Fire orb detonated in in my players hands, in the middle of a city. How do I run this...
As the title states my party members ran the "trouble in Yartar" encounter and collected a Fire elemental orb. However, they did not realize the box it was in paused the countdown to detonation. They removed the orb and just carried it around in a backpack. It has now detonated and I need help running the encounter that would result from this.
My 1st instinct is to just run the encounter as the entire city of Yartar is now engulfed in flame ( even though this is bit of an an exaggeration of the orbs powers). But I am not sure how to make this impactful. To set the exact scene: the players are sitting inside an inn planning to turn over a fake orb to the Harpers (who they do not trust for character reasons). They didn't know the orb was a time bomb, and so while they were winding down for the night the orb detonated while they drank in the taverns main room.
Has anyone run a city in flame type encounter? Anyone have any resources that could help? While I have the idea of what I want to do, I could use some help how to pull it off mechanically.