What was the Day of Mourning like?

[d20fool]

Hello!

I'm kicking off my brand-spankin' new Eberron campaign with a "flashback" to the PCs during the war (details below.) This occurs just before the events of the Day of Mourning that destroys Cyre. My question is. . .

What exactly happens? How does Cyre die? Is it a big explosion? What immediate effects where there? Did people die all at once, or did it take some time for most of them to die off?

While we are at it, what do you think caused the incident? I'm going with Cyre creating a magical doomsday weapon/artifact that backfired, for the time being.

As for my campaign, I'm making the players make three "0 level" PCs each. They will be members of a Cyran unit assigned (in three teams) to retake a forge for creating warforged, where they will be introduced to the monster mercenary band that will be the recurring villains for the campaign, Hogar's Hundred. They may pick their PC from the survivors. After their mission's success or failure, the Day of Mourning happens. They are on the far border of modern Breland, close to the edge of the event. Thus, they should see something, but what exactly?

Thank you for your thoughts.

 

[demiurge1138]

From the edge of Breland? I'd say they see a bright flash of light, and an approaching shock wave of eldritch colors. But the shockwave doesn't hit them; not too far from the party it flows upwards, forming a prismatic curtain, which swiftly cools to a dead grey mist...

So, yes, I'd say it'd be an explosion of some sort (and I agree that it was a Cyran doomsday weapon that failed).

Demiurge out.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

The sounds of battle and war sounded in his ears as the scent of blood and tears assualted his nose. Commander Trelis ir'Wyrnarn looked over the battlefield of Cyrran and Brelish soldiers as he prepared to join the fray with his elite unit. He forrowed his brow and surveyed his unitl; Twelve Warforged, a new model straight from the Canniths' secret Whitehearth creation forge, six Shifter Maulers, specially trained in hand to hand combat, four Valenar Mercenaries, five Halfling Riders, a Changeling Scout, and twentyfour battled hardened Cyrran soldiers. His men looked across the horizon and prepared to face their destiny. Some were there for gold, some for glory, others due to treaties and pacts, and some were bought, the majority of them however, were there to defend their home and to fight for honor. Trelis looked accross the blood stained horizon and sounded the battle call to surge forth his men. They stormed across the hill to help their allies and then something terrible happened. Just as the Cyrran elite unit reached the fight, the horizon lit up with an eerie gray light. The entire land around them sounded off with a rumbling thunder, as if thousands of halfling riders were travelling the landscape. The eerie surged over the men in the blink of an eye. The agony they felt was undescribable. Trelis' horse vaporized beneath his legs dropping him to the ground. As he fell, time slowed to a fraction of its normal movement, he saw his men, his friends, falling to the ground as well. Dying in agony, in pain, suffocating, ripping their own eyes out. More then half of them vaporized into nothing. "They're lucky..." he thought, as a sharp stone impacted with his skull when his head hit the ground. It was the last thing he saw, and thought as the Mourning began to eat him away too....

 

[BrooklynKnight]

Ick, thats some bad formatting. But,eh, a short tiny story on what someone might have seen being caught in the Mourning.

 

[d20fool]

Wow, what a great response, and so quick too. What if any PCs caught outside during the Mourning must roll an increasing Fort save or die until the get cover? Hmmmm. . .

Thank you, any further ideas and comments are welcome.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

What I like is the rifts style doomsday where it's not so much a single weapon or event as a series of related (though perhaps inadvertantly) events that interact to create one giant catastrophe where individually there might have been several smaller ones.

That might also explain the bizarre limitation of the disaster. If it was a series of events the nations mightiest magic users might have had time or indication that lead them to try counter-act it's effects. Thus it's limited affect within the nation.

I'm guessing it was an attack by some other entity or group that was itself devastating and was aggravated by something the nation itself had going on.

 

[d20fool]

Nature of weapon

I don't know if I would infer any direct limitation to the Mourning, I'm under the impression that borders where pretty flexible during the Last War. When they say "destroyed Cyre" I think it means "destroyed most of Cyre" or "Cyre and then some.

Going with the weapon gone wrong theory, I could see the development of an artifact that destroy flesh but not constructs. Warforged-using Cyre would love such a weapon, as they could clear an area and march in warforged to take it, or even use it to support warforged on a campaign. It would also explain why so many warforged are in the Mournland. They survived.

Of course, the Mourning implies a lot of property damage too. That would effect constructs.

Any more ideas folks? During the Mourning, I think I'll simply have everything outside take 1d4 damage a round (they are on the edge of it, after all.) This damage does wear down buildings and other structures. The PCs in my adventure will need to find shelter underground.

 

[demiurge1138]

The Mourning as Neutron Bomb? Nice touch. But we've seen that some inanimate objects can take serious damage, such as a sandy plain fused into a plateau of glass, the destruction of Estrol and massive cracks opening up in the earth. I'd say that the Mourning did effect inanimate objects, but that, perhaps, the warforged were strangely resistant to its effects. Either that or the warforged that came to the Mournlands post-mourning (starting with the Lord of Blades, of course) came after the devestation to exploit a newly empty landscape.

Demiurge out.

 

[Henry]

I imagine it somewhat like the Invoked Devastation of the Greyhawk Bakluni. Someone once theorized in some fan fiction that the Invoked Devastation was an Epic spell-ritual that temporarily made the first layer of the plane of Gehenna coterminous with the Bakluni empire. The borders being the border of the effect suggest a willful spell that knows where to stop by terms of its conditions at casting. Just all of a sudden, the world the Cyrans knew was transformed into a Hell their religion had never envisioned.

Perhaps Dolurrh is coterminous there?

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Keith/Hellcow picked this one up on the WotC forums.

Basically, if you were standing far enough away it would look like a huge fog was eveloping outward for hundreds of miles. I'm not sure what happened to people who were stuck inside. I assumed they all came down with a bad case of dead.