January 2012 and the Manastorm
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Wed Jan 11 2072
Word on the street is a local mage tried to use a sub-par sin to get himself a magical licence. The Lawyer he hired didn't know him from a hole in the wall so rolled over on the guy like a fat man reaching for a snacky cake. There is now a warrant for the arrest of 'Harold Walker', identity unknown. His accounts were automatically fined 50,000 Nuyen and his SIN was busted and turned criminal.
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Wed Jan 11 2072
At the north wall of the Warrens, 'Harold Walker', a 56 year old human male who works as a day laborer mopping floors for Dynacorp LTD, was shot and killed by Knight Errant Security Forces when he was arrested. The Officers involved indicating he refused to stop muttering 'incantations' and kept 'gesturing' at them. With the warrant out for Harold Walker, Knight Errant Management is taking no chances with its officers.
As it turns out, the 'Harold Walker' killed at the North Wall was not magically active. Still, the captain-on-duty at the time reports that the killing was within proper protocol.
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Sat Jan 14 2072
Down off the coast of Cuba… something goes very wrong. The problem with the Caribbean is much like sudden-forest-syndrome on land, there's sudden reef syndrome on the water. The Princess of the Seas, a 400 meter cruise ship owned by Vivindi-Disney Media and flagged to Antigua has holed itself on a reef and is sinking. What makes this particularly interesting, is the current contract dispute between the CAS Coast Guard and V-D Media means there's an actual lapse in coverage. The Caribbean league is mobilizing, but it's just not set up for the evacuation of 5000 people from a cruise ship 200 miles from the nearest inhabited island and 400 miles from the nearest serviceable air strip.
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Sun Jan 15 2072
It came without physical warning. Later, people would say they 'felt' a disturbance in earth's aura, but most magical scholars will dismiss them as crackpots. No warning for McMurdo station, but sheltered on Ross Island, it will survive with damage. But Helier Station, owned by the Atlantian Foundation and probing the Bently Subglacial trench.. there is no chance. No escape. Lava is very hot - and the massive earthquake that rumbled up from below seems to have loosed a crevasse that allowed magma seepage to the surface. This is not so much a problem, when your surface is not a mile thick glacier. Magma and ice, becomes water becomes steam. Steam explodes. Helier station is gone… two thousand men and countless pre-awakening artifacts that were reportedly found in the depths of the ice.
Launched from McMurdo, a UCAS heavy lift transport outfitted with a sensor package flies over what remains of Helier Station. As telemetry is relayed back to McMurdo and then to the UCAS, a clearer picture emerges. The actual blast over the trench is relatively contained in its scope - a half kilometer of ice blown outward and up, concentric rings of debris showing as heavier and lighter ejecta landed.
There is nothing here that should have reduced Halier station to the smoldering ruin that shows as the aircraft banks wide over the site. In the bay, the Atlantis Maru lies on its side, broken in two. The 500 foot supply ship leaks fuel into the bay, a burning slick spreading for several hundred feet across the water and ice. The campus of weatherproofed buildings are all torn open, burning to their foundations. Smoke, steam and haze make details hard to distinguish, but analysis makes it clear - whatever happened here, was not a natural disaster.
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Wed Jan 25 2072
Roughly a week after the disturbance in the Antarctic, scholars worldwide are sure of one thing: the disturbance, while isolated in the furthest region of the world, would have effects throughout the globe. Like a large rock thrown into a pond, it could not help but cause ripples across the manasphere. Even now, noted thaumaturgists warn of mana storms and other, perhaps even more devastating effects, in the coming days. They anticipate such could reach North America as early as this Friday. Closer to the event, magicians have reported surges and flows in the way magic works, magical storms of monstrous ferocity, and even the loss of ability.
A mana storm stretching some fifty miles across manifested in Buenos Aires for six hours today. Residents were struck with all manner of magical effects, including an entire city block turned to stone. Those in nearby Amazonia claimed they could see the storm discolor the horizon, trailing red and purple fire in the sky. Weather conditions in the region are considered extremely hazardous and all flights in and out of BA have been canceled.
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Thu Jan 26 2072
The skies over Aztlan, parts of the PCC and CAS Nations all have hints of a sick green colour this evening, with violent winds and yellow/pink lightning raining down. Mana distortions have struck across the globe, creeping slowly forward like some sort of rancid slime that leaves ruin in its wake. Rumors of mages fleeing before the storms are rampant. The Front Range Region is expected to be impacted before noon tomorrow.
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Fri Jan 27 2072
And as if someone had flipped a switch, the skies over the Front Range Region begin to darken ominously. A sound not unlike nails on a chalkboard issues forth as snow begins to fall over much of the city despite weather reports of mostly clear skies. The temperatures begin to plummet as green lightning spears a skyraker downtown, turning the uppermost glass into a rain of bats, the beat of their wings sending terrified citizens off the streets. The Storm of the Century has arrived in Denver.
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Fri Jan 27 2072
In the UCAS downtown sector, lightening strikes the Mooreland building. This is not an uncommon occurrence. What is uncommon is for the bolt to not wink out of existence a moment later. This bolt, all 1.21 gigawatts of it, holds steady for a second - a second second - a third second. By the fourth, the conductive rod melts, superheated by the storm. Windows in the top level shatter as a long, rippling peel of thunder from the lightening strike continues into it's 10th second, vibrations grown too strong. Free of the lightening rod, the tendril of energy snakes its way across the rooftop of the Mooreland building. Mr. Moorelands helicopter explodes, sending shards of chopper in all directions.
THe building's electrical system flickers once - then twice…
And then the Mooreland building is in darkness.
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Fri Jan 27 2072
A wave of toxic sludge threatens downtown Colorado Springs (CAS Sector). The green mass is slowly eating its way down Tejon as Lone Star attempts to put up barricades to control the mass. Their efforts are stymied by strong winds, blowing snow, and what some reports claim are the Living Dead attempting to cross over into the PCC sector.
A spike of pure white energy erupts out of the middle of Cherry Creek Lake, burning a hole through the clouds and into the sky. Once it touches the clouds it shatters into hundreds of spears of lightning, spiraling out to touch down across the CAS Sector, The Warrens, and further out. Drones and vehicles near the park shut down as if hit by an EMP, while many of those that were close to the park are struck blind, their eyes burned out of their sockets.
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Fri Jan 27 2072
Deep in the woods of The Sticks, something slumbering, something long asleep and dreaming, something better left to qlippothic somnolence awakens. Not fully, not completely, but enough to roll over in its torpor. Ground fog rises, quickly blanketing the forest in an eerie stillness that is punctuated only by the occasional scream. No animal moves. No wind stirs. Near the ground, fog rolls so thick you cannot see your feet, while visibility above is cut to mere tens of feet. Dark shapes scuttle and scamper, just outside of view.
Screams anew, but this time.. not from the Sticks. From Orktown. Rignaka Griswald, Grandmomma to the Griswald clan who settle the outskirts, comes into the central Orktown area. "The fog, Oh mah stars! It took mah babies! Mah babies!" She screams, falling to her knees in the road. While no one doubts this elder of her people… no one who looks at the wall of fog that is the Sticks has any interest in going in.
Proctor is holding mass in the mission chapel. The Laymen are out in force tonight, perhaps better prepared for this event than any other gang in the Warrens. A peaceful serenity of sorts reigns over this district. Brothers of Saint Sylvester have gathered on the border with the sticks, and while they do not use magic or spell, they kneel in a line, several hundred feet apart… and they pray. They pray in latin. They pray in a synch with each other and in time, a chorus of prayer. It's beautiful really, in its way. Such unity and devotion.
The fog from the sticks rolls forward, a malicious thing, an ugly thing that roils and boils with unseen malevolence. The praying men do not bend. They do not break. The fog comes to a stop some ten feet from the men.. and then it evaporates. It continues to come, this fog, but it strikes some opposing counter force and can come no further. The pitch of the praying men rises just slightly in celebration.
But there is no celebration in Orktown, as gunfire breaks out at random.
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Fri Jan 27 2072
The slime has abated in the CAS Sector, and even now there are reports of fires that cannot be contained in the Ute Sector, burning large swaths of land. Those that believe they are safe at home, drinking and watching the mayhem on the trideo are surprised to find that, in one CAS apartment building, the walls have begun to bleed acid blood. Across town, the PCC finds itself cut off momentarily as two Matrix junctions are severed.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
Every town has a hero, someone who comes to the rescue of the many when others hide like cowards beneath their beds. One such seems to be a runner known as Slitch who showed up in Orktown, perhaps drawn by the cries of the needy, perhaps a fortune seeker. Nevertheless, the young woman slipped into the fog and seemed to vanish into its depths, vanishing from sight. Sometime later she seemed to stumble out, looking behind her near the Fox Hollow district as a slithering, whispering sound issued forth behind her. Against her will, or perhaps drawn by forces we don't understand, she is pulled back into the darkness, into the murky depths of The Sticks.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
A Wal-Mart on I-25 (Sioux Sector) burns with a merry lavender flame as gargoyles dance in the air above it. Towards the city center, the drone net is all but burned out by repeated strikes of electricity and sub-zero temperatures as steel becomes as brittle as glass. Throughout the city there are reports of creatures not seen in this part of the world, far too large to have come down the city streets unnoticed. A feeling of dread has engulfed the PCC as the darkness seems ever closer, sucking the breath and the very life out of those on the street. Cars lay abandoned in the UCAS Sector as a freak blizzard event closes down traffic for miles. Even now, those who run the shadows try to make a nuyen, with break ins taxing the various security forces ability to maintain peace and save lives.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
Fox Hollow.
Serene and calm, the chanting of latin spreading outward. Orderly, even in chaos. As Orktown descends into chaos, Fox Hollow stands strong. Every minute - on the nose - the bell of the Mission Chapel chimes, ringing out in the darkness. It's a reassuring sound that carries across the entire district. A single heartbeat.
At the line of Fog, Alduin finds himself staring into the darkness, casually standing with his hands in his pockets. It's no great story that some chick went in. It's a crazy time. But he sees her come out. The pale features, drawn and gaunt. The blood pouring from eyes, lips and nose that stains her white features black in teardrop lines. The look of utter despair that washes over her as tendrils of fog whip around her, dragging her back in.
Alduin is last seen by the monks on the line, sword drawn, charging resolutely into the fog after Slitch.
Neither runner is ever seen again.
In the Sunrise District, several members of Los Reys Diablos were confused and horrified to see a bright orange, 100 year old car come roaring down the road, to jump over their roadblock. Word is, the two men in the car shouted out some kind of war cry as the car hung in the air.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
In the Pueblo Sector, things are a little crazy. At the Ostara Shamanic Park, there are lots of angry indians. Not living indians, mind you, but about 200 spectral indians on horseback as they circle around the park, calling out war cries. Within the park, 30 spectral cavalry from the US Army are hunkered in the boulders. It's not a happy time. Moderately famous Shaman-with-a-book-to-sell Michael MountainTiger was quick to issue a matrix press release denouncing the PCC for allowing Ostara Park in the first place.
Citizens may remember that Blackbird Park in the CAS sector was renamed from 'City Park' to 'Blackbird Park' after Robert Blackbird's Song, a Pueblo Shaman, fought off an uncontrolled elemental as it attacked a school bus in 2034. A reciprocal show of respect was made by the Pueblo when they dedicated Ostara Park in 2040.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
Air traffic across the world has been impacted, and while many have complained about the setbacks and delays, none can really object to the groundings. After all, seventeen planes in the last twenty-four hours have been downed, with fourteen managing to make safe landings. Two others crashed, one near Topeka and another near Chicago. The last plane has gone missing deep in the Mojave. This plane was carrying, among the passengers, UCAS Senator Aaron Burkhead (D., North Dakota).
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Sat Jan 28 2072
The residents of the Falklan Towers in the CAS Sector were horrified to find out their building had moved during the evening. Moreover, they are more horrified to find out that their building has started walking out of Colorado Springs and is heading towards the Pueblo Corporate Council. The military at the Pueblo base as well as Fort Carson are on high alert and are considering how to stop the apartment complex at the border without killing any of the residents.
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Sat Jan 28 2072
Quervo Jones, over at the Boneyard comes into possession of a solid gold Beretta Stilleto. He says he bought it from this guy who bought it from a chick. Apparently she took a shower, came out and her gun had turned to solid gold! No one can confirm, but really, who makes a fully detailed, articulated gun that you can take apart and reassemble, exactly to factory specifications that, aside from being made of a soft metal - would be perfectly servicable… out of gold so pure that you can't find impurity in it at all? Maybe the only one who really knows is Sasha, who has a pocket full of cash…
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Sun Jan 29 2072
Panic in the warrens as the factories which are fueled by day laborers report they will not be sending busses in the morning. The people who live in the Warrens work daily, are paid daily… and their entire existence is so temporal that a day without work is painful - a week is deadly.
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Sun Jan 29 2072
The Falklan Towers seems to have moved from its former location in the CAS Sector and is now located just outside the border checkpoint for the PCC Sector on I-25 at South Academy. Rumors that it may have walked there are unsubstantiated
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