The Campaign Builder's Guild

Also possible is seed storage, I known in the real world we have at least one group that's preserving some of all known seeds.

In a medieval time perhaps a crazy wizard is trying to amass the seeds of all plants, inadvertently saving a lot of plant species. Now the main problem would be getting the seeds from him, ether in a trade promising seeds from other generations of the plant to replace them, or in a much more adventurous way prying them from his cold dead hands :p

Albeit that is an awesome idea (honestly, somebody should really use that) I'm not sure that was what i was plaaning for the setting :D
And yeah, we have that doomsday vault on Svalbard (or is it Iceland?).
Hmm, but Cataclysms aside, i probably shouldn't turn my setting into a post-apocalyptic one although i do love those. But there are just so many already...
So I'll probably go with the "new dawn" approach. Or what?

New Dawn sounds like a great idea. So civilizations are just recovering form the Cataclysm.

Are there still monsters left over from the Malady? How much has geography changed from the Wrath? How long has it been since the Cataclysms?

Hmm, yes, i was planning on the crazed humans of the Malady still being around in the wilderness, and the Malady might have caused some other monstrous creatures (or maybe they were there to begin with). Now you're saying it, Wrath could make up for some rather interesting geography... And how long do you think it should take? How long would it take for some kind of civilization to reestablish itself? Not completely, but somewhat? I'm really no good with time...

Depends on how bad it was in the end, in the situation I outlined in my first post, I figure maybe a generation and you would have city-states, maybe small communities or baronies, no large sovereign nations yet.

Maybe three or four generations and you would start to have multiple large nations, mostly just connected by roads and easy travel ways (rivers mostly) not obstructed by some harsh geological feature, like a huge rift in the earth, or a desert or a mountain range.

For the way Lath predicted things, somewhere between 50-100% longer, depending how much plant life comes back. That's how I see it anyhow, others would probably have differing opinions.

The amount of time would also differ depending on the culture of the people (or race, if you have orcs and elves and stuff). Most communities that survived would have been advanced enough to have large grain stores, modern agriculture and stuff, they would probably have a hard time without a lot of resource, where a smaller tribe would have an easier time.  

Also the availability of magic/pre-Cataclysm ruins would influence how long it takes.

After a calamity of this magnitude you would see a reversion to tribal systems. I doubt city states would be a regular occurrence for many years (50-100). It would likely be well over a century before you saw nations again.

Quote from: Nomadic DwarfAfter a calamity of this magnitude you would see a reversion to tribal systems. I doubt city states would be a regular occurrence for many years (50-100). It would likely be well over a century before you saw nations again.

But don't forget, those who survived, survived because they lived in large keeps/cities (I think), so they already have the whole shelter thing down pact, just need to start doing resources. After a generation of checking out the surrounding land and most likely building some small farms, they could easily be considered a city state.

Sorry be being "out" for a few days after my post, i was able to read most of the replies this morning before work and was honestly thinking about it at work today (i have a bit of an obsession with different "doomsday scenarios"). Also My own setting is based around the core concept of rebirth after a "medieval cataclysm". Mostly city-states, and a few half chewed empires or grand nations. Everything is in pockets, with people primarily interacting in their own pocket. So i have a real interest in this topic.

Seeds would be a major influence, with Seeds and Nuts in time most plant species would/could return. Seeds and Nuts can stay dormant for a long time (main issue is moisture), easily outlasting a year or two calamity. I was also thinking Geography could play an controlling role. I would suggest to stay away from Forgotten Realms 4e style random pockets, but rather (as it sounds your still mapping it out) use something large, like maybe large bodies of water resisted the darkening, with it being lighter at the shore than inland, or reverse. Maybe the darkness had a "top" and tall mountains poked through, thus being able to support plants just fine. Maybe cold effected and rebuffed darkness, and it was brighter the more northerly/southerly you travel. I was thinking of creating logical areas of "less affect" that life and culture could hold on to and spring fourth after it passed. This would create something similar to what i was talking about earlier in my own world where all the towns are in clusters; along coastlines, or centered around mountains ranges, each with their own history and culture based on their own individual stories of where they survived and how making them unique... especially with the Wrath and all the crazy-plague-people and newly-carnivorous-hungry-animals roaming the "wild lands" wooo, i just got a "crystalids" chill...

hmmm time to get back to work rebuilding Tu'loras i think.

Quote from: Llum

Quote from: Nomadic DwarfAfter a calamity of this magnitude you would see a reversion to tribal systems. I doubt city states would be a regular occurrence for many years (50-100). It would likely be well over a century before you saw nations again.

But don't forget, those who survived, survived because they lived in large keeps/cities (I think), so they already have the whole shelter thing down pact, just need to start doing resources. After a generation of checking out the surrounding land and most likely building some small farms, they could easily be considered a city state.

Actually that causes some problems. In a situation like this with renaissance era city design a disease like the malady would very rapidly spread (that's why the black plague was so deadly; everyone was crammed together in these places). The people most likely to survive would actually be those in outpost communities. Outposts tend to have fortifications as they are the first line between inside and out. Furthermore their remoteness not only requires them to be self sufficient but lessens their chance of being discovered (by marauding monsters or hungry crowds). The cities would probably become mass graves for millions of people. Most everyone else would flee since being in a highly populated place while a disease is running rampant and monsters are attacking (not to mention resources and infrastructure are vanishing in the chaos) is probably a bad idea. Have you ever seen the new movie adaptation for I am legend? It's probably a good example as to what would happen.

But being self sufficient wouldn't matter at this point because there are no plants to be self sufficient with, its all about food stocks, so big cities = where its at.

Plague Wards in cities would help reduce contagion in healthy people, we also don't know how the plague spreads, it could be entirely magical in nature and just infect random people.

Lath reminded me about an idea, for seeds. Some plants need a forest fire to activate their seeds, so perhaps near the end of of the Cataclysm the Wrath started a forest fire that burnt down a large swath of forest, but the light returned and the seeds that were activated managed to grow.

Hmm, I'm sort of considering going a bit easier on the Gloom, seeing as it wrecks the world a good deal more than Necessary :)
Maybe instead of actual permanent twilight conditions just make the weather really, really bad? Would wreck things up for sure, but not in the same scale, and with the other things thrown in it would still make up for a nasty cataclysm.

@CC that is actually I think a better way to handle it. That would make things alot easier on you.

@Llum a disease that happens to be waterborne isn't going to be stopped with quarantines (which are already difficult to pull off in a renaissance era city due to city design). Pasteurization might help but again that didn't exist in the real world til near the very end of said era (and even then it didn't become a common known practice til after the era ended). On top of this the disease is capable of turning people into monsters. So you essentially have the equivalent of a zombie outbreak. Now as any ZSG reader can tell you, a major city is the last place you want to be in one of those. Actually taking ideas from that the best chances of survival for people from the cities would be to find a safe haven nearby and raid the city stockpiles for supplies from time to time. You know that would actually make a viable point for an adventure. Following a group of PCs as they survive day to day and raid nearby cities for supplies, perhaps planning to stock up and search out those outposts I talked about. On that note, as long as some plants survive an outpost community would probably do fine as long as they rationed. They have far less people and they stockpile as well (remember that stockpiling is part of good self sufficiency). They don't need the massive stockpiles and farms that a city requires. A few farms and some silos are more easily defended and provide all the food needed.

Alright, I agree you're correct Nomadic. However once that did happen and the cataclysm was over, their are still these big cities just sitting there.

Instead of raiding them why wouldn't a group of people move into a section of town, saves time on raiding, free presumably strong shelter (noble or military districts), lots of cleared land around the city itself.

Something I was wondering about was how much of water-side things survived, if typhoons/tsunamis happen a lot, and if the Gloom leads to crazy weather (monsoon maybe?) seems like it would hit port cities and fishing villages especially hard.

i think just limiting the Darkness to a Week maybe 2 tops, kills 90% of the plant life off, destabilize the balance of nature, push animals to the brink, and then let everything grow back, large dense forests and such would take time to come back, but everything would come back.

After the darkness pushes the village people to the cities, the Malady takes over. Use the Wrath as "artistic license". That would pull the Cataclysm back a bit without throwing out any of your good ideas.

The problem is, that if the Cataclysm doesn't last long enough, things can go to normal once again almost too quickly. So that is one of the reasons that i think I should limit the effect of the Gloom as it seems to be the most devastating of the Omens. I'd like to prolong the Cataclysm a bit.