Plot ideas for armegeddon theme?

[Wippit Guud]

Due to a war between wizard, a magical storm surrounded the world, killing millions and magically mutating more. To escape, several million across the races retreated underground to try to wait out the storm. After the first year, wizardry was outlawerd, and sorcerers were put to death in the name of life.

50 years to the day, the storm ended. 1 week later, most of the small communites living underground decide to send out expeditions to see if it's safe to come out. Enter the party.



Anyways, I'm getting stuck on ideas. For the first few, I was thinking of having the only town they know of being buried under laval for a nearby volcano, with sewers and the insides of some bulings intact, but that idea can only last so long.

 

[Furn_Darkside]

Salutations,

How about a cult of creatures living in the sewers that worshipped the storm- considering the undergrounders distaste for magic, they may take them as the slayers of their "god".

Longer term, perhaps they meet another settlement that did not banish magic but embraced it to survive the storm. They are now racing to find the lost towers of the great mages to recover any thing that might have survived.

How about the storm ended because it weakened the dimensional barriers between it and the astral plane- the githyanki (or whatever) are now using the above ground as a new colonial base.

How about a large settlement of vampires that live off of cattle- and have long had legends about "living" ones that once exisited.. how will they party react to non-evil vampires? How will the vampires react to them?


Good luck!

FD

 

[Polydamas]

You might want to check out the book At Winter's End by Robert Silverberg. It deals with a colony of humans emerging from underground shelters after a great cataclysm into a new world. Not my favorite work of his, but may prove helpful.

Fifty years is a long time...for humans. I expect there would be wanderer's from the longer-lived races setting out to track down old friends. If one of your players chooses an elf, for example, tell him the geography of the world and the history of the nations ...then shock him with the massive changes.

With fifty years of constant magical storm I imagine there would be strange lifeforms adapted to such an environment. Describe these odd creatures....ballon-kite creatures designed to drift on the winds, now limping across the blasted sands. The culture of any who could remain in the storm would be quite different from those who went below....do they feel contempt for such feeble creatures? Do they see the end of the storm and the emergence of people from underground as some sort of invasion?

Entirely new religions, political cultures, and styles of magic may have arisen. Lots of materials there.

With the new storm-blasted landscape may come new crops....is there water to drink, food to eat? You could easily add a survival in hostile environment element, if you wish. Learning the way of the land may involve experimentation, magic, or a desperate desire for peaceful contact with locals for information.

As to long term direction...I think all you need is a few vauge ideas of what the local surrounding area looks like and what may have caused the storm (the underdwellers must have some theories...even though they are probably wrong.) See what aspects of the world interest your players and build off of that. They might choose a quest to reclaim lost treasures, seek to learn the new ways of the world to support their home community, or who knows what else?

Neat setup.

 

[morrolan]

Also how do the PC's feel about magic? If magic was outlawed, they could be part of a religious group that "enforces" the law. Hunting down renegades could be fun, as could the converse. Perhaps they are spellcasters trying to rebuild the damaged reputation magic has. They could use their power to aid fledgeling communities and rebuild trust in mages, while trying to keep a low profile from "authorities". And just how will magic function, if at all, after this cataclysm? The Fallout CRPG's also would be a source of ideas for this campaign, and a mineload of NPC ideas.

 

[Black Omega]

Plenty of stuff to do here. Take creatures from the MM and othersources and put them around as new creations of that period.

Perhaps there is more to the storm than meets the eye. Perhaps some race from another plane 'helped' the storm along and has been moving in to take over while the storm kept people under ground. Little clues could come out about that and perhaps lead to the unbanning of magic as a way to fight these things.