This is a bit of a long one, but I am quite proud of myself and want to share. It will take some back storie, but bear with me.

I was running a homebrew sandbox campaign for my friends. I built an island continent with various factions set in opposition, in a spider web of power. It was a balanced world ready to get disrupted. Then I let the players wreck havoc, and the world reacted to them. One faction worship a dragon, another worship a giant magical crystal, etc.

The first thing they do is attack the sorceress queen. She was a major villain ment for later in the game... but they wanted to kill the witch. They end up captured, and forced to do her bidding. She makes them break into the elf headquarters to steal a chunk of the crystal god, a task they completed beautifully.

The players main goal for the first half of the game was to kill the witch, but the elves wanted them dead. Their was a whole prison break, but that's not important. What is important is that the elf of the party was marked: elvish script scarred across his face: "He who cracked the face of God"

I was planning the sorceress to use the fragment of crystal as a phylactery for her section to lichdom, and it would explode when broken. But mid campaign I realized I had potential to do something awesome. The phylactery wasn't the fragment, it was the god itself, something done through the fragment.

Suddenly, He who cracked the face of God would have to finish the job. The massivegemstone would go off like a nuclear bomb, and they knew to expect this.. They quest for the magic items required to do the deed: a magic fortress, a portal staff and a rod of destruction. (I don't remember the proper names or what ones were homebrew)

The plan was to place one end of the portal away from the , sneak into the church, place the other half next to the god, and hit it with the staff blowing it up from a safe distance.

They forgot to place the first half. They realized this in the presence of the entire elvish army and the god itself. In a moment of desperation, they place the magic fortress. Then the marked elvish player jumps from the roof, bringing the rod down on the crystal God.

The crystal blows up like a nuke. The city is destroyed. The PC is long dead. The fortress is obliterated, but the other 2 PC's managed to survive.

It was the best moment of the campaign, especially for the elfs player.