The Sigil
Mr. 3000 (Words per post)
Psion already chimed in with my first thought - the PCs lead a small escape team to another dimension and seal it off from barsoom, allowing barsoom to be destroyed, but preserving the PCs in a pristine new world (kind of the "Adam and Eve" story?).
Your next campaign can be set in the new world, a few millenia down the line (so the few initial colonists have blossomed into a legion of empires, nations, etc.)... and perhaps the "sealing off" from Barsoom wasn't as permanent as imagined and evil is creeping back into the world from the link to the now-shattered Barsoom (of course, you don't tell your players the source of the evil in the new campaign - or even that it's the same world that they colonized at the end of the Barsoom campaign - until the very end of the new campaign).
But then I thought you ought to try doing it one better... in that the PCs don't survive Barsoom going nuclear.
The PCs are to fight a holding action on Barsoom while getting some colonists safely away. The problem is, the only way the colonists can get safely away is for the PCs to run a huge diversionary tactic - a suicide mission into the heart of darkness (perhaps with an artifact or two). The PCs go out in a blaze of glory, far away from the "important action" of colonization, and yet without their distraction at a crucial moment, the colonists can't get away. So evil triumphs on Barsoom, and the players die horribly, but taking out a lot of baddies with them... because the PCs must use the artifacts to cause Barsoom to go nuclear in order to keep the baddies away from the colonists. And to do that, they have to get the artifacts into the heart of evil, and then activate them... with no "countdown" to let them get away. They should go in knowing it's a suicide mission, if possible.
Of course, through their self-sacrifice, the seeds of salvation are sown - in the colonists' escpae (the "Empire Strikes Back" ending where it looks like the "good guys" get their heads kicked in). The PCs get the closure of blasting the baddies. Barsoom still goes nuclear. The PCs go out in a blaze of glory - and not a worthless one. And you always have the option in your new campaign of tying it to the old by having the dimensional link open after millenia of peace...
Of course, perhaps the "nuclear option" results in the PCs turning into evil overgods themselves, and it takes them millenia to figure out where the colonists went to and give chase. Imagine the your PCs in another seven years as they end the new campaign - to find out that the unimaginable horrors entering their world that they've been battling all this time are... their old "heroic" PCs... =)
But then, I'm twisted that way...
--The Sigil
Your next campaign can be set in the new world, a few millenia down the line (so the few initial colonists have blossomed into a legion of empires, nations, etc.)... and perhaps the "sealing off" from Barsoom wasn't as permanent as imagined and evil is creeping back into the world from the link to the now-shattered Barsoom (of course, you don't tell your players the source of the evil in the new campaign - or even that it's the same world that they colonized at the end of the Barsoom campaign - until the very end of the new campaign).
But then I thought you ought to try doing it one better... in that the PCs don't survive Barsoom going nuclear.
The PCs are to fight a holding action on Barsoom while getting some colonists safely away. The problem is, the only way the colonists can get safely away is for the PCs to run a huge diversionary tactic - a suicide mission into the heart of darkness (perhaps with an artifact or two). The PCs go out in a blaze of glory, far away from the "important action" of colonization, and yet without their distraction at a crucial moment, the colonists can't get away. So evil triumphs on Barsoom, and the players die horribly, but taking out a lot of baddies with them... because the PCs must use the artifacts to cause Barsoom to go nuclear in order to keep the baddies away from the colonists. And to do that, they have to get the artifacts into the heart of evil, and then activate them... with no "countdown" to let them get away. They should go in knowing it's a suicide mission, if possible.
Of course, through their self-sacrifice, the seeds of salvation are sown - in the colonists' escpae (the "Empire Strikes Back" ending where it looks like the "good guys" get their heads kicked in). The PCs get the closure of blasting the baddies. Barsoom still goes nuclear. The PCs go out in a blaze of glory - and not a worthless one. And you always have the option in your new campaign of tying it to the old by having the dimensional link open after millenia of peace...
Of course, perhaps the "nuclear option" results in the PCs turning into evil overgods themselves, and it takes them millenia to figure out where the colonists went to and give chase. Imagine the your PCs in another seven years as they end the new campaign - to find out that the unimaginable horrors entering their world that they've been battling all this time are... their old "heroic" PCs... =)
But then, I'm twisted that way...
--The Sigil
