What could cause an explosion big enough to wipe out a hamlet?

[Bihor]

A small number a peaple survived. they thell the PC that some one who was missing for a couples of days walk in town. he was looking strange like a corps. The survivor are the ones who got scared and ran just befor the town explode.

The body that came in the village was a zombi stuff with explosif like in the manga ninja scroll.

Mage it's a evil gnome alchimist or necromance with something against the village or something

 

[MerakSpielman]

Apropos of a thread in the general forum, I think there will be an unstable portal open to the plane of decay. Maggots everywhere! I'll have a cleric of the Queen of the Dead be responsible. All the villagers will be maggot infested zombies. The carcasses of their domestic animals will be oozing with rot. Trees will be covered in fungus, and even the grass will smell bad.

Instead of maggots, make 1 in 4 of them be infested with Rot Grubs. You can find 3rd edition stats for these classics at http://www.enworld.org/cc/converted/vermin/rot_grub.htm

 

[Corey]

Historian Peter James and Arachaeologist Nick Thorpe have a very interesting possible explaination for the destuction of Sodom and Gomorrah in their book Ancient Mysteries.

They suggest that the cities sat on a fault line and nearby slime pits were rich in oil, a combination that equalled a "powder keg."

Here is a quote: "A disasterous earthquake shook the Vale of Siddim (in the Dead Sea area) in about 2000 BC, releasing large quantities of natural gases and bitumens which were ignited by scattered hearth fires..."

So earthquake releases natural gases that interact with people's cooking fires and go boom.

No more hamlet and an interesting conflguration whose thick black smoke would be visible from afar.

Corey

 

[Buttercup]

Instead of maggots, make 1 in 4 of them be infested with Rot Grubs. You can find 3rd edition stats for these classics at http://www.enworld.org/cc/converted/vermin/rot_grub.htm

Oh my yes. My players will be arriving in about 10 minutes. I just printed the rot grub stats. Mwahahahahaha!

 

[Buttercup]

I just thought I would post an update. My players, accompanied by several NPCs, killed a bunch of zombies, but two of them ended up getting attacked by rotgrubs. The party's rogue (played by my husband) killed a rotgrub covered zombie with a thrown dagger, then went to retrieve his knife, over the protestations of his companions. Eleven rotgrubs burrowed into his flesh, dropping his constitution into the negative numbers.

So, I had my first party death, and it was my husband's character! Ah, well. He did a stupid thing, and deserved what he got. He's still thinking about what to play next.

 

[Kesh]

I had a desert set up in my homebrew world that was created by a magical explosion. Essentially, a powerful evil wizard was in the process of transforming into a lich when a band of adventurers stormed his keep. Disrupting the ritual at the last possible second, the adventurers caused the lich to not only lose the spell... he lost control of it.

The result was that all the energy of that ritual, plus all of his other memorized spells, was released in a single instant. Coupled with all the magical and alchemical equipment in the keep (which was destroyed, releasing their energies too), it blasted the landscape into a scorched desert.

Now, the magical energies permeate the area. Snow can't fall, because when it reaches a certain place above the desert it simply melts. The entire landscape maintains a constant, scorching temperature year round, and any creatures who make an extended stay there begin to mutate due to a form of 'magical radation' left over from the blast.

 

[Ferret]

Towns people have a big party, and did something to really piss of the druids, who were at least 18th or so level, and they cast thunderswam, earthquake and whirlwind, and other "apocaplypse" type spells. See those stones? Druid circle!

 

[howandwhy99]

I've always liked the idea of an Epic Antipathy spell. The after-effects to a small town would visibly seem like a modern nuclear blast, but show no signs of heat damage, radiation and the like. Then the players would need to think outside the box to solve the mystery of what caused it. (especially if you make antipathy a physical law and not magical, like the old alchemist laws of nature).

If you didn't want it to be too mysterious, you could keep the effect in place. The town may look decimated, but don't try walking in there!

 

[oliverhenshaw]

fractals or grumpy faerie

Ok, I know the sessions been played but I've got a couple of ideas for the map that might be interesting.

One thing I've noticed is that the shape of the clearing looks a bit like a fractal. Maybe some seer was exploring mathematics with bizarre-o consequences.

Or you could go more the route that the discovery itself was catastrophic.


I also noticed the the boundaries of the destruction extend no further than the boundaries of the hamlet itself. Which opens up interesting possibilities. I'm quite attracted by the idea cof the standing stones representing some kind of mystical lock or gate and being linked to a similar place of power in or near the clearing on the other side of the hamlet. Maybe the people were digging there and woke/released/upset something.

 

[Existence]

three words : evil stupid gnome

Hehe, I like that, but I like these three words even better...

Spontanious Bovine Combustion.

Unfortunatly the map doesn't have ample grazing space.