Korad: Polling the Something Awful
What is the Something Awful that lurks under the mines of Oldtown, and can be blamed for the province's collapse to a shadow of its former self?
Decide from the following possibilities:
The miners cracked an evil godlike creature's prison. They did not awaken the creature, but Barle must now commit incredible resources to dealing with cults, keeping the prison from unraveling, and with the monsters and zombies that erupt from underground all over the continent from time to time.
a complete and utter fabrication. The Koradi, seeking to keep the Barleans in line, put their many alchemists to the task of creating a compound, part of which could be introduced into Barlean food while the other is let loose as a gas through the Barlean cities' sewage systems. A field trial twenty years ago produced results beyond expectation.
Hellborn crawling terror. It was late summer when it happened. The mine was deeper than any mine had ever gone and looked to be opening up a fine vein of silver. Then a section of wall collapsed...normally not that terrible an event...and millions of tiny creatures were set free. Within hours, they had overtaken and suffocated 12 miners before spilling out onto the surface.
It was then that the Barleans found out exactly how terrible this crawling plague was, because the creatures began eating every bit of metal they could find. Iron, tin, gold...if it was metallic, they ate it. If a human oe animal got in the way, they were crushed under the weight of the horrible crawlers and suffocated.
The tiny creatures increased their numbers at a startling rate. In just over a week, they covered an area nearly a half a mile square to a depth of 18 inches. Entire villages were crushed, the rubble revealing not a trace of any metal or, it was later discovered, any glass.
For two months the creeping terror was an unstoppable force, causing widespread destruction and panic. Tens of thousands of people fled the country. Those who remained were convinced that all was lost.
And then, the first cold weather of fall came and the creatures (creature?) retreated back into the mine and the warm depths of the earth. The mine was then sealed and a one mile wide area around it was cleared of everything but bare earth and stone. Setting foot inside the area was decreed to be punishable by slow death from torture.
With most crops and livestock destroyed, villages & cities in ruins, nearly half the population gone and almost no metals of any kind left, Barle was never fully able to recover.
High Pressure Magma Floods Lower City Killing Thousands.
All the mines in Oldtown have long been connected, but the deepest was by far the richest. When the mine was dug to a pocket of high pressue magma it quickly filled all mines, including those old ones that had been converted to cheap housing for the cities workers. While many entrances to the mines were sealed before the magma spewed forth into the city proper, all mining in Oldtown has now ceased for fear of reopening the volcano and a good third of the city has been destroyed. The simultaneous blow to the cities economy and the regions major population centre have had long lasting effects on all the people of Barle.
(To my mind, there are realy three questions that any entry needs to answer:
1) How did shutting down the mine seal the threat 'in'
2) Why could the mining not continue around the threat, or use specialists to do the mining
3) Once the threat was dealt with (sealing it in) why has the process still had such a devastating effect (beyond just loosing the main mine).
Kudzu Kraken. Were there many, or just one? Impossible to tell due to the rate of growth. Desperate to stave off the choking tendrils that reached absurdly from the mine to draw water (even salt water) from where-ever it could reach; a daring band of pirates gathered up every stonemason within reach and took them down into the depths before all ships and cities within reach of the radiating tentacles were destroyed.
They were never seen again, but the tendrils found themselves unable to draw water back to their main source. Choked off, they withered and died. Exploratory missions found several manufactured rockfalls sealing all passages below.
Slaughter Worms. Small worm-like parasites that crawl under the skin of living beings, infecting thier minds with an irresistable urge to kill. As the infection progresses, the brain is devoured, the victim becoming less and less capable of reason, and more and more violent. Worm-eggs are laid in the mouth of the victim, and spread by bites.
Smell
The Most Blasphemous Smell.
They punctured a deeper labyrinth, causing widespread subsidence. Nobody survived who saw the original detonations, but they collapsed the top layers of an alien underearth city, that stretches across much of the breadbasket. Spontaneous, catastrophic subsidence still threatens the fields between Oldtown and the lake.
Some folks say that strange bodies washed up into the river for a couple of weeks after that day, but none were ever brought to the palace.
View Poll: The Something Awful
