Help me brainstorm

[LostSoul]

I've been working on a campaign world for a while. Dark and gritty. It has a "faded-glory" atmosphere. Anyways.

I need some kind of big world hook. Some kind of secret that turns the whole game on its head. I can't really think of anything that cool, so I'm looking for inspiration.

Don't worry about my tastes or the world or anything. Just throw out some ideas for world secrets that will make the players sit there and say, "whoa".

 

[Hand of Evil]

To turn the world upside down mmmmmm,

Maybe the gods are not but only beings living off the power of the true god(s) that they have kept hidden.

Or that they are dying, one by one fading away. Leaving the world to the lesser races. Which may create a dark age.

Then you have magic. You could go the same way, magic failing but you could also have it increase. Which can cause new monsters to appear, and cause massive havoc.

Kingdon - while not the world could be the players world. They could find out that the king and family are really evil, all the things that have been going wrong in the world was do to those in power setting their power base.

Matrix - Nuff said.

 

[Avarice]

At the far corners of the world, night is falling: a curtain of unrelenting darkness which no light can penetrate, nor from which anything living may escape. Those few who manage to get out before their lands are consumed find their memories of the people and places they had known there consumed as well. They wander the world, nameless and alone, with no past to lay claim to and only an uncertain future ahead of them. And always on the horizon, night's embrace awaits...

Or:

The world itself is a god, from which the druids draw their power, and upon which all depend for their survival; and the god is dead. Year by year, as the diety's residual power fades, the fields become less fertile and the forests slowly wither and fall to the advancing deserts. Of course, there are some who realize what has happened; the druids certainly do, though most now secretly worship other powers. Some are even working to undo this tragedy, but restoring life to a god is no small task. Granting him undeath might not be so difficult, by comparison...

 

[Silver Moon]

How about these ideas......

1. Take a page from "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", with one of your playing characters discovering that they may be the descendant of somebody famous or infamous from long ago.

2. Have a large group of powerful foreigners suddenly show up and take over. It could be your standard human, orc, or giant army. But it could also be a group of good-aligned dragons, a demigod and his/her followers, or even a hero of legend (draw from any published source).

3. (This may be too sci-fi/comic booky for your likes, but I've successfully used this once). Everything the characters knows suddenly changes, with only them knowing the difference. Seems that a bad guy has gone back in time and altered history. A deity has allowed the characters to retain the knowledge of what was, and will send them back in time to make things right.

4. Give all of the players some specific NPC's to play for a night, namely all of the major villains they have ever fought that still live (or might have been resurrected). Have this new alliance of villains do their own plotting for taking over the world. My bet is that the players as villains will come up with more outlandish plans than most DM's could ever think up. Fast forward a few months of character time, stating that the villains have been successful in their plans. Then have the playing character be the heroes to defeat them.