The Black Crater is a landmark within Wizard City. It itself is the product of a magical mishap the approximate size of six city blocks. To this day, nobody is exactly sure what happened, though it has now resulted in site of pilgrimage for those visiting whispering prophecies of the Pit of Portents and/or those wanting to throw things down the bottomless pit.
The entire desolation is a spongy black-as-soot waste. Nothing grows in it. Nothing can be built on it. Anything spending inordinate amounts of time standing still in the Black Crater simply sinks into the ground at a pace of 4cm / hour. This has given rise to the speculation that the Crater is in fact a portal to another dimension, and that might be true.
MAGICAL MISHAPS
d20 | There Is A(n)... | And It’s... | And On Top of That... |
1 | Mystical Vortex locally randomizing space and time. | Coming this way! | Some kids are poking at it. |
2 | Familiar giving out their master’s secrets like candy at a parade. | Minding its own damn business. | The Secret Police are keeping everyone at a distance, secretly. |
3 | Street brawl running in reverse. | Got the same physical properties as a game of freeze-tag. | The Wizard Police are here, and they’re definitely making it worse. |
4 | Thing which really shouldn’t have consciousness that has very recently obtained it. | Definitely your problem now. | Some stock brokers are already trying to cash in on the phenomenon before the markets adjust. |
5 | Plague going round. Rather quickly. | Melting! Melting! Aaaaaaah it’s melting! | Someone decided this was a great place to have a raging party. |
6 | Mathematician who is mathing way too hard. | Going to sound way dumber when people describe it later. | It’s drawing the attention of some opportunistic gangsters. |
7 | Glitch in the matrix. | Broken through the quarantine. | Some construction workers are carrying a fragile piece of glass across the street. |
8 | Big bloody orb of flesh floating mid-air. | Clearly edible. | For some reason, everyone is glowing now. |
9 | Animated Object that has illegally self-actualized. | Attacking the city! | Someone called the bomb technicians and they don’t know it’s a prank. |
10 | Ooze. | Slowly vaporizing. | Magical possibly-time-traveling insurance agents have come to pre-emptively assess damages. |
11 | Remarkable admonishment that there are more dimensions out there than we can perceive. | Infinitely more confused about this situation than you are. | The medieval equivalent of a school bus full of children is careening straight for it. |
12 | Fiend, Fey, Monstrocity, Undead, Elemental, Aberration, or quite possibly all of the above. | Your responsibility by some outstandingly impossible Butterfly Effect / Rube Goldberg mechanism. | There has already been a religion established to worship this particular thing… And it’s not a very nice religion. |
13 | Spot where Gravity is evidently having a time-out. | On the cusp of a groundbreaking philosophical conclusion. | Some dumb wizard is already trying to get high off of it. |
14 | Very Naked Wizard. | Chaotic Stupid | The acid rain is coming in early today. |
15 | Screaming Book. | Leaking magic like a 1982 Toyota Pickup on its last legs. | The Fire Brigade is here. Shit. |
16 | Explosion | Continuously Exploding | It’s about to explode! |
17 | Adorable Puppy | Broken through the sound barrier. | An overconfident wizard is about to go apeshit on this thing. |
18 | Evil Twin. | Really, really pathetic. Really. | There’s a reward for capturing it alive. |
19 | God. | Going to talk your head off. Possibly literally. | Magic doesn’t work for some reason! |
20 | Combination of two of the above. (Reroll twice) | Simultaneously doing two things: (Reroll twice) | Oh look! There’s another one… (Reroll everything an additional time) |
Great mishap table - can never have too many!
ReplyDeleteThis is grand and I like it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I especially like 16 across the board.