Volcano stats?

[TheDutchArtist]

So, I’m working on a new home brew campaign. It’s relatively lose and I already told my players it’s more of a side project.
So, the idea I have in mind is to use a volcano very early on in the campaign, which goes off suddenly and basically destroys the center of the continent, and as the players help around and look more into it they find out it’s not by natural cause, but by a powerful Balor, using a magical item to make a rip between this plane and the fire plane to cause destruction.
The thing is that I’m not sure how to work with it. The volcano is definitely something that remains a problem, possibly for the entire campaign. But how fast does it go? What kind of destruction does it leave? And for the Balor: what kind of magic item (possibly corrupt artifact) could he have that causes such destruction?
Theres a lot of questions, and there’s a large chance I’ll be winging most of it. But it’s nice to have at least some basic stats down.

[DMThac0]

Well, the item that the Balor uses can be pretty much anything that allows use of the plane of fire. A staff from the City of Brass, maybe acquired from the bazaar in return for something. The players could stumble across that something creating a secondary conflict.

The volcano will cause all sorts of chaos depending on how true to life you want it to go. You have the ash covering the sun, the tectonic movements, the destruction of land from the magma, as some of the natural things. You'd then have the displacement of creatures as homes and lairs are destroyed. Over crowded cities as refugees look for a place to live. Disease, famine, and crime. There's a lot of fallout from something like this, it just depends on how far you want it to go.

I know those aren't definitive answers, but I hope it sparks some creative thoughts for you.

[TheDutchArtist]

Well, the item that the Balor uses can be pretty much anything that allows use of the plane of fire. A staff from the City of Brass, maybe acquired from the bazaar in return for something. The players could stumble across that something creating a secondary conflict.

The volcano will cause all sorts of chaos depending on how true to life you want it to go. You have the ash covering the sun, the tectonic movements, the destruction of land from the magma, as some of the natural things. You'd then have the displacement of creatures as homes and lairs are destroyed. Over crowded cities as refugees look for a place to live. Disease, famine, and crime. There's a lot of fallout from something like this, it just depends on how far you want it to go.

I know those aren't definitive answers, but I hope it sparks some creative thoughts for you.

I had quite a lot of similar stuff in mind actually! But I was more looking for realistic numbers. How fast does lava travel, how long until the entire sun would be blocked out. What is a realistic distance everything travels from the volcano (although that might just depend on the side of the volcano itself)

However, the ideas for the Balor’s weapon will help a lot. At least I know where to start searching! Thank you~

[JoeJ]

You might want to check out Cinematic Environs - Blasted Lands (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/232608/Cinematic-Environs--Blasted-Lands) by Critical Hit Publishing. It deals with disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, and meteor strikes in 5e.

[the_brazenburn]

I had quite a lot of similar stuff in mind actually! But I was more looking for realistic numbers. How fast does lava travel, how long until the entire sun would be blocked out. What is a realistic distance everything travels from the volcano (although that might just depend on the side of the volcano itself)

However, the ideas for the Balor’s weapon will help a lot. At least I know where to start searching! Thank you~

Lava is very slow. You can walk fast enough to outrun lava, and it wouldn't even be hard.

A mundane earthquake on Earth blotted out the sun for a full year. I'd be willing to bet that a magical one could be even longer.

Hope this is helpful!

[DMThac0]

These were going about 6 miles (10 kilometers) per hour through thick forest. That was the velocity of the flow front. Once the lava flows became established and good channels developed, the lava in the channels was going at more like 60 km/hour!


Here are some highlights very fine book about the 1883 Krakatau eruption by Tom Simkin and Richard Fiske (Simkin, T., and Fiske, R.S., Krakatau 1883: The volcanic eruption and its effects: Smithsonian Institution Press: Washington, D.C., 464 p.) that should give you and idea about how far ash can travel during a large eruption.


Ash fell on Singapore 840 km to the north, Cocos (Keeling) Island 1155 km to the SW, and ships as far as 6076 km west-northwest. Darkness covered the Sunda Straits from 11 a.m. on the 27th until dawn the next day.
Blue and green suns were observed as fine ash and aerosol, erupted perhaps 50 km into the stratosphere, circled the equator in 13 days.
Three months after the eruption these products had spread to higher latitudes causing such vivid red sunset afterglow that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration. Unusual sunsets continued for 3 years.
The volcanic dust veil that created such spectacular atmospheric effects also acted as a solar radiation filter, lowering global temperatures as much as 1.2 degree C in the year after the eruption. Temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.



Just a quick search to get you further. Also, according to a well written and well researched book, the amount of damage a character takes from magma/lava is: Death

[JoeJ]

The USGS (https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/lava_flows.html) has some information on the speeds of different types of lava.

[hamishspence]

Just a quick search to get you further.

I'm kinda puzzled - how come Krakatoa's credited with such a high temperature drop: 1.2C - when Tambora, with only 0.53C, put out so much more dust, was so much larger, and has a much more famous climate effect - "The Year Without A Summer"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora

Disruption of global temperatures

During the northern hemisphere summer of 1816, global temperatures cooled by 0.53 °C (0.95 °F). This very significant cooling directly or indirectly caused 90,000 deaths. The eruption of Mount Tambora was the most significant cause of this climate anomaly.[16] While there were other eruptions in 1815, Tambora is classified as a VEI-7 eruption with a column 45 kilometres (28 mi) tall, eclipsing all others by at least one order of magnitude.

The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) is used to quantify the amount of ejected material with a VEI-7 being 100 cubic kilometres (24 cu mi). Every index value below that is one order of magnitude (meaning, ten times) less. Furthermore, the 1815 eruption occurred during a Dalton Minimum, a period of unusually low solar radiation.[17] Volcanism plays a large role in climate shifts, both locally and globally. This was not always understood and did not enter scientific circles as fact until Krakatoa erupted in 1883 and tinted the skies orange.[16]

The scale of the volcanic eruption will determine the significance of the impact on climate and other chemical processes, but a change will be measured even in the most local of environments. When volcanoes erupt they eject CO2, H2O, H2, SO2, HCl, HF, and many other gases (Meronen et al. 2012). CO2 and H2O are greenhouse gases, responsible for 0.0394 percent and 0.4 percent of the atmosphere respectively. Their small ratio disguises their significant role in trapping solar insolation and reradiating it back to Earth.

Global effects
See also: Year Without a Summer

Sulfate concentration in ice core from Central Greenland, dated by counting oxygen isotope seasonal variations: An unknown eruption occurred around the 1810s.[18]
The 1815 eruption released sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, causing a global climate anomaly. Different methods have estimated the ejected sulphur mass during the eruption: the petrological method; an optical depth measurement based on anatomical observations; and the polar ice core sulfate concentration method, using cores from Greenland and Antarctica. The figures vary depending on the method, ranging from 10 to 120 million tonnes.[1]

In the spring and summer of 1815, a persistent "dry fog" was observed in the northeastern United States. The fog reddened and dimmed the sunlight, such that sunspots were visible to the naked eye. Neither wind nor rainfall dispersed the "fog". It was identified as a stratospheric sulfate aerosol veil.[1] In summer 1816, countries in the Northern Hemisphere suffered extreme weather conditions, dubbed the Year Without a Summer. Average global temperatures decreased about 0.4–0.7 °C (0.7–1.3 °F),[6] enough to cause significant agricultural problems around the globe. On 4 June 1816, frosts were reported in the upper elevations of New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont and northern New York. On 6 June 1816, snow fell in Albany, New York, and Dennysville, Maine.[1] Such conditions occurred for at least three months and ruined most agricultural crops in North America. Canada experienced extreme cold during that summer. Snow 30 cm (12 in) deep accumulated near Quebec City from 6 to 10 June 1816.

The second-coldest year in the Northern Hemisphere since around 1400 was 1816, and the 1810s are the coldest decade on record, a result of Tambora's 1815 eruption and another possible VEI 7 eruption that took place in late 1808. The surface temperature anomalies during the summer of 1816, 1817, and 1818 were −0.51 °C (−0.92 °F), −0.44 °C (−0.79 °F) and −0.29 °C (−0.52 °F), respectively.[8] As well as a cooler summer, parts of Europe experienced a stormier winter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_eruption_of_Krakatoa


Global climate

In the year following the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, average Northern Hemisphere summer temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F).[11] Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.[11] The record rainfall that hit Southern California during the “water year” from July 1883 to June 1884 – Los Angeles received 38.18 inches (969.8 mm) and San Diego 25.97 inches (659.6 mm)[12] – has been attributed to the Krakatoa eruption.[13]

The table on the page for the Tambora eruption:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora

suggests a "Northern Hemisphere Summer Anomaly" for Krakatoa, of 0.3C instead of 1.2C.

[Grog Logs]

So, I’m working on a new home brew campaign...use a volcano very early on in the campaign, which goes off suddenly and basically destroys the center of the continent

I think that it sounds like a cool campaign. You should check out Volcano (1997) and other disaster films for inspiration.

Disaster films don't get too caught up in realism, so don't feel too constrained by reality **cough, The Core, cough**

[TheDutchArtist]

There’s a lot of useful info in here! I hadn’t yet considered how much the climate could change because of it.
What I’m mostly struggling with now is scale. I’ve never seen a volcano in real life, and obviously not an active one, so I find it difficult to wrap my head around how large the destruction will end up being (as in; distance from the center of the volcano to the very edges of what would be considered part of its destruction). But I suppose the best way to do that is to do some more research.

[Eriol]

Also for many volcanoes, don't worry about outrunning the Lava. Worry about how horrifically you're going to die to Pyroclastic Flow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyroclastic_flow). Can go over 700kph and reaches over 1,000C. You are NOT going to outrun it unless you're in an airplane. If you can get out of the way of it (climb out of a valley) OK, but otherwise, you're dead.

[DMThac0]

I'm kinda puzzled *snip*


I was at work and didn't take time to do anything more than type in "how far can volcanic ash travel" in google, grabbed the first thing that popped up.


Disaster films don't get too caught up in realism, so don't feel too constrained by reality **cough, The Core, cough**

Then there's this point, which is probably going to be your (OP) biggest savior. Do your research, look into how things work, become immersed in the wonders of the volcano. Then throw it all out the window!

I literally finished a session just over a month ago where I had my players running down the side of a volcano. They were trying to outrun the magma, escape the onslaught of fire giants' boulders, travel through various terrain difficulties and try not to get crushed by a Titan. There was no pyroclastic flow, no choking ash, no seismic activity. I focused on what threats were going to make the situation more exhilarating.

You're doing something a bit more global, so your focus will be broader, but the advice is the same; focus on what will make for a good story. A super volcano erupting from the actions of a balor, well you would essentially kill/harm much of the world with that. So I'd say take the info you get, figure out how you can use it to tell a good story, and try to keep the realism to story and plot points.

[hamishspence]

I was at work and didn't take time to do anything more than type in "how far can volcanic ash travel" in google, grabbed the first thing that popped up.


Even Wikipedia's pretty inconsistent on how much of a temperature drop Tambora produced - in some places, it says 0.5C on average, in some, 1C on average.

Suffice to say that it was a big drop.