Lackofname
Explorer
Need a bit of brainstorming, or at least, some extrapolating.
In my game there was a city that was overrun with an abyssal plague and actual demons. The Goddess of fire smote the city with a volcano--the lava kind, not the explosive/pyroclastic flow kind (Mountt St Helens/Pompeii). The civilization promptly fell (due to plague and demons). 800 years have passed. The local natives have left the city alone--that whole 'demon angry goddess and plague' being a mighty big taboo to avoid.
My group, new settlers to the area, is now looking to go investigate the ruined city, and I'm wondering what to put there to find.
One desire is for them to battle demons. Trouble is, logic is kind of getting in my way. Any free demon would have left to go cause havoc elsewhere. One trapped under all that rubble couldn't be encountered. So how, amidst the destruction, to have a demon trapped in such a way that it can't get out but the PCs can get in. (And also you know, be accidentally released rather than good and truly trapped, allowing the characters to taunt it from outside the proverbial jail cell before walking off, because that is exactly what this group would do.)
Finally I'm not sure how to navigate the treasure issue, since "you find a lot of cool stuff because it's a city" vs "you find nothing because what hasn't fallen apart from age was wrecked by a volcano". Finding nothing makes some sense, but going into a city and getting nothing seems massively disappointing.
So far all I can imagine is that the buildings at the edges of the flow weren't destroyed, and some stone buildings were tall enough that while the first/second floors may be buried under rock, upper floors were not, and that might allow access to lower floors (although the lava's heat might have melted the building's walls etc so maybe not).
Any way to suddenly give access to preserved but unreachable places would be ideal.
In my game there was a city that was overrun with an abyssal plague and actual demons. The Goddess of fire smote the city with a volcano--the lava kind, not the explosive/pyroclastic flow kind (Mountt St Helens/Pompeii). The civilization promptly fell (due to plague and demons). 800 years have passed. The local natives have left the city alone--that whole 'demon angry goddess and plague' being a mighty big taboo to avoid.
My group, new settlers to the area, is now looking to go investigate the ruined city, and I'm wondering what to put there to find.
One desire is for them to battle demons. Trouble is, logic is kind of getting in my way. Any free demon would have left to go cause havoc elsewhere. One trapped under all that rubble couldn't be encountered. So how, amidst the destruction, to have a demon trapped in such a way that it can't get out but the PCs can get in. (And also you know, be accidentally released rather than good and truly trapped, allowing the characters to taunt it from outside the proverbial jail cell before walking off, because that is exactly what this group would do.)
Finally I'm not sure how to navigate the treasure issue, since "you find a lot of cool stuff because it's a city" vs "you find nothing because what hasn't fallen apart from age was wrecked by a volcano". Finding nothing makes some sense, but going into a city and getting nothing seems massively disappointing.
So far all I can imagine is that the buildings at the edges of the flow weren't destroyed, and some stone buildings were tall enough that while the first/second floors may be buried under rock, upper floors were not, and that might allow access to lower floors (although the lava's heat might have melted the building's walls etc so maybe not).
Any way to suddenly give access to preserved but unreachable places would be ideal.
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