D&D 5E What should the backlash be? Your ideas wanted

[Gilladian]

This is a 5e game, but your responses don't need to limit themselves. I just ran a little adventure called "Storm Keep"; in it the PCs fight an elemental that has more-or-less taken over a wizard's keep. There are some apprentices hiding in their room, and one of them will become the new keep owner/senior wizard if the PCs allow, at the end of the adventure. The keep gets its name from a fairly powerful magic item that draws down storms and charges itself from them. It is capable of summoning elementals, of creating elemental-based magic items, etc... So really an artifact.

At the end of the adventure, my PCs drop-kicked and smashed the thing, despite the young wizard's frantic pleas that they not do so; they were certain that leaving such an artifact in the hands of a naive, young, untrained wizard was a bad idea, and they were not interested in taking the place over for themselves. So they destroyed it. Now, there just HAVE to be repercussions. I mean, this item HAD to be sitting there doing more than looking pretty. The previous owner had just tried, and failed, to summon and bind a major fire elemental to his command. HE got thrown into the interplanar void, somewhere. The elemental had then tried to burst through to our plane, hoping to create chaos and burn everything in sight. And now he's been banished home again. Mighty pissed off is how I'd describe him.

So I'm wondering if maybe a couple of things shouldn't go on... maybe the expelled wizard is trapped somewhere, and smashing the crystal did something? What could be going on with him? A ghostly thing? Doing what? And what would the elemental be able to do? And what else could this crystal have been binding in place? Was it a ward, a key, or something else?

 

[iserith]

Based on what you're saying and having not read the adventure module, it seems that the players aren't really interested in repercussions related to this artifact... which is why they smashed it. So I would probably just set the apprentices to hostile and move on. Perhaps sometime later in the campaign when the planes are introduced as a place to adventure, the PCs encounter a legendary efreet planar raider who keeps the wizard as its learned slave. When they come to learn how the wizard found his way into such ill fortune, it may be a real "Oops" moment.

 

[pukunui]

What iserith said. Maybe the apprentices get angry and tell the PCs to get out so they can start picking up the pieces (both literally and figuratively).

If you want some grander repercussion, though: maybe the artifact was somehow controlling the weather in the area, so now that it's gone, the weather goes crazy and over the next few weeks, some intense storms wreak havoc on the communities in the vicinity of the keep, which might make the PCs rather unpopular in that area.

 

[thalmin]

I thought it was supposed to be very difficult to destroy an artifact.

Sounds like the artifact acted like a lighning rod for storms in the region. Without the lightning rod, the storms are free to cause more damage in the region. The artifact drew off the power of the storms, giving the storms shorter durations. No more. Bad weather lasts for days or weeks instead of hours. Super tornadoes. Dust bowl types of duststorms. Week-long blizzards. Month-long rains. Inland hurricanes. Lightning bolts splitting mountains.

But the big question. What can the PCs do about it now? You can teach them they made a mistake, but what can they do about it now. It isn't a matter of teaching the PCs a lesson if they have just doomed the world, unless they can still save it. And remember, the game still has to be fun.

 

[steeldragons]

hmmm...

Drawing down storms to charge itself with them...fire elemental...wizard in limbo...botched binding...let's see, let's see...

Storms...air...air elementals...air and water, really...by traditional D&D layout...air conflicts EARTH...water, also, softens earth, makes it malleable...difficult to maintain its shape/form...

Your trouble/problem isn't going to be the ticked off fire elemental...though he will certainly be something that needs to be dealt with by the party at some stage...your SERIOUS repercussion is that you destroyed the artifact which was a LOCK

...that imprisoned the ancient, terrible, primordial, description-defying EARTH ELEMENTAL near-deity that has been held and imprisoned miles beneath the ground (hell, maybe it actually IS the ground) beneath Storm Keep.

NOW it will awaken! It will be slow. Take some time to reform...but now that the artifact that channeled the air/water/lightning power of the Storm into the ground that kept him destabilized has been shattered...there's nothing to prevent him/it from reforming/animating itself...eventually.

As the earth elemental begins to regain its consciousness -well before an actual form- the creatures of the elemental plane of earth, and those associated with it, begin to take on significantly more chaotic/violent/unusual behavior...preparing for the rise of this world's new master, their master.

Stone giants begin rampaging throughout the countryside in states of inexplicable madness.

Gargoyles seem to have infested the realms. Galeb Duhrs seem to be springing up all over the place but all they speak are gibberish [or are they oracular riddles?].

Bulettes, umber hulks, and purple worms are scrambling to the surface in unheard of numbers.

Deep gnomes come to the surface seeking out heroes to help them as large numbers of their population begin to go mad. Duergar and Drow seem to be encountering similar difficulties.

...and any/all attempts to track a source for all of this earth/rock critter created chaos brings you back tooo..."Hey, isn't this the keep with that apprentice and the gem we destroyed? Storm Cellar or whatever it was?"

Maybe the wizard can be found/brought back to explain/warn against the "impending rising doom"...maybe in a few levels the party is sought out by the apprentice-turned-master of the place with this very mission in mind ["I've found the planar coordinates my former master was sent. I can get you there, you must bring him back! Only he might know the cause of our woes!" Cue rescue mission which turns race against the fire elemental lord to get to the lost archmage.

Perhaps an air elemental creature or two become allies of the party and/or try to explain/get their assistance before the earth/rock/stone lord regains its full form/power. Maybe a great/legendary djinni wizard [who created the first lock eons ago] needs to be sought out. MAybe the trapped archmage knows how to find this djinni wizard...or at least his name and a way to get the party to the elemental plane of air...or border-air or whatever they're using in 5e now.

The archmage had actually been hoping to bind the fire elemental's aid [however coerced] into adding to the power of Storm Keep's "Lock".

The fire elemental knows perfectly well what lies beneath Storm Keep and sought to unleash it against the world...as earth can easily be scorched and turn to lava/magma to turn into an army of mag-men to invade the material world and, ultimately, rule all creation...This fire elemental, however, is sorely underestimating/miscalculating the power and evil being unleashed and would suffer an undignified and quick defeat should it ever come face-to-face with the Earth Lord/Monster...which it never should since the party should deal with it first.

I dunno...off the top of my head...something like that...or not.

So, you get SK1: "The Secret of Storm Keep" -already played.
Followed by SK2: "The Dementia of Deep Vault"
Then SK3:"The Fury of Flame Spire "
capped off with SK4:"The Unearthly Wrath of Rock Hold"

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] I've always thought surprise "gotcha" outcomes are best when they are either foreshadowed (even subtly) or are logical consequences of what has happened.

The most logical consequence from your scenario is that the magic channeling device had been located in an area fraught with copious supernatural storms. So it acted like a lightning rod. Now that it is gone the storms have nothing channeling them, nothing holding them back.

 

[GameOgre]

If it is easy to destroy.

1- Storms break out in the region. This is just flavor text mostly for a while. Just run foul weather in the background for the next three adventures. If they care enough to investigate the may discover that it's centered on them. They are now the center of the storm outbreak. Just play it up as a lot of rain and fog and light snow fro a while. Then as they get higher level let it slowly build into worse and worse weather. Crops not only fail around them due to the foul weather but crops far away fail because all the precipitation seems to be centered around the pc's.

If one of the party is a wizard or sorcerer let them gain a bonus to fire, lightning, cold and heat type spells. After a adventure or so of this.....let it start raining inside and have HUGE fluctuations in weather.

The only way to stop this ever escalating disaster is to remake the artifact! Only it's a hellova lot harder to make than it is to destroy.

If the outsmart themselves and resort to crazy powerful magic to beat this....let it work. Let it work in spades! No weather at all. Fast forward thousands of years and you have the world of Dark Sun!

That's right those pc's caused it all!

Just have fun with it.

 

[Sunseeker]

The Castle/Artifact didn't actually draw forth elemental energy to do whatever it did. It siphoned off the extra energy caused by the friction of the planes, this energy was then used for a variety of purposes, but when not otherwise utilized it was simply a discharge location. Without it the energy that builds up normally has nowhere to go and creates disastrous elemental-based problems. From living hurricanes to tidal waves of water elemental, without it draining off the extra energy to keep things in balance, the elemental planes are building up too much energy and forcing their way into the material, or other planes.

Perhaps legend tells of another location that served the same purpose long before this one, an ancient city or ruin that has long been abandoned, but could potentially house a similar device that would save the day.

Perhaps conversely, the artifact used the power for something else all the while everyone who did stuff with its energy either didn't know or didn't care that there seemed to be substantially more energy going in than coming out for their pet projects. Perhaps this energy fed a slumbering monster to keep it sedated or powered an ancient prison and now the "ancient evil" stands ready to, or already has escaped. Perhaps in destroying the object they have earned the ire of its original creator some generally-good-aligned deity and thinks they are agents of chaos and evil so the party much fight normally good-aligned creatures and explain their actions.

 

[Mistwell]

It obviously creates a rift between the worlds, and sucks the PCs into an elemental plane where they need to find their way back. Duh.

 

[JackOfAllTirades]

The item was protected by a powerful curse. Thunderstorms now occur everywhere the PC's travel.

And they get disadvantage on saves v. lightning.


But hey, don't explain any of this, just let them figure it out. Start off each game session with "It's raining again." End every session with "And it's still raining." Also be sure to mention it whenever they're traveling, or outdoors for any length of time. Ask them what they're doing to keep dry.

And don't mention the disadvantage v. lightning saves until it actually comes up, because surprises are fun.