Help me DESTROY the Forgotten Realms

[Derulbaskul]

Firstly, I would echo the earlier comments about purchasing When The Sky Falls and using meteors... almost liberally.

Secondly, IMC, the great underlying theme is always the battle between Shar and Selune. Selune wants Toril to live and grow; Shar wants everything returned to primordial darkness. Shar's most devoted followers are made up of a custom prestige class, the Dark Nihilist. They have many of the powers of the ruin priests of WTSF... including the ability to summon a meteor after three tendays of sacrificial ceremony. I have attached the prestige class for you to see what I mean, particularly how the Dark Nihilists turn a symbol of hope into a thing of destruction.

Anyway, my campaign is developing into a running battle between the PCs (and other forces across Toril) with Shar's patsies. She has offered the power of the Shadow Weave to Cyric, Talon and Kiaransalee, amongst others... and all for a very small price. Along the way they are beginning to uncover knowledge of the Shadow Weave... and will shortly discover the power of the Dark Nihilists in an ancient tome dating back to the time of the Creator Races.

The orcs, too, are but pawns of Shar. The shamaness, Black Lorog, is actually a disguised annis cleric of Shar who is moving the orcs into position to spread strife and destruction throughout the North.

Blah, blah, blah... I think you get the picture. In due course, the party may or may not stop the Dark Nihilists in their area but they will hear stories of widespread destruction across the rest of Faerun as cabals of Dark Nihilists successfully call down meteors on major population centres... which will also turn people against Selune in particular because of the way the meteor first appears (see the attached file for an explanation).

Of course, I haven't decided how far and how dark to take the campaign but the seeds are there to utterly destroy Toril and usher in the time of primordial darkness that Shar so wants.

Cheers
D

 

[Angcuru]

That is one MEAN PrC, dude.

 

[taliesin52]

Cyric (or other evil god of your liking but not Shar) has grown tired with the world. He is an evil diety and wants destruction wrought against the realm. He wants intrigue and terror and has possibly tricked another (probably evil but more interestingly good) diety into indirectly aiding him. He causes several or all of the following:


1) The schisim in the Harpers widens. Perhaps governments aren't willing to deal with this group who's known to do things to their own ends and their own vision of what's good. Look to the time of troubles trilogy of novels for this. Elminster goes missing and the Harpers turn into right bastards trying to prosecute and hunt down who they decided were the culprits.

2) The Zhents or another evil political orgainization (preferably not Thay, I'm tired of them) unleashes a plot that's been worked on for a decade. Agents of their have infiltrated the courts and militaries of several nations (or most nations) to unleash chaos so that the main body of the Zhents can grab up more land. In the chaos at least one nation of significance (Cormyr would work) falls fully to them. Others are tricked into thinking their neighbors and allies had attacked them and launch attacks of their own. Look to the movie (or if you have taste, the book) The Sum of All Fears to get ideas for chaos and tricks, look to Greyhawk and the rise of the Scarlet Brotherhood for a plotline very similar to the Zhents.

3) Eliminster and the Symbul both disappear suddenly. Lured to another plane by a plot of Cyrics (yes they're uber characters but he's the prince of darned lies) and either captured (the ally god should have a trick to do this), killed, (lots of psionic githyanki out there or perhaps mindflayers who could avoid the magic), trapped, perhaps in a demi-plane constructed by Cyric maybe with the aid of Shar's shadow weave where magic doesn't exist, a sort of place you can enter but not leave. An added twist on the last is the ever chaotic Symbul realises the nature of the place and willfully gives up on Mystra and switches to the Shadow Weave, turning evil in the process, ditches Elminster and returns to wreak havoc of her own.

4) Cyric uses the shadow weave and normal magic to create a sort of conflicting reaction (matter-antimatter but worse) which begins to tear the world apart. Mystra pulls her annoying trick of removing magic from Cyric but is forced to reinstate it when another diety or group of dieties who're fooled by Cyric's lies decide to withold things like air and sunlight and other parts of their profile from Mystra to stop her childish bickering. This would be good to wrap your campaign up with as the characters aren't powerful enough to stop Cyric, the most powerful characters in the world are incapacitated (see #3), and the other dieties are fooled by him. The only hope is to help evacuate as many people as they can (a way to get them to Krynn) or attempt to trick the lord of trickery or otherwise convince him to stop (look to the show Babylon 5 and the end of its Shadow War for ideas here).

5) Wars between the Drow and anyone (and everyone) in the underdark, evil magics and bizzare expiraments by the Drow and/or Mind Flayers, and overmining by all forms of dwarves has destabilzed the tectonic plates of the world causing much of the underdark to collapse, earthquakes and other natural disasters, etc... The surface world is damaged significantly from this. Long buried evil magics, artifacts, trapped uber-monsters, etc... from the old Age of Magic (Myth Dranor, whatever nation in the desert that was powerful in magic and a dead wringer for the Baklunnish and Seuloise mages of Greyhawk) are released due to the worldwise quakes and wreak havoc everywhere.

6) Thakisis has grown powerful in Krynn and elsewhere. She manages to unite the Dragons of Faerun (including some deluded gold dragons) and starts her own war in Faerun to try and succeed where she failed in Krynn.

 

[Celtavian]

re

A bit more grim?

The Shadovar have returned, powerful shadowy evil archwizards wielding shadow magic.

Bane has returned.

Thay is still as powerful as ever and exceedingly evil.

Cormyr is in near ruin.

The Dalelands are under attack from drow. Scardale just recently suffered the effects of a plague.

Orcs are slaughtering in the North near the Silver Marches.

Calimshan is a cesspool.

Evermeet was nearly destroyed.

Lolth is silent. The drow are at war with each other.

What more do you want?

The Realms may seem fluffy because of the way it is written, but it is very dark and grim all by itself. Given the above events, you can make it even more grim and dark if you so choose.

I think people have a negative view of the Realms because of super-beings like the Chosen and the total lack of equivalent villains as well as poor novelization of Realms crises. The build up towards crises and their resolution is usually very anticlimatic, especially with the Chosen being overused to solve the problems.

 

[Fenes 2]

I too believe the Realms can be grim without too much altering. Just tone down the goodness among the leaders of the "good states", and replace it with more pragmatism, egoism and politics. When most of the leaders think of themselves/their country/their organisation first and of "Goodness" second things are much less "fluffy". Add a couple of "evil" organisations out for themselves, not out to "do evil", which do not suffer too much from terminal infighting and have leaders and masterminds that are smarter than the average teenager (and do not excuse sloppy setbacks as a means to "weed out the weak" instead focusing on getting the job done) and things are looking grim indeed.

The Red Wizards are, imho, one of the best examples of capable evil in the FRCS. No more big, stupid plans and blundering, but honeyed words, smiles, and big magic carrots to bribe, corrupt and blackmail their way into influence over msot of Faerun.

Many other organisations from the "Lords of Darkness" Sourcebook are also a great help in making Faerun a place more grim and gritty. You can have the whole place crawling with secret agendas and backstabbing from that book alone.

 

[Gellion]

If you have evr played FF6, you could have something like what Kefka did happen. Or a Far Realms incursion.

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

Simple. Allow the things that happened in Edena of Neith's Gnomish Industrial Revolution (IRs, for short) games, to happen

Mind you, there was an evil god in the 3rd IR named Melkor, Lord of All