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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pax" data-source="post: 1594093" data-attributes="member: 6875">First off, I'm not satisfied just levelling the buildings.  Buildings can be rebuilt.  Even populations can be rebuilt.  To truly destroy the city, we must make it so that noone EVER wants to rebuild it again ... we must erase it form every map, and even living memory, with a calamity of unequalled proportions.  No single spell can do this; accomplishing such a task will be the work of months, even years, by very high-level characters.  So ... let us begin:THE PARTY (all Evil-aligned, of course):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> LE Tiefling Wizard(3)/Cleric(3)/Mystic Theurge(10), specialised in Necromancy.  Domains are Air and Pestilence;</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> NE Human Druid(17);</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> LE Gnome Bard(7)/Evangelist(10)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> NE Halforc Fighter(5)/Warrior of Darkness(2)/Disciple of Dispater(10) - cold iron spiked chain twink.</li> </ul>  The Fighter is there merely to be good, effective security against interruption and/or retaliation by the city's populace; his/her role is to be very very good at killing things.  The true work of destruction will fall upon the shoulders of the two spellcasters, while the Bard works to make that destruction SO memorable in and of itself, that noone wants to rebuild the city once the work of demolition is done.  The party's first goal is to purchase some property as near the city's center as possible, keep a low profile, obey all the local laws (hence the largely lawful alignment spread), and spend some time getting prepared.  A large warehouse would be the ideal property for this purpose.  The Mystic Theurge spends that time building a horde of incorporeal undead (imprisoned in ForceCages, until wanted).  Meanwhile, the Druid spends time capturing / gathering rats - lots and LOTS of rats.  The Theurge and Druid together can cast contagion spells on the rats en mass, until you have several score infected rats for each disease type.  Then the rats are all killed, and distributed in secret (via teleportation, dimension door, and the like) to various water storage/distribution sites ... preferably affecting the water supply of the ENTIRE city except the supply for the noble class; that can fester and stew for a while, driving a wedge between the noble class and the commons, while simultaneously weakening the city's military might.  Now, we have a city sliding into civil unrest and disorder - if we're lucky, even outright rioting and looting.  That provides a great cover for further clandestine activities.  This is when the bard/evangelist gets into the action.  S/He can begin to proseletise to the populace about the sins and transgressions of the city; work to convince the people that the Gods themselves have become angry, and loathe the very name of their city.  This, of course, merely serves to stir the pot WRT riots - but the gnome should work AGAINST allowing things to fall into whole-scale chaos.  We don't want THAT; we want to delay the collapse as long as possible, until the tension has built SO high, that EVERY vestige of the city's existance will be torn asunder in an unequalled convulsion of violence, which will leave barely a MEMORY of the city - and that memory itself one solely of hatred and loathing.  Meanwhile, the theurge makes more undead (uncontrolled, and have to be contained somehow - using wall of force, turning/rebuking, and extended forcecage seem workable here), and the druid builds up another stable of diseased rats.  And yes, that concept is shamelessly borrowed from The Worthing Saga.  If it worked for Abner Doon, to take down a many-hundred-world interstellar empire, it can work for a partyof high-level characters, to take down a single city.  ^_^  The final destruction, of course, comes via direct spellcasting - the chosen season, if at all possible, is Summer, for maximum plague viability.  First, the BArd lights the final fuse, and triggers the proxysm of destruction he's been building up to for (at this point) months, now.  The second step is to put the party inside a barred Forcecage.  The Theurge casts Control Weather, and brings in the most violent thunderstorm he can - a hurricane, if possible; at the same time, the Druid casts Evil Weather (BoVD), which has an effective radius of 17 miles; the selected evil weather is Rain of Blood.  If this doesn't get the entire city into an outright and utter hysterical panic ... nothing will.  Then, the Druid fires off an extended widened control winds spell, downdraft pattern with a 15'-radius "eye", at maximum wind force (which is tornado-force, mind, and has a 1,360' radius) and centered on the party; s/he then starts with the enlarged call lightning spells.  These spells are used, if range permits, not against the populace ... but against bridges, gates, and other points of access to (or in this case, escape FROM) the city.  We want as few survivors as possible, and all of them absolutely TERRIFIED of the sound of their own BREATHING before this is over.  Meanwhile, the Theurge can be opening gates to various planes, and inviting nefarious beings in for the "festivities" (not calling specific creatures, merely opening a door to populated areas of the lower planes and saying "come on over if you wanna have some fun" to whatever might be on the other side).  Once all that is done, the Druid fires off Evil Weather a two more times.  The first is a rain of nettles, and the second is Green Fog.  Rain of Nettles will destroy every last crop, even any nearby forests, and leave animate - and violently evil - plants in it's place.  Famine, and yet more terror.  Green Fog will wipe out most of the (probably very few) survivors, turning most of them - and the people in nearby villages, farmsteads, travellers on teh road, livestock, wild animals, etc - into assorted nasty monsters.  If anyone even SURVIVES to get out of all that, without the use of high-level magic, it may be a miracle unto itself.  And given the period of plague and disease leading up to it ... those survivors are unlikely to be welcomed into ANY other city or other settlement, for DECADES; plague will truly put terror into the neighbor's hearts (especially if it was a port city, and yoru plague-creation managed to spawn a pandemic, due to diseased sailors (and even secondarily-infected rats) heading off to other ports, and arriving with enough life left in them to infect people there, before dying.  And given we've inflicted at least ten, maybe as many as twenty, diseases on the people ... even a mere COLD (with associated cough and/or runny nose) is likely to result in pitchforks and torches, for months - if not years - to come.  THAT should accomplish my true goal: to not only destroy the physical city, and slaughter the populace ... but obliterate it's existance for all time, leaving it a balsted and haunted ruin that will never be rebuilt.  Okay, it's not a rain of colorless fire ... but IMO it's the next best thing.  And not bad for only four evil bastards, considering the Rain took an entire NATION to pull off.  ^_^</blockquote>

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