Q on particle effects

[jdoran]

This is one of those questions where I'm not sure where to post it. But it seems that misc Q's get stuffed in the server forums.

Is there a clever way to get particle effects in a zone from the server side? While one can edit the emitters file on the client side, that would not be suitable for a transient effect.

I'm not sure if there is a way to attach effects to individual objects.
Would it be possible to have an invisible NPC silently casting, but have the particle effects appear?

I would like to see if it would be possible to have a quest of the form "we have reports of some strange phenomenon, go investigate". But I'm stuck on what to use for these phenomena.

Weapons with particle effects might be buried just under the ground... I could spawn a bunch of really small untargettable wisps... Hmm, Broodlands had some round platforms with permanent effects (no, those were done with permanent emitters)

I'm holding out for some oddball hack to get me over the hump. Any crazy ideas?