Natural Law Rubric
Heya Anvilites! Ademal here at last with a rubric for the Natural Law prompt.
That's right, I'm the judging the 2nd prompt and I'm here to inspire you to make the coolest natural disaster that you can. So let's crack on, shall we?
I like to refer to the Natural Law template as a Phenomenon, because I think it underscores that it is the expression of your world's physics. Ghost sightings are a phenomenon of a world with ghosts. Magic and spellcasting are phenomena of a world with magic. Rift storms are a phenomena of a world of eldritch horrors.
Disasters are phenomena which express the dangers of an environment.
For this prompt, I'm happy to read about a classification of disaster or a particular instance of it, though I think the best entry will discuss both, describing the circumstances which cause the disaster.
My favorite entry will combine both the physical
Where applicable, I would like you to describe the disaster as the classification of a series with particular instances
Based on that presumption, I have some questions for your phenomena:An environmental or other large-scale natural disaster
Prize: $50 gift card for Kobold Press, World Anvil, Cantrip Candles, DriveThruRPG or HeroForge. Additionally, a pen and colored pencil doodle related to your work, and/or 5 Midjourney-generated illustrations
Example
The thunder storms that visit us are grander and more terrific than I have ever seen before. We watch them as they approach from the opposite side of the lake, observing the lightning play among the clouds in various parts of the heavens, and dart in jagged figures upon the piny heights of Jura, dark with the shadow of the overhanging cloud, while perhaps the sun is shining cheerily upon us. One night we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before beheld. The lake was lit up—the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness.
On September 1816, Mary Shelly visted Bath, England and attended the scientific lectures of Dr. Wilkinson, who suggested that electricity might someday be used to bring inanimate matter to life. This resonated with Mary, whose nightmares and fantasies were still tormented from the storms she witnessed in Geneva — storms of incredible power fueled by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia on April 1815. This was the Year Without Summer, and its intense gloom would forever be captured in Frankenstein.
“…When I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.
Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me...”
In this year, the United States and Europe faced crop failures from incessant dark and rainy days, and India faced a devastating Cholera epidemic.
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