Destruction on a ludicrous scale

[The Grumpy Celt]

How would you go about destroying an entire prime material plane?

For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to define a prime material plane as the entire individual crystal sphere containing at least one inhabitable body populated by sentient creatures with souls and so forth that go to another plane upon their death. The other planes (heavens, hell and so forth) are connected to the prime material plane, but destroying it does not mean destroying them.

As part of a game I am preparing, the PCs will face an enemy dedicated to the utter and true destruction of the entire prime material plane the PCs happen to call home. I am contemplating ways the villains of the piece – who are really determined not to pay back those late DVD fees – are attempting to end existence. Some elegantly simple would be preferable to something complicated.

So, how would you go about destroying an entire prime material plane?

 

[Clueless]

Elegantly simple? Take advantage of Planescape's planar shifting theories. Shift the crystal into the Abyss as a new layer and establish yourself as the Abyssal Lord of that layer.

The trick of course being ways to shift the place - could be as simple as convincing other places that the sphere is the source of all evil, yada yada until belief kicks in. Or simply opening enough gates to get the percentage population of Tanarri in the sphere to shift it. Or... some grand epic spell to shift it etc etc.

The advantage of this technique - afterwards you have a nice shiney layer and LOTS of mortals to torture! (Oh and the PCs can run a raid on the Abyss to rescue them, or make deals with the other Abyssal Lords to deal with this upstart...)

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

The goal of the LOW (Locusts of Worlds) is to end the plane, to destroy it. The plane doesn't turn evil and it is not simply laid waste. It ends. It is no more. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Roll credits. Page at the end of the book with the little paragraph talking about the type face.

 

[Vorput]

A... big bomb?

 

[Shemeska]

Random ideas:

Release one of the Entropes created/bred by the members of the Doomguard (seemingly lost after the faction imploded and fragmented into its four splinter sects).

Open an uncontrolled and expanding rift into Quasi-elemental vacuum/salt/ash/dust or just Negative Energy itself.

Open the Bringer of Doom and somehow keep it open.

Codex of the Infinite Planes. Bad mojo. Enough said.

Link the world to Tharizdun's demiplane prison and let him have fun.

 

[Tewligan]

Open an uncontrolled and expanding rift into Quasi-elemental vacuum/salt/ash/dust or just Negative Energy itself.

I was also thinking of a Negative Energy rift.

 

[Rabelais]

Dr. Serazawa "Don't push that button"
Ogata: You mean this one? Oops.

[Roll Credits]

The MacGuffin opens a simultaneous rift to the Positive and Negative energy planes, creating strangelets and other fun subatomic particles. Giving your players a very fun, but brief example of what you do when the monkey boys play with fire.

The disaster scenario is this: one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, and sends pieces (more strangelets) flying in all directions. These merge with other nuclei and convert them, leading to a chain reaction, at the end of which all the nuclei of all the atoms have been converted, and Earth has been reduced to a hot cloud of strangelets. -Wikipedia

 

[Imp]

Planar rifts... how about pouring the Negative, Positive, and four Elemental planes into the Heart of the Plane (whatever that is) at once?

(ooh I see Rabelais beat me to the matter/antimatter idea)

Or suppose there are multiple vital places in the world, maybe tied to terrains (the tallest mountain, the deepest trench, the wildest forest; or it can work differently of course) and when ceremonies are performed at each those facets of the Prime Material dissolve into the Ethereal Plane...

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

The MacGuffin opens a simultaneous rift to the Positive and Negative energy planes, creating strangelets and other fun subatomic particles. Giving your players a very fun, but brief example of what you do when the monkey boys play with fire.

The disaster scenario is this: one strangelet hits a nucleus, catalyzing its immediate conversion to strange matter. This liberates energy, and sends pieces (more strangelets) flying in all directions. These merge with other nuclei and convert them, leading to a chain reaction, at the end of which all the nuclei of all the atoms have been converted, and Earth has been reduced to a hot cloud of strangelets. -Wikipedia

And if that doesn't work for you be even more outlandish, the MacGuffin calls a small horde of vivacious thaqquas from the Positive energy plane, for every body length they burrow they fission into two thaqquas, shortly the entire prime material will be thaqquas.

Or screw up the Mainspring that keeps all the celestial bodies of the prime material in question on the proper tracks causing them to fly off at random breaking the crystal sphere and allowing the Outside to pour in and evaporate the Prime Material as the Far Realm reclaims the space.

Or by sacrificing the creation gods of the prime material in a truly evil ritual it could cause all they made to vanish back into a might-have-been since it only existed through an act of divine will.

 

[Felix]

How would you destroy a Prime Material Plane? Well, if anybody would be up to the task it would be this guy.