CMC Troop #185 Makes an Oopsie

I'm just going to quote my post from the "Unforgettable Lines" thread on the Roll20 forums, because my players are awesome and I felt like sharing.

I am currently running an Unknown Ponies campaign here on Roll20; thus the campaign is set in the world of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and the player characters are all children (foals) on the cusp of pubescence (blank flanks).

The campaign began with a field trip during Spring Break, to go visit a paleontological dig site. The first session dealt with one character's parents not having signed the permission slip to go. I thought this would set the tone for the story; that is, the major crises would be mundane things.

Of course my players were going to prove that wrong. That's a player's job, right?

Anyway, as they come in for a landing at their destination, I describe Thunder-Drum Mountain to them. An interesting piece of background set. Or so I thought.

One of my pegasus players latched onto the fact that I described the mountain as being ringed by clouds, with none coming within a certain distance. (Note: In the MLP show, weather is planned, rather than predicted. Pegasi manipulate clouds/etc. to rain/etc. on schedule.) I gave a token effort to nudge the player away from the scenery by having NPCs say things along the lines of "I think the wind just pushes the clouds away" when the players asked questions (the one got the others interested, of course).

The budding mad scientist pegasus player decides to try an experiment, and floats along the wind as though he was also a cloud, to test whether the wind indeed pushed them away.

Of course, by this point, the mountain has become a plot point, without me planning to give it much of a second thought. But I roll with it, and for the past several weeks we've been exploring this mysterious mountain.

As it turned out, the mountain was a volcano. An ice volcano. And underneath the volcano was an entity made of the concept of being alive. My pegasi players fed the entity power in the form of extra wind. The entity thanked them (sort of...) and created an exit from the mountain for them. As it used the extra power to beget some new life. This same entity called Celestia and Luna (the two main pony princesses, considered in fanon to be the goddesses of the Sun and Moon, as they can each move their respective celestial body) its "first children." And my players gave it sufficient power to beget life once again.

Then the mountain exploded.

Brian (GM): Suddenly, the thunderous drumming stops.
Brian (GM): And then the mountain explodes
-> switches playerpage back to the landing screen
Brian (GM): g'nite everypony! /runs away laughing
Richard F.: I blame everyone who isn't me
BluntPoint: what
Liz: ...
BluntPoint: WHAT
BluntPoint: WHAAAT
Liz: I blame Gin
-> Gin Gear is the character that started this whole mess
DCL: I blame michael bay.
Aerdan: Me too.
Winged Cat: "Dear Princess Celestia, today we learned that friendship is triggering apocalypses."
BluntPoint: DAMMIT GIN
COULDA HAD A NICE DIG AND STUFF
NO
Richard F.: Dear Princess whoever. Please send help.
Winged Cat: Gin: "But, but, we're learning so much! Science!"
Richard F.: WHAT SCIENCE DID WE EVEN GIN, WHAT SCIENCE?!
DCL: And now the science is leaking.
Richard F.: "We learned Magic Spiders a bajillion years ago froze themselves in a time capsle under a mountain. THat isn't science, that's History, which is barely a subject

Lithl predicts an acute alteration to tomorrow's Zebrican weather forecast. This is what you get when you derail my campaign. You get fed the awesome anyway.

(And no, I REALLY had planned for the mountain to just be a piece of scenery until Gin took an interest in it. I did NOT intend to make with the boom-boom from the beginning.)

In other news, an ex-Wonderbolt NPC lost a wing. That's what get gets for wanting to retire to Montana. Except he was already retired, so... That's what he gets for pointing out the anniversary of his retirement was next week!

Comments

[TheStratovarian]

It somehow figures in the grand legacy of the cmc,that they would bring about some part of the end times. a hundred or so years down the line, not that expected, but somewhere, some mad oracle is smiling at the chaos.