Apocalypse in Thay (FR)

[Dream]

Well, I was generalizing but from your statement I see that you´re certainly not afraid of touching the "sacred cows"...

 

[painandgreed]

As has been stated, most people in stone buildings would be safe. Everyone in the open and in a wooden building would be dead. Whole forests leveled, many tens of thousands of people dead. All cattle dead, too, and fields destroyed. There would be mass starvation (or imports) come winter, and the average price of food rises across the continent. So does the pay rates of all kinds of craftsmen, as Thay hires anyone it can get their hands on to come help restore the country.

I'd have to argue with the "whole forests leveled" part. Why would trees gain enough experience from such an act to level up? (Ha ha. Just kidding.) No, really, wood has 10 hit points per inch of thickness, I don't think you're going to topple any tree larger than 3.5 inches in diameter. Saplings will be killed while the bark and leaves are knocked off larger trees, but in the abstract hit point system of D&D, that's just all flavor text and they'll survive.

For that matter, how many trees are there in Thay anyway? I've always pictured it as mostly plains and steppes with trees being sparse. I'd have to wonder if they're even used much for building material in the country. More likley they just use slave labor to quarry Thaymount for stone and use what wood they grow or import for items that can't be made out of other material. I would expect slave quarters to be tents (like yurts) or sod since those would be the available materials if not stone. Those in tents would be toast, but if being in a build protected the occupants from damage, then even a sod hut would probably provide enough protection for the inhabitants to survive. Maybe even waddle and dob house depending on the thickness of the walls and hit points given to them due to quality. I'd say a typical log cabin would survive quite nicely (if they actually could use that much wood if Thay is wood sparse).

Still, it's going to take out most of the commoner slaves and live stock across the whole country. It'll probalby take out most of the armies of Thay if they're not garrisoned properly.

What it does to food production and the country as a whole will probably depend on what time of the year it is. Between after harvest to a little while after planting, they're probably not too bad as all the grain will be inside silos or underground. If it's in summer before harvest, then there's going to be an almost total destruction of the crops. Of course, then theres not really anybody else to feed is there? You're going to be left with the city dwellers of Thay mostly intact. The infrastructure will also be mostly intact as IMHO 35 hit points is not that much when dealing with things like bridges. Especially when sonic damage and once it's over, it's over. A far better choice would have been fire, because although the 35 hit points caused by the fire wouldn't have destroyed such things, it will cause things to start burning which would have resulted in more damage than the initial spell.

So, we're left with a Thay that has been depopulated by slaves, servants, and maybe armies, but still has it's highly trained core of wizards and city folk. The mines would be ok and if the main threat of Thay are the Red Wizards (and any undead armies they can build), then Thay probably has enough threat to defend itself from the outside. What it does mean is that Thay is not much of a threat for many years to come and a place to make money. Thay will be buying slaves and supplies right and left for years to come and spending all their money on rebuilding rather than looking outside of Thay's borders. It would essentially turn Thay from a threat to everybody to an insular country that can't afford to mess too mcuh with other countries affairs because they ahve other things to worry about and spend their resources on. It would not remove them commpletly as individual powerful wizards would have their personal axes to grind and they'd still try and maintain as much of a spy network as possible so they can pull strings here and there.

The other choice is that the Zulkirs would decide the best defence and economics would to be to take what resources they have left, raise and undead army and attack whatever country could threaten them (or is easy pickings) in order to remove any threats and regain their slave population.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I should like to point of that most buildings will have wooden roofs and many will have stone exterior walls, but wooden interior walls and flooring, in addition to wooden furniture. So this could leave the exterior walls of a structure standing, but demolish the interiors. And even in people indoors surived the spells, the could be injured or killed by having roofs and ceilings fall in on them.

It would also destroy or badly damage all wagons and carts, limits the nations ability to move needed supplies from one location to another, along with many horses, cattle, donkeys and so forth.

 

[Darkness]

It would also destroy or badly damage all wagons and carts, limits the nations ability to move needed supplies from one location to another, along with many horses, cattle, donkeys and so forth.

I'm sure Thay has a lot of teleportation circles and portals.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Let's talk about the political repercussions for a moment.

I think the relationship between the various magical superpowers in Faerun can be likened to that of the Cold War. Sending low-level adventurers and spies is part of everyday business, but no one is eager to pull out the big guns and start a total magical war, because mutual destruction is bad for everybody's business. Thus, there is an unspoken "Gentlemen's Agreemen" not to nuke each other.


Someone just dropped a nuke on Thay. What will the Zulkirs do?

Unify and nuke the party they believe to be responsible for this would be my guess. Do they know or can they learn on a short notice about the wizard who cast this spell? If yes, they will break out their own big artefacts and go after him, his friends, his families, his city of birth, and anyone else even remotely associated with him. The idea here is total vengeance on such a large scale that one will even think about repeating such a stunt.

If they can't find out (and a 24th-level wizard is not to be underestimated, either), then they will do something similar nasty to either Rashemen or Aglarond - whomever they consider the guilty party. Probably Aglarond - the witches of Rashemen are too tied to nature to attempt such a large-scale destruction, while the ruler of Aglarond is a capricious and epic-level sorceress who could pull off something like this.

Note that, in certain regards, the guilt or innocence of the retaliatory target doesn't matter. What matters is that the whole word hears the Red Wizards saying: "No One screws with us like this and gets away with it!"

Oh, and to all those people who say that realistically, the zulkirs would find some way to prevent that... well, you might be right.

But really, who cares about realism? I think the Realms work best as a backdrop for epic High fantasy, with really big stakes. And blowing up whole countries shows just how high the stakes are, so why not do it? Besides, who says that that 24th-level wizard isn't clever enough to circumvent the protections and divinations of the zulkirs?

 

[Darkness]

Oh, and to all those people who say that realistically, the zulkirs would find some way to prevent that... well, you might be right.

But really, who cares about realism?

No realism required, just things making sense.
But if you like winning without resistance regardless of whether that makes sense given the parties involved, more power to you.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

No realism required, just things making sense.
But if you like winning without resistance regardless of whether that makes sense given the parties involved, more power to you.

I never said that. Besides, Arravis never said that that wizard who invoked that spell was a PC. Is it really that important to work out precisely how one NPC pulls one over some other NPCs? Maybe if you want to run an investigative adventure where these details become really important (like, say, if you want to convince the zulkirs that they should lay waste to this person rather than to some other, uninvolved country).

But if your campaign focuses on the political, magical, and economic fallouts from this event, you can simply hadwave these details away - they are not at all important to the story. After all, adventures should be about the struggle of the player characters. Your primary task as a DM should be worrying about the obstacles they have to overcome. Unless the precise nature of the defenses of Thay - and why they failed in this instant - become directly important in an adventure, then all this is merely an intellectual exercise.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, what resoruces would Thay have to rebuild and protect itself?

The use of undead has been mentioend several times.

However, let's not forget that Thay also has access to various constructs. It's been a while since I checked Unarpproachable East, but I remember the old 2nd ed boxed set had all sorts of new golems and golem variants and I'm sure with third party material, many different types of constructs could be added.

To move things further, how about transmuteers that decide it's time for survival of the fittest? Perhaps they unleash something on the land similiar to the creatures from the Miniature's Handbook as those are crafted creatures... The one's that look like a Tyranid rip off which was already done in the Book of Vile Darkness.

Summoners might also try to work in elemental forces. Kossuth is still a big power over there right? Elementals might more in to act as more protection and resource than previously used. This doesn't take into account the 'evil' nature of most of these summoners as demons, devils and other creatures may be about as well to 'assist' in the rebuilding. Perhaps in the future, there will be more tieflings and other infernal creatures?

What about some of the dimensional barriers being weakened by the damage the spell wrought? Be a good chance to slip in some unusual creatures or apply some off beat templates to some of the standard monsters. Since gnolls are one of the creatures often found there, perhaps some gnolls gain the infernal template that survived the rainfall.

When looking at how the red wizards would cope, well, I can't imagine that some wouldn't just use the Wish spell to restore their favoed things like their private towers and perhaps armies. Heck, I can see some of them trying to wish their forces into another plane. Perhaps somethign that has to be returned by another group as the town is now stuck in that outer planar reach.

I also can't see the gods sitting back. FR unlike some settings like Eberron, has the gods involved with a lot of day to day affairs. They might have saved some of their favored servants although since most of the gods there are evil, not in the traditional fashion. Perhaps they'll only stay alive if they stay in a certain area or have to ritually sacrifice others to their god to provide the life force that keeps them living?

 

[Darkness]

I'd rather continue debating what happens in the aftermath of this explosion but whatever.

To avoid hijacking this thread further, I'm going to use sblocks.

Jürgen:[sblock]

Is it really that important to work out precisely how one NPC pulls one over some other NPCs?

You don't need exact details. A brief look at the people involved is all you need to know it simply doesn't make any sense. And that's without bringing Faerun's overactive deities and omnipresent liches (besides Tam) into the equation.

Also, if it's an NPC, why not simply give him the power he needs so this does make sense? It's not like power is in short supply if you're the DM.
And if you're going to say, "But I need the PCs to defeat him later!" I'll just point out it takes no effort to give him a temporary power boost (from the artifact he later sacrificed, say) and little effort to play the campaign with stronger PCs. (In an ongoing campaign I'd prefer the former, though.)

I'm willing to suspend disbelief a lot but this simply shatters it.

Would you base an adventure upon the ramifications of a 5th-level fighter slaying a demigod? If so, again, more power to you. I'd only do something like that if I had a damn good explanation.

The OP might have such an explanation even though he didn't post it. If he doesn't, no skin off my nose, but it shouldn't come as a surprise that people are taking him to task for being too lazy to come up with one. Especially considering he didn't bluntly state: "Look, I blew up Thay without really thinking it through. Agree or disagree, but please help me with the aftermath." [/sblock]

 

[Mystery Man]

What do you guys think the overall effect of this would be? Would there be enough infrastructure left for Zulkirs to still remain in control? How would the refugee situation be? How would neighboring countries react? Well, any suggestions are welcome! Thanks guys!

Keep in mind as well that although the rulers of Thay are not very nice, the people that they rule are (for the most part) innocent and most would be slain as a result of this spell. If there is such an apocalypse I doubt very much that the do-gooders would let something like this slide without trying to find the culprits involved and bringing them to justice whether they be good or evil.