What if the Tarrasque suddenly has young? Say, two young males...
Now there must be at least one breeding pair, plus two young males; minimum.
So, four Tarrasques minimum on the Prime Material; and mom feels compelled to feed and protect the two young males. She would obviously go on a rampage if something happened to her young; but you can't allow them to mature, either.
Plus a Dracolich, because let's face it; every campaign needs a Dracolich!!!
Bwa!!!!!!
The tarrasque is active every few years, and then goes on a longer rampage every couple decades. That's the conventional wisdom, correct?
Yes, teacher.
But what if that's not right?
The tarrasque activity cycle is actually thousands of years long. The only reason you see a tarrasque every few years is because there's so many of them, buried in their shells like giant eggs, all around the world.
This has some implications. One, it means the legends you've heard about where its burrow is hidden are bound to be wrong. Because whomever wrote books, or first told those stories, was talking about a different tarrasque.
Two... well, have you given any thought to the nature of dungeons? They're bizarre places, weirdly situated, full of nonsensical tunnels, and stuffed with all kinds of unlikely monsters that seem to exist only to eat you. They're full of magic, too; and treasure. And the reason behind all that is one and the same: Dungeons aren't stand-alone entities, they're complex ecostems that grow up around the (not-so-)singular entity you call the tarrasque. (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-the-ecological-significance-of-a-whale-fall.html) The tunnels are the fracturing of the earth above it, mirrored and made strange and quasi-extraplanar by the reflective properties of its rolled carapace. Many monsters have come to feed on its flesh and waste, or to feed on the monsters drawn to the feast. Some are natural parasites, kaiju lice. The wealth is inanimate and inedible leavings of its meals, weird nodes that encase gems, and precious metals, And magic is of course enhanced, by proximity to such a locus. It's enhanced to such a degree that spontaneous wonders occur.
Three, you were wondering where little tarrasques come from, weren't you? Hold that thought for a second.
You might have also wondered about all the ancient magics in the world, all the traces of lost civilizations that reached greater heights than today, but have fallen. There are no written records of those times, just archaeological traces. Massive broken statues, buried cities, mighty artifacts. Things of stone and adamant, worn but long-enduring, which have survived the passage of time, and perhaps their own shattering.
You probably didn't realize, but those two things are connected. I can't give you a time frame, but we're talking at least thousands of years, perhaps much longer. But every so often, when often is measured in indistinct aeons, something happens. It might be a chemical cue, released by some hypothetical queen. It might something in the stars, a rare alignment presaged by comets and other cosmic phenomena. It might simply be because there's too much magic, and that irritates them, makes their slumber restless, and arouses their hunger. Maybe it has something to do with all the poking and prodding, in their dungeons. It might be any or all of those, or a million other things. Doesn't matter I suppose, what matters is that it happens. First one, then the next, then many, then all tarrasques waken. They wake hungry, starving, and go on a rampage. A rampage that lasts for years, centuries, who knows. Cities are thrown down, and erased. Libraries, records, and those who keep them are eaten, the magic of entire arcane civilizations is devoured. All the works of dwarves, and elves, and humans are turned to dust, slain, or destroyed. The world is scoured and reset.
And after the tarrasques tire, and go back to sleep, bloated and sated of food and mating, there is a time when the world is tarrasque free. Long enough for the few demi- and semi-humans who survive to repopulate, and rebuild. And then, when the occasional tarrasque does start to waken, once a millennium, or maybe once a century, it only causes some localized destruction. The world goes on, around that temporary blight.
Wait... did you say once a century? Isn't that wrong, a tarrasque wakens every few years, right?
I was getting to that. First it's only once every millennium or two, then every few centuries. But when a tarrasques starts wakening once every few decades, or elysium forbid once every couple years, it only means one thing: The tarrasques are becoming restless. That unknown something is waking them.
Kiss your children goodnight. Keep them safe, and help them become strong. And hope you have time to watch them grow up. Because we don't know exactly when it will happen, but they're probably the last generation.
Perhaps...perhaps an organization could be established to catalog the locations of tarrasque eggs, and the inevitable hatching of the same.
It would be important work, so it should have an important name?
King? Emperor?
...Monarch?
Go go Rasquezilla!
Too on the nose. But I would think the elves in particular might have some sort of small group working on something similar. Maybe an elf researcher hires the PCs to go check out rumors of an egg as a campaign kickoff.
"OK, you're going to write down that a Wish spell needs to be used to kill me permanently. It'll keep people from even trying."
"But, that would be disinformation! The Society of Scholars cannot condone..."
"Do you want me to crush your Society's library into gravel bits!!!!
"...no..."
"Then put it down!"
Pat, that was seriously awesome! Thank you!
Love the idea of the Tarrasque resetting the world!
If you're interested in further expanding on the Tarrasque, check out Kuntz's Dark Druids adventure from Chaotic Henchmen @ http://www.chaotichenchmen.com/p/dark-druids-by-robert-j-kuntz.html which includes his free download from Canonfire! about the Tarrasque @ http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=getit&lid=183
Allan.
Friend of mine wayyyyyyyy back did essentially this premise. What if the tarrasque was a more active breeding creature. Answer? Civilization is cast into worse than ruin as these things become active, mate, eat up whole kingdoms and then settle down.
Theres also Oriental Adventures which had the Gargantua which were essentially Godzilla, Gamera, and so on. More akin to natural disasters.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1093223Pat, that was seriously awesome! Thank you!
Love the idea of the Tarrasque resetting the world!
Thanks! It might also be interesting to play in the post-tarrasqueopocalypse era, sort of a fantasy Gamma World. The wrecked and splintered remnants of the world's magic would cause all kinds of Ovid-like metamorphoses, from bizarre localized effects, to enduring changes to the climate and geography of the world. The extinction of so many species would cause biota to become more homogeneous, followed by a burst of new speciation. The hiberation of the tarrasques themselves, the apex predators to end all apex predators, would have also have massive effects on the immediate ecology, with a mesopredator release (https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/59/9/779/248536) causing areas to be wiped out by mid- to small-sized predators like great wyrms.