Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edena_of_Neith" data-source="post: 186587" data-attributes="member: 2020">THE NIGHT ETERNALThe Night Eternal, for such was the name given to it by Melkor himself.  It is ever so much worse than Allenthrellus said it would be.  The candles turn into fires, the fires into towering pillars of purple violence, the quakes becoming titantic.  Then it stops.  For one brief moment, there is stillness.  Then, about seven Light Minutes from Toril, rather quite close to Toril's sun, there is an explosion.    An explosion the likes of which has never occurred before, and probably never will again, until the final end of the Multiverse itself is come.  An explosion that was begun with the relatively pitiful power of the Red Goo from hundreds of murdered worlds.  Multiplied by the suicide of countless billions of Shade.  Multiplied again as the Weave of Realmspace is sucked into the explosion as it happens.  Multiplied yet again as the Shadow Weave detonates, adding it's power to the explosion.  The prison holding Melkor, the one created by Kalanyr and Siobhan, instantly ceases to exist.  Melkor's power is stripped from him - he is reduced from Greater God to Intermediate God to Lesser God, to Demipower, before the pulling stops.  Melkor the demipower is hurtled across the multiverse by the explosion, instantly, and is temporarily gone from the IR.  Melkor's power is drawn into the explosion as it happens, and it multiples again.  The Mists enveloping Realmspace try to retreat, but it is too late.  They are instantaneously pulled into the explosion as it occurs, and the explosion multiples in power yet again.  None of the above stack, folks.  The above, multiply with each other.  Multiply, over and over, producing a chain reaction in which more multiplications occur, the explosion building on itself, feeding on it's own power, multiplying endlessly, the multiplications building up into a level of power beyond all measurements, beyond all imagination.  A great fireball is produced.  However, it is utterly black.  It is black because it is a Sphere of Annihilation.  A Sphere of Annihilation the size of a sun.  A Sphere of Annihilation, that is expanding.  Expanding.  Expanding at a rate equal to thousands of times the speed of light.  Out ahead of it, ahead of the main blast, is a blast wave of Shade, moving faster than the Sphere is expanding.  The blast wave reaches Toril's sun in an instant, passing through it.  All fusion stops in Toril's sun, and the whelming waves of Shade cool the surface.  Toril's sun dims, turning yellow, then orange, then red, then dimming, going brown.  Going out.  Then the Sphere of Annihilation reaches it and consumes it.  The blast wave reaches Toril in seconds.  Toril instantly freezes, the planetary temperature dropping to Absolute Zero.  Toril becomes as fragile as the fragilest glass.  Toril's atmosphere instantly freezes, and crashes to the surface, the weight of the hit shattering the planet into billions of tiny fragments, which then grind each other into dust.  Then the Sphere of Annihilation reaches the planet, and Toril passes away.  The blast wave of the Shade reaches the Crystal Sphere, and passes through it effortlessly.  The matter of the Sphere is very thick, and it could normally withstand any force.  It cannot withstand this.  It freezes to Absolute Zero, and great cracks appear and expand.  As the followup of the initial blast wave beats at it, as wave after pounding wave of Shade hits it, the Crystal Sphere shatters, chunks of it countless millions of miles across tumbling end over end into the Phlogiston, carried by the hurricane blast of Shade.  The Phlogiston, vaporous and fiery, cools and freezes as the blast wave of Shade passes through it.  This forms a maze.  A maze of frozen Phlogiston.  No minotaur who ever lived created a better maze.  No God who exists in the Spheres could have created a bigger one.  The Lady of Pain's prison is nothing compared to this maze, for this maze is growing at the rate of Light-Minutes every second.  The maze does not last long.  The Sphere of Annihilation has now grown to the size of what people once called Realmspace, which is now gone forever.  The chunks of the Crystal Sphere are devoured by the Sphere of Annihilation, as a tarrasque would gobble up kobolds, then it goes on growing, eating the maze of frozen Phlogiston, continuing to expand at the rate of thousands of times the speed of light.  Ships in the Phlogiston are warned by their magic that the outer blast wave of Shade is coming.  Desperately, futilely, they put about, trying to ride the flows of the Phlogiston away from it.  Those flows travel at truly incredible speed, but they might as well be standing still, compared to the speed of the blast wave of Shade.  The ships are caught, and those on board do not even have a chance to scream - they are frozen, caught between the seconds as surely as if a Time Stop spell had been cast on them.  The following waves of blasting Shade blow their forms, cooled to Absolute Zero, into tiny fragments, then grind them into the finest of powders.  Then the Sphere of Annihilation reaches them, and they are gone.  The explosion is felt across the Spheres.  There is no place in the Spheres where mages, clerics, psionicists, and other workers of magic do not feel it.  In every d20 setting ever made, that could possibly be conscrued as being in the reality of the Spheres, mages reel, clerics clutch at their hearts, psionicists grip their heads in pain.  The explosion heads into the Ethereal Plane as surely as it passed through Realmspace.  The Ethereal shatters and dissolves, the Border Ethereal peeling back, rolled back by the oncoming wave of Shade, everything so unfortunate to be in the way killed, obliterated, instantly.  The Sphere of Annihilation follows, and although the Ethereal Plane is considered to be infinite, somehow it is shrinking - a part of it is being consumed, being lost forever.  The explosion roars through the Astral Plane.  The githyanki citadels freeze solid and shatter as the blast wave of Shade hits them.  Countless billions of beings on the Astral perish as the explosion crosses it, finally slamming into the Outer Planes.  The Powers on the Outer Planes are strong, and the nature of the Outer Planes makes those Planes inherently strong.  They withstand the blast, and the blast of Shade is halted.  Even so, there is tremendous damage and destruction.  The ocean of Holy Water around Mount Olympus turns dark and cloudy, ruined, spoiled by the Shade, and the lowest part of the mountain erupts in flames as the Shade hits it.  In Avernus, first layer of the Plane of Hell, the fires are put out, and the plane chills to a frosty 40 below zero.  It is, truly, a cold day in Hell.  Parts of Avernus shatter, blown away by the blast wave of Shade, before it is finally stopped.  In Arborea, the blast wave turns forests into great stands of deadwood, slays millions of the forest beings, causes the great, beautiful buildings to become rimed with ice, to crack and fall.  In Ysgard, the Norse Gods pit their power against the blast wave, thunder and lightning, furious storms, beating the blast wave back, slowing it, mitigating it's fury.  Even so, Valhalla rocks as the blast wave hits it, it's doors flying open, ice appearing in the drinks, a cold wind roaring in Odin's face.  In Sigil, the blast wave punches through the Gates, shattering them, smashing through all the titanic defenses that were established.  The temperature plummets to 40 below zero, all light and fires in the city are doused, and the Lady of Pain reels in pain herself, thrown back by the explosion.  Many in the city die, killed by the blast wave of Shade, and nearly all suffer agonizing pain, watching in disbelief as ice forms over their limbs.  - - -  The great explosion plows through the Phlogiston.  Considering what is doing in the Planes, there is no question as to it's power on the Prime Material Plane.  It reaches the nearest Crystal Sphere in a few hours, the Crystal Sphere known as Greyspace.  The leading edge of the blast wave of Shade shatters the Crystal Sphere where it hits it, producing a rapidly widening hole of broken shards of the Sphere, until a third, then a half, of the Sphere is shattered.  It douses Oerth's sun as surely as it doused Toril's sun.  It freezes and kills everything it hits;  nothing survives, not even the undead, not even creatures of primordial cold and darkness, not even creatures from the Plane of Shadow itself.  The Alliance of Dread roars in exultation and delight, having moved off of Oerth to greet it's coming.  For one instant, the Shade grants them that privilege - the privilege of knowing they have triumphed, the knowledge that the End is at hand.  The next instant, they are utterly and permanently dead, their bodies frozen, their souls obliterated.  The blast wave approaches the world of Oerth, still coming at thousands of times the speed of light.  The blast wave closes in.  In a few more seconds, the blast wave of Shade will reach the world of Oerth.    The Doomgrinder stands, blades sticking perfectly up and down, right and left, proclaiming Final Doom, while those inside it laugh, insane laughter to greet the coming End.</blockquote>

Verification