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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 2430228" data-attributes="member: 3051">I was thinking about the plane idea, but I was thinking you'd take it from the other direction.  The psionic power Genesis makes a demiplane that slowly grows, 50' per year.  And, if used on the Material Plane, it creates a "dead zone" instead.  So, why not reverse things?  Instead of the nature of the core driving the worms, have the worms be the one responsible for the place from the start.Back when they first escaped, the worms went to the center of the world.  They used an Epic-level variant of Genesis; this "Epic Genesis" does both effects at once; it devastates a volume of the core, and with the resulting energy creates a plane-within-a-plane with the exact conditions needed to breed new worms, the sort of conditions that existed back in the primal universe before the gods arrived.  It's basically a realm of pure chaos, and it's not completely coterminous with either the Real World or the Astral Plane, existing in a halfway state.  Plus, the Epic Genesis plane grows at a much faster rate.(Question: why the core?  The simple reason is that it's the only place the ritual will work, but WHY?  Maybe the spell requires the sacrifice of powerful people... like all the ones that have been sent to the core by Velendo and others... so every powerful enemy banished by a Talisman just served as fuel for the Worms.  Or maybe it's just that the "flame" at the heart of the earth would destroy the worms, like the sun would, if it wasn't displaced first, so the antigenesis component of the spell was necessary.)You could easily say that the ritual happened LONG ago, and the "nest" has finally grown to the right size, although that reduces the impact of the sacrifice idea above a bit.  (On the other hand, this means that many of the omens could have actually happened long, long ago, which could explain some of the other ideas we've had about ancient prophecies and seers.)So now the worms have headed back to the nest and laid the eggs.  Stone Bear should have felt this happening.(If you want to get rid of the adult worms: To protect the eggs, one of them (not Elder) sacrificed itself to create an impenetrable planar barrier around the nest, and Elder is inside the nest guarding the eggs until they hatch and devour him.  Again, Stone Bear would know the moment Elder died.)At some point the eggs will hatch, the worms will start swarming, and the world will start being hollowed out.  They're not actually going for "hollow", they're just trying to reach the surface and find food before they starve.This means that the DoD face several challenges:1> Find a way to penetrate the core, either through defenses set directly by the worms, or the very nature of the place.  Ioun might know a way.2> Get past the hatchlings.  For this one, they might have to ask for help from those nature spirits again.3> Neutralize the miniplane of chaos growing there, probably using artifacts of pure law... like Halcyon's sword... convenient.4,5> Find a way to return the core to its natural state, and destroy the new worms.  If the reason the core was picked was that it's a sun-like source of energy that would destroy the new worms, the very act of restoring would kill the hatchlings.  If not, you'll have to find some other way.  Of course, the question becomes exactly HOW they'd do it, and the short answer is that if the Worms can use this epic power, the gods must have similar abilities.  One of them would surely be willing to make a Proxy/Avatar to do this.The natural choice in the Human pantheon for restoring would be Boros (underworld) although Galanna would work if you interpret her "Nature" portfolio a bit loosely.  Having Galanna be the hero has a certain appeal after the beating her religion took from the Imbindarla disaster, and of course she's connected to the DoD.  (Except, with Tao and Raevynn not full PCs any more, this might not be simple.)  Actually, none of your pantheon seem to focus much on the physical aspects of the planet (stone, lava, etc.), so maybe the solution is to ask a Dwarven god for help... Splinder would have been the best choice for a Proxy, but he's busy.  Hmm, where's Wulf Ratbane when you need him?</blockquote>

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