What has the greatest chance of destroying the Forgotten Realms?

[laiyna]

Very easy.......

Get Mystra killed in a big battle, then Elminster and the Symbul, the 7 sisters, etc will all also fall.

If these are gone who is gone stop the Thay, the Dragon Cults, etc.

The Harpers would get plasted away in a few weeks without Mystra and its "uber" characters.

Just kill mystra in a big battle and the compleet balance of FR is gone, evils will surely win, even if they start fighting under eachother. The dales will be nothing more then a desert when Thay is finished, the drows will turn Evermeet in a slave market for cheap pleasure slaves.... It will be fun.....

Lai

 

[Zappo]

A gnomish industrial revolution resulting in a nuclear holocaust?

 

[orion winterfire]

I did something like this, though I set my world several millenia afterwards, to when little memory of the old world existed.

Anyway, I had a trio do it. The first, a vampire goddess and master seductress gets a bunch of world leader/epic heroes under her "spell".

The second, her bastard son, slowly gets agents planted in all the major religions.

The third, a charismatic fallen hero and consort to the goddess gets some armies set up -- partially the typical orcs, etc. The army also includes my version of tieflings, which he gathers from their outcast places throughout the planes to unite as a race.

Then one day . . . pow.
The goddess gets her pets to start wars against each other, causing destruction, famine, etc.
Her son's plants burn temples and do horrible things in the names of gods, causing people to lose faith in the gods (which weakens them).
Then the fallen hero shows up with his armies.

Once the gods are weakened, the goddess kills some of them and imprisons the rest.

Then it's all over but the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

 

[Knight Otu]

A gnomish industrial revolution resulting in a nuclear holocaust?

I second that!
You might really want to read the Gnomish Industrial Revolution threads for some good (evil?) ideas.
The IR is archieved at Bugbears lair: http://bugbearslair.homestead.com/GIRA1.html

Warning: The third IR is very long, but it also has some nice ideas for destroying a world.

 

[dorain]

lay it all to waste

RETURN OF THE ARCH WIZARDS SPOILERS
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Tilverton was destroyed by the interaction of the weave and the shadow weave, two wizards spell effects overlapped (9th level spells) and the resulting malfunction destroyed tilverton.( thats the short and dirty of it, you can read the two books in the series that have been released so far for more info) suppose mystra and shar go at it over the control of the shadow weave (FnP mentions mystra wants it) and the result of their magic interacting lays most of the realms to waste. any gods you want out of the picture were destroyed in the dissaster and it leaves you free to shape the realms as you please with a rather believable back story. i wouldn't buy it if it was just the work of one evil god or power group. the realms does have a lot of built i saftey nets but i think this option bypasses most of those quite nicely.

 

[trix]

One big Asteroid

Well, One big Asteroid should do it.
Make it one of those football stadium sized asteroids.

FR doesnt have any early warning system. Although there must be a lot of astronomers looking at the stars, its not as if they've got hubble or anything like that.

I dont hear of any coalition of wizards looking out to deflect inbound asteroids, so, lets say that 1% of wizards are WAA (wizards against asteroids), thats probably fewer than the number of observatories we've got on earth.

We only look at about 5-15% (??) of the sky ever evening with any suitable focus on looking for asteroids.

An asteroid should do it... yeah.

Maybe then if they catch it in time, the 'heroes' could use a spelljammer ship and fly to the asteroid to divert it.

Leave a mage behind that'll cast one BIG fireball... (after the delayed blast BIGASZ fireball doesnt seem to work).

-Tim

 

[kobold]

Me

 

[KnowTheToe]

It partially depends on what you want for your current campaign. Is it going to be a dark gritty world in the midst of surviving an evil and dark age, or is it in ealry recovery from such an age.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

A gnomish industrial revolution resulting in a nuclear holocaust?

Well, actually that was threat easily averted. Now, 11th level magic and stuff does the trick. However, real problems came in guise of entropy loving pc:s, corruption and known worlds almost ending up in the Ravenloft.

Best way to create Apocalypse, is to make your players one's responsible for it. More involting story that way too. Know term 'accidental villains'?

Summoning of Old One's etc. is not that hard, all you need is some ignorant adventurer playing with wrong but 'oh so kewl' artifact.

And most important, remember to keep your goal of destruction in mind and not give in to whining characters (players are supposed to enjoy, well most of t he time anyway) or your need to protect the nice and wonderful world with all that 'stuff you don't really want to break'.

I am one of those (un)lucky players who manages play under destruction loving DM:s. Hehe, like it that way too.

FR has certain problem. It has so many threats, but none of them has truly come to pass. Evil in FR has high hype-factor, but in reality certain things remain pretty static. Makes it hard to find new more nasty thing to throw at there (not really problem, unless you have players who know every bit of FR lore there ever was).

And what comes to Crown of Horns or similar artifacts, WotC books describe artifacts really lame stat-wise these days. I really wish they wake up, and make evil and powerful artifacts not only, evil, but powerful too, and not just evil, but, powerfully including rule-wise cursed, but in a way, they seem like something somebody would want to start using.

Here is another 'god-politics' scenario:

Unthinkable happens. Shar manages to kill Selune, and steals much of her power. Greedily Shar feeds Shadow Weave more power, so she would be able to say Mystra good-bye for god, but doesn't take all things in considerance.

Terrible disharmony passes through whole world, Weave ends up mostly destroyed, magic goes crazy (Mystra along with it, if you want, or maybe Shar just kill her, before that can come to much).
Death of Weave kills Chosen of Mystra as their essesce along with their soul is ripped to oblivion.

However, Shadow Weave is not balanced enough creation: Terrible chaos in magic ensures, Dead magic, Wild magic everywere, weave users losing their powers, some dying, some going insane. Shadow weave casters are not doing well either, like said, that was not balanced enough to start with.

Plane of Shadow overlapping with Material plane, corruption and monsters created from poisonous wild magic and shadow-essence.

Shar is overjoyed. However, Shadow weave turns out to be unable to replace the Weave in all aspects. Gods' links to mortals fade. This includes Shar, who ends up trapped by her own follys.

Powerful, before unknown beings from Far Realms find their way though unhindered new ways, these wounds in primal nature of cosmos itself. Powerful, before unknown lords from shadow realms start their hunt for souls to rule or eat.

Power of gods doesn't stop demonic and devilic beings from entering, and some of them arrive to play their games and wage their otherworldy wars.

Maybe things are at this... or maybe more happens...

Some group of beings have power in this terrible cosmos, maybe those Shades, who have studied mystery of shadows for long and have more endurance for it's madness. Maybe there are seeirs out there, who knew this event would come to pass, and have made their arrengements.

Maybe some group manages to seal whole world from most of extraplanar elements, but unfortunely seal some of them in their side (wrong side), since it all happened 'so fast'.

Maybe you want to use psionic group of creatures who remain in powerful position.

Or maybe magic is mostly declared too dangerous (or maybe just too dead in some areas of the world), it's abardoned and barbaric hordes have rule of the day.

When you destroy a world, you have so much possibilities what to do with pieces left. And FR, well, they jumped there so many elements, just make your picks.

I just tried to combine few ideas given here.

Tired, Bored, had fun. Bye.

 

[Johno]

My original answer to the question was "The DM"...

But seriously, try for an unholy alliance of Illithids and Aboleth, led by some Half-Demonic Illithilich Demigod. Their evil machinations have finally come to fruitition.

The Sun is darkened, the surface Oceans have been turned to Acidic Lakes, The rain is pure acid, No plant life exists on the surface. The only "life" on the surface consists a few Dracoliches with armies of undead, who try to eek an existance by paying fealty to the present rulers. These UNdead creatures battle each other in eon-long rivalries.

In the depths of underdark, the resistance is stubbornly trying to hold ground, numbering mostly just a few escaped Drow/Duergar.

Humans, Surface Elves, Gnomes and such are mere myths.