Another prompt from GLoGtober '22: Under New Management this time from a list by semiurge: "Post-apocalyptic - except the apocalypse wasn’t one of the usual suspects."
Worlds or whole systems where it has all gone horribly wrong for some reason or another. Perhaps you are arriving to one of these by portal, by astral travel, by Spelljammer, by climbing Yggdrassil, however you get there you find a place in very bad shape - not just a broken world but a whole devastated system. Whatever went wrong here scorched the planet and reached out to ruin the moons, nearby planets, sometimes the sun that once shone here. What exactly went wrong?
Post apocalypse crystal spheres - use for Spelljammer or planeswalking
1. The dead hive - here there was an ant-like hive, they consumed everything, built great structures, hive rings that orbitted worlds, hives that floated above their worlds, then all dissappeared from mysterious causes - a plague? A great migration? Few remains of the dead can be found, far, far less than there ought to be for the scale of the works. The entire place is composed of deserted hives - the seas and continents of the planets were covered over, great hive creatures to travel between worlds tumble dead and dry in space, huge chitinous hive structures stand empty. Here all that remain, the last non-hive remnants, survive by cannibalising the hive elements
2. Dead sun: (d6: 1 - recently, worlds still in the process of dying, 2-3 - near past, worlds mostly dead but still some life in underdark or roaming undead, 4-6 - long dead, only wildspace fauna to be found) caused by (d6: 1. Aboleths, 2. Vampires, 3. Mindflayers, 4. Wizards, 5. A minor godling, 6. A sun-eating artefact engine). The sun-killers are still about, ruling the ruin of their successful plots
3. Ex-bloodwar battlefield - some unfortunate quirk of the bloodwar led what was supposed to have been a back-water sphere turning into an all-out blood-war free for all as demon lords and infernal generals poured troops in to try and dislodge the others before they could consolidate. By the time the infernals saw the losses outweigh the potential gains in their bleak mathematics, the habitable worlds were devastated, their populations slaughtered and the worlds themselves wrecked. The demon lords turned on each other after the infernals left until even they realised there was nothing worth fighting over left. Now the entire sphere is a wrecked battlefield littered with abandoned weapons and un-discharged magics. Mutation, corruption and toxicity abound - life persists but only in competition with the most tenacious of fiendish scavengers.
4. Discarded by genies - the currents of the deep ethereal made this place easily accessible to the princes of the elemental planes - for a while. The currents shifted, the genies left, and their servants mostly did not survive long without them. There are some few pockets where servants of the genii have scratched together enough to survive but mostly this is a place of magestic ruins. Much has been stripped away but caches of treasures are squirrelled away in now-dead communities of servitors. Fine gems, gold and decorative magic items lie heaped and ignored while dwellers here seek desperately for anything to help them survive.
5. Godspasm - a local rapture or ragnarok type event happened - all the sentients departed, whisked away to the realms of their gods to be judged in the afterlife. Only a few constructs and undead remain on a series of re-wilding planets. Treasures and hazards abound as nature reclaims everything.
6. Witchlight marauder waste - victim of the Unhuman War, the large planets were attacked with witchlight marauders that devoured all life upon them, then died. All organic matter is gone, but cities and constructs, though damaged remain. Harsh and inhospitable worlds with dead biospheres and slowly dwindling atmospheres can yield treasures for those willing to brave the conditions.
7. Runaway magical event - some terrible curse of magical accident has dessicated this sphere. Oceans have dwindled to thick brines at the bottom of their seabeds. Desert fauna are now all that remains, clinging to the places where the last wisps of moisture can be found. Water slowly dissappears from sealed vessels as the residual effects of the curse play out.
8. Magewar - territorial wizards gained more and more power and fought amongst themselves. All suffered as grass while those elephants fought in their floating towers above. Now the towers patrol continent sized swathes of territory or orbit claimed moons, watching over devastated wildernesses. It is not clear if any of the tower-inhabitants still survive. Nomadic communities and those hidden from sight of the sky survive and scurry through the necessities of survival when the towers are out of sight.
9. Post-magewar servitor independence - here the mages built legions of servitors not towers, and those constructs slaughtered their way to a victory so profound even the mages were killed. Now these intelligent weapons struggle to adapt to their new dominion. Some fight each other, others wait in dormancy for new challenges, still others attempt to maintain what parts of their old culture they can in the otherwise shattered and empty farms and cities of the lands that built them.
10. Vengeance of the seas - the seas rose and smote the land, surging to great heights of flooding caused by (d4: 1. Kuo-Toa, 2. Sahuagin, 3. A god of the seas at the urging of a vanished land-bound people, 4. Aboleths, 5. A portal to the plane of water, 6. something enormous falling from the heavens into the ocean). All within reach of water was washed away, cities, navies, nations, peoples. Now the waters have receded but the terrified remains of land dwellers huddle on the high grounds, with only the desperate or brave venturing down towards the shores.
11. Volcanic winter - elementals fought (or continue to fight) and volcanos sprung up spewing ash and molten rock where there had been no mountains before. The darkness came abruptly and with it cold and famine. Now the volcanos continue to rage and the remnants of the population seek shelter and survival however they can under a sky that never brightens more than twilight
12. The civilised zombie apocalypse - the sun guttered, a plot by vampires or illithids or who knows anymore. But as all vegetation perished and ecosystems collapsed, necromancers of the dying surface civilisations staged a fight-back and liches, wights and other powerful undead raised hordes of skeletons and zombies to fight back and won. Now the sun still stands dark and the nations of this place go about an eerie mockery of their old ways. Ore is mined, goods are created, trade goes on under a guttering sun. The locals are open to vistors, if somewhat intimidating and viciously factional amongst themselves
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