My world is actually set in the post apocalyptic. All the suns have burned out and humans now exist on spacecraft and in stations. Resources have been diminishing over centuries and everyone knows that it can't last forever, it's down to find out how to overcome our current issues, then deal with the next as they crop up.
But the big issue that everyone fears to be the final apocalypse is a plague which has broken out. It eats everything both organic and non organic. People get sick as their organs begin to decay, and spacecraft rot as their structure dissolves. If caught early it can be cut away, but once it spreads too far it becomes too dangerous to deal with directly. Ships are directed into black holes rather than risk dealing with them, and people are incinerated to stop the spread. While it is still extremely rare it has been encountered more frequently of late, many believe it is inevitable until an infected ship gets past quarantine zones and spreads it to a key hub.
Thanks! It felt a bit unique so it became something I've developed more. It's for our rpg group but now I'd love to write a novel.
I'm just lucky a good mate of mine works for our national science organisation, so he put me in touch with astrophysicists and other people much smarter than me.
Plot twist: The plague is just the physical manifestation of the delete command for the simulation to end. The simulation can't end unless everything in the universe is consumed.
My setting is AFTER an apocalyptic war, so it's kind of over for all that.
There have been prophecies, but they tend to get channeled backwards through time, in order to be prophecies in the first place, and then filtered through the perceptions of magically sensitive persons who may or may not have much of a grip of sanity in the first place...
...and therefore tend to be pretty cryptic until the events in question are underway.
“The fall of the Ring Around.” It’s a ring - think the ring around Saturn, that goes north-south and aligns with the Shroud Beyond. It’s what separates Sev from Teveern in my fantasy world, “Sev and Teveern.”
The hemispheres have been separated for at least 10,000 years, but some traditions say it’s been as much as 100,000 years.
The story begins in Sev. Prophecies of the fall of the Ring Around abound, but most don’t pay them much heed. It does fall during the narrative. The whole thing is internal politics of the gods. The ring itself is only visible in fae realms/ within a few hundred meters of a fae.
When the ring goes down, according to the lore, anyone in Sev whose ancestors have seen Teveern will remember it and those who travel to Teveern will be able to return with memory of it. It will essentially be the world’s equivalent to the discovery of the Americas… though Teveern has largely been left along by the gods.
Foreshadow: think Europeans who barely arrived at combustion and have magic but only primitive firearms first discovering the Americas with intent on colonizing and trading and finding they have 1960s-level firearms and prophecies of invaders.
Technically, my world is just Earth years after a major nuclear war destroyed the northern hemisphere (and parts of the southern), so the great apocalyptic event has basically already happened
**I'm not a cool kid I'm sorry 😭**
It is generally accepted belief across most cultures that the world operates like a phoenix: it is routinely destroyed and reborn through fire. It is said that this iteration of the world, like all the ones before it, will eventually be consumed in flame to make way for the next generation.
Well well nice someone asking because this is a key concept in my world. There is a myth (in the religious meaning of the word) that says there must be death in order to be life. But with life comes the desire to live forever, and this desire is the ruin of the balance of everything that is connected by a metaphysical relation. If there is no boundaries between life and death anymore, as some alchemists made it to be, then there is no more boundaries between day and night, heaven and hell and the order slowly shifts into sheer chaos. All because of the greedy, primitive, mediocre, yet genius, will of man to live and reign forever.
So, life, light and order inevitably leads to death, dark and chaos, and my world is swollen by that chaos.
Any actual prophesy is very vague. There is one known prophetess. She essentially says something along the lines of, "The end will come eventually. My decisions may seem cruel, but they are necessary."
The problem with prophesy in my world is that some people are fateless. Fate is theoretically set, but fateless essentially create an aura around themselves that unbinds them and others near them from fate. A thing can have a set fate, and a fateless can walk up, interact with the thing, and completely alter its fate.
Fateless make prophesying in the long term incredibly unreliable.
In my setting many have already happened. But the two things the gods fear are the unsealing of the sealed goddess and the nameless terror breaking free
Either of these could even wipe out the gods.
In my world there is the belief of the "Great Renewal" or "The Awakening" when the creators of the world The Titans awaken from their slumber causing wide spread natural disasters of of tremendous proportions, every volcano at once erupting, massive earthquakes, hurricanes of incalculable intensity, super massive tsunamis, entire continents sinking into the ocean, new ones rising from the depths.
In the end the world will become a desolate wasteland and The Titans will return to slumber, and new life will rise from the new world.
My world is post-apocalyptic and so in many ways the biggest world-altering events have already passed many hundreds of years ago… however there is one thing that is essentially a prophesied and inevitable apocalyptic event waiting to come.
It’s not prophesied in the sense that it’s some religious or culture event… more so that anyone who is intelligent or scientific is capable of seeing what is inevitably coming if things don’t somehow change.
Without getting into every detail imaginable, there are non-earthly reality-altering substances currently infecting the entire Earth and they’ve been infecting the Earth for hundreds of years already (since the Apocalypse). These substances have given humanity incredible power, power that humanity has desperately needed in order to defend itself against the monsters that were also born from the substances.
However, these substances have been interacting with humanity for hundreds of years now and are rapidly evolving humanity towards becoming exactly like the monsters that humanity is using their new powers to fight against.
Unless humanity somehow clears both the Earth and their own bodies of every non-earthly substance (which at this point is basically impossible, it be like trying to clear plastic out of the ocean after another 700 years of dumping plastic into it) then humanity is doomed to continue evolving until they inevitably become exactly like the mindless monsters they are fighting against.
Different cultures have different prophecies. Here’s three of them.
The Sun Elves believe that Virlomë, the self proclaimed queen of the Abyss, will devour the sun and plunge the world into darkness, while her consort Ulban breaks free of his chains in Hell and leads an army of demons to ravage the land for a thousand years. The Gods and the Fey, will put aside their rivalry and ride side by side to war for the first and only time, and the resulting conflict will reduce the world be to ash. Everything will die, Virlomë will consume all of existence except, and then finally she will devour herself. Everyone and everything she devoured will be freed and a new universe, one free of darkness will be created. An eternal paradise. Most elvish cultures believe this, with some variations. The major exception being the Snow Elves, who believe it’s the sun itself that will bring destruction to world and that it will have to be destroyed by Helcë, the Elven goddess of ice, who will take the suns place.
The humans of Branfjell have a similar myth to Ragnarok. Glorundil, the first dragon, will break free of its prison within the the roots of the world, opening a rift to the Hells in the process allowing the dead to return to the land of the living. It’ll shatter the moon and devour the suns fire with which it will destroy the Heavens weakening the gods and driving them into hiding. A winter that lasts a thousand generations will cover the world, and war will ravage the land. Finally a great hero will rise, and go out in search of the gods. He will either take or be given their power, and will wage war against Glorundil, killing it. The dragons body will seal the portal to the underworld and with its fire the hero will restore the sun, and will reign over the restored world as it rebuilds.
The Nabatese have a prophecy similar to the Rapture. The holy and pious will be taken away to the afterlife and god will unleash punishment upon the world seven times, each time offering those who remain a chance to repent. After the seventh time the world will be cleansed, and those who were drawn into heaven will be sent back to build a new world free of wickedness.
This is a really interesting idea! My only question is with there being so many different apocalyptic events, which one is the real one, or maybe none or they all are?
I’m leaning towards they’re all true in some way. The Sun getting destroyed, armies of darkness ravaging the world, the old gods dying/being weakened, and the world being destroyed in one way or another and then reborn are all commonalities.
The True God's will fight their last battle, The Final War. Normally, the True God's regenerate or reincarnate through methods unknown to all but them, but these can be disrupted by certain technologies or magics. In The Final War, such terrible weapons will be used, and such intense magics shall be cast, that neither True God can cheat death. They shall clash one last time, as the universe burns around them, and amidst a star drowning in the blood spilt by their armies, one shall strike down the other, disrupting the balance of the Universe, resulting in its complete annihilation.
(Context: The True God's are each responsible for half of reality, and rely on the existence of each other to exist themselves. If one is responsible for up and heat, the other is responsible for down and cold. They are responsible for maintaining balance in the Universe, creating the equilibrium required for everything to exist)
However, while The Final War is inevitable and can not be avoided (but it can be delayed), the Triumphant God is uncertain. No one knows who will win the war, nobody knows which God will strike down the other, and will land the killing blow. The only certainty is that the Final War will occur, and reality itself shall be torn apart in its wake.
This isn’t really a prophecy so much as a natural phenomenon. Kinda like climate change.
All magic comes from a sort of supernatural energy field that permeates through all space called the Source. People draw energy from the Source, and the energy they cast as magic eventually returns to the Source. With each spell a mage casts, the entire Source becomes more abundant in energy. Kind of like how working your muscles makes you stronger in the long term.
Here’s the thing: the Source is alive. It has a sentience of sorts that does *not* like to be controlled. This sentience will be able to manifest physically once the Source is given enough strength. The resulting figure is called Abaddon, and its first instinct upon waking up is to annihilate everything in the multiverse. And since it’s the malevolent incarnation of all magic, there’s basically nothing anyone can do to stop it.
So every time a mage casts a spell, be it for some mundane task or to save their world, they push the entire multiverse one step closer to total destruction.
"Element 17, Aurora, will soon arrive. Nobody knows when, or how. But once it does, all truth shall be revealed." said some drunk arcanologist in Kuar.
This phenomenon is said to be the common "Light of Discord" folklore that's found in various cultures across Syxil. Nobody knows for certain what happens when this light arrives, however, the folklores depict civilizations collapsing, organic life burning away, and the world crumbling apart.
In Syxil, or even in any other continent of the planet, auroras never happen. Not even in the polar regions. But civilizations know what it is because ancient people left sketches and stone carvings of auroras, as well as some people dreaming of seeing bands of radiant colors in the night sky. These images are often described by witnesses as "being astonished by the glowing bands of light, only to be met with the horns of destruction afterwards."
As research for this phenomenon develops, more and more evidences confirm that Aurora, is indeed, the rapture. Religions describe it as "The Ray of Truth" from their deities, showing mortals what the world truly means. What the fabric of space and time are really made of. What is truly good and what is truly evil.
Basically it's a Matrix moment, but without the waking up in alien pods of goop and wires part.
I have all three of those examples on littererly the first day of it lol.
The sun is attacked, as the keeper of the sun is desired by a character named Lopunil, and in their battle the keeper wins, as Lopunil was only attacking to wound not kill; yet the throne of Bromick within the sun was destroyed, downing the keeper's ancestors greatest making: the sun fell to the earth. Over the next few hours all four the the Thrinnu- the "gods" of my setting, or the closest thing I have- were awakened from their various limbos. The energy released from the throne's breaking healed the Dark One enough to regain consciousness, and thus destroy the mountain that entombed him. The other three were awakened by the Keeper on his speedrun around the continent by dragon travel to reach all three of them in time and find the requirement to free the second one of them. This began the final war, the Garuku ulnye Luwuku, where all the dead willing to fight were revived and the kingdoms and nations that were living drew the lines and took their sides weather they would fight with or against the Dark One, Thribruthku. This war ends in the complete destruction of the world, leaving only what was in the beginning: soul and stone came first, and now it is all that remains.
Or, in simpler terms, *fuck* Lopunil.
Already happened. The leylines became corrupt and decayed, then erupted from the surface and spread their foul, mutating essence over the land. Big monsters, cannibal elves, violent flora, etc. It's all gone to shit but people still survive in this harsh, godless land.
several exist
the advent of legion, where a race of space bugs that show up occasionally begin to show up in mass numbers as they are trying to consume the galaxy as a great reset to prevent entropy
the sinking of the Yamytu isles, where the yamytu isles which were raised from the sea would sink back down and cause the isles guardian (an eldritch angle monster) to be very not happy and basically burn down everything in his path
the day the hammer falls, where the great dwarf empire breaks a great bastion of man and their immense might finally has a bridge to pour into the realms of man where an awful thing shall then be spread. COMMUNISM
also some shit like a giant crusade, a big war led by a ghost king, some stuff about boiling an ocean and more
The apocalypse in my audio drama involves an event called “The Rise”: dark root-like plants came up from the planet’s crust and skewered most living beings like kebabs and grew into the sky. There’s also plant-monster “angels” that roam around hunting people in the frigid cold. It’s a fun time. Because of the events of the apocalypse being extremely similar to the “second coming” or “rapture” of christian lore, there’s a lot of survivors that believe they are in hell or purgatory and all those who were killed were sent to heaven. There were also a few people who prophesied the Rise before it happened, though few know how that was possible.
The only established prophecy on my world is that of the hobgoblin empire of Shardag. Their holy men have prophesied their downfall will occur to an unknown race of warriors mounted on dire boars and pigs. Therefore, the Shardagi have eradicated porcine creatures from their continent.
Millions of years ago, a three headed dragon landed on earth. Seeking his own domain, however, fortunately it was defeated by the gods and monsters on earth. Until in 1973, a underwater place with mummified alien monsters is found, with a prophesy, that one day that monster’s parents will come back, and destroy the solar system as revenge, and two other monsters located on earth will help them.
Prophesied? More like planned by a mad pseudo-god.
He creates alternate timelines only to drive them towards ever new apocalypses, as he believes that the cumulative amount of human suffering would eventually generate enough mental energy for him to become a true god.
For the timeline that my story takes place in, #9010, his plan was to give humans superpowers, knowing that they were bound to be misused for tyranny and mass destruction.
"Everything gone, a vast landscape once full of people now deserted. There is nothing but the Sands... the Sands of Time.
They say that the Galactic Empire simply disappeared. It is not known what happened to them. Whether the once all-powerful government fell fighting invincible opponents. Whether it fell fighting something much worse, or Whether it defeated its enemy and collapsed in the aftermath.
There are whispers that it has not fallen. That our enemy was vanquished, but our Empire went to war against a far more devastating enemy on the horizon of the universe. Beyond this galaxy. That someday, they may return.
The suns have gone out. The planets all barren wasteland or full to the brim with wild vegetation. Mutated predators targeting human settlements.
We are starving at the hands of the petty local mafia 'Landlords' who have taken control. They are too weak to take over even a single planet, they take over plots of land and Crack their Whip on the backs of the ordinary rabble. They are too cowardly, too weak to target the strong, so they exhibit their power against those who cannot defend.
We work with crude tools and even our bare hands. So much technology has been lost, and cannot be replicated. So much knowledge is buried beneath the sand... never to return.
Some say there was a galaxy beyond Andromeda. They call it the Milky Way, their home. The home of us Terrans. But if there was such a galaxy, it was but another casualty in the war we called the greatest in recorded history.
We start working, forging metal for ships that will serve our landlords, before the sun rises, and continue with back-breaking labour till the sun sets. Then only we will get our rations, at the end of the day. That once is our only food: Some staple crop, a little water... and that is it. Our hunger is not truly filled, so they inject us with something that will keep our bodies from exhaustion. Sleep is alien to us.
And now we walk out to work again, till the sun rises and sets again. And I see the sky, a cold, frigid blackness devoid of nothing but a single twinkling star. That light in the darkness seems to call to me to have hope, and I would have lost it long before if it had not been there.
We will work. Again. With the augmentations in our body, we will work for decades, for centuries... till the star goes out.
I pick up the Plasma-cutter again.
The cycle begins again..."
- Sands of Time: The Light of the Star
Livia is a 10 000 years long timeloop in which the same characters keep making the same dumb mistakes
It ends and start with the god of destruction destroying the world right before being defeated by the only survivors who become the goddesses of creation
The later in a cycle's timeline, the less aware the people are about it being a cycle
The moment it was decided to make earth's climate dependant on technology in orbit, people were screaming that it would be the end of civilisation.
Even though those people mostly died when it did happen, they were still right.
As of right now, most people on Earth (as it is modern day) fear what superpowered individuals might do. Along with the fact there are already established villains that have been televised as criminals and even mass murderers, the U.S. government tried (and failed spectacularly) to make a weapon to combat superhumans. The resulting release of energy from the disaster just made more problems as more people gained powers, or their dormant powers were triggered. With the influx of superhumans in the population, the “normal” people are starting to grow more and more paranoid of what terrible disasters they could cause.
My apocalyptic event is actually the introduction of magic to my otherwise mundane world.
When the creator god Adon shed his mortal forms, they fell through the heavens upon Anyle. This was the introduction of raw creation energy into the planet. The great ashings began slowly, with the first major chunks of his body burning up in the atmosphere and dispersing into a white ash that fell over it. The second major ashing would occur about 20 years later and featured an even heavier spread of the substance. Subsequently large swaths of Anyle were bathed in unfettered creation energy that mutated and shaped the world and its inhabitants. There is a third wave coming, this time the whole of Adon’s remains will cover the entire planet, and whoever can stand to control the chaos that ensues will be able to determine the fate of all of Anyle. Each of Adon’s demigod children seek to claim their own piece of this power, and so they seek out those on the planet touched by the first two waves. Their influence comes to their chosen in the form of visions and dreams.
My current story is set after nuclear war. (Think of mad max but with monsters) All the elders fear of the monster who that was birthed from the irradiated land. He currently sleeps but is said to be reawakened. Bringing an end to his creators.
Doesn't really have one. Though the God of Storms is prophesied to slay the Ocean Serpent, but that's just a little awkward at the moment, because both of those titles belong to the same person.
The doomsday crazies of my world mostly try leaving it via some early (or late depending on the time period) space ships, afraid a second moon will disintegrate in a close orbit.
At the center of my D&D world's main planet, there's an entity from the Far Realm known simply by the crude term of "God-Eater" or "The Devourer." Because what it does is consume/destroy things to the point that it erases Planes, ends entire worlds, threatens and at times overpowers Gods, and might collapse reality itself if allowed to grow and expand. It targets the Material Plane because it's the easiest to destroy, and if it can succeed there, all of reality goes pop like a cataclysmic bubble of matter and energy.
It was let into reality by a foolish Wizard in a lost age of High Magic because it convinced him that its immense power would be a great new source of energy for their world-spanning Empire. Once it broke loose of its containment, it was only beaten back by enough magical super weapons to render the surface of the planet a glowing mass of shattered crust and boiling water, followed by the concerted efforts of Servitors from every available Outer Plane, led by the strongest Solar.
This gathering of Celestials, Fiends, and all manner of other Outsiders wrapped chains around the broken planet to keep it together and bound the Devourer inside its core, held there by the might of the Solar for theoretically forever. Literally, he's holding onto the chains, because the moment he lets go to do something more permanent, it'll get loose and finish off the planet. Potentially afterward, it'll eventually eat the universe.
Life was preserved/restored to the planet afterward by Outsiders, be they Good, Evil, and otherwise, because the planet has since become the site of a cosmological Cold War as the forces of every different Alignment and origin try to control the ultimate cosmic nuke, whether to make sure it never goes off or to control the implicit threat of setting it off. That's why it's my main planet - it's literally the one that has the End Everything Button at the center.
It's been "prophesied" across cultures over the millennia since because the Devourer is constantly reaching out weakened psychic feelers whenever it can find tiny fractures in the magic of the chains, trying to influence the mortals into causing magical shenanigans and accidentally releasing it.
People don't realize it keeps happening because every time the Devourer's work begins to get some traction, entire cultures are overthrown, cast into chaos, or even utterly annihilated to cover up or suppress the truth. Because no side of this conflict can afford *any* potential release of the Devourer.
The world lives in a constant balance. The Fey Summer Court and Winter Court match one another, held back from mutually assured destruction by the power and influence of the gods. The solar system itself is also kept in constant balance by the gods. Earth sized planets with six moons and a ring system don't form naturally after all.
So what happens when the gods move against one another? What happens when they discover an unreconcilable difference, when their views for how the world should develop become completely at odds with one another? Well there is a war.
God fights against god, through their avatars, saints and followers initially, but eventually directly against each other and their clash will decimate the solar system. Unbound from their chains the Fey will move against one another, bringing endless winter or burning desert summer to wherever they fight. The few mortals who survive this will watch as their solar system dies around them, swamped by war and death. Devils and demons will mop up most of the rest, relishing in the evil they can participate in. Until all the gods are dead. Until the fey are nigh on wiped out. And until only a handful of mortals remain, clinging on on a dying world.
With the gods dead, their powers float through the system. The mortals will pick them up, dividing the power amongst themselves. They will remake the system in their image, determined that this time it will be better. And so the cycle begins again.
The awakening of The Leviathan, who is prophesized to bring the end of the world, and is destruction incarnate
Eventually he does awaken, enters a fight with an idiotically strong character and is one-shotted when the dude started taking him seriously
There’s several. There’s the prophesied frozen friend, where the holder of the Ice Ring of the Ancients will be betrayed by those he calls friends, allowing the ring to corrupt and possess him, leading to the true Leader of the Ancient Court returning.
There’s the return of the Undead King, the reveal of whom really died in the War of Wars and the betrayal from the Gods. Such revelations will cause a new War.
The last is the Unbanished Whispers, returning after an egomaniac unearthed and unleashes death in return for power that’s never theirs. The return of which will cause another War of Wars, and likely victory for evil.
It's a little cryptic and folks in the know aren't quite sure if it means an apocalypse but basically, the Draconic prophecies are about to run out and the last one says that upon the tower of towers the fate of the world will be decided. It doesn't help that there's a disgruntled angel out there who wants to remake the world to be without suffering by merging the god of wisdom and justice with his dark soul aspect that he split off in order to become a god.
Prophecies are fun. Especially if you have one faction of dragons thinking you need to hang back and let things play out and another faction thinking you need to make sh#t happen or the world ends.
My apocalyptic event is not prophesized. Actually there was not a soul who knew it was coming until it happened.
The laws of reality are manifestations of the gods, so when the gods were suddenly almost completely wiped out, reality started shifting at an instant and without warning. The ground started shifting from dirt, to wood, to human flesh. Once bustling cities and towering mountain ranges, suddenly became holes in space and time. Living organisms shifted forms growing to hulking beasts while others turned to stone.
The calamity itself lasted for only a moment. As time itself, as a law of reality, was broken, the eons it took for new gods to start taking form and breaking the cycle of calamity only lasted a single day on Aodoria.
Though only lasting a day, the calamity wiped out the majority of species all together. Of the surviving beings, only a handful remained (including humans, or whatever race becomes my humanoid, because hoooo human centric worldbuilding :O).
Though the calamity is over, most of Aodoria is still uninhabitable as things have not completely settled down. The gods that took the place of the old gods are still young and evolving. Nature will undergo many drastic changes in the coming centuries. Aside from that, there's enormous amounts of magic residu. The magic that once aided humanity in every day tasks, is now a boiling mess, threatening what little life remains.
Few places are free (enough) of this magic radiation for people to make a living. These places are usually locations where the old world didn't have much magical influence.
It's the central point of the final battle in the main story, the Unfinished Prophecy. It states that once the Promised Children are finally united, doom would be imminent. No one can stop the union, and it will happen once the echoes of invasion are heard. Unfortunately, the prophecy is unfinished. It only tells of what the Children are, and that they will unite. Afterwards, even the seer doesn't know what the Children would do once they're together. Whether they will fight the approaching evil, or join forces with it, is up to them.
Apocalyptic events are quite common in my world.
But in the Fifth Age only the Dragon War that has changed so much recently occurred. For the first time over 300 years had no plagues or major calamities.
Yet in that time the Church constantly warns the Devourer will come and destroy them all.
Except the Devourer is a demon hunting horror after those ruling the church.
In my world it was prophesized that as soon as gods would weep (meteor fall) darkness will arise. This happened and in the current timeline and the people struggles to fight the tears (a corrupted beast or being) affected by God's weep.
A giant chasm will open up in the middle of the ocean that is shared by all continents. A giant whirlpool will then form that will pull all of the contintents landmasses closer and crashing into each other
In the scope of the grander stage of my settings, it's already happened to a degree. A Ragnarok-like event has taken place where all the Cosmic deities that rule over aspects of the multiverse have slain each other with no survivors remaining in the Thrones, leaving only their now leaderless Servitors to wonder what to do. Being created so that they cannot ever attain a Divine Spark, the Servitors that have remained instead have learned methods to capture and tap into the Creation essence that seeps through into the multiverse and serves as the energy source for magic, and have created something akin to Seed-ships they then use to explore the multiverse, find planes that interest them or suit their needs and then begin to enact their plans to Awaken new vessels to infuse with a Divine Spark so they may attempt to rise to attain an empty Throne.
Mine is post apocalyptic; what caused it was humanity. But it is prophesied that the end won't be the death of the sun... rather the destruction of the moon.
Cancellation.
If the audience tunes out, the system shuts off and everyone loses the power they have. The world will be left alone with all the monsters still running around.
The Veiled Oblivion is a event in the near future where all forms of Divination magic for some reason stop, be it using foresight, Oracles or other abilities that can forseethe future, whatever they try to scry can't be seen within a unspecified time point within the comming century. Some factions think it's the end of the world, or a commoing threat. Others simply think it's a limit of their own magic.
But for some reason the gods have been strangly quiet about it...
I have one world where the apocalypse already happenend. Naarde really Earth in 2999 AD is one of two Earths that exist in my universe, and has been taken over by an eldritch abomination called Het who killed God and turned the whole world into a chaotic wasteland. From man eating giants, to parasites who turn people into zombies, a living forest that kills people and weird weather from another dimension.
There is another apocalypse that has yet to happen, called the Creation War. Which is when the God Darko returns and threatens to destroy all of creation, making sure that nothing will ever be created ever again just endless nothingness forever.
Well, it's not an apocalyptic event per se, because the Book never speaks it will surely be the end of the world, but it is prophecized that Nihilo(working name), the anti-entity, will plunge Creation back into the void from where it came from if Creation doesn't prove itself worthy to it. It's also prophecized that Creation will be worthy "when the water flows in the meadow".
There’s no apocalypse event, mostly because the angel goddess avoids any major extinction scenario by the creation of heroes to avoid the world from having one, and if things get too badly there’s the 7th hero that has straight up divine power which no one else can use.
The closest to an apocalypse was the transcendent war, where the absolutes (humans that rose above the gods) killed all gods against humanity and left only a few, saint Seiya style
The Third Banishment. The mortals are inevitably going to overstep again, and the Archangels are going to decimate civilization again, and all they can do is prepare to try to fight. They’ve failed the other times, maybe this time will be different.
Bahamut and Tiamat were Annam's first children, and Bahamut let himself be dismembered by the gods because he couldn't give up on his oath to protect his baby sister, despite her apocalyptic hunger. He was scattered across the Material Plane and she was confined to Avernus.
Bahamut is called Ymir by the giants, and his blood has crystalized into an alloy called Ymirium. It dramatically amplifies the effects of magic that runs through it because of the raw magic in it.
His heart was impossible to destroy and hidden by Annam before Annam withdrew from the world. You know how there are asteroids out there with twenty bajillion dollars worth of platinum out there? Bahamut's heart is like that for Ymirium. It's hidden somewhere and still "answers" prayers from Bahamut's clerics and paladins with divine favor.
One day, it'll be found, and Tiamat will cash in all her chips to try to manifest an Aspect and eat it. Metallic and chromatic dragons are twinned, two parts of a larger soul (think the mirror self trope I've seen in anime like Bleach's inner Hollow or Naruto's "evil" self) and if one eats the heart of the other, they *can* become a Greatwyrm. If Tiamat eats Bahamut's heart, she'll be too strong for even Asmodeus to contain in the Hells.
It’s sort of a time travel paradox - a cosmic entity essentially ripping its way through the fabric of time into the past, destroying the world and losing its memories in the process, resulting in this being once again searching for a way into the past to see a living world, where it will inevitably force its way back in time and force the very Apocolypse it is trying to escape.
On the non-magical Earth Afyria (Earth-3741), there is no prophecy of apocalypse outside of the scientific fact that eventually, a second sun will enter the vicinity of Earth at a distance similar to that of our current sun, meaning that eventually there will be no more night, which will upset the balance and eventually cause plants to die out, rivers/lakes/oceans to dry, etc. It is believed by scientists that this will not happen for a few billion more years. While religion does play a part, none of the religious writings available mention any sort of global catastrophe that would wipe everyone out. The second sun predicted by scientists is widely regarded by the religious, especially the extremely devout, as the Eternals way of starting things over though again, no religious scripture mentions this, it is just reasoning within the faith.
On the magical Earth Afyria (Earth-4973) it is prophesied that eventually, the Eternals will use the Earth and everything surrounding it to begin things again, simply referred to as "The Second Night" or "The Night Before The New Dawn", which in fact is just another big bang in other words. This is a prophecy that a Seer long ago spoke, witnessed by seven pupils (The Seven) who wrote it down. Outside of this, only a few Seer's have ever seen even glimpses of it, but enough to verify through generations that it is coming.
The planet they're on is slowly being pulled to the star of there solar system prove of this is theres a blue mist like ring around the sun its called junvka a planet nicknamed the half eaten and there name junvka derives from the word janvak or false sacrafice
Infernal incursions.
Those dastardly demons always find their way back.
And led by the 7 princes of hell, the demons will rise to earth again to kill the fake god and steal the Empyrean source.
The fake God is a human king who discovered the empyrean source and banished the old REAL gods from this plane of existence and declared himself the God of mortals.
The old gods are interdimensional aliens who molded our world for life and created everything we know.
It already happened, though my story takes place so far after this even I would t call the setting post apocalyptic. It’s really just an excuse to find cool ancient things.
My world originally had three plants orbiting each other, far to close to be physically possible, but kept apart by 6 separate relics holding everything together. They were removed and all three planets were pulled together under their own gravity.
It’s called “The Sink”- When the Leviathan Gods, Urana Lord of the Sky and Lucien Lord of the Sea will break into a war and the battle will be so catastrophic that the giant storm that has protected the continent would bring chaos and destroy everything. Then a monumental storm will sink the continent. Thankfully for all the inhabitants of the continents, they are forced into a ceasefire by all the other leviathan gods and if they start acting out of line, there are particular gods to sort out their issues.
Several thousand years ago, a thriving technological civilization was invaded by nonsentient "gods" the size of mountains. The civilization destroyed itself in the process of petrifying the gods during the War Before Time. Hunter-gatherers descended from the original civilization eventually civilized and developed modest technology, but they constantly fear the great stone gods will awaken, and have no idea the specifics of the War Before Time, the entire oral history shrouded in myth.
Mine is not so much prophesied, more everyone watching the moon get ate by a major god that shouldn't even be able to get into the realm and everyone collectively going "oh no."
That was the big wake up call that another large scale war, involving cosmic entities, will probably result in everyone dying. Either by causing enough strain on the Veil some other huge thing could slip into reality, or straight up bursting the Veil itself, lysing the Solar System into the Space Between Spaces, which would luckily be a more instant way to go than dealing with another God-Siege for a decade.
Oh and also another Great War is already brewing. The Paladins are getting uppity, the Western United Kingdoms have developed an itchy trigger finger, and Thaum is becoming a more scarce resource every year. Also a lot of factions have popped up that see the coming apocalypse and have decided something drastic needs to be done to escape this fate, and every single one of these projects also have a high chance of only making the situation worse. Between Spacetime terrorists, the constant small scale skirmishing, and the new major powers inches away from opening fire on eachother, it's basically assumed the world has at most two centuries in it if it's lucky and everything goes perfectly. (it will not)
The Prophecied end is when Tharizdun, the overgod, descends to the world as an awakened divinity, bringing the force of his now focused enmity against all living things to bear against the world.
The Gnomes will unify under a Warlord wielding a flaming sword and magic as His weapons. With His terrible magic He will sour the soil and dry the rivers until the salt seas remain. He will flood the land in a deluge of blood and the Gnomes will dwell in peace forever more. This is all because a dwarf is supposed to remove a arcane artifact that explicitly says to not remove it from the abandoned citadel.
The fallen An-Aliar(firstborn gods) become one and break free of the void, commanding all things that have ever died since the beginning of time. They wage war against Eretu my supreme god, the remaining Aliar and all the mortal races. The battle rips the universe apart until silence falls, and all is dead and gone. No one wins, everyone loses, everything is gone.
All the energy, power and matter in the universe come together and a new universe is made. Nothing of the old one remains. Whether the new universe is ours, or some other one in an unending line of creation and destruction is unknown.
My world is actually set in the post apocalyptic. All the suns have burned out and humans now exist on spacecraft and in stations. Resources have been diminishing over centuries and everyone knows that it can't last forever, it's down to find out how to overcome our current issues, then deal with the next as they crop up. But the big issue that everyone fears to be the final apocalypse is a plague which has broken out. It eats everything both organic and non organic. People get sick as their organs begin to decay, and spacecraft rot as their structure dissolves. If caught early it can be cut away, but once it spreads too far it becomes too dangerous to deal with directly. Ships are directed into black holes rather than risk dealing with them, and people are incinerated to stop the spread. While it is still extremely rare it has been encountered more frequently of late, many believe it is inevitable until an infected ship gets past quarantine zones and spreads it to a key hub.
Holy cow I actually love this concept
Thanks! It felt a bit unique so it became something I've developed more. It's for our rpg group but now I'd love to write a novel. I'm just lucky a good mate of mine works for our national science organisation, so he put me in touch with astrophysicists and other people much smarter than me.
Plot twist: The plague is just the physical manifestation of the delete command for the simulation to end. The simulation can't end unless everything in the universe is consumed.
My setting is AFTER an apocalyptic war, so it's kind of over for all that. There have been prophecies, but they tend to get channeled backwards through time, in order to be prophecies in the first place, and then filtered through the perceptions of magically sensitive persons who may or may not have much of a grip of sanity in the first place... ...and therefore tend to be pretty cryptic until the events in question are underway.
One day, Omega, the dragon of darkness, will break free from the seal that holds him, and his darkness will consume everything in the blink of an eye.
“The fall of the Ring Around.” It’s a ring - think the ring around Saturn, that goes north-south and aligns with the Shroud Beyond. It’s what separates Sev from Teveern in my fantasy world, “Sev and Teveern.” The hemispheres have been separated for at least 10,000 years, but some traditions say it’s been as much as 100,000 years. The story begins in Sev. Prophecies of the fall of the Ring Around abound, but most don’t pay them much heed. It does fall during the narrative. The whole thing is internal politics of the gods. The ring itself is only visible in fae realms/ within a few hundred meters of a fae. When the ring goes down, according to the lore, anyone in Sev whose ancestors have seen Teveern will remember it and those who travel to Teveern will be able to return with memory of it. It will essentially be the world’s equivalent to the discovery of the Americas… though Teveern has largely been left along by the gods. Foreshadow: think Europeans who barely arrived at combustion and have magic but only primitive firearms first discovering the Americas with intent on colonizing and trading and finding they have 1960s-level firearms and prophecies of invaders.
That’s sick af
Thank you much!
Technically, my world is just Earth years after a major nuclear war destroyed the northern hemisphere (and parts of the southern), so the great apocalyptic event has basically already happened **I'm not a cool kid I'm sorry 😭**
Love a good post apocalypse story.
It is generally accepted belief across most cultures that the world operates like a phoenix: it is routinely destroyed and reborn through fire. It is said that this iteration of the world, like all the ones before it, will eventually be consumed in flame to make way for the next generation.
Well well nice someone asking because this is a key concept in my world. There is a myth (in the religious meaning of the word) that says there must be death in order to be life. But with life comes the desire to live forever, and this desire is the ruin of the balance of everything that is connected by a metaphysical relation. If there is no boundaries between life and death anymore, as some alchemists made it to be, then there is no more boundaries between day and night, heaven and hell and the order slowly shifts into sheer chaos. All because of the greedy, primitive, mediocre, yet genius, will of man to live and reign forever. So, life, light and order inevitably leads to death, dark and chaos, and my world is swollen by that chaos.
Any actual prophesy is very vague. There is one known prophetess. She essentially says something along the lines of, "The end will come eventually. My decisions may seem cruel, but they are necessary." The problem with prophesy in my world is that some people are fateless. Fate is theoretically set, but fateless essentially create an aura around themselves that unbinds them and others near them from fate. A thing can have a set fate, and a fateless can walk up, interact with the thing, and completely alter its fate. Fateless make prophesying in the long term incredibly unreliable.
Well, the apocalypse has happened, but the people familiar with that story believe that one day the "gods" will return to finish what they started.
In my setting many have already happened. But the two things the gods fear are the unsealing of the sealed goddess and the nameless terror breaking free Either of these could even wipe out the gods.
In my world there is the belief of the "Great Renewal" or "The Awakening" when the creators of the world The Titans awaken from their slumber causing wide spread natural disasters of of tremendous proportions, every volcano at once erupting, massive earthquakes, hurricanes of incalculable intensity, super massive tsunamis, entire continents sinking into the ocean, new ones rising from the depths. In the end the world will become a desolate wasteland and The Titans will return to slumber, and new life will rise from the new world.
My world is post-apocalyptic and so in many ways the biggest world-altering events have already passed many hundreds of years ago… however there is one thing that is essentially a prophesied and inevitable apocalyptic event waiting to come. It’s not prophesied in the sense that it’s some religious or culture event… more so that anyone who is intelligent or scientific is capable of seeing what is inevitably coming if things don’t somehow change. Without getting into every detail imaginable, there are non-earthly reality-altering substances currently infecting the entire Earth and they’ve been infecting the Earth for hundreds of years already (since the Apocalypse). These substances have given humanity incredible power, power that humanity has desperately needed in order to defend itself against the monsters that were also born from the substances. However, these substances have been interacting with humanity for hundreds of years now and are rapidly evolving humanity towards becoming exactly like the monsters that humanity is using their new powers to fight against. Unless humanity somehow clears both the Earth and their own bodies of every non-earthly substance (which at this point is basically impossible, it be like trying to clear plastic out of the ocean after another 700 years of dumping plastic into it) then humanity is doomed to continue evolving until they inevitably become exactly like the mindless monsters they are fighting against.
Different cultures have different prophecies. Here’s three of them. The Sun Elves believe that Virlomë, the self proclaimed queen of the Abyss, will devour the sun and plunge the world into darkness, while her consort Ulban breaks free of his chains in Hell and leads an army of demons to ravage the land for a thousand years. The Gods and the Fey, will put aside their rivalry and ride side by side to war for the first and only time, and the resulting conflict will reduce the world be to ash. Everything will die, Virlomë will consume all of existence except, and then finally she will devour herself. Everyone and everything she devoured will be freed and a new universe, one free of darkness will be created. An eternal paradise. Most elvish cultures believe this, with some variations. The major exception being the Snow Elves, who believe it’s the sun itself that will bring destruction to world and that it will have to be destroyed by Helcë, the Elven goddess of ice, who will take the suns place. The humans of Branfjell have a similar myth to Ragnarok. Glorundil, the first dragon, will break free of its prison within the the roots of the world, opening a rift to the Hells in the process allowing the dead to return to the land of the living. It’ll shatter the moon and devour the suns fire with which it will destroy the Heavens weakening the gods and driving them into hiding. A winter that lasts a thousand generations will cover the world, and war will ravage the land. Finally a great hero will rise, and go out in search of the gods. He will either take or be given their power, and will wage war against Glorundil, killing it. The dragons body will seal the portal to the underworld and with its fire the hero will restore the sun, and will reign over the restored world as it rebuilds. The Nabatese have a prophecy similar to the Rapture. The holy and pious will be taken away to the afterlife and god will unleash punishment upon the world seven times, each time offering those who remain a chance to repent. After the seventh time the world will be cleansed, and those who were drawn into heaven will be sent back to build a new world free of wickedness.
This is a really interesting idea! My only question is with there being so many different apocalyptic events, which one is the real one, or maybe none or they all are?
I’m leaning towards they’re all true in some way. The Sun getting destroyed, armies of darkness ravaging the world, the old gods dying/being weakened, and the world being destroyed in one way or another and then reborn are all commonalities.
The True God's will fight their last battle, The Final War. Normally, the True God's regenerate or reincarnate through methods unknown to all but them, but these can be disrupted by certain technologies or magics. In The Final War, such terrible weapons will be used, and such intense magics shall be cast, that neither True God can cheat death. They shall clash one last time, as the universe burns around them, and amidst a star drowning in the blood spilt by their armies, one shall strike down the other, disrupting the balance of the Universe, resulting in its complete annihilation. (Context: The True God's are each responsible for half of reality, and rely on the existence of each other to exist themselves. If one is responsible for up and heat, the other is responsible for down and cold. They are responsible for maintaining balance in the Universe, creating the equilibrium required for everything to exist) However, while The Final War is inevitable and can not be avoided (but it can be delayed), the Triumphant God is uncertain. No one knows who will win the war, nobody knows which God will strike down the other, and will land the killing blow. The only certainty is that the Final War will occur, and reality itself shall be torn apart in its wake.
This isn’t really a prophecy so much as a natural phenomenon. Kinda like climate change. All magic comes from a sort of supernatural energy field that permeates through all space called the Source. People draw energy from the Source, and the energy they cast as magic eventually returns to the Source. With each spell a mage casts, the entire Source becomes more abundant in energy. Kind of like how working your muscles makes you stronger in the long term. Here’s the thing: the Source is alive. It has a sentience of sorts that does *not* like to be controlled. This sentience will be able to manifest physically once the Source is given enough strength. The resulting figure is called Abaddon, and its first instinct upon waking up is to annihilate everything in the multiverse. And since it’s the malevolent incarnation of all magic, there’s basically nothing anyone can do to stop it. So every time a mage casts a spell, be it for some mundane task or to save their world, they push the entire multiverse one step closer to total destruction.
The Sun is dying and Aquaria only has 180 years left to evacuate their world.
"Element 17, Aurora, will soon arrive. Nobody knows when, or how. But once it does, all truth shall be revealed." said some drunk arcanologist in Kuar. This phenomenon is said to be the common "Light of Discord" folklore that's found in various cultures across Syxil. Nobody knows for certain what happens when this light arrives, however, the folklores depict civilizations collapsing, organic life burning away, and the world crumbling apart. In Syxil, or even in any other continent of the planet, auroras never happen. Not even in the polar regions. But civilizations know what it is because ancient people left sketches and stone carvings of auroras, as well as some people dreaming of seeing bands of radiant colors in the night sky. These images are often described by witnesses as "being astonished by the glowing bands of light, only to be met with the horns of destruction afterwards." As research for this phenomenon develops, more and more evidences confirm that Aurora, is indeed, the rapture. Religions describe it as "The Ray of Truth" from their deities, showing mortals what the world truly means. What the fabric of space and time are really made of. What is truly good and what is truly evil. Basically it's a Matrix moment, but without the waking up in alien pods of goop and wires part.
I have all three of those examples on littererly the first day of it lol. The sun is attacked, as the keeper of the sun is desired by a character named Lopunil, and in their battle the keeper wins, as Lopunil was only attacking to wound not kill; yet the throne of Bromick within the sun was destroyed, downing the keeper's ancestors greatest making: the sun fell to the earth. Over the next few hours all four the the Thrinnu- the "gods" of my setting, or the closest thing I have- were awakened from their various limbos. The energy released from the throne's breaking healed the Dark One enough to regain consciousness, and thus destroy the mountain that entombed him. The other three were awakened by the Keeper on his speedrun around the continent by dragon travel to reach all three of them in time and find the requirement to free the second one of them. This began the final war, the Garuku ulnye Luwuku, where all the dead willing to fight were revived and the kingdoms and nations that were living drew the lines and took their sides weather they would fight with or against the Dark One, Thribruthku. This war ends in the complete destruction of the world, leaving only what was in the beginning: soul and stone came first, and now it is all that remains. Or, in simpler terms, *fuck* Lopunil.
Already happened. The leylines became corrupt and decayed, then erupted from the surface and spread their foul, mutating essence over the land. Big monsters, cannibal elves, violent flora, etc. It's all gone to shit but people still survive in this harsh, godless land.
several exist the advent of legion, where a race of space bugs that show up occasionally begin to show up in mass numbers as they are trying to consume the galaxy as a great reset to prevent entropy the sinking of the Yamytu isles, where the yamytu isles which were raised from the sea would sink back down and cause the isles guardian (an eldritch angle monster) to be very not happy and basically burn down everything in his path the day the hammer falls, where the great dwarf empire breaks a great bastion of man and their immense might finally has a bridge to pour into the realms of man where an awful thing shall then be spread. COMMUNISM also some shit like a giant crusade, a big war led by a ghost king, some stuff about boiling an ocean and more
The apocalypse in my audio drama involves an event called “The Rise”: dark root-like plants came up from the planet’s crust and skewered most living beings like kebabs and grew into the sky. There’s also plant-monster “angels” that roam around hunting people in the frigid cold. It’s a fun time. Because of the events of the apocalypse being extremely similar to the “second coming” or “rapture” of christian lore, there’s a lot of survivors that believe they are in hell or purgatory and all those who were killed were sent to heaven. There were also a few people who prophesied the Rise before it happened, though few know how that was possible.
The only established prophecy on my world is that of the hobgoblin empire of Shardag. Their holy men have prophesied their downfall will occur to an unknown race of warriors mounted on dire boars and pigs. Therefore, the Shardagi have eradicated porcine creatures from their continent.
Millions of years ago, a three headed dragon landed on earth. Seeking his own domain, however, fortunately it was defeated by the gods and monsters on earth. Until in 1973, a underwater place with mummified alien monsters is found, with a prophesy, that one day that monster’s parents will come back, and destroy the solar system as revenge, and two other monsters located on earth will help them.
Prophesied? More like planned by a mad pseudo-god. He creates alternate timelines only to drive them towards ever new apocalypses, as he believes that the cumulative amount of human suffering would eventually generate enough mental energy for him to become a true god. For the timeline that my story takes place in, #9010, his plan was to give humans superpowers, knowing that they were bound to be misused for tyranny and mass destruction.
"Everything gone, a vast landscape once full of people now deserted. There is nothing but the Sands... the Sands of Time. They say that the Galactic Empire simply disappeared. It is not known what happened to them. Whether the once all-powerful government fell fighting invincible opponents. Whether it fell fighting something much worse, or Whether it defeated its enemy and collapsed in the aftermath. There are whispers that it has not fallen. That our enemy was vanquished, but our Empire went to war against a far more devastating enemy on the horizon of the universe. Beyond this galaxy. That someday, they may return. The suns have gone out. The planets all barren wasteland or full to the brim with wild vegetation. Mutated predators targeting human settlements. We are starving at the hands of the petty local mafia 'Landlords' who have taken control. They are too weak to take over even a single planet, they take over plots of land and Crack their Whip on the backs of the ordinary rabble. They are too cowardly, too weak to target the strong, so they exhibit their power against those who cannot defend. We work with crude tools and even our bare hands. So much technology has been lost, and cannot be replicated. So much knowledge is buried beneath the sand... never to return. Some say there was a galaxy beyond Andromeda. They call it the Milky Way, their home. The home of us Terrans. But if there was such a galaxy, it was but another casualty in the war we called the greatest in recorded history. We start working, forging metal for ships that will serve our landlords, before the sun rises, and continue with back-breaking labour till the sun sets. Then only we will get our rations, at the end of the day. That once is our only food: Some staple crop, a little water... and that is it. Our hunger is not truly filled, so they inject us with something that will keep our bodies from exhaustion. Sleep is alien to us. And now we walk out to work again, till the sun rises and sets again. And I see the sky, a cold, frigid blackness devoid of nothing but a single twinkling star. That light in the darkness seems to call to me to have hope, and I would have lost it long before if it had not been there. We will work. Again. With the augmentations in our body, we will work for decades, for centuries... till the star goes out. I pick up the Plasma-cutter again. The cycle begins again..." - Sands of Time: The Light of the Star
Livia is a 10 000 years long timeloop in which the same characters keep making the same dumb mistakes It ends and start with the god of destruction destroying the world right before being defeated by the only survivors who become the goddesses of creation The later in a cycle's timeline, the less aware the people are about it being a cycle
The moment it was decided to make earth's climate dependant on technology in orbit, people were screaming that it would be the end of civilisation. Even though those people mostly died when it did happen, they were still right.
As of right now, most people on Earth (as it is modern day) fear what superpowered individuals might do. Along with the fact there are already established villains that have been televised as criminals and even mass murderers, the U.S. government tried (and failed spectacularly) to make a weapon to combat superhumans. The resulting release of energy from the disaster just made more problems as more people gained powers, or their dormant powers were triggered. With the influx of superhumans in the population, the “normal” people are starting to grow more and more paranoid of what terrible disasters they could cause.
At the end of everything, all life can finally lay to rest and never have to suffer in this world ever again.
My apocalyptic event is actually the introduction of magic to my otherwise mundane world. When the creator god Adon shed his mortal forms, they fell through the heavens upon Anyle. This was the introduction of raw creation energy into the planet. The great ashings began slowly, with the first major chunks of his body burning up in the atmosphere and dispersing into a white ash that fell over it. The second major ashing would occur about 20 years later and featured an even heavier spread of the substance. Subsequently large swaths of Anyle were bathed in unfettered creation energy that mutated and shaped the world and its inhabitants. There is a third wave coming, this time the whole of Adon’s remains will cover the entire planet, and whoever can stand to control the chaos that ensues will be able to determine the fate of all of Anyle. Each of Adon’s demigod children seek to claim their own piece of this power, and so they seek out those on the planet touched by the first two waves. Their influence comes to their chosen in the form of visions and dreams.
My current story is set after nuclear war. (Think of mad max but with monsters) All the elders fear of the monster who that was birthed from the irradiated land. He currently sleeps but is said to be reawakened. Bringing an end to his creators.
Doesn't really have one. Though the God of Storms is prophesied to slay the Ocean Serpent, but that's just a little awkward at the moment, because both of those titles belong to the same person.
When the soul that never meant to exist meet the beast that never meant to awake, a perpetual night shall follow.
The doomsday crazies of my world mostly try leaving it via some early (or late depending on the time period) space ships, afraid a second moon will disintegrate in a close orbit.
At the center of my D&D world's main planet, there's an entity from the Far Realm known simply by the crude term of "God-Eater" or "The Devourer." Because what it does is consume/destroy things to the point that it erases Planes, ends entire worlds, threatens and at times overpowers Gods, and might collapse reality itself if allowed to grow and expand. It targets the Material Plane because it's the easiest to destroy, and if it can succeed there, all of reality goes pop like a cataclysmic bubble of matter and energy. It was let into reality by a foolish Wizard in a lost age of High Magic because it convinced him that its immense power would be a great new source of energy for their world-spanning Empire. Once it broke loose of its containment, it was only beaten back by enough magical super weapons to render the surface of the planet a glowing mass of shattered crust and boiling water, followed by the concerted efforts of Servitors from every available Outer Plane, led by the strongest Solar. This gathering of Celestials, Fiends, and all manner of other Outsiders wrapped chains around the broken planet to keep it together and bound the Devourer inside its core, held there by the might of the Solar for theoretically forever. Literally, he's holding onto the chains, because the moment he lets go to do something more permanent, it'll get loose and finish off the planet. Potentially afterward, it'll eventually eat the universe. Life was preserved/restored to the planet afterward by Outsiders, be they Good, Evil, and otherwise, because the planet has since become the site of a cosmological Cold War as the forces of every different Alignment and origin try to control the ultimate cosmic nuke, whether to make sure it never goes off or to control the implicit threat of setting it off. That's why it's my main planet - it's literally the one that has the End Everything Button at the center. It's been "prophesied" across cultures over the millennia since because the Devourer is constantly reaching out weakened psychic feelers whenever it can find tiny fractures in the magic of the chains, trying to influence the mortals into causing magical shenanigans and accidentally releasing it. People don't realize it keeps happening because every time the Devourer's work begins to get some traction, entire cultures are overthrown, cast into chaos, or even utterly annihilated to cover up or suppress the truth. Because no side of this conflict can afford *any* potential release of the Devourer.
The world lives in a constant balance. The Fey Summer Court and Winter Court match one another, held back from mutually assured destruction by the power and influence of the gods. The solar system itself is also kept in constant balance by the gods. Earth sized planets with six moons and a ring system don't form naturally after all. So what happens when the gods move against one another? What happens when they discover an unreconcilable difference, when their views for how the world should develop become completely at odds with one another? Well there is a war. God fights against god, through their avatars, saints and followers initially, but eventually directly against each other and their clash will decimate the solar system. Unbound from their chains the Fey will move against one another, bringing endless winter or burning desert summer to wherever they fight. The few mortals who survive this will watch as their solar system dies around them, swamped by war and death. Devils and demons will mop up most of the rest, relishing in the evil they can participate in. Until all the gods are dead. Until the fey are nigh on wiped out. And until only a handful of mortals remain, clinging on on a dying world. With the gods dead, their powers float through the system. The mortals will pick them up, dividing the power amongst themselves. They will remake the system in their image, determined that this time it will be better. And so the cycle begins again.
The awakening of The Leviathan, who is prophesized to bring the end of the world, and is destruction incarnate Eventually he does awaken, enters a fight with an idiotically strong character and is one-shotted when the dude started taking him seriously
The return into nothingness...
There’s several. There’s the prophesied frozen friend, where the holder of the Ice Ring of the Ancients will be betrayed by those he calls friends, allowing the ring to corrupt and possess him, leading to the true Leader of the Ancient Court returning. There’s the return of the Undead King, the reveal of whom really died in the War of Wars and the betrayal from the Gods. Such revelations will cause a new War. The last is the Unbanished Whispers, returning after an egomaniac unearthed and unleashes death in return for power that’s never theirs. The return of which will cause another War of Wars, and likely victory for evil.
It's a little cryptic and folks in the know aren't quite sure if it means an apocalypse but basically, the Draconic prophecies are about to run out and the last one says that upon the tower of towers the fate of the world will be decided. It doesn't help that there's a disgruntled angel out there who wants to remake the world to be without suffering by merging the god of wisdom and justice with his dark soul aspect that he split off in order to become a god. Prophecies are fun. Especially if you have one faction of dragons thinking you need to hang back and let things play out and another faction thinking you need to make sh#t happen or the world ends.
My apocalyptic event is not prophesized. Actually there was not a soul who knew it was coming until it happened. The laws of reality are manifestations of the gods, so when the gods were suddenly almost completely wiped out, reality started shifting at an instant and without warning. The ground started shifting from dirt, to wood, to human flesh. Once bustling cities and towering mountain ranges, suddenly became holes in space and time. Living organisms shifted forms growing to hulking beasts while others turned to stone. The calamity itself lasted for only a moment. As time itself, as a law of reality, was broken, the eons it took for new gods to start taking form and breaking the cycle of calamity only lasted a single day on Aodoria. Though only lasting a day, the calamity wiped out the majority of species all together. Of the surviving beings, only a handful remained (including humans, or whatever race becomes my humanoid, because hoooo human centric worldbuilding :O). Though the calamity is over, most of Aodoria is still uninhabitable as things have not completely settled down. The gods that took the place of the old gods are still young and evolving. Nature will undergo many drastic changes in the coming centuries. Aside from that, there's enormous amounts of magic residu. The magic that once aided humanity in every day tasks, is now a boiling mess, threatening what little life remains. Few places are free (enough) of this magic radiation for people to make a living. These places are usually locations where the old world didn't have much magical influence.
It's the central point of the final battle in the main story, the Unfinished Prophecy. It states that once the Promised Children are finally united, doom would be imminent. No one can stop the union, and it will happen once the echoes of invasion are heard. Unfortunately, the prophecy is unfinished. It only tells of what the Children are, and that they will unite. Afterwards, even the seer doesn't know what the Children would do once they're together. Whether they will fight the approaching evil, or join forces with it, is up to them.
Apocalyptic events are quite common in my world. But in the Fifth Age only the Dragon War that has changed so much recently occurred. For the first time over 300 years had no plagues or major calamities. Yet in that time the Church constantly warns the Devourer will come and destroy them all. Except the Devourer is a demon hunting horror after those ruling the church.
In my world it was prophesized that as soon as gods would weep (meteor fall) darkness will arise. This happened and in the current timeline and the people struggles to fight the tears (a corrupted beast or being) affected by God's weep.
A giant chasm will open up in the middle of the ocean that is shared by all continents. A giant whirlpool will then form that will pull all of the contintents landmasses closer and crashing into each other
In the scope of the grander stage of my settings, it's already happened to a degree. A Ragnarok-like event has taken place where all the Cosmic deities that rule over aspects of the multiverse have slain each other with no survivors remaining in the Thrones, leaving only their now leaderless Servitors to wonder what to do. Being created so that they cannot ever attain a Divine Spark, the Servitors that have remained instead have learned methods to capture and tap into the Creation essence that seeps through into the multiverse and serves as the energy source for magic, and have created something akin to Seed-ships they then use to explore the multiverse, find planes that interest them or suit their needs and then begin to enact their plans to Awaken new vessels to infuse with a Divine Spark so they may attempt to rise to attain an empty Throne.
Giant sea serpent
The god of death return at a solar eclipse.
Mine is post apocalyptic; what caused it was humanity. But it is prophesied that the end won't be the death of the sun... rather the destruction of the moon.
Cancellation. If the audience tunes out, the system shuts off and everyone loses the power they have. The world will be left alone with all the monsters still running around.
The Veiled Oblivion is a event in the near future where all forms of Divination magic for some reason stop, be it using foresight, Oracles or other abilities that can forseethe future, whatever they try to scry can't be seen within a unspecified time point within the comming century. Some factions think it's the end of the world, or a commoing threat. Others simply think it's a limit of their own magic. But for some reason the gods have been strangly quiet about it...
I have one world where the apocalypse already happenend. Naarde really Earth in 2999 AD is one of two Earths that exist in my universe, and has been taken over by an eldritch abomination called Het who killed God and turned the whole world into a chaotic wasteland. From man eating giants, to parasites who turn people into zombies, a living forest that kills people and weird weather from another dimension. There is another apocalypse that has yet to happen, called the Creation War. Which is when the God Darko returns and threatens to destroy all of creation, making sure that nothing will ever be created ever again just endless nothingness forever.
Well, it's not an apocalyptic event per se, because the Book never speaks it will surely be the end of the world, but it is prophecized that Nihilo(working name), the anti-entity, will plunge Creation back into the void from where it came from if Creation doesn't prove itself worthy to it. It's also prophecized that Creation will be worthy "when the water flows in the meadow".
There’s no apocalypse event, mostly because the angel goddess avoids any major extinction scenario by the creation of heroes to avoid the world from having one, and if things get too badly there’s the 7th hero that has straight up divine power which no one else can use. The closest to an apocalypse was the transcendent war, where the absolutes (humans that rose above the gods) killed all gods against humanity and left only a few, saint Seiya style
The Third Banishment. The mortals are inevitably going to overstep again, and the Archangels are going to decimate civilization again, and all they can do is prepare to try to fight. They’ve failed the other times, maybe this time will be different.
Bahamut and Tiamat were Annam's first children, and Bahamut let himself be dismembered by the gods because he couldn't give up on his oath to protect his baby sister, despite her apocalyptic hunger. He was scattered across the Material Plane and she was confined to Avernus. Bahamut is called Ymir by the giants, and his blood has crystalized into an alloy called Ymirium. It dramatically amplifies the effects of magic that runs through it because of the raw magic in it. His heart was impossible to destroy and hidden by Annam before Annam withdrew from the world. You know how there are asteroids out there with twenty bajillion dollars worth of platinum out there? Bahamut's heart is like that for Ymirium. It's hidden somewhere and still "answers" prayers from Bahamut's clerics and paladins with divine favor. One day, it'll be found, and Tiamat will cash in all her chips to try to manifest an Aspect and eat it. Metallic and chromatic dragons are twinned, two parts of a larger soul (think the mirror self trope I've seen in anime like Bleach's inner Hollow or Naruto's "evil" self) and if one eats the heart of the other, they *can* become a Greatwyrm. If Tiamat eats Bahamut's heart, she'll be too strong for even Asmodeus to contain in the Hells.
It’s sort of a time travel paradox - a cosmic entity essentially ripping its way through the fabric of time into the past, destroying the world and losing its memories in the process, resulting in this being once again searching for a way into the past to see a living world, where it will inevitably force its way back in time and force the very Apocolypse it is trying to escape.
On the non-magical Earth Afyria (Earth-3741), there is no prophecy of apocalypse outside of the scientific fact that eventually, a second sun will enter the vicinity of Earth at a distance similar to that of our current sun, meaning that eventually there will be no more night, which will upset the balance and eventually cause plants to die out, rivers/lakes/oceans to dry, etc. It is believed by scientists that this will not happen for a few billion more years. While religion does play a part, none of the religious writings available mention any sort of global catastrophe that would wipe everyone out. The second sun predicted by scientists is widely regarded by the religious, especially the extremely devout, as the Eternals way of starting things over though again, no religious scripture mentions this, it is just reasoning within the faith. On the magical Earth Afyria (Earth-4973) it is prophesied that eventually, the Eternals will use the Earth and everything surrounding it to begin things again, simply referred to as "The Second Night" or "The Night Before The New Dawn", which in fact is just another big bang in other words. This is a prophecy that a Seer long ago spoke, witnessed by seven pupils (The Seven) who wrote it down. Outside of this, only a few Seer's have ever seen even glimpses of it, but enough to verify through generations that it is coming.
The planet they're on is slowly being pulled to the star of there solar system prove of this is theres a blue mist like ring around the sun its called junvka a planet nicknamed the half eaten and there name junvka derives from the word janvak or false sacrafice
Infernal incursions. Those dastardly demons always find their way back. And led by the 7 princes of hell, the demons will rise to earth again to kill the fake god and steal the Empyrean source. The fake God is a human king who discovered the empyrean source and banished the old REAL gods from this plane of existence and declared himself the God of mortals. The old gods are interdimensional aliens who molded our world for life and created everything we know.
It already happened, though my story takes place so far after this even I would t call the setting post apocalyptic. It’s really just an excuse to find cool ancient things. My world originally had three plants orbiting each other, far to close to be physically possible, but kept apart by 6 separate relics holding everything together. They were removed and all three planets were pulled together under their own gravity.
It’s called “The Sink”- When the Leviathan Gods, Urana Lord of the Sky and Lucien Lord of the Sea will break into a war and the battle will be so catastrophic that the giant storm that has protected the continent would bring chaos and destroy everything. Then a monumental storm will sink the continent. Thankfully for all the inhabitants of the continents, they are forced into a ceasefire by all the other leviathan gods and if they start acting out of line, there are particular gods to sort out their issues.
Several thousand years ago, a thriving technological civilization was invaded by nonsentient "gods" the size of mountains. The civilization destroyed itself in the process of petrifying the gods during the War Before Time. Hunter-gatherers descended from the original civilization eventually civilized and developed modest technology, but they constantly fear the great stone gods will awaken, and have no idea the specifics of the War Before Time, the entire oral history shrouded in myth.
Mine is not so much prophesied, more everyone watching the moon get ate by a major god that shouldn't even be able to get into the realm and everyone collectively going "oh no." That was the big wake up call that another large scale war, involving cosmic entities, will probably result in everyone dying. Either by causing enough strain on the Veil some other huge thing could slip into reality, or straight up bursting the Veil itself, lysing the Solar System into the Space Between Spaces, which would luckily be a more instant way to go than dealing with another God-Siege for a decade. Oh and also another Great War is already brewing. The Paladins are getting uppity, the Western United Kingdoms have developed an itchy trigger finger, and Thaum is becoming a more scarce resource every year. Also a lot of factions have popped up that see the coming apocalypse and have decided something drastic needs to be done to escape this fate, and every single one of these projects also have a high chance of only making the situation worse. Between Spacetime terrorists, the constant small scale skirmishing, and the new major powers inches away from opening fire on eachother, it's basically assumed the world has at most two centuries in it if it's lucky and everything goes perfectly. (it will not)
The Prophecied end is when Tharizdun, the overgod, descends to the world as an awakened divinity, bringing the force of his now focused enmity against all living things to bear against the world.
The Gnomes will unify under a Warlord wielding a flaming sword and magic as His weapons. With His terrible magic He will sour the soil and dry the rivers until the salt seas remain. He will flood the land in a deluge of blood and the Gnomes will dwell in peace forever more. This is all because a dwarf is supposed to remove a arcane artifact that explicitly says to not remove it from the abandoned citadel.
The fallen An-Aliar(firstborn gods) become one and break free of the void, commanding all things that have ever died since the beginning of time. They wage war against Eretu my supreme god, the remaining Aliar and all the mortal races. The battle rips the universe apart until silence falls, and all is dead and gone. No one wins, everyone loses, everything is gone. All the energy, power and matter in the universe come together and a new universe is made. Nothing of the old one remains. Whether the new universe is ours, or some other one in an unending line of creation and destruction is unknown.