I have been running an off and on tabletop game with my group (myself and another DM have been swapping back and forth running separate campaigns) and we are a couple sessions in and I need some advice on the handling of my setting, how to deal with various play styles all in the same group, and how to move my story forward without really railroading the group. I could think of no better place to ask for advice.

I'll start with the basic rundown of the world/setting, which is using the Pathfinder ruleset by the way. For centuries now civilization as we normally imagine it in these fantasy games has collapsed. It all started with a grieving wizard trying to do away with the Tarrasque after losing everyone he cared about to the beast's hunger. After repeated failures this poor soul enlisted the aid of an unsavory council of mages (liches in fact) to help him prefect a banishing ritual to do away with the beast. The council agreed to help, but of course, having their own agenda turned on the wizard and twisted his ritual to instead summon tarrasques from a multitude of parallel worlds, resulting in the world being decimated, an event now known as The Ravaging. What few survivors were left after this event have scraped by a meager existence ever since, never fully able to rebuild as the beasts awaken and ravage the world every century like clockwork. The majority of Elves, resident Fey, and probably quite a few Halflings have erected a massive barrier around a large forest to prevent the beasts from reaching them, living in isolation and letting none enter or leave (one of the PCs actually is an Elf that chose to leave, possibly having found a fault in the barrier that allowed him to leave, we haven't worked all that out just yet). Most of the Dwarves and a vast majority of the Gnomes have chosen to hide themselves away in a deep mountain keep with adamant walls to prevent the beasts from reaching them, and just as with the elves, rarely let anyone in or out. This leaves the human population mostly to their own wretched existence, and with their shorter lifespans there are few who have seen a Ravaging, and few still who know how things got the way they are. Being adaptive and ingenious as they are though humans have found ways to avoid extinction, mostly by escaping via ships to this worlds equivalent of Antarctica and waiting out the Ravaging. You may wonder why then they do not simply settle the frigid wastes and live out their days there, and the answer, mostly for story purposes, is that there are limited resources to support life, and so the cycle carries on, with mankind fleeing to avoid extinction only to have to go back to the ravaged world they left behind to start over again.

What I failed to take into consideration though when making the setting is the implications to the countryside having potentially hundreds of colossal creatures burrowing in and out of the ground, as well as the impact on local wildlife, as we all know a single tarrasque eats quite a bit, this raises the question of how much would actually be left after a ravaging, and of what is left what kind of animals would remain. So far the group has encountered Gnolls with hyenas, Goblins with a Hobgoblin and Ogre, a Velociraptor, and a Dire Tiger while out in the world, and a python living in an underground river. At this point though I'm having a hard time deciding how much is left after a Ravaging, and just what kind of creatures would even be able to survive so many apex predators stomping around looking for a meal before hibernating for another hundred years. Any suggestions and input would be appreciated on this matter.

The party I have adventuring in this world is a mismatched group of lost souls who spent much of their time as scavengers gathering what materials they could locate in scattered ruins to keep their coastal village "thriving" for lack of a better term. They consist of:

1. A Gnome Alchemist, optimized for crafting rather than combat, who believes with ever fiber of his tiny being that he is actually just a short Dwarf. He was raised as a Dwarf when he was taken in by them after his birth parents were attacked by undead when he was a wee toddler, and legit believes he is son of a dead Dwarf Chieftain.

2. An Elf Wizard, practitioner of the Void Elemental School, and all around curious fellow interested in taking notes on all that he sees as this is his first foray into the world beyond the barrier the Elves hide behind. He is a bit scatterbrained, unobservant, and on more than one occasion has gone completely oblivious to dangers around them because he is lost in a book, in thought, or just speaking with the intelligent sword they found.

3. A Kuru Bloodrager. Kuru are a tribal and cannibalistic people, usually living on islands. This particular Kuru though was forcibly exiled after violating tribal law and killing (and subsequently eating) the daughter of their tribal chieftain. As a Bloodrager he is essentially a Barbarian and Sorcerer rolled into one, relying heavily on Strength and Charisma, while only having a 5 Intelligence, so he is dumb as a brick, and speaks mostly in grunts, broken English, and a smattering of kuru words that the Wizard is still trying to learn to better understand. He chose to take the Nemesis feat, and as such will have to deal with the tribal leader coming after his head sooner or later.

4. A desert-dwelling Human Ranger with a Falcon as his companion. He focuses mostly on melee with a falchion, but also carries his father's bow for times when engaging a foe toe to toe may be unwise. The falcon serves mostly as an eye in the sky to watch for potential threats and thanks to a spell usually keep watch all night without suffering exhaustion. The player has come up with a very rich cultural background of his own, and I'm quite happy with what he's made. The character reveres several "spirits" and can regularly be heard asking them to guide his strikes, take his foes, or protect the party, and has a multitude of masks representing various aspects. I think this may by far be my favorite character in the group.

5. Rounding out the group is An Aasimar (Agathion-Blooded iirc) Druid (Bear Shaman) who also happens to be a were-bear. I don't honestly know much about this character as he was absent from session 1 and was only involved in part of the second session. I know he's combat focused, and as I recall is planning to fully armor his bear companion. And in case you are wondering, I allowed him to be a were-bear because of the nature of the campaign and recognizing that dealing with Tarrasques will require them to have any advantage they can get.

I'll continue on in the next post with a brief recap of what has happened thus far, and what I hope to pull off moving forward.

So session 1 began with PCs 1-4 (no druid) heading into some fairly nearby ruins to see what they could recover only to stumble upon some goblins doing the same. The Hobgoblin leader of course was not too keen on sharing the spoils and a fight broke out, with the group quickly dispatching a couple goblins. Things starting turning for the group though when the Hob called in their secret weapon, an Ogre Berserker who quickly made short work of the Ranger, rendering him unconscious with a single blow before turning to the next closest PC, which I think was the Kuru, who also fell quickly as they were not really supposed to actually stand and fight this ogre, but flee for their lives. Luckily for them they each started with a nice magical item that was meant to reflect something they had scavenged up in the past, and the Kuru happened to have a tribal relic with him, a stone that allows him to channel as a cleric, making him the emergency healer of the group, and as he dropped the stone activated healing him and the Ranger. The Ranger then was able to activate the enchantment on his falchion that let him fly and was able to take down the ogre with his bow while staying out of reach. The ogre's collapse then caused a cave in of an old system of tunnels under the ruins which lead our party down below in search of more earthly treasures such as gems and ore (the "dwarf" likes mining, go figure).

After finding a few deposits of ore and gems, including a rather substantial mythril vein, the party found their way to a massive steel door deeper below the surface. I forget which character scouted ahead, but this was the point that I was first made aware that the "dwarf" had a severe phobia of undead, a backstory snippet I was not yet aware of. When the scout returned advising the group that the halls beyond the door were lit with purple flames and the first room he reached contained skeletons in cages hanging from the ceiling the "dwarf" showed his true colors and refused to go any further (though in the end he did end up following at a safe distance after drinking one of his invisibility potions). The tribal relic made the dungeon beyond easy, as the channeling of positive energy make quick work of all the skeletons and zombies they were put up against, but not before the Kuru contracted a fatal disease (a plot hook I had put in place to lead them to an NPC that would be able to cure said disease). They quickly found their way into a room stacked high with treasure galore, new magic items, and various other mundane items such as tapestries, jeweled mugs, and the like. While rummaging through the stacks of coins (something that really holds no value in a world like this..) a hidden door slid open and in walked the Vault Guardian, seeking to protect his master's hoard. Even without the channeling from the stone the party made quick work of the "boss" and found beyond the hidden door yet another room full of treasure, more magic items, and though they did not know it yet, the phylactery of one of the Liches from the Council I mentioned earlier.

((At this point I'd like to point out that the majority of magical knowledge is lost as well, so few alive even know what a lich is, much less a phylactery or how to destroy one.))

The "Dwarf" upon seeing the Vault Guardian had immediately fled back to the entrance of this dungeon, somehow slammed the door shut and proceeded to try and weld it shut to keep the scary, scary skeleton champion from ever getting out, sealing the rest of the party in the dungeon as well. Luckily for them, a 3 foot tall gnome could not effectively weld the door shut and they were able to reopen the door when they returned with their spoils of war. The "Dwarf" player in turn told me he did not deserve experience for the dungeon, and received a much lower amount of exp from the session.

The next day the Kuru's skin felt harder, but being dumb as a rock thought nothing of it and went about business as usual while the "Dwarf" set about crafting with the ore he had dug up beneath the ruins. The next day his skin got harder still, and it was becoming harder to move, the Druid, and maybe the Wizard quickly determined he was not well, and if left untreated would suffocate in his own body when his soft tissue hardened to the point his lungs would no longer function. ((for those curious, he had contracted Vile Rigidity)) None in the town had the means to cure the affliction, only delay the symptoms with alchemy, so they set out to find the old witch who could fix their dumb friend and remove a curse the "Dwarf" had picked up from a cursed weapon in the vault.

The witch agreed to help, requiring payment and labor for her help, and after curing the disease and removing the curse advised them what they held (the phylactery) and that it must be destroyed asap. So they will be setting out next session to look for the lost knowledge of how to destroy it...

Okay, first off, multiple tarrasques is INSANE! Those things are, what? Fifty feet tall and probably close to that wide? I feel a great swell of pity for your poor world! I would imagine that the damage would be extensive and, dare I say, apocalyptic, not much of anything left, at all.

Now, that said, a few thoughts that came to mind as I was reading this were:

1) About how many tarrasques are we actually talking about, here? 10? 100? More? The more there are, of course, the more devastating the outcome for the world and it's wildlife. If there was an ungodly amount of them summoned at the beginning, it could be entirely possible that they ended up consuming ALL of the wildlife and, perhaps, begun to turn on one another leaving only one or two left,

2) Exactly how big is your world? Did the Ravaging take place all across the planet or, rather, was it confined to just a certain part (i.e. The continent on which the grieving wizard lived and perhaps some of it's outlying islands or whatever)? If it was a planet-wide catastrophe, you might pigeon-hole yourself into a never-ending post-apocalyptic scenario. On the other hand, if the Ravaging was more localized (say, to the "known world" as far as the PCs understand it), there's hope that, beyond the utter desolation of everything they know, there are new lands teaming with life and promise,

*shrugs* Lots of things to consider and factor in, I suppose, and I have a tendency to waaaaaaaay overthink things, at times, but, there you have my initial thoughts for what they're worth.


I see you've added a second post... allow me to peruse.

Before setting out the group decided it was better to over-prepare than under-prepare and set about using their spoils to craft gear and reinforce a wagon with the mythril they had mined. So now they have a mythril-plated wagon, with metal axles, metal wheels, and a mounted crossbow turret. Such a shiny "tank" is sure to catch the eye of ever thief, raider, and scavenger in the wilds as they travel, a fact I don't think they thought out that I can exploit...

Given that knowledge I have decided to have a particularly slippery thief follow the group, at a distance of course, to wait for an opportune moment to strike, leading the group to chase her down and end up following her through a portal to the Plane of Shadows, where they'll either confront her and she'll convince them that without her they can't escape this plane, or she'll pull a fast one and leave them stranded before they have a chance to catch her at all, leaving her free to loot to her heart's desire as they fight to survive.

Given the fact that the Plane of Shadows is usually a perverse reflection of the Material I have decided that the ruins of the Material will give way to fully populated cities on the Shadow. Twisted places, fully populated by natives of the Plane, and not too friendly to outsiders, especially outsiders who bring light, which many denizens cannot bear.

My first concern, seeing how skittish the Gnome can be, and the superstitious nature of the Kuru, is that only part of the party will enter the portal, and if that happens the thief could potentially split the party across two different planes of existence, with neither splinter party having the know-how to reunite the group as a whole. The splinter on the Material could set out to either find the thief and force her to reunite the party, or seek the aid of the same witch that saved the Kuru from certain death, while the splinter on the Shadow tries to avoid detection by the locals and death by the local fauna. Or, if they are feeling particularly charismatic they could try to talk to the locals, explain what happened, and either find a way out that way, or even negotiate a safe place for the remaining humans on the Material to take refuge in the Shadow... Or maybe the knowledge they seek on destroying the phylactery can be gained from a resident spellcaster, but at a price, probably a favor or quest...

The original plan for them to find this lost knowledge is to locate the lost sanctum of the wizard I mentioned in my first post, the one that hired the liches. If they could find his sanctum, and any of his notes survived they could potentially gain lots of lost knowledge and uncover further clues to the cause of all this.

As for the Long Term plans, the group has found an intelligent blade (though only the Wizard knows this I think), one designed by the ancient wizard I keep mentioning, with a very specific set of abilities to aid in the slaying of the Tarrasque, and even though the group is far from being able to take on the Beasts themselves (I think level 6-8 or so atm) the plan is to use the blade, empowering it with each slain tarrasque, while also following the breadcrumbs to the architects of this apocalypse, the Council of Twelve, the liches that doomed this world and prevent them from awakening the Sealed God of Destruction before the entire world is rendered incapable of supporting life.

So to answer the questions, I have not fully decided just how many there are, I doubt anyone on the world truly knows. I've settled on "hundreds" being the assumption, and that may have well just been the original number with as you said, some of them turning on each other, or potentially starving to death as the ages pass due to lack of food. Another point though that has no precedence, as there has only ever been one per world, is what happens if they breed, the initial hundreds multiplies to ungodly numbers.

There are 3 continents on this world, the one the campaign is set in, a desert continent across the sea (which as with the frozen wasteland would be unlikely to support the rest of the population with the limited resources they have available), and the Antarctic land mass I mentioned previously. The Tundra and Desert are Tarrasque free, but simply not capable of supporting all the refugees from the main continent. I ruled rather early on that the Tarrasque is a fairly reptilian creature, therefore cold blooded and incapable of surviving for long in the frozen continent which is why remaining humans flee there when the time of the Ravaging approaches. They would take with them what livestock they keep, a few cows, oxen, chickens, goats, what have you in order to keep at least some animals alive. I have plans that at least one brood of dragons lives somewhere on the continent, and I imagine if anything can wait out a ravaging it's dragons with their intellect and might...

I would seem fair that at least a handful of each of the monstrous humanoid races, as well as some wildlife survive each ravaging, finding somewhere they can hole up. Otherwise there would be no goblins, no gnolls, no wildlife, nothing to give the humans hell when they return from their arctic hideaway.

...the geology, climate, and small number of the continents makes it kind of tough, for sure. Factor in the "high-magic" aspect of your setting and, I've gotta admit, I'm stumped.

I'm not a big fan of high-magic realms, myself (PCs planes-walking and the like), as I find it really complicates the living crap out of things for me. In most all of my campaign settings, the magic level is really low OR magic is costly to wield (spells can take hours or days, the "mage" suffers hp and/or stat loss from the casting, things like that)... "Magic is the domain of gods and dragons. Trifling with such powers as a mortal can lead to nothing but madness."

Anyhoo, my own predilections where magic is concerned aside, I think that's where your solution lies. Based on what you've described, I think the only way things could be resolved, or even continue on, for that matter (especially with folks living in a world where hundreds of terrasques are running around), would have to be the result of some pretty hefty magical or divine intervention.

I'll have to give all of this a LOT more thought if I'm going to be of anymore assistance than that, I'm afraid.

I see potential solutions being, in no particular order:

-Slaying all Tarrasques, a hefty task.
-Finding a way to reverse the ritual that summoned them, effectively sending them home.
-Escaping to one of the parallel worlds that no longer has a tarrasque, which while being safe let's the Council succeed in freeing the sealed God.
-Die a horrible death inside a tarrasque.

If I were running this campaign...

First, Tarrasque are, as Eol has said, huge destructive beasts. They hunger, eat, sleep, hunger, eat, sleep, and are rather indiscriminate when it comes to what they eat and destroy in the process. In short, your world is screwed each and every time the Ravaging occurs.

You're right, the land mass upon which these Tarrasque reside would experience massive changes every Ravaging. Burrows, forests destroyed, mountain ranges altered... there's no end of change possibilities.

Being large and ravenous, Tarrasque are also solitary except for mating. I'd have them do both every Ravaging. Kill and eat rival males while mating with the females. So, each Ravaging could also include hatching periods. Scary to contemplate, really.

Now, what does this do to the fauna and sentient beings on the continent? Well, you've already established humans high-tailing it to the arctic while the other races have secularized themselves. Why couldn't the other races have done the same (hobgoblins, drow, orcs, goblins, etc.)? After all, Tarrasque wouldn't get deep into mountain ranges, canyons, etc. with their burrowing and that leaves room for many subterranean civilizations to be struck by other races and/or including humans. Honestly, hundreds of Tarrasque, in my opinion, could beat down any walls constructed to keep them out. What's going to keep them away from the populace isn't crafted defenses per se, but more natural ones. Huge and deep crevices the provide the stupid lizards enough footing to take them out over the depths and then it crumbles away under their weight to send them crashing into the depths and away from the occupants of the safe zone.

Next, let's take the human lifespans into consideration and apply the same method of survival to other creatures. Everything from rats to giants. Every one of those species have lifespans. Those with longer lifespans and intelligence (like your dragons) would have developed methods for surviving the Ravagings, while those of a shorter more human-like lifespans would have done something similar to the humans if they could, or—like rabbits—would be able to overcome near extinction with their ability to rapidly reproduce. So long as a male and a female survive they can repopulate in the 100 years between Ravagings.

Like Eol said, I'd have this world be a post apocalyptic version of high-fantasy. Magic is a mystery waiting to be uncovered, but it is obviously not unknown. Magic items, existing gates, portals, magical sites, etc. as well as the existence of weird and fantastic wildlife clue people in.

The trick is to not make it so bleak that the players get frustrated and don't want to continue so you need to give them wins without giving them too much power. Frankly, I wouldn't even have them aware of the quest to end the Ravagings. I'd continue to give them hints and tastes of success through these small quests, but I'd be absolutely sure not to overpower them with magic items. Everything needs to be a skin of their teeth success; something to talk about, laugh about, and reminisce.

Now, you've got a scared "Dwarf" and I'd award experience for playing that hurdle through while at the same time, I'd provide the players with a method(s) for overcoming the fear and continuing everything as a group. Maybe a magic item or a quest that allows him to face his fears and overcome the phobia. Something... While I prefer to promote the type of character development you've outlined your players doing, I also need them to work as a group and be cohesive. So, if I can't get the party to follow-up on, or play through the character overcoming their challenge that's keeping the group from moving forward together, I adjust the adventure to make it possible for them to move forward together. I absolutely despise splitting up player characters. It slows the game down for some of the players and stops it for others. Just plain sucks.

Mind you, I'm shooting from the hip here. So, bear with me if these thoughts seem scattered.

Instead of having a thief take them into the Plane of Shadows, I'd have the thief take them into a secret enclave, ruined city, or something else that helps the "Dwarf" overcome the phobia.

Aside from what I'm detailing here, what was your question(s)?

I offered the group a couple campaign options, selling this one as a post-apocalyptic setting and explained the details to the group when they made the decision, though they are not aware of the full over-arcing story and plot, only that the world is pretty messed up.

I guess what I was really looking for was some outsider input on how to handle what survives and what may actually be extinct at this point. The idea of hiding out in canyons and cave had not really come to me when I was thinking this through, and I like it, so thank you for that. Taking that into consideration I can likely assume that most of the wildlife left would be creatures that are normally mountain dwelling, though they would have to spread out from the mountains in search of food after the ravaging ends, I imagine a severed Tarrasque tail or something similar would feed a pack of mountain-dwelling wolves, or orcs for that matter, for quite some time before the buzzards picked it clean.

I'm realizing the biggest issue now with the thought of them fighting amongst themselves, the regeneration and the fact that nothing short of a wish/miracle can truly kill a Tarrasque, so even if they are duking it out over mating rights, the loser would just end up getting back up after the fact and we're not down any beasts after all, in fact the population continues to rise with young being hatched every cycle...

I had not taken the damage to the countryside into effect at all, that honestly only just came to me while I was making my posts, and I think for simplicity sake it's best that I keep the map as is, especially since the timeline of the adventure has the last ravaging happening nearly 100 years ago, so nothing would have changed in the time this party has been active.

Honestly I'm kinda set on the Plane of Shadows coming into play, I like the idea that the cities on that plane still flourish and prosper, since even if there was a Shadow Tarrasque it now resides on the Material rather than terrorizing the Shadow-dwellers.

I have warned the player of the "Dwarf" that his phobia is likely to come up pretty often, and it will be something we need to explore him working past for the sake of the game and flow of things, so that is presently in the works as well.

Now a new question that I just thought of, what would be the moral implications if the group decided this world was beyond saving and instead found a way to flee this Plane and let the God of Destruction be unleashed again as his bonds grow weaker with each ravaging? If they do decide to flee, do they try to get the Elves and Dwarves on board, do they make the trip across the sea to invite the desert natives, or is it acceptable in this situation for a group of desperate people to just get out as quickly as possible and never look back, essentially moving the game to another world, with a real economy, and no giant murder-beast rampaging every century?

I realized that you also asked what kind of solutions to present to the players. The way I see it, you're correct about the Tarrasque population becoming amazingly out of hand... unless the lich council did something to contain it. What was the reason for the liches to bring the Tarrasques into the world to begin with? To free the god of destruction? Here's the problem with total destruction: there's nothing left to rule over. I, personally, don't see the liches being favorable of the idea of a world where nothing exists by Tarrasques, so they could be "allowing" the population to exist at a certain level using Wishes or other magic to contain it so they can rid the world of the Tarrasque infestation when their god is freed and thus have a world to rule over.

Personally, I'd put the solution to the players and provide them with multiple ways of dealing with it. It is, after all, as much their game as yours.

• Slaying all Tarrasques, a hefty task. (But for those players who love combat, a Disneyland like experience!)
• Finding a way to reverse the ritual that summoned them, effectively sending them home. (In this, they will not only be able to avoid the daunting task of facing off against Tarrasques left and right, but at lower levels could see success—if they can overcome the lich obstacle too...)
• Escaping to one of the parallel worlds that no longer has a tarrasque, which while being safe let's the Council succeed in freeing the sealed God. (If my players chose this, I'd allow it but I'd have it be something that comes back to haunt them regularly. Characters are supposed to be heroes and this is by far the least heroic of the solutions. Of course, being unable to see past the forest of Tarrasques may lead them to this solution so you'll need to make sure they have the other options as viable solutions to begin with.)
• Die a horrible death inside a tarrasque. (I still talk about my Paladin who gave up his life in exchange for the lives of his people while he was duke. There was no fighting involved. His people were severely outnumbered and outclassed and the common folk would suffer fates worse than death, so my paladin offered up his life in exchange for theirs. He was simply beheaded by the opposing leader and that was that... or so I thought. My DM and I continued to run campaigns in that realm and when my new character came to that domain there was a statue erected of my paladin and stories were told about his heroic sacrifice. If you can make them go down in history, this might just be an option they willingly choose.)

Now a new question that I just thought of, what would be the moral implications if the group decided this world was beyond saving and instead found a way to flee this Plane and let the God of Destruction be unleashed again as his bonds grow weaker with each ravaging? If they do decide to flee, do they try to get the Elves and Dwarves on board, do they make the trip across the sea to invite the desert natives, or is it acceptable in this situation for a group of desperate people to just get out as quickly as possible and never look back, essentially moving the game to another world, with a real economy, and no giant murder-beast rampaging every century?

Again, this would be up to the players and whatever their choice, I'd have there be consequences. Let's say they do decide to flee and they do attempt to get the other races to flee with them. Not only does the God of Destruction get to basically devour the world they left behind but perhaps it "follows" them into the new one. Then the native population learns of the reason they are now faced with a great Ravaging of their own plane/world and now the player characters are faced with trouble on multiple fronts. Let's say they attempt to convince the older races to leave and learn that it is actually because of humans that the world is threatened with destruction. The older races had been the reason the god had originally been jailed (but they don't remember how) with the help of humans, but humans are the reason everything has gone wrong and now the players are suggesting they just up and leave? How dare they! Cowards!

See where I'm going with this? Leave it up to the players but whatever their choice, consequences follow.

With the realization that these Beasts would like fight each other for the limited amount of food, as well as mating rights, would it be too much of a stretch to say that one Tarrasque could in fact overcome another Tarrasque's regeneration and DR, meaning that a Tarrasque could in fact kill another Tarrasque without the need for Wish or Miracle?

Allowing this could then lead to the idea of using a fallen Tarrasque's claws and teeth to forge weapons specifically to take down other Tarrasque. That is of course assuming that the residents of this world put two and two together and figure out that the dead Tarrasque were killed by another and that the Beasts counteract their own natural defenses...

If that's the way you want to do it, you are welcome to. I see no problem with making alterations to certain aspects of monsters based on my campaign.

If there is a way to actually stop the Reckoning from happening, I would wonder why the longer lived races -- in particular, the elves and dragons -- would not have solved this problem already.

I cannot imagine them letting this continue for more than two or three Reckonings before they solved this problem, even if it required someone of human blood in order to solve it.

That's my biggest wondering.

And if there is no way to actually solve the problem, I'm surprised the intelligent, long-lived races haven't actually just shifted themselves to some other plane of existence. If the lich council could shift every single Godzilla from every other plane, surely the elves and dragons can figure out how to gate themselves to a Godzilla free plane, right?

The short answer as to why the Elves (and Dwarves for that matter) haven't found a way to undo (or escape) this mess in the ~800 years or so this has been going on is simply that I did not want to do away with entire races in my game world. If I had simply set it up as the Elves all packing up and leaving via some magical portal then I would have had to remove them as a player race as well, because who wants to play the only remaining Elf on a planet over run by Godzillas? That and the Elves are less than willing to abandon their sacred forest to be demolished by Godzillas..

The long of it is that I wanted to set up a segregated setting as I have in order to get the PCs to come to the conclusion that perhaps they should try to pull the other races out of their sanctuary states. If they could get the older races to come out of hiding and cooperate in a concerted effort to fix things that maybe they could, and in the long run build stronger bonds between the currently segregated races than they had in the time before the Ravagings.

As for the Dragons, well I figure when the first couple Ravages happened the Dragons would have fought hard, but ultimately found so many essentially unkillable monstrosities to be too much to handle and were eventually wiped out, all but a couple small scattered broods that remain. I have plans to introduce a mated pair of Copper Dragons, and their brood, holed up near the edge of the forest the Elves are hiding in, and maybe have a couple of Reds living with the Dwarves, raised from whelplings by the Royal Family to preserve dragonkind as well as to help in the forge, what better to keep the flames going strong than a fire-breather. There are probably also plenty of Whites in the Arctic region (but Whites are little more than beasts as it is) as well as Silvers (though they do prefer the mountains, it simply isn't as safe there anymore), and the desert-dwelling dragons have probably seen no decline in their numbers, but are also mostly unaware of the events on the other continent as it in no way effects them yet. This also presents an opportunity for the PCs to try and convince the Dragons to join their struggle, presenting a truly united front against the Ravages, the Liches, and potentially against the God of Destruction if he ends up loose.