Re: brains... brains...

On Jan 30, 2007, at 8:00 PM, Loki wrote:

> There's always stealing from "Star Trek".  "Doomsday Machine" +
>> "Borg" = a planet-sized gelatinous cube.  PCs investigating a new
>> sphere find voidworld after voidworld on the edges of the system,
>> their surfaces utterly swept clean.  How do you stop such a
>> creature?  Will it figure out how to escape the sphere?  Must it be
>> destroyed - or, in the Spelljammer universe, is there always room for
>> Jell-O?
>
>
>
> I LOVE IT! Do elucidate, good sir.

Well, as far as killing the thing is concerned:  they managed to stop  
"The Blob" by freezing it, so perhaps the PCs could try to lure it  
onto an ice planet or comet of some sort, where it would thicken and  
its metabolism would cease.  (Alternately:  you can't kill it, you  
can only freeze it into stasis, from which it would revive if ever it  
thawed out.  So the frozen-cube-planet becomes a quarantine world,  
perhaps with some sort of beacons or naval patrol, lest somebody  
revive it or try to steal bits of it to grow their own cubes.

Here's another derivative idea, for fearless DMs only:  "When There's  
No More Room in the Outer Planes, the Dead Will Walk the Oerth"

Take a TSR world that you don't really care about/plan to use/have  
any of the books for.  Maybe you don't give a fig about Krynn, maybe  
you don't really know much about Oerth, whatever.  Send your PCs into  
that sphere, where all hell has broken loose.  Ships are fleeing the  
planet or even the sphere;  the Elven Armada is trying to prevent  
anyone from approaching the planet, etc.  (Players, especially of the  
have-read-all-published-sourcebooks types, may be intrigued that  
something major they hadn't heard of has happened to a TSR world.)   
Contrive some reasons for them to land (simple curiosity might be  
enough, or rumors of no-holds-barred looting, for the chaotically  
inclined).  Especially cruel DMs will have them crash.

When they get to the surface:  Dawn of the Dead!  The Mysterious  
Zombie Plague has struck a helpless Toril/Oerth/Krynn.  High-level  
clerics are simply no match against ravening tens of thousands of the  
walking dead;  mighty wizards blast and blast until their spells are  
exhausted and they themselves are devoured.  The stumbling hordes  
grow and grow, overwhelming areas which try to hold out.   
Civilization utterly destroyed as anyone bitten by a zombie becomes a  
zombie;  special guest appearances by Shambling Drizz't, Flesh-Eating  
Mordenkainen, Brain-Devouring Tanis Half-Dead, or other TSR Stars.*

Obviously, this plot effectively deletes a gameworld from your  
Spelljammer cosmos, so, as noted above, just use one you never  
planned to have PCs go to anyway.  Especially useful for utterly  
astounding know-it-all players, who cannot believe that you just  
destroyed, e.g., the Forgotten Realms.  This would also work for  
simply some new, generic inhabited world, but it's more shocking if  
the PCs are trying to save the two or three remaining Knights of  
Solamnia or something from the devouring undead.  Depending upon how  
much contact said world had with the Spelljamming community, this may  
have enormous political consequences.  Many a lich would think of  
immediately decamping for the new Planet of the Zombies to now have  
millions of the Dead under his thrall;  nearly any race would be  
desperate to keep the zombie plague confined to one world, or to hunt  
down any rumored infected persons who might have escaped.

- Benjamin Winkler


* Ideas plundered from "Dawn of the Dead" and "Marvel Zombies".