Sermon #1: Don't Play With Wormholes

(The following sermon was written on the morning of June 1st, 2007 after a sleepless night gaming. It is slightly out-of-date as it uses the D&D 3.5 system as its foundation, but it is functional nonetheless.)

*ahem*

Ladies and Gentlemen. We have the ability to accelerate an object to the speed of light. We also have the ability to fire said object at anything, and I mean anything, we wish. We sincerely hope that no other government figures out how to create a wormhole. After reading this, you will understand why. Don't try this at home, kids.

This is the DM Cannon. This is the God Machine.

Just for quick reference, here are some facts and wild assumptions.

FACT: One ton/megagram of TNT releases approximately 4.184x10^9 joules of energy.

FACT: 1 stick of TNT (1 pound) in D&D deals 3d6 damage.

ASSUMPTIFACT: Assuming the damage to energy-released relationship is a linear one, one ton of TNT deals 6000d6 damage.

Now, on to the machine itself.

The DM Cannon utilizes the force of gravity and high-level magic to create its effect. It has a surprisingly simple design. First, you set up 2 linked gates (as per the Gate spell, illustrated as Gate 1 and Gate 2), one directly above the other. Both gates must be exactly parallel to each other and perpendicular to the force of gravity, otherwise some rather nasty things may happen. Then, you drop an object into Gate 1 to set it moving in an infinite loop, allowing gravity to generate some very serious acceleration. However, due to air resistance, the object would be unable to accelerate further and would reach its terminal velocity.

Do not fear, dear reader. We've got a way around this.

To prevent the object's velocity from plateauing, you must create a vacuum within the object's path of acceleration. We did it by creating a permanent forcecage, teleporting a Sphere of Annihilation inside, letting it remove all the air within the chamber, teleporting it out, creating our 2 linked gates within the chamber, teleporting our object in and letting gravity take effect.

NOTE: Gnomish ingenuity is a valid replacement for the forcecage and Sphere of Annihilation when creating the vacuum chamber.

Now all we have to do is wait for the object to reach the speed of light. The speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 m/s. An object placed in this chamber with no initial velocity and assuming that Greyhawk has the same gravitational acceleration as Earth (9.81 m/s^2), then it will take approximately 1 hour, 32 minutes, and 8 seconds (922 rounds) to reach the speed of light. Once this occurs, we create yet another set of linked gates, one at the bottom of the forcecage (Gate 3) and one at the strike zone (Gate 4, not shown, somewhere above Madagascar).

ASSUMPTION: Forcecages are impenetrable, immovable objects. They can be dispelled, but not destroyed by physical means.

FACT: It would be hilarious if the above assumption were not correct.

ASSUMPTION: Gates are air-tight, thus the vacuum would remain intact upon opening a new gate within the chamber.

Now for the fun part.

Suspend or dispel Gate 1 through whatever means are at your disposal (We were fortunate enough to have the v.3.5-adapted Dwarven Chanter in our party to suspend the accelerator gate using Counterchant). This sends your ammunition flying at your target at the speed of light, obliterating lots of many things and possibly tearing holes in existence.

We can use e=mc^2 to determine the amount of energy put out by an object. Let's say we use a grain of sand with a mass of one milligram. Even with such a small mass, we produce approximately 8.99x10^10 joules of energy, a blast 20 times greater than a ton of TNT (128,884d6 of damage). Using these mathematics, getting a blast the same size as the bomb dropped on Nagasaki would require only a single gram of matter (dealing about 138,000,000d6) and a blast the size of that tested in "Castle Bravo," the largest bomb ever tested, would require just over half a kilogram of matter (698.299 grams dealing approximately 9x10^10d6).

Our party decided to use an iron golem, since its falling into a spiked pit trap gave both us and our characters the initial idea to create the God Machine. Imagine that.

An iron golem weighs approximately 2.5 tons, the equivalent of 2,267.962 kg. When used as described in the God Machine, it unleashes a whopping 48.718 gigatons of TNT worth in energy (2.923x10^14d6).

Just think of all the destructive capabilities available with the use of a wide variety of munitions, including adamantine cannonballs (ignore planet's hardness, you say?), chunks of ionized rust (the thermite reaction grants the ability to hurl miniature suns and makes shruikens look pathetic), shadesteel golem (it kills everything on the Shadow Plane too!), and of course the Sphere of Annihilation (makes a tunnel from Sharn to Waterdeep just before existence folds in on itself (No, seriously, don't try this, very bad idea.)) just to name a few. As far as the blast radius goes, I'll leave that to my physicist buddy Corn. Once we get all the equations worked out, I might just make a quick table so he can figure out just how doomsdayey your doomsday device really is!

Have fun destroying the multiverse, kids!

:D