a Very Bad End to the champion's games! - warning: spoilers

[Kang]

Anyone run Champion's Belt and have the party ignore the ulgurstasta until it was too late to save the final match's audience from being transformed into wights immediately following the awesome and terrifying "everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by d!@#less here" scene?

I did, as you may suspect. They found the ulgu' when they were exploring the shrine of Kyuss, but after trying and failing to pick up the apostolic scrolls and shooting a single arrow at the ulgurstasta only to see it bounce harmlessly off the force field, they pretty much said, "oh well, I guess we can't get at it so let's just try and forget we ever saw that hugely evil sleeping maggot-thing. It seems peaceful enough right now" - they didn't even approach the containment field or anything. Now they've somehow killed it without losing a single PC life (for a change) and, before too many wights had left the carnage in the stands, escaped the arena through the hole the ulgu' left when it burrowed up to the surface, then fought their way past a few guards-turned-wights up through the understructure and into Raknian's palace where they performed a quick search (found their hard-earned prize money), stole some horses, and high-tailed it to Eligos's manor (stopping briefly at a couple of temples on the way to warn whatever low-ranking priests were lucky enough to be minding the temple while their superiors were off enjoying the games), the party cleric turning those few gangs of wights that they encountered as they left the area. They found the note hinting that going to Diamond Lake to see Allustan would be in order, but perhaps unsurprisingly they feel duty-bound to stick around for a while and try to help save what's left of the populace and contain the wights so they don't spread across the whole land. My ruling was that the arena was big enough to hold nearly the whole city, and that it was a sell-out crowd, so the rest of the city is mostly deserted and there are tens of thousands of wights roaming around the arena and environs, slaying as many of the several hundred surviving audience members as they can.

I'm thinking I can't be the only DM to have presided over such a debacle, so my question to the rest of you is, did your party decide to stick around for a while after lettign something like this happen, and if so, what sorts of side-quests did you throw their way to keep everyone entertained until they decided to move on, one way or another? I have one PC who has an Aunt who raised him living in town, so I plan to cook up a scenario where they can try to rescue her (if he even remembers to think of her, which I wouldn't put money on), and I'm thinking maybe they can somehow rally some of the surviving city watchmen to try and seal the gates so the wights will have a harder time getting out into the world; maybe put up some (permanent?) Celestial Brilliance spells around the perimeter near gates & other areas where wights might try to get out or that will require living guards, etc., but I'm looking to have several options they can choose from that I can either suggest via NPC's or use to cover any less obvious plans they might come up with on their own. So; suggestions, side-treks that worked out well for you, etc.?

It'd be good if not the entire city is a complete write-off by the time they leave, even if some 95% of the population will need to be rooted out and destroyed (hopefully mostly done by NPC's once the party gets them organized enough that they can leave for Diamond Lake without feeling totally irresponsible - if they stick around too long, they'll gain levels and I'll find myself using those darned Scaling the Adventure sidebars again, and I'd rather not go there as I only finally managed to have the adventures catch up to the PC's as of the start of this adventure). I think a few of them are already starting to consider looting the city for all they can carry, or maybe trying to take the whole place over for themselves, so I am thinking that offering them a few nobler options might help keep up the pretense of them being "heroes" until they're ready to resume the regularly scheduled campaign...

PS. How many seats would the Greyhawk arena have anyhow? And the city itself? Just wondering if my crude calculations from the metropolis-building rules in the DMG are even close to accurate, after I spent a couple of hours adding up all the members of various levels of the core PC and NPC classes using those guidelines... Perhaps the arena shouldn't be able to hold as much of the general population as I've estimated, which would give them a bigger pool of surviving citizens to work with...

Also, aside from suggested side-treks and demographic projections, I would not consider any other stories of disastrous/entertaining conclusions to the Champion's Games that you DM's out there may care to post to be off-topic here; let's hear how badly your players messed this one up!

Kang

[Kurukami]

Dungeon 128 suggests it can hold about 18,000 people at fullest capacity, but I was considering upping that a bit -- to 25k or 30k, perhaps. Not that 18,000 wights isn't an suitably impressive army to try to evade as it is, and they'd no doubt shred most any commoners they came across.

I haven't quite gotten to the Champion's Games quite yet. My players are just getting in to the beginning of Hall of Harsh Reflections, which I'm mixing in with the plots behind Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. I passed around a bunch of fliers "posted on Greyhawk corners", showing a Photoshop'd rendition of the Dungeon 128 cover with suitably badass Loris Raknian anecdotes -- "Loris Raknian grinds his coffee with his teeth and boils it with his rage", "In the average room there are 1,274 items Loris Raknian could use to kill you, including the room itself", and so forth -- just to make sure that my players know PRECISELY who Raknian is before the big reveal after the Zyrxog confrontation.

I have no doubt the Champion's Games will be... exquisitely challenging for them. I plan to rev things up a bit as it is -- six players, one of whom already has the Leadership feat, means seven combatants going into the arena.

[Cuchulainn]

This is exactly what happened in my campaign. When the party encountered the spawn underneath the arena, they retreated instead of finding out what they were guarding. They never saw the Apostle until it burst from the floor of the arena during the final match.

The party stayed as far away from it as possible, and made no effort to rescue Auric after he was swallowed. The power grid, as it were, got shut off big-time.

The arena was suddenly full of wights. I mercifully ruled that the wights were busy attacking people in the stands who made their initial saves, and then started pouring into the streets of the city, so they didn't have to face the Apostle and several thousand wights at once, just the Apostle.

Raknian became a Death Knight, summoned a Nightmare, the escaped.

After the party killed the Apostle, they were badly injured and low on spells. They fled to into the sewer system and tried to make their way back to Eligos' home.

The rest looked a bit like I am Legend.

The party eventually escaped. Currently, the Free City is under military quarantine, and the heroes are hoping the reigning monarch doesn't find out that they could have stopped it.

[Olmac]

My party failed to kill the apostle as well. It had something like 3 hit points left when it spewed forth Auric and the lights went out. It heals up to full, almost everyone in the stands drop dead, and Raknian is transformed into a Kyuss Knight. As I described this to them I could see jaws dropping and the fact the Greyhawk city is now dead dawning on them.

Priceless.

They did not even stick around to see what happened next, the cleric casts a plane shift and scoots out there with the party as the first Wights are rising.

They teleport back a couple days later to find the temple of Heironeous the only island of safety inside the walls (good thing that is where they landed). They realized that the temple would not last long as Raknian is leading a huge force of Wights and Kyuss spawn against it.

They fly to Eligos’ house and find it over run by Wights, fight their way in, find Eligos dead, recover their stuff, the letter and bug out of the city.

I have no idea what they think they should do about it, but now they are deep into The Gathering of Winds.

I have plans to use a Greyhawk City controlled by Kyuss worshipping minions in a future home grown adventure path. I just have to wait and see if Kyuss is defeated. If not, it will be a very interesting world to adventure in.

[Paul Murray]

My party also were going to ignore it. I resorted to out-of-game "Dudes, not killing this thing as a very bad idea".

http://www.paulmurray.id.au/ageofworms/week22.html

Since we have a cleric in the party, I justify this sort of thing as the cleric getting flashes of info from the gods. Works with a paladin, too.

[Crust]

I applaud those of you who allowed such a catastrophe to unfold when your PCs neglected to thwart Bozal.

I've set my Age of Worms along the Sword Coast, and the Free City is Waterdeep in my campaign. I was fully prepared to turn 18,000 some spectators into wights. After all, after that initial save, the resulting mob would quickly overwhelm the arena and pour out into the streets, turning commoners, guards, whoever had a marginal chance of failing that save into wights. I would have made it clear through NPCs that the PCs would have to stay and clean up. That would have led to some incredible street-to-street fighting, calling into service certain powerful NPCs (and former PCs who are epic) into the mix to save the day. It would have been 5 or 6 sessions of 28 Days Later.

I wish I could have run through that, but I stayed out of party decisions concerning the cultist beneath the arena. I did, however, tell the group what would have happened had they just moved through the games without investigating, and they were floored. Some were disappointed (myself not the least of those). ;-)

I still got to run my 28 Days Later scenario by linking Expedition to Castle Ravenloft with Prince of Redhand. It wasn't the same, but it was still loads of fun.

[TerraNova]

The same went down here. I threw them a bone and gave them a Celeste in full celestial regalia to help them out of the Wightocalypse. Mostly because i had no plan whatsoever, and wanted to do a Gathering of Winds first to have time to catch my breath and plan.

Eventually i send them back to the wight-infested city, where they got their chance for a rematch with Deathknight Raknian - while they tried to prime what amounted to a magical nuke (shunting the city into the ether counts as pretty much that... :) ) in order to at least stop the cancer of undeath from spreading any further.

[Charles Evans 25]

Kang:
Well it could be an excuse to give the party an early glimpse of an archmage from Spire of Long Shadows turning up with several of his friends to deal with the crisis.
(Or suddenly the party find themselves teleported to him to explain exactly what is going on, after he became alerted to the crisis, worked divinations and determined that they are the only living souls who know.)

[Olmac]

Crust wrote:

I applaud those of you who allowed such a catastrophe to unfold when your PCs neglected to thwart Bozal.

My players are still agast that I have allowed that to happen. I decide before the get go that the fate of the world rested on the successes of the players. The fact that Greyhawk is now a city of the dead has change the landscape in a huge way. What City State or Country will rise to the top to take up the lofty title of Gem of the Flanaess.

I think that a Kyuss Knight Raknain in charge of Greyhawk can get the place solidified and ready to repluse anyone trying to free the city. I also transformed Bozal into a Kyuss Knight and Orkal in to a Favoured Spawn, who inturn turned Raknian's personal guard. That and a maxed out Apostle should make a hefty challenge.

[Crust]

Awesome ideas, Olmac. Bravo.

It would seem like a campaign ender, reducing an entire city into an undead nest of death, expecting the PCs to clean up. I think such a scenario is just the thing to take the Age of Worms into the epic range. Maybe the city is lost, and only later, when forces mass and the PCs get stronger, can the city be cleansed.

Really, I wish I could turn back time and run that infestation. I would have really enjoyed (and I think the players would have enjoyed it as well) running some fast-paced, street-to-street "Saving Private Ryan/28 Days Later" style scenarios involving death everywhere, screaming, panicking, the odd NPC cameo, PC cunning in terms of spellcasting and positioning, the knowledge that a major metropolis has just been reduced to an undead horde, many who might be acquaintances of the PCs... Insanely hectic games where the first thing we do is roll initiative and fight mobs of wights and Kyuss spawn, uncovering several bosses along the way. Could also be a way to create some arcade-style mayhem, where PCs are endlessly hacking at CR 3-5 foes who are slightly dangerous but will still go down relatively easily (with the exception of mobs).

By the way, how many of you are using mob rules from the DMG II? The mob can make any creature a serious threat. A wight mob's energy drain DC is I think in the upper 20s. Deadly for a 10th-11th level party.

[Russ Taylor]

There's enough power in Greyhawk that I don't see the wight influx as being a sure death for the city. I do think that by the end of the battle, a significant portion of the city would be dead, and likely hundreds of wights in the slums and sewers for months or years to come. Probably a good half to quarter the population would outright flee, and create a refugee problem in the surrounding area.

[Fake Healer]

Wights are intelligent. Human-level intelligent. One rises above his peers and leads them to create the first undead city on the surface. They raid the closer small towns in well-coordinated night-time raids to add to their army and continue to fortify their position, planning to repel any attacks and sieges while swelling their ranks with the dead from the attackers. Eventually the PCs hit epic levels and there is their quest, clean up the mess they made when they were less powerful before the Army of the Wightlord decides to march on some of the smaller cities in the area. Wights could create a whole society with all the trimmings and they don't need to eat, drink or sleep to survive. The only thing that really prevents a wight city from springing up is numbers...they usually don't have the numbers readily available and when they start building up from small to larger numbers a group of adventurers hears a rumor, or a group of Pelorians, and puts an end to the threat.
That's how I'd play it!

[Kurukami]

Fake Healer wrote:

Wights are intelligent. Human-level intelligent. One rises above his peers and leads them to create the first undead city on the surface. They raid the closer small towns in well-coordinated night-time raids to add to their army and continue to fortify their position, planning to repel any attacks and sieges while swelling their ranks with the dead from the attackers. Eventually the PCs hit epic levels and there is their quest, clean up the mess they made when they were less powerful before the Army of the Wightlord decides to march on some of the smaller cities in the area. Wights could create a whole society with all the trimmings and they don't need to eat, drink or sleep to survive. The only thing that really prevents a wight city from springing up is numbers...they usually don't have the numbers readily available and when they start building up from small to larger numbers a group of adventurers hears a rumor, or a group of Pelorians, and puts an end to the threat.

Interestingly, I had already laid a rumor in front of my PCs about "the Wight Wizard" up in the ruins of Castle Greyhawk -- which, naturally, everyone mis-heard as "the White Wizard". If they don't go to confront him, and if they don't kill the ulgurstasta... *evil cackle* Instant evil kingdom smack dab in the middle of the Flanaess.

[MrVergee]

Check this thread for more on the same topic:

Go to What happens if they fail?.

[pebepe]

An (un)fortunate accident with the Apostle happened in my game too.
Basicly, my players were starving for cash. They treated arena-games mainly as a way for raising additional cash - previously i was trying to balance their slight cheeseness with smaller-than-advices wealth. They decided that first they win the game, and then they conduct research on what's going on, even thou they were hinted that after winning the game there might not be able to return inside.

As a result:
- The Apostle appeared in the midst of a finale - it was a real surprise for them. Sure, since the beggining of the fight with Auric there were omnious signs appearing on a specific initiative count (ground shaking, heavy pounding, etc). So they WERE expecting something, but not SUCH a thing.
- about the same time they noticed their contact (Eglios) getting stabbed in the back (he was in the main viewing booth, together with Raknian & company - the company including a previously unknown thiefling (Bozal) - and some other prominent Waterdhavian figures who acted as a background)
- in the panic/chaos, they fired some random potshots at the big U while gathering around mage, and then left Auric&co to fight the Apostle - they themselves teleported to the main viewing booth to rescue Eglios
- Eglios rescued himself (panicked teleport while on single-digit hit points), they tried to fight the bad guys, and were forced to flee in panic in round 2 (well placed blade barrier can do wonders on low levels - courtesy of Bozal), teleporting out with no casualties, several groupmembers on the verge of collapse, and nothing really achieved. Before escape they saw Auric getting swallowed, and his pet mage getting slaughtered. Or the other way around.
- they teleported to Eglios' mansion, where they started licking their wounds. One guy who was closest to windows made a spot check, and noticed an unusual mushroom cloud appearing above a quarter of the city, originating roughly in the place where arena was.
- more havoc, more fleeing, whole city turned to the undead chaos. Together with Eglios they went to Khelben Blackstaff who was organizing the defense (including a defense perimeter around the city).
- after some heavy scolding, they were sent on their own way for a time, with obligation to report on each day to check if they're needed. Always with some teleport ready for action. They went to pursue their other goals (return trip to Daggerford or something), but were called back soon after.
- The source of the plague was identified. The power of the slaughter strengthened the Apostle beyond imagination. What's needed to destroy it is an epic ritual (that Khelben will provide), but there is a need for brave adventurers to creep to the Apostle and target his location for the ritual's target - they received a targetting device (a bazooka-sized laser-like gizmo) and were given instruction to get to the arena, signal Khelben when they have Apostle in the view, and have the Apostle him targetted for 1 minute - otherwise the bomb might be off target).
- Then it turned to an urban undead survival game for some time. Finally, after fight with Bozal while attempting to maintain the target, and after getting hit by the Apostle with a CON-draining breathe, they succeeded - an asteroid fell from the sky, killing Apostle and almost causing a TPK (they were caught in the first wave of damage, then managed to gather up their unconsious ones and teleport away before the second wave hit them in the next round)

All in all - a blast for everyone. We're now in the Into the Wormcrawl Fissure adventure, and the Waterdeep is still in deep ruin, with 80% of its population MIA. However, it is being rebuilt, and there's an inbound flow of new citizens.

[Milak]

In my game (FR Setting) Brokengulf (Raknian) had the players so worked up with fixed matches that they completely lost sight of the main objective and dealing with the ulgurstata. My arena had near 100,000 fans including the staff as it was located in Waterdeep. When they failed to stop it from waking up it crunched through the floor during the final match and swallowed Alric pretty easily. That set off a chain of events that forced the party out of the city and back to Diamond Lake for the next module, it worked out nicely as they didn't have access to the resources of Waterdeep. It also hit home for them that this was a lot bigger than they had thought it was and they had better get serious. After the wave of negative energy killed 95% of the arena it was only a few rounds before the wights awoke finished off any higher level fans, after that they left the arena and started slaughtering the city. The party was teleported a few blocks away out of the arena by Celeste (I made her a song dragon) in human form after seeing Brokengulf transformed into a death knight. They fought a running battle out of the city as the entire city erupted into chaos. It was quite fun as I got to show off some of the city defenses including the military and magic constructs. Sadly for them it wasn't enough to prevent a massive amount of deaths and empty most of the city trying to contain the flood of undead. Currently the city is sealed off with powerful magic by Khelben Blackstaff waiting for the pc's to stop the age of worms. I've set this up as a come back epic module for the future as the players have told me they want to do a little more with their first 3.0+ epic characters. I'm not sure yet what exactly I'm going to have them up against in there but I will have a massive city of undead for them to chew on.

When I originally read the thread on these boards about what would happen if they failed I immediately started preparing this outcome. I wanted this scenario to play out as it helped me later on keep them from hanging out in a city with almost limitless resources at their disposal. I didn't railroad them into it and gave them plenty of opportunity to stop it. I for one thought this was one of the best moments in my campaign.

[Ogrork the Mighty]

The danger of the Ulgurstasa was foretold by Eligos at the beginning of the adventure. Ignore that warning at your own risk, lol.