[Brauer Bauer] Human, Male, Farmer Location: The remote farmlands of a distant micro-nation, far away from the mainland
Birds sing, flying with almost mockingly lively energy through the air of the vivid, hot summer’s day, filled with an unusual warmth now that, weeks later, the darkness finally begins to subside from the skies of the world, allowing the sun to peek through for the first time in full, joyous clarity.
The man is seen sitting at his desk with a quill in his hand as the sun begins to set in the distance, bringing an end to a very unusual day in many ways. He is attempting to collect his thoughts as he stares at the blank parchment that is in front of him with shaking eyes and hands. The events of the day have left him mentally exhausted, and his mind is a tangled mess as a result.
Only a few hours earlier, a ray of light slammed into his quiet corner of the world, which immediately sparked widespread fear and disorder for obvious reasons. The few people who live in this remote, distant region are panicked and frenzied, unsure of what this could mean. When the incident took place, the man had been tending to his crops in the fields outside when it occurred. Brauer had turned his head just in time to witness the brilliant, blinding light that appeared to be falling from the skies. It gave the impression that the heavens were being torn in two.
He had been thrown to the ground when a shockwave rippled through the soil when the light touched down upon the world, which caused him to lose his balance and fall down an irrigation incline and out of the danger of the explosion. When it finally stopped and he managed to climb out to look at the point of impact, he noticed that his farm was gone, and instead, there was a glowing, heat radiating crater with smooth, almost glassy walls. Soil and other particles shot up into the air, bringing an early end to the first kind day that he had experienced after weeks.
That’s ignoring his farm, which is very much destroyed now.
Brauer had no previous experiences with anything relating to the heavens. He had always been told tales of heavenly beings, strange events that occurred in other places, and old stories, but he had never seen anything that was genuinely like this before. He couldn't help but feel awed and terrified at the same time, and he couldn't help but ponder what this revelation meant for the future.
Surely, it spells darkness for the future generations to come. When the sun is failing and crops are dying and the gods themselves destroy the last few farms that provide nourishment, then war and famine are the only things that can emerge at the will of the divine.
Are they really so cruel?
The man is stymied in his efforts to put his ideas into words as he toils at his desk, his pen hovering just above the parchment. He needs to chronicle this and write it down so that future generations will understand what happened. He may just be a farmer, but he understands the importance of passing down such rare knowledge to those who come after. But how exactly is he going to explain something that cannot be explained? How can he possibly describe the magnitude of what he saw, how the archangel’s blade appeared to go on for what seemed like an eternity, and how it lit up the sky as if it were a second sun, making a mockery of the shine of the former?
He is well aware that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to adequately convey the scope of the happening, despite his best efforts. He is only a simple man.
He takes out his pen and starts writing, letting the words pour out of it like the water from his well, which he apparently no longer needs. He writes of the dread and wonder, the perplexity and the awe, that he felt at the time. He writes about the individuals he saw fleeing and screaming just before the blast knocked him into that ditch, as well as the total destruction of their livelihoods he witnessed in the aftermath of the event.
He writes until his hand becomes tired and the inkwell runs dry, emptying everything he has onto the page.
Splotches of the ink seep through the paper from his unsteady hand, which applies far too much of it.
A poor omen.
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[Skrecha] Harpy, Female, Monster {Harpy} Location: Best tree in Big-Hill-Thick-Forest
From her perch high in the tree, the harpy clicks with her mouth and watches curiously as the light of the mother-moon drops from the heavens — during the day, mind you. Very odd.
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It is a brilliant and blinding flash that appears to split the world, cutting it like a woodsman would cut her favorite tree. She can't decide whether she should be curious or cautious, so she simply tilts her head to the side and then to the other, as a harpy is wont to do.
A moment later, as the sky’s talon makes contact with the world, her curiosity is quickly exchanged for raw terror as a shock wave travels through the trees of the thick forest on the high hill, which causes the branches to tremble and the leaves to rustle. Boughs and trunks lean backward from the force of the blast, like a fresh, bouncy twig being pressed down beneath a foot. Skrecha screeches in terror, clawing on to her perch at the same time as she confusedly prepares to take flight by spreading her wings, her instincts not sure whether to let go or to fly away, but the quake stops almost as fast as it began.
The limbs snap back, causing her to almost be catapulted away. Her talons dig into the wood, and she flaps her wings, loosened feathers flying out all around her, almost falling upside down as they cut a ring around the thick branch she’s on.
Disoriented, the harpy clambers back up onto her favorite tree and looks down at the impact site, where there is a big hole. It is a hole like a raven would leave when pulling a worm from the soil. Even from this vantage point, she can hear humans shouting and running in the distance, and she can feel the terror that they are experiencing.
Good.
She clicks with her mouth, looking up towards the sky.
The giant sky bird brings fear to the hearts of humans.
Skrecha spreads her wings, holding them out wide as she screeches a victory screech toward the heavens, doing a small, swaying dance.
May the great sky-bird feast on the massive world-worm that it has taken throughout the births of many clutches.
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[Bellami] Fairy, Female, Merchant {Flowers} Location: The Sweetpetal Meadow, Southwest of a sizable merchant and fishing port-city
Bellami the fairy has been having the time of her life, darting and dancing through the fields and forests, reveling in the joy of being alive, as a wild fairy in such a nice place as these islands tends to do. She had spent the entire day so far playing and exploring, chasing butterflies and dodging dragonflies in her pursuit of finding the best flowers to collect for sale, and now, as the sun begins to set, she’s feeling invigorated and full of energy.
She should have been working, honestly, but she was having so much fun just doing stuff that she didn’t even bother to look for any nice flowers to sell yet.
Bellami flies over an open field when all of a sudden she discovers that the sky is beginning to lighten up a bit more than it ought to. The sun was setting a second ago.
At first, she thinks that maybe she got some wayward reflection of light in her eyes, or that the sun’s golden rays are reflecting off of the clouds in an unusual way. Being a fairy isn’t easy. They’re highly sensitive creatures. But when she takes a moment to adjust and take a closer look, she sees that the glow is emanating from another location, one that is more distant and located higher in the sky.
— The moon?
Confused, Bellami comes to a stop in the middle of her flight and floats in the air while she attempts to make sense of what she is witnessing. The glow is becoming much brighter, and she can now make out a ray of light coming down. A ray of pure, dazzling energy that appears to extend on into infinity is unlike anything she has ever witnessed before in her life.
— And its extension towards the endless heavens, while impressive, does make her realize that the other end of it, heading straight her way, will very likely not be so endless.
Confused, the fairy screams a wordless fairy scream and immediately spins around and shoots off as fast as she can. Her mothy wings are practically buzzing as she flies, but not as loudly as the hissing of some great serpent in her ears.
It only takes a second. Thankfully, fairies are very fast and nimble and have pretty good reflexes, especially with a little magic here and there. There’s a noticeable sense of change in the air, like the shifting of seasons. There’s an exchange of heat and pressure. The wind seems to switch around for only a second in its direction. It was behind her a second ago, but now it's before her, as if it were trying to pull her back into the central zone of the falling star.
She is able to sense an increase in both the heat and the pressure as she continues to fly; it is as if the beam is pursuing her. She is able to hear the sound of the air rushing past her ears, and the ground is quivering and shaking beneath her. She is petrified, but she cannot bring herself to turn around.
The fairy lifts her hands, using an emergency spell that zaps her away and into the shelter of the forest, where she nearly passes out on a bed of leaves, gasping for air and panting as she tried to catch her breath as a burst of intense, incredible heat and pressure washes over her tiny, fragile body like a crushing wave of tidal waters during a surge. It knocks the air out of her, and her vision spins, somehow making the endless sea of white even more confusing to look through.
Then, after what seems like an eternity, it subsides.
Confused and dazed, Bellami cries, laying on a crushed leaf, as a scorched petal of a flower gently drifts down towards her from above.
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[Gottlieb]
Gottlieb yawns, rubbing his eyes as he meanders back into the gunner’s bay, having just gotten back from taking a shower. He’s carrying a load of nutri-rations and some dead monsters beneath his arms.
“Pow!” says an excited voice.
He looks around the bay, seeing everyone gathered in one area by his console.
There’s an empty clicking noise.
“Pow!” says an excited voice again. Blauhausen.
The man sniffs the air. It smells faintly like…
“Pow!” says the ooze a third time, at least in his presence, as she clicks the button on the gun’s control again.
The gun starts to hum, ready for another blast after having already been fired, apparently. Gottlieb yelps, dropping everything as he runs across the room, yanking her off of the chair, but not before another blast careens down towards the world, hitting God knows what.
With horrified eyes, he watches the explosion on the monitor.
“Papa!” says the ooze, her floppy suit glooping up towards him. “Like you!”
“Kai! What the hell?!” barks the man, looking at the monitor and then at the other three, who quickly and quietly shuffle away, back to their stations.
[Response]
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- Not my problem. Take better care of your progeny.
“Kai!” yells Gottlieb, as a gloopy pair of hands hug him excitedly, the proudly beaming face behind them laughing as the world on the monitor below explodes just a little more.