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When someone on the ‘mad’ side of the Alchemist spectrum releases a self-replicating magic-consuming substance across the land, the high-magic realm swiftly grinds to a halt as Dragons stop flying & floating cloud cities crash into the ground.
On the plus side, the undead menace is gone.
On the minus, those beautiful crystal bridges probably can’t support their own weight.
The utterly generic Kingdom of Niceness has been at war with the entirely derivative Lands of the Dread Lord for centuries. It’s always been a low-key thing, with skirmishes and raids and very little change.
Until now.
Nobody backed down, nobody withdrew, they’ve used more & more powerful magics, it became increasingly difficult to tell the sides apart any more, and they’ve reduced themselves and everything in between to rubble.
As dawn breaks, the remnants of the garrisons on both sides of a minor mountain pass emerge from the cave they’ve been sheltering in, and wonder what to do next.
When a solar flare, or alien invasion, or assault be extraplanar entities makes the surface un-survivable, the denizens of a fantasy realm retreat to the only place left – The dungeons.
The world tore itself apart, and your small band of survivors from all sides of the conflict are trying to make their way in a world gone mad.
Or maybe you’re the ones who’ve gone mad.
Or maybe the world really has become this psychedelic fantasy-land?
A patch of primordial forest, with primordial creatures, is growing rapidly, shutting down any technology it encounters. Right now it’s in the middle of the desert, but if it keep growing it’s going to hit towns and cities.
Can it be stopped?
Can it be turned back?
And, without planes or jeeps, can you even reach the centre of the thing in time?
When a Fantasy Realm started to expand into the modern world, we turned to LARPers & the SCA to find a solution.
The Postman, by David Brin
Postman Pat
Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
When the Wind Blows, by Raymond Briggs
Lindsay Ellis deconstruction of the Transformers movies
And Hobbit movies
Mad Max (movies)
Yojimbo
The Man With No Name
The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham
Fifth Millennium Series, by S.M. Stirling
Pugmire
Monarchies of Mau (Geek and Sundry link)
Sword of Shannara, by Terry Brooks
The Shannara Chronicles (TV)
Skyline
Slipstream
Apocalypse Now
The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway
Chaga / Evolution’s Shore, by Ian McDonald
Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer
Torg
Torg Eternity (Ulisses Spiele Edition)
Hothouse, by Brian Aldiss
I’m surprised there was no mention of Palladium’s Rifts, in which the eponymous rifts between dimensions open up, bringing absurdly badass extradimensional entities to save, conquer, or ravage the planet depending on their inclination. Then again, the word “Palladium” may explain why there was no mention of it . . .
Ah, Rifts. It might have some up if something else hadn’t, but we aren’t scripted and definitely aren’t attempting to be comprehensive.
We’ve also taken a few, hopefully good-natured, shots at Rift recently, so if we had it could have started to look like a vendetta.
I personally played and enjoyed a lot of Palladium games in my teens, and, well, there are some things you can’t go back to easily.
Easiest apocalypse: all the animal life and denizens of a fantasy world are suddenly transported to modern Earth. No explanation, just a lot of scared critters who don’t speak the language violently encroaching on modern humans. Carnage ensues. Now modern civilization doesn’t have enough trained workers to keep it going. Worldwide collapse. Stabilize in the Iron Age.
Yeah, smashing two ecologies together would make a pretty big mess normally, and the addition of magic and fantastic beasts would definitely be the icing on the Apocalypse cake.
The part that sparks my interests would be the desperate alliances and adaptations that factions from both worlds make to survive and how they move on afterwards.
Heck, maybe Kim Jong-Un’s Unicorn Lair is real and it’s already started!