered orbit over this world as a new moon. There is a continual rainbow streaming off of it, visible even in day time.

It has become increasingly rainy, as the sun's rays from the moon are melting it and the planet's gravity is drawing it in. Since the planet is in rotation, the rain hits in waves. It turns out that it is effectively raining everyday, somewhere on the planet, by way of this melting moon. As the planet rotates and the moon orbits, the rain simply moves, it doesn't stop unless the planet is between the moon and the sun.

With all the moisture, the people have begun to get sick, and get pneumonia. Sores appear on both sides of their neck. The sickness passes, leaving a thin line of a scar on both sides of their neck.

As months pass, the ocean levels rise, flooding of coastal cities begins. It may be noticed now, that no one who has had the Sickness drowns. The scars on their neck, it turns out, have become Gills.

A year later, the new moon has shrunk greatly in size. All but the highest points on the planet are flooded. Society has adapted, because everyone who had the Sickness has discovered they can live underwater. So, they simply rebuild their lives, in their underwater cities.

The Leviathan awakes. It is time to feed.