I saw a dude in the subway wearing this t-shirt. My first thought was “What happened to Paris? Medusa attack?” Turns out Pray for Paris is just a fashion T-shirt line. Paris is just fine. Fleshly as ever.
Got me wondering, though. In a magical D&D world, when some magical catastrophe strikes a city (which must happen, like, every other week) would we see the same outpouring of concern and charity that we do when a natural disaster hits a real city? Is there a Clerics Without Borders in a world with isolated nations and city-states? Would Athens care if something bad happened to Sparta?
Athens and Sparta is actually a good example. I suppose that warring city-states would react to a monstrous threat the way Athens and Sparta did to the Persian invasions. Athenians are foreigners to the Spartans, but the Persians are even more foreign, so the two city-states unite. An army of medusae would be more foreign still.
So this is something that can happen in a D&D city. Word arrives of some horrific magical disaster or attack in a foreign land. People pray. (Clerics leading thousands of believers in prayer probably has a concrete D&D spell effect, maybe casting Stone to Flesh at a distance). People donate coins and iron rations. A band of clerics sets off on a mission against the medusae.* Church bells toll. And maybe the king hires an adventuring band or two.
*This is the source of the famous “Clerics of Paris” statue garden.
This popped up in my google results when I searched for “Paris” to try and brainstorm a work headline. Chapeau, Paul Hughes! (My article will now be called “Army of Medusae.”)