I'm running a Spelljammer campaign right now. Gives me licence to pull all sorts of sci-fi shenanigans.
The first one, though, is just my players being resourceful. First session they were to escort a dying girl and her father to another sphere (read: planetary system) to find a religious artifact that could heal her. She was supposed to die on the trip, but the cleric whipped out a delay disease spell. All the healers had tried so far was to
cure the disease, but slowing it down, even for a day, was enough.
The sphere they were travelling to was supposed to be on the verge of war. Having nothing planned beyond the father, named Gaeta, making a bargain with devils for the girl's life, the war got jump-started, and the ship entered an active war zone >_>
Dodging a few errant projectiles (Newton's first, bitches), they attempted to approach the planet, got intercepted, and were boarded. The crew (PCs) promptly surrendered. Gaeta went below deck to make the pact, and was inhabited by an infernal spirit. He was supposed to be the harbinger of fiendish cooperation that would later lead to the end of the Blood War, but the combined forces took him out D:
So, being the bastard that I am, instead corrupted his pact; the daughter is now a warlock with a resting spirit inside of her. In about a year, she'll head to another sphere, which is where the Blood War has spilt out onto the Material Plane (It hasn't spread further due to the way interplanar travel works between spheres, ie it doesn't). Apocalypse time
This is all unbeknown to my players. They got their reward from the daughter (who isn't aware of her corruption), and went off to get a new contact. They got a job from a merchant named Niska. Contrary to the name, he's not a gangster; in fact, he's an agent of the local order of paladins, known as the Order of the Teutonic Light. Given that two-thirds of the party is heavily evil, he sent them into a trap.
It was my intent that the party attempt to retrieve a "package" from an incoming ship. This "package" was a silver dragon egg, and the ship it was on was full of psions and paladins. The idea was that they would fail, and run away; maybe even a PC would die. This group's been pretty cocky in the past, and I want my world to be harsh. What happened was...a bit different. Nobody died, but the paladins did capture one of the non-evil characters, and got a gooood look at the rest of the party (One was essentially a sapient gorilla with 4 arms. Very distinctive).
The paladins placed a Quest on the captured PC, to hunt down the rest of his party and report their position. Instead he decided on revenge. Went into Niska's shop, and started shooting off Energy Rays of fire. I had previously mentioned the "No Smoking" signs, flammable warnings, and the
Helm of Brilliance in the store -_- Explosions happened. Significant explosions.
Did I mention that his shop was on an orbital platform?
In any event, Niska was able to escape, but the PC was hit by a Prismatic Ray, and was shifted to another plane. Now he's in my NPC stable.
The rest of the party was hunted for a bit by lantern and hound archons, given the description of the party. Most of them could disguise themselves, but the ape? No chance.
One PC, on a mission of his own, decided to eliminate this risk of detection. He (swordsage) and the warforged artificer decided to decapitate the ape while he slept. The player of the ape was not amused >_>
In short, a third of the party died, and I didn't kill any of them. My players are...interesting.
Wall of text D: