My players caught me a bit off guard. I described a scene at the end of last night's session involving an "ancient ruin on a mountain in the distance". My players randomly decided to explore it. Fine, exploring the game world I great. Problem is, I need to whip up something quickly. My game world takes place about 500 years after a 99% extinction event. There are a lot of ruins from ancient and lost civilizations but I've never gone into the details. Suddenly I need to come up with something cool, creative, interesting, mysterious, something. Which of course means complete writer's block. Anybody able to help me with ideas or sources of inspiration?
Apologies for typos. Typed from my phone.
I'm currently reading "At the Mountains of Madness" by HP Lovecraft, which has some great stuff about exploring huge, ancient ruins and might mesh well with a recent mass extinction. Lots of lurking horror and the idea that something bad may have awakened from dormancy.
There are quite a few Lovecraft stories that could provide inspiration. The Nameless City and Under the Pyramids might work well. Ways to build tension include having the structures - doorways, stairs, ceilings etc. - far too large for regular use by normal sized creatures, strange and hideous but somehow familiar statues or carvings, hints that these ruins are somehow a refuge or hiding place for any surviving ancient monsters, etc.
TL;DR - Read a HP Lovecraft short story, steal shamelessly.
The first thing that popped in my mind is, make this ruin tie into your campaign story.
What are the circumstances of the 99% extinction? (Maybe this ruin has something to do with it. Doomsday cult completed their ritual? Council of Kings last convened there? The God of disease and Misery made a physical entrance into the world there?)
Are the players aware of those circumstances? It seems like 500 years is plenty long enough to have bloated rumor and myth take the place of the truth in most people's minds. I would say, play on that!
Maybe your players believe the world almost ended because of X, but by exploring this ruin they uncover some clues that lead them to yet another ruin, which in turn will show them the TRUTH of what happened to their world. Sounds like a campaign arc all its own. Maybe that's too far of the mark for what you were asking for.
What exactly is your story at the moment? Is there one? I agree with others that if possible tie this into your campaign arc. But it really depends on what else is going on. Ultimately there are a ton of printed 'explore the ruin' adventures you could tie this into. That depends entirely on you
Ancient, silent, blanketed in long shadows. Ancient builders,long forgotten, have left thier mark upon these ruins. Who knows what lies within these echoing chambers of a long fogotten world. Some say this ruin lies between two plains. Ours and the Plane of Shadow.
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If the party is exploring a large area they will run across a lot of ruins so you will probably not want to make everyone of them important. Some you could have completely empty or maybe find some mundane useful stuff.
You could do a web search for dungeon maps or fantasy ancient ruins and use the maps as insperation.
Edit: Question...what are the party goals? Why are they out wondering around?
The first thing that popped in my mind is, make this ruin tie into your campaign story.
What are the circumstances of the 99% extinction? (Maybe this ruin has something to do with it. Doomsday cult completed their ritual? Council of Kings last convened there? The God of disease and Misery made a physical entrance into the world there?)Are the players aware of those circumstances? It seems like 500 years is plenty long enough to have bloated rumor and myth take the place of the truth in most people's minds. I would say, play on that!
Maybe your players believe the world almost ended because of X, but by exploring this ruin they uncover some clues that lead them to yet another ruin, which in turn will show them the TRUTH of what happened to their world. Sounds like a campaign arc all its own. Maybe that's too far of the mark for what you were asking for.
The extinction event was basically the gods going from bickering like children in a proxy war using mortals, to actually deciding to start killing each other. World war deity which only ended when they had caused sufficient damage that nearly nothing was actually worshiping them anymore. Most of sentient life was reduced to pockets of just a handful of survivors in a vastly changed world. Most of the current nations are fairly ignorant of the larger world, at least what exists beyond what they have direct contact with. Almost nothing is actually known about the civilizations from before the event. Rumors, myths, etc? Everywhere. Lots of ruins. Not much that is concrete. This is made even more so as even long lived humanoid races cap out at 300 years in my game. So no elves old enough to remember it.
If the party is exploring a large area they will run across a lot of ruins so you will probably not want to make everyone of them important. Some you could have completely empty or maybe find some mundane useful stuff.
I try to encourage my players to jump in and explore the game world, so now that they have saw something cool in the distance and decided that they wanted to go explore it, I would rather reward that. Not every ruin will be important, but this one will be because that encourages them to keep treating the world as a living, breathing place as opposed to just a storyline to follow.
In that case you definitely need to include something that hints at the old world. I do not know what gods you use in you game but you might want to have them find temple to a god that was LG before but is now know to be quite evil.
Or the opposite.
You could take a board game that you all enjoy and have them find a set in the ruins as a popular game from the before.
Have them activate a curse.
Have them release something.
Make ancient history a skill that can only be gained by exploring old ruins and such. History refers only to the last 500 years. Make this a choice between the knowledge and something else like an extra HP or neat one time use blessing.
Actually, that could be a great way of rewarding them for their willingness to explore and view the world as a place, not just a set piece.
I might go with the releasing something bit...
The ruin is on a fairly secluded island which is populated, but not by peoples who have interest in exploring the ruins in the area. My first thought was that the island was "created" during the war and the ruins are actually undersea ruins from an aboleth kingdom, which could culminate in running into an aboleth who has been unable to leave a lake trapped within the the ruins for centuries. However, I have something of an aboleth plot planned out for later in the game and I don't want to over-aboleth them.
I don't know what level your PCs are and don't know what the overarching plot is. However you're saying you like the idea of releasing something. Why make it an evil creature?
The ruins sit atop a distant mountain which in turn is on an island. These places are old, hearkening back to a before time. What creatures would like old stuff?
- Fey: they are long-lived, perhaps longer than playable races. They also hail from the First World originally; perhaps they're trying to remake this island into some primeval real estate using the ruin and faerie revels to do it? Released: a trapped fey queen who's trying to talk sense into her kin.
- Undead: some necromantic cyst drew the restless dead from their graves. Now it ebbs from the center of the ruins; anything that dies on the island rises to unlife. The place is doomed unless brave, living souls enter the ruin and shut it down, permanently. Released: a massive surge of positive energy that slays all the dead on the island but also might affect the PCs in some strange way.
Dragons: a powerful, POWERFUL dragon laid their eggs here mere days before the cataclysm. Ever since the eggs have remained dormant and radiated powerful arcane energies. Kobolds and half-dragon types have made their way here to build up a society around the ruins but a true dragon of old seeks to remove the eggs to a safe nest where they can finally be properly hatched. Released: baby dragons
I mean, these ruins could LITERALLY be anything. They might have been a weapons factory for hi-tech laser rifles; they might have been a temple held down by a griffon-riding cleric of Desna; they might have been a monstrous Far Realms portal/beacon sought by aberrant creatures beyond the stars.
Or they might just be ruins; crumbling remnants of a bygone age that provide some cover from the relentless winds that constantly tear at the peak. In this scenario some hapless creatures wandered here once, found a resource they didn't otherwise have access to, and remained. Now as the players explore the site they are trespassers and thieves and will be dealt with as such. So sayeth the Whisperers in Stone...
It's an ancient ruin, depending on the style it could work great as a place to just fill with spiders, spider swarms, webs, etc. Depending on the type of ruins (like if they were surrounded by a town) you could figure out what size the town would have been, roll up some magic items that the town would have had at the time, and maybe hide them in the surrounding ruin of a town. An old weapons shop with racks of rusted weaponry, and one weapon rack with a well maintained (albeit dusty) magic weapon or something similar.
As for the ruin itself you could place an advanced awakened giant spider, maybe give the spider levels in blight druid. This would obviously be the spiders leader, it's their ruin, they let "food" wander so far into the ruins before descending on them and eating them. How you ask, well magic, or let's just say a demon lord has taken an interest and started experimenting with spiders.
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Lovecraft will be your friend, both as inspiration for the ruin event, but also for your future Aboleth plot. Have the two linked in a minor way: If you're going to release something, have a crazed summoner lich occupying the ruins, with the PCs running into all kinds of lovecraftian influenced monsters before they unleash the lich into your campaign world.
Make it an interesting boss fight for later in your campaign, or even an unlikely ally for your PCs against the Aboleths. To make him even more terrifying, make him a Synthesist: They may HAVE to turn him into an ally, or face an ancient Horror equipped with powerful magic AND physical prowess from beyond the stars.
Or even more devious, maybe the lich becomes a bigger BBEG than the Aboleths and THEY make the PCs to take care of the lich.
Just some ideas, but please do share what you ended up doing, your campaign sounds pretty interesting and I'd like to hear more about what you're doing.
Okay, so much of the world was destroyed in the Godswar. These ruins were not. Perhaps it was mere chance that spared them. Certainly that would have been the reason many of the surviving remnants came through to the present time. But what if it wasn't chance. What some of the people of that bygone era made what frantic shift they could amidst the chaos? If they made plans of escape, those ruins could hold a gate to another world. Or perhaps the deepest levels of these ruins hold a staircase leading ever downward, into a hitherto unsuspected subterranean realm containing the remnants of a civilization now extinct on the surface but adapted to life (or undeath) beneath the earth and hopefully beneath the notice of the once warring gods. Or maybe the contents aren't immediately understandable. Picture a sealed vault, trapped and locked beyond the abilities of any but the most skilled rogue. Within lies a child asleep, surrounded by the dust of ages...
