Epic-level campaigns tend to be so massive and "out there" so I'd like to have some creative help from you guys.
Tharizdun really doesn't need 333 gems to escape his imprisonment. He is simply feigning that he is imprisoned because he is certain that otherwise good, evil and neutral gods would have no other choice than to destroy him (which they don't want to do due to certain ramification). In truth, Trarizdun is waiting for his special agent Lich to find That Which Is Hidden From the Gods, which is the most powerful artifact the history has ever seen. It was created in the Far Realms aeons ago and it was meant to destroy the whole multiverse. However embarassingly its magic only works in Far Realm (which is immune to its effect) but it didn't work at all when a Far Realm death squad attacked Prime Material. The artifact was lost because anyone didn't even realize it was an artifact and Far Realm wasn't interested in retrieving the flawed WMD.
Tharizdun is however the only God with ties to Far Realm and the only God aware of the existense of TWIFtG. Now that his agent has retrieved it from the Plains of the Paynims, he escapes his imprisonment and activates the item with his Godly powers which are more powerful than any other being in the Far Realms. After doing this he escapes and leaves the artifact to slowly absorb the whole multiverse.
The only way to destroy the item is the touch of pure Law or Chaos. Such purity is only achievable if all the chaotic creatures or all the lawful creatures join together and make a concentrated effort to destroy the item. Moreover, the side that will destroy will become considerably stronger and the side that didn't destroy it will become much weaker. This will be a permanent effect.
Thus all the demons and other chaotic outsiders (both neutral and good) will join together and devils will join together with lawful outsiders, drawing the mortals into the conflict. There is only one week to go before the multiverse will be destroyed...
How to expand this idea? How to fit this in to Greyhawk canon and make it make sense? Any thoughts?
It sounds interesting, but there is one potential difficulty with your scenario that I will point out, helpfully.
It is conceivable that every single Lawful creature in existance might want to join together to prevent such a catastrophe, but how do you propose such a thing to even be possible. I'm sure Tharizdun didn't activate the artifact and leave it sitting an Oerth in the Prime Material Plane. Even if he did, how would all the Lawful creatures across greyspace from other planets reach Oerth to touch the artifact. On top of that, there are sure to be many Chaotic creatures that are inspired to kidnap some Lawful creatures so that they simply cannot participate in such an undertaking, making the effort completely worthless.
And, for the killing stroke - There is no way all Chaotic creatures would make such an attempt. By their very nature, they will not cooperate for any length of time and many will simply not care enough to participate in such an undertaking for any reason. The Lawful team won't even have to kidnap any Chaotic creatures. There's simply no way all of them would be willing to put forth the effort necessary to save existance.
I guess I could be a little bit more flexible and demand less than every single creature from the same side of Law/Chaos-axis. As you said, kidnapping would be big problem. Like for instance a concentrated effort of 100 million lawful OR chaotic creatures would be much better.
There are more chaotic creatures than lawful creatures (demons vastly outnumber devils) so 100 million would be an easier task for the creatures of chaos than for the creatures of law even though the organization itself is easier the lawfuls.
One hundred million would also be a large enough number to force co-operation between good and evil creatures. Well at least in my Greyhawk... I could of course think about it a bit more.
Actually I wish thinking that Tharizdun left the artifact to Prime Material, because the plane where the artifact is would be consumed first. I think this would incite him to drop it to Prime Material.
For a Greyhawk slant, it is interesting to ponder who the forces of Balance would support, Law or Chaos. Certainly, they want to universe to continue, but they would resent the permanent imbalance that would result in saving it. Perhaps they look for the third, Star Trekian, option that is not immediately obvious, that allows ALL sides to "win."
Also, perhaps this fits into the prophecy of waning magic, in that either the activation of the artifact, or its destruction, is responsible for the inevitable decline of magic on Oerth.
Lastly, perhaps the story follows analogously to the Gord the Rogue books, and rather than attempting to stop the artifact, everyone unites in sealing Oerth off from the rest of the multiverse and sacrifices that one crystal sphere for the benefit of everyone else. Characters stuck on Oerth are no longer able to contact their gods or other planes, summon other-planar monsters, etc., but the destruction is long-term enough (after all, there is no time in the Far-Realm) that campaigns can continue on Oerth.
I think your alterations do improve it quite a bit and they make sense. I also think that IronGolem's suggestion that Neutrals will be miffed at any result is a good one. Perhaps a group of Neutrals could also destroy the artifact just as a group of Lawfuls or Chaotics. Such a three way conflict could make it nearly impossible to any one side to successfully destroy the artifact and gain its powers as all three would fight to utter destruction. As soon as one of the three gained an upper hand in the battle, the other two would gang up against it. As soon as the tide turned toward another alignment, the teams would change again. Thus, it would end with only a very few (one, maybe) of a single alignment coming out victorious. What if the victors were of conflicting alignments - LG/LE or CG/CE? They would then battle until only those sharing similar philosophies were left. If those happened to be CE, the battle would likely continue until only a single extremely powerful individual remained.
Thank you for the comments! Great insight IronGolem, I hadn't thought about it from that perspective.
At the moment I'm considering about the ditching the "100 million" idea as too cumbersome and considering that the artifact (laying in the outskirts of City of Greyhawk) could be destroyed by a complex ritual of one hundred creatures of law OR chaos, but every participant must be epic or near-epic (e.g. pit fiends and solar angels OR balors and ancient gold dragons).
A hidden option for the neutrals is also a good idea, but their weakness would be that while lawfuls and chaotics already have a clear idea what to do, neutrality is either trying to figure out another way or joining one of the sides as reluctant henchmen.
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