Oh, I have a LOT of these. Drawing from various real life events, or from the rumor mill surrounding real life events:
Faeries invoked for ritual and not appeased properly wreak havoc throughout the camp. (I will pay you money if you pick this one and work it in somehow. >:-)
Failure to put the usual ritual protections in place leads to a much higher than usual incidence of disasters of various sorts. (I know that sounds the same as the first one, but it was a different event.)
Intuition about an impending physical disaster doesn't come quickly enough to prevent it. (That was the maypole, this year. Let me know if you want details.)
People being unknowingly dosed with LSD from a horn of mead being passed around at the fire circle.
People under ill-advised invocation going running out into the darkness, and having to be fetched back and managed.
Memorial ritual for a beloved community figure who turned out not to be dead.
Giving inappropriate or inadequate answers to a deity's questions during a ritual leads to a pissed off deity, leading to a rainstorm that floods the camp and sends everyone home -- almost not making it out before the creek rose to cover the bridge.
Portajohn employee who comes in to suck the contents out of the toilets loses control of his truck while rubbernecking at naked tits and puts the whole poop truck into the ditch. Which led to the rule that everyone had to put their clothes back on when the portajohn company came to do the toilets.
While very talented weatherworkers very impressively deflect an impending tornado, festival participants skip through the street singing songs from The Wizard of Oz -- because, as one storyteller noted, in times of great stress, everyone reverts to the Old Religion. >:-)
Woman blissed out of her mind on how much fun she's had wishes aloud, on the last day, that she didn't have to leave; gets her wish when her car won't start, and has to be rescued. (This happened three times to the woman in question before she figured out to stop saying that out loud. I was there all three times. :-)
A ritual involving every participant having a candle, and then coming up and putting their candle with all the other candles, clustered into a metal tray with low sides. . . which soon became an overflowing well of molten, flaming wax, due to the candles all melting one another at high speed, which slopped over the edges and started to set the entire altar on fire. One priestess, alarmed and a bit desperate, did the only thing she could think of: she dumped the big bowl of water that had been used to bless the circle on the middle of the flaming, overflowing pool of wax. Yes, water on a wax fire. The resulting fireball shooting straight up about fifteen feet was impressive, and the fire did go out, and conveniently the whole thing timed excellently with the peak of the power raising, but the entire altar and everything on it was covered with a thin coat of wax, and cleanup was a stone bitch.
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Faeries invoked for ritual and not appeased properly wreak havoc throughout the camp. (I will pay you money if you pick this one and work it in somehow. >:-)
Failure to put the usual ritual protections in place leads to a much higher than usual incidence of disasters of various sorts. (I know that sounds the same as the first one, but it was a different event.)
Intuition about an impending physical disaster doesn't come quickly enough to prevent it. (That was the maypole, this year. Let me know if you want details.)
People being unknowingly dosed with LSD from a horn of mead being passed around at the fire circle.
People under ill-advised invocation going running out into the darkness, and having to be fetched back and managed.
Memorial ritual for a beloved community figure who turned out not to be dead.
Giving inappropriate or inadequate answers to a deity's questions during a ritual leads to a pissed off deity, leading to a rainstorm that floods the camp and sends everyone home -- almost not making it out before the creek rose to cover the bridge.
Portajohn employee who comes in to suck the contents out of the toilets loses control of his truck while rubbernecking at naked tits and puts the whole poop truck into the ditch. Which led to the rule that everyone had to put their clothes back on when the portajohn company came to do the toilets.
While very talented weatherworkers very impressively deflect an impending tornado, festival participants skip through the street singing songs from The Wizard of Oz -- because, as one storyteller noted, in times of great stress, everyone reverts to the Old Religion. >:-)
Woman blissed out of her mind on how much fun she's had wishes aloud, on the last day, that she didn't have to leave; gets her wish when her car won't start, and has to be rescued. (This happened three times to the woman in question before she figured out to stop saying that out loud. I was there all three times. :-)
A ritual involving every participant having a candle, and then coming up and putting their candle with all the other candles, clustered into a metal tray with low sides. . . which soon became an overflowing well of molten, flaming wax, due to the candles all melting one another at high speed, which slopped over the edges and started to set the entire altar on fire. One priestess, alarmed and a bit desperate, did the only thing she could think of: she dumped the big bowl of water that had been used to bless the circle on the middle of the flaming, overflowing pool of wax. Yes, water on a wax fire. The resulting fireball shooting straight up about fifteen feet was impressive, and the fire did go out, and conveniently the whole thing timed excellently with the peak of the power raising, but the entire altar and everything on it was covered with a thin coat of wax, and cleanup was a stone bitch.
more below . . .