Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
Who: Everyone
When: About mid-day, five days after Time to put up--
Where: The Whole Colony Site
Invited: ALL PLAY!
Status: Complete
Al Mondroca saw it first.
He was plowing The North Forty (so called despite being neither north of the colony nor consisting of 40 acres) with a pair of draft horses. The colony had tractors but after losing some of their machinery and fuel stores in the meteor strike, they were making doing without whenever and wherever possible. Horses were self-fueling, self-repairing and self-replicating.
A crack of thunder broke the relative silence. Al glanced up at the clear blue sky. Not a cloud in sight as far as he could see in any direction. Two more crashes in quick succession spooked the horses. Al wrestled with the reins for a moment until they settled down. When he looked up again, scanning the sky, Al felt his breath freeze in his throat.
(Oh shit,) he thought. (Not again!)
A fireball was hurling out of the sky from the west, growing rapidly in size. It didn't appear to be drifting across the sky at all--which meant it was coming directly toward him. Al squeezed his eyes shut, cursing fate or god or whatever force thought it funny to torment this tiny remnant of humanity with repeated threats. Wasn't it enough that earth was lost to them? Apparently not.
When seconds passed and Al realized he was still alive, still unharmed, he opened his eyes. The fireball was still approaching but it was clearly decelerating. And decelerating hard. It slowed to a relative crawl while still high in the sky, the flames guttering out to reveal a glowing white disc--no, a sphere. A perfect sphere glowing white hot with the heat of its passage through the atmosphere. As Al watched it drifted directly overhead, slowing until it hung directly over the settlement.
And then it just hung there. The glowing sphere lost brilliance as Al watched, slowly changing color, from white to violet, then shading into blue, and then edging into green. Al realized that he was sweating then, and from more than just hard labor in the sun or even fear. The glowing sphere was putting out enough heat that he could feel it even from here!
The color change continued over the next few minutes. The sphere was glowing green at first, but that faded into yellow, and then to orange, then red--each transition occurring more swiftly than the last. The sensation of radiant heat faded as well. The red glow faded into black and now the sphere wasn't glowing at all. It was a uniform matte black so featureless that if Al didn't know it was a sphere instead of a flat disk, he couldn't have told.
It seemed to begin growing then. Al knew, intellectually, that it must be losing altitude--coming closer--but the featureless sphere made it impossible to sense any movement. It swelled until Al found himself crouching, convinced that it was about to crush him. It's shadow slid across the colony as it occluded the sun, stretching for miles. The sphere had to be miles in diameter. By the time the sphere stopped descending it seemed close enough that Al could have thrown a rock in the air and hit it.
And now it simply hung there in absolute silence. Al could hear the dogs in the settlement barking madly, and behind them the babble of voices.
OOC: Feel free to post your character's reactions to this event. Or the reactions of NPCs. Or both. Just keep in mind that no one has ever seen an object/vessel like this before. They can speculate all they like, but neither technology nor psychic abilities will penetrate the black globe to tell them anything about the vessel or its occupants (if any). Not, at least, until it does something more....
When: About mid-day, five days after Time to put up--
Where: The Whole Colony Site
Invited: ALL PLAY!
Status: Complete
Al Mondroca saw it first.
He was plowing The North Forty (so called despite being neither north of the colony nor consisting of 40 acres) with a pair of draft horses. The colony had tractors but after losing some of their machinery and fuel stores in the meteor strike, they were making doing without whenever and wherever possible. Horses were self-fueling, self-repairing and self-replicating.
A crack of thunder broke the relative silence. Al glanced up at the clear blue sky. Not a cloud in sight as far as he could see in any direction. Two more crashes in quick succession spooked the horses. Al wrestled with the reins for a moment until they settled down. When he looked up again, scanning the sky, Al felt his breath freeze in his throat.
(Oh shit,) he thought. (Not again!)
A fireball was hurling out of the sky from the west, growing rapidly in size. It didn't appear to be drifting across the sky at all--which meant it was coming directly toward him. Al squeezed his eyes shut, cursing fate or god or whatever force thought it funny to torment this tiny remnant of humanity with repeated threats. Wasn't it enough that earth was lost to them? Apparently not.
When seconds passed and Al realized he was still alive, still unharmed, he opened his eyes. The fireball was still approaching but it was clearly decelerating. And decelerating hard. It slowed to a relative crawl while still high in the sky, the flames guttering out to reveal a glowing white disc--no, a sphere. A perfect sphere glowing white hot with the heat of its passage through the atmosphere. As Al watched it drifted directly overhead, slowing until it hung directly over the settlement.
And then it just hung there. The glowing sphere lost brilliance as Al watched, slowly changing color, from white to violet, then shading into blue, and then edging into green. Al realized that he was sweating then, and from more than just hard labor in the sun or even fear. The glowing sphere was putting out enough heat that he could feel it even from here!
The color change continued over the next few minutes. The sphere was glowing green at first, but that faded into yellow, and then to orange, then red--each transition occurring more swiftly than the last. The sensation of radiant heat faded as well. The red glow faded into black and now the sphere wasn't glowing at all. It was a uniform matte black so featureless that if Al didn't know it was a sphere instead of a flat disk, he couldn't have told.
It seemed to begin growing then. Al knew, intellectually, that it must be losing altitude--coming closer--but the featureless sphere made it impossible to sense any movement. It swelled until Al found himself crouching, convinced that it was about to crush him. It's shadow slid across the colony as it occluded the sun, stretching for miles. The sphere had to be miles in diameter. By the time the sphere stopped descending it seemed close enough that Al could have thrown a rock in the air and hit it.
And now it simply hung there in absolute silence. Al could hear the dogs in the settlement barking madly, and behind them the babble of voices.
OOC: Feel free to post your character's reactions to this event. Or the reactions of NPCs. Or both. Just keep in mind that no one has ever seen an object/vessel like this before. They can speculate all they like, but neither technology nor psychic abilities will penetrate the black globe to tell them anything about the vessel or its occupants (if any). Not, at least, until it does something more....