Need Apocalypsi (yes, plural)

[tjoneslo]

In my current Dragonstar campaign, the big bad evil emperor is planning on destroying the entire Dragon empire. However he's also read the Evil overlords list of rules and want to make sure no annoying group of heros can disrupt his plan. So there will be several possible Apocalypsi. Not all of them will kill everyone, but each should inflict major disaster.

The base plan is to start with 10 plans (one for each of the dragons), five based upon the evil dragons breath weapons (fire, cold, lighting, acid, poison gas), the other five just random items. A plague of brain eating zombies and planet consuming space ameobes are already on the list.

The key here is simplicity and destructivity. The two keys here are simplicity, destructivity and unstopability... Ideas?

 

[Nightfall]

I always favor the old standbys:

Earthquakes and a hail of meteors.

So go with Malhavoc's "When the Sky falls" for ideas on using that other one.

Other ideas:

Planar conjuctivity with the emphasis on "I get a powerful artifact or key thingie like in Buffy, and blamo, planes collide/slide together" Oh and the old Angel "Blot out the Sun trick" aint bad either.

 

[RangerWickett]

You could drive everyone insane, but that requires them to kill each other. No, no good.

Bubonic plaguebola?

Smash the moon into the earth?

 

[Hawkeye]

Well since you are talking about Dragonstar and about killing lots of people at the same time, may I suggest an Epic spell or techncology that would cause a sun to go nova? That would have to be in a system that you want to get rid of, like one dedicated totally to military production and staffing by the BBEG's opponents.

If you are talking about things just on a planetary scale> Inducing massive tectonic imbalance. Lots of devestating earthquakes and volcanoes that will destroy much and possibly alter a planets climate by inducing a nuclear winter.

Induce a nuclear winter or ice age: For example on Earth, blocking or disrupting the gulf stream would have disastorous consequences on the Northern hemisphere, particulalry Europe and could lead to an ice age.

Several well placed EMP bombs, high in the atmosphere will knock out lots of electronics and electrical generation and relay systems. I know Dragonstar relies on both Technology and Magic, but there must be worlds and groups of people that trust technology more than magic. They would be much more susceptible.

TRIBBLES!

Seeding an atmosphere with a virus that only effects plant life. It doesn't kill the plants, just prevents them from reaching sexual maturity. since many food crops are also seasonal in nature, one year later and food production is severely diminshed. Hit several of the major agricultural worlds at the same time. Food production for the galaxy drops chaos ensues.

That is all I can some up with for the moment.

Hawkeye

 

[Nifft]

Start physically transposing one world with another, so long as the people who live on the worlds would probably not get along if they were randomly teleported amongst one another. Random teleportations, random portals, big swirly things that grab people. On the "sucking" end, it looks like a kidnapping. On the "spitting" end, it looks like a covert invasion. Especially if you target militaristic civilizations. Let them kill each other.


Destroy their ecologies by seeding each world with every other world's equivalent of rats & pigeons... but mutated into cranium rats and pigeons! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!


Construct portals to the Plane of Shadow at one world's Lagrange point (L1). Cast a really, really big illusion [shadow] anchored there, and big enough to block out the sun's light to that world. Cinematic scene: heros fighting shadow-critters in the void of space. *shudder!* After cutting off sunlight, send in the vampires.


Get a white gold ring. Wake up the worm in the middle of the planet.

-- N

 

[ivocaliban]

The apocalypse in my campaign is centered on the rebirth of Tharizdun (God of Entropy and Madness). To preface this I had 13 portals open across the Flanaess that lead to one of the more destructive realms. One opened every season for thirteen seasons (a little over three years total). The first opened in the Hellfurnace Mountains and lead to the Plane of Fire. All the volcanos in the Hellfurnaces erupted and fire elementals, salamanders, azers, and the like flooded into the area. Another opened in the Valley of the Mage, which lead to the Plane of Shadow. The nasty mage who ruled the region disappeared into the portal and returned a few months later with one of the flying cities of shades made popular in Forgotten Realms.

So far eleven of the portals have opened and chaos has reigned wherever they spring up. I tried to tie the portals to various regions in ways that made sense. For instance, the Plane of Negative Energy portal opened in the Bonewood (transforming everything in a growing radius into undead); the Plane of Air opened in the Barbarian lands in the northeast (bringing the harshest winter ever known to the area); and so forth.

In an area where maps are common and the land is well-known having the portals open so that they form a pattern of some sort is useful. A pentagram, is always nice. Then you can either have the PCs try and figure out a way to stop these portals from opening (In my campaign, the Cult of Tharizdun is performing rituals at ancient sites holy to the dark god so they could try and beat them to a portal) or you can have the portals and the resulting apocalypsi be unavoidable (in which case a larger and more thorough apocalypse occurs--such as the return of an ancient deity of Tharizdun's stature).

 

[Stormborn]

Make it seem like a boon intially, like magic slowly working better and better. Every spell becomes maximized or extended, Xp costs are halved, no need for material components, etc. The PCs are likely to have mixed feelings about that, but its going to get worse. 1 in 10 people is now a sorcerer. Soon wild magic storms start sweeping the world. Living Spells are everywhere. Every undead has turn resistance and magical beasts are roaming the countryside. Wars are beign waged by in experianced battle mages, cabals of enchanters are starting civil wars. The gods of magic have gone mad.

Sure all the PCs stuff works great, maybe they even have some high level magic powers of their own, but so does the village idiot and every NPC villan that ever got away. And reality is crumbling.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Super Novas or a magic spike (up or down) - a weapon/spell to make stars go boom or a sharp quick reduction or increase of magical energy that would either shut everything down or burn it up.

 

[tjoneslo]

Thank you for the suggestions. I particuarly like the gate to the plane of shadow in space putting darkness over whole planets. And bringing in hordes of dark creatures.

I also like the magical boost ideal, though I may make it aspected. In this area, all the cold spells start to work extra well, then a little too well, the run amuck.

The apocalysi I have so far are:
Star Fire (Fire): A magnetic containment field around a nova funnels the star hot plasma through a magical gate, then down the Long Road (another series of always open magical gates connecting the Dragon home worlds). Bake all homeworlds in one shot. The player have actually seen a test firing of this device in a very spectaular display.

Falling Shards: Uses an delayed and enhanced version of the enlarge spell on a large pile of pebbles. No one will notice a collection of pebbles flying through space, that is until they hit the atmosphere and enlarge to several ton rocks. Result: a devestating metor shower.

Mortis Populi: The zombie plague, a magically enhanced virus to turn people into rampaging, mindless beasts. Released into several major trade ports, with an incubation period of two weeks or so should spread it quite far before it becomes unpleasant.

Avarice Consumption: The giant planet eating space creature breeding program. Nothing like having a running gun battle inside a creature against the "antibodies" while trying to reach the brain before it eats another world.

Intolerable Atmospherics: This is a long term, subtle plan. The life support systems on most warships and many sealed habitats include a number of vital components. Things like valves, fan motors, and so on. On command, these components will emit a large volume of very poisonous gas directly into the life support system.

Lighting View (Lighting): Some bright mage a long time ago figured out how to send computer data via electical signals through a crystal ball. Now all the dragon houses have large networks of these computer network crystal balls. Unfortunatly, no one ever bothered to figure out what the upper limit of the amount of electricity that these spheres will take. Or the people who knew are no longer around. There are now several major communication networks connected via these magical electricity conducting orbs. A set of wand of continuous lighting in the wrong place and the EMP effects take down the entire network.

 

[AuraSeer]

Falling Shards: Uses an delayed and enhanced version of the enlarge spell on a large pile of pebbles. No one will notice a collection of pebbles flying through space, that is until they hit the atmosphere and enlarge to several ton rocks. Result: a devestating metor shower.

That's pretty easy to avoid; one good disjunction makes the enlarging magic go away, and some ordinary pebbles burn up in the atmosphere.

What I'd do is reverse it. Start with some large asteroids, get them moving toward the target planet, and then hit them with an epic-scale version of shrink item. Then they're tiny and hard to detect, until they reach the destination or someone tries to interfere with them, at which point the spell automatically dissipates.