ISS: 18:38 GMT+0 Second of February 2019
Ann McClain stared out the porthole at the Earth one...
Ann McClain stared out the porthole at the Earth one...
The Lonely Earth - Earth ISOT into Magitek fantasy
- Thread starter Spartakrod
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Chapter 1: Earthfall
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
ISS: 18:38 GMT+0 Second of February 2019
Ann McClain stared out the porthole at the Earth one more time. She wasn't sure why, it wasn't like the planet would be going anywhere and the view had grown somewhat mundane.
"ISS, please come in we're picking up some massive interference." A voice came crackling in. Her heart sank briefly. You never wanted to hear something like that.
"Ground control, what's the situation?"
"All our telescopes and scanners are going ballistic. Can you see anything we can't?" The voice replied, clearly alarmed at what they were picking up.
"I'm not see…" She said, but it was like a frog leaped into her throat as it seemed that all at once; cracks started forming through the black void of space. The mirror of the universe was starting to splinter and something was straining to get through.
"Holy shit...ground control...it's starting to break."
"What's starting to break? ISS, can you clarify?!"
"Space it's starting to break!"
"Can you clarify less metaphorically?"
"No it's literally starting to sh-" The cracks started to spider web across the black void of space. Based on the swearing she heard in Russian, even the moon was starting to be enveloped in a three dimensional network of splinterlines.
"Jesus fucking christ what!?" Clearly ground control was able to see it as well to break professionalism so flagrantly like that.
For a moment everything seemed to be calm as the ISS flew by one of the splinters in space, through which she caught glimpses of...everything. A kaleidoscope of countless visions all played at random without any sense of coherence or stability. Part of her was terrified, but another part demanded that it be studied.
"I have visual on one of the cracks. I'm seeing...random visions. Stars, planets...people...war….corpses...christ what is this?" She said, now thoroughly shook by the images.
"Telescopes are confirming as much. The cracks haven't spread too far for now."
White House 13:01 GMT-6 Second of February 2019
"Look I have my best people on the situation, we're handling it beautifully. Everything is going to be okay!" President Trump said, trying to contain the emotions of a baying crowd as people started to fear the end of the world was at hand.
"Okay, before we all get crazy here, let's have some questions. Anyone want questions? I want questions. I got answers, and they're great answers believe me!" He said, figuring that if he spoke as quickly as possible nobody would figure out that he was internally panicking himself.
"Mr.President do you have any plans to investigate the cracks?"
"Look getting a rocket up into space is time consuming and expensive. We can't just launch now. I've been told we'll have to wait at least a week on that, maybe more. But we can maybe launch one of the old ICBMs there."
There was a furious murmuring among the crowds as people considered how to write that into what may be the last stories anyone would ever make.
"Are they dangerous?" Another asked, this one some lady from...France he thought. Must have been the accent.
"Look I dunno, maybe they are maybe they're not. They're not here yet so I think we've got some time."
"Don't you think you're being a bit cavalier about this?" Who was that guy? He didn't like them.
"Cavalier? No i think we're being very reasonable, we're the most reasonable administration this country's ever seen in the face of this crisis." He said, yeah that sounded brave.
"And what if it is the end of the world?" One asked, getting a wide array of stares from the gathered press.
"Then we'll pray. Next?"
European Space Agency HQ, Paris 20:12 GMT+1 Second of February 2019
"So you're saying we have no idea about what these cracks are?" Macron asked, his hands jittering like mad. The riots in France had aged him a decade and now he was facing the possibility of the end times themselves dawning upon him. He was going to die of stress before his presidency was over at this rate.
"They do not correspond to any known electromagnetic phenomena but based on our studies they seem to be distortions in space and time." The scientist said, Andrea adjusting her glasses and chewing her pen nervously. The redhead was in her twenties at most, but nerves made her seem to have aged years prematurely, and her expression bore a severe frown.
"Shit." Macron breathed, audible only to himself.
"Are they dangerous?" He asked, he knew that he already asked whether they truly knew nothing, but he needed to hear it from her.
"A distortion in the universe like this would be more than enough to tear the planet apart. Anything with the power to cause this is...inconceivable. Not even the largest black holes we simulated could do anything like this."
The politicians and commissioners behind him broke into a frenzy of mutterings.
"So this is the end then?"
"I don't see how it could be anything but that."
"What do I tell everyone?" He asked, utterly lost.
"Make your peace. Nothing we do will matter shortly." She said, resigned and clearly longing for all the wine she could drink.
"How shortly?"
"I couldn't say. But we may as well live life like tomorrow will never come." She said, looking at her phone and tapping in one last message to her girlfriend.
With that, Macron left the office looking at the sky, silently cursing it.
Tehran 23:58 GMT+3:30 Second of February 2019
The announcement that in all likelihood this was the world's grand finale caused quite the stir in Iran. There was rioting at first, protests later, then there was seeking solace in faith. The apocalypse had not unfolded as the Qu'ran or any other religious text predicted it, but it was coming and so people began to look to other answers. Many had taken their lives, wanting to die on their own terms; and many of their corpses had yet to be taken off the streets. What was the point? The end was here.
People were coming together, offering each other solace as the splinters in the universe began to grow ever larger, wider, and more pronounced. Eyes were glued to television screens that reported that the sun had been affected by these cracks, massive pieces being split apart from it while somehow the star kept on burning despite being essentially broken like a dropped jigsaw puzzle.
Mars was gone, as far as Farid could tell. The spirit rover reported the cracks consuming the planet before its signal cut out entirely and there was nowhere he or anyone else could run.
He had returned to his parents; wanting a few last words with them before the Earth came to an end, and was now wondering what would happen.
His parents had fallen asleep, figuring that they did not want to be awake when they died. He himself could only stare out the window as the ugly fractures in the cosmos grew wider and brighter like a strange aurora.
Random, incoherent visions filled his sight and he had spent many minutes trying to make what sense of them he could. Many a charlatan had spent their last few hours trying to offer prophecies or interpretations, but none of them made much sense to him.
To him though, he thought it may be visions of something new. He kept on seeing an image of some sphere with what he thought looked like continents. He had no idea what it meant. A new world perhaps? But the image of a black figure with circular glowing white eyes troubled him, an unnerving vision of a shadow man.
However, a mournful groan could be heard through the air as the earth began to tremble and the trees swayed with the wind. The cracks were expanding and advancing closer. The world was ensnared within them, and he wanted to just close his eyes and let his death come to him.
But his younger brother came out from the room behind him and said a few words. "Farid, I'm scared."
He shuddered and grabbed tightly onto him.
"I'm sorry I couldn't visit more often." He said, not wanting to let go as he felt a strange glow on his sunkissed unshaven face.
"What's happening?"
"It's going to be alright. We're going to heaven." He said, trying to offer what comfort he could as he looked to the splinter. The stars were broken, the void began to splinter apart to be replaced with an infinite grey expanse as the laws of reality came undone.
A noise like a deep howl and the shriek of shattered glass and the rumble of shaking earth reached his ears in defiance of the laws of sound, and the moon disappeared into the rift before enveloped the world like the jaws of a great dragon. Then he could feel everything falling as if the Earth had been thrown down some great pit by God himself. His body clenched and it took everything he could to not scream as all that was came asunder.
His vision was overwhelmed and nothing more could be perceived.
ISS ???
Everything that could go wrong was going wrong at once as space and time pulled apart and the whole of the earth fell towards some great pit. The crew of the ISS braced for whatever shelter they could find as they collectively screamed. But there was no feeling of shuddering or shaking, merely a tremendous plummet.
The earth plunged through impossible colours before they fell into an infinite grey expanse; an Ur-Null whose boundaries were determined by the mirror finish of reality and shimmering fields of imaginary nonsense that defied the infinite emptiness and the beings of nonexistence that dominated the unspace of the truest void.
A tunnel made of cracks in the emptiness carried the station and the earth to another tear, and everyone plummeted towards an unknowable and unguessable future. Time and space reasserted meaning where there was once none and the strange colours disappeared behind them.
Nothing could be seen for a moment, but the Earth as they knew it was soon gone amidst a shimmering field of auroras that seemed to concentrate themselves near what seemed like a far too flat map of the continents as if the Earth's crust had been peeled like an onion and laid flat on a…
No...Were those?
Oceans?
Continents?
Ice caps?
Moons!?
Nothing like this could be so big...not when…
The station was going to crash at cometary velocities into a world that had to be of a diameter at least comparable to quasi-star based on its tremendous all dominating horizon. The good news was that they were going to die long before they hit the ground.
The bad news is that they were going to die.
Everyone braced for a fiery re-entry that would kill them all in seconds at an orbital velocity that was enough to make anyone at NASA's head spin. But the impact never came. The auroras touched the craft and light enveloped them all.
Sensation returned seconds later, but the ISS was somehow, beyond all possibility; safely on the ground. Grass could be seen outside of the port holes, grown wild and free, and trees; albeit unlike any trees any of the Astronauts were familiar with; could be made out.
Where were they?
Eurwangni Beach ???? Second of February
Pang Sun-Hwa grimaced at the computer as she tried tapping on her keyboard. No, nothing still. She sighed, all the websites connecting to places like oceania and the rest of Asia were working fine, but anything based in America was unresponsive. It was like half the internet had just vanished.
Great, they survived the apocalypse only to not even be able to tweet about it. What cruel injustice the world had dealt to them. She guessed that this was their punishment for not panicking like everyone else.
She looked to her friend, Ran Chi-Won and spoke up. "The internet is fucked. I wanted to post about how we survived but half the websites seem to be down." She said angrily, gesturing at her computer before her friend turned around and tapped on her binoculars.
"The horizon looks wrong."
"Eh? How so?" She said, confused.
"Are you supposed to be able to see those islands from here?" She said, passing her the binoculars.
She took the binoculars in her slender hands and looked over the horizon to the east.
There were indeed, faintly visible islands in the distance visible through the binoculars. Too far away to make out much detail, but somehow still visible.
"Is the GPS still broken?"
"Haven't been able to get any maps since the cracks broke." She said, sighing. Who even knew how to read maps anymore?
"What do you think it is?"
"Maybe it's Godzilla?" They both laughed at that.
The sight of an explosion in the distance caught Ran's eyes though, and she turned her binoculars to the right.
Warships, but unlike anything she'd ever seen were firing at something or the other.
"What…"
"What is it?"
She passed the binoculars out to her friend who almost dropped them in surprise before gasping.
Zonth Ocean, 32:31, 6th of the Twelfth Month of Ulthrik, 4th Epoch of the 13th Age, 2136.
Admiral Olornd would be damned if he was going to let the Jothii hold the upper hand here. He checked the augurs and looked at the display crystal telling him of anything within the vicinity it could detect. He was sure that there wasn't supposed to be anything more than a few sea mounts in the vicinity. The whole place was supposed to be an abyssal plain.
Yet here was a fair sized continent in the way. Must be the work of some powerful mage...maybe an elemental or archplanar....hrm. He'd have to be cautious, but there were ways he could use this to his advantage he mused as his warship "Kolr's bane" navigated through the waters between some archipelago and a peninsula.
There was a larger landmass ahead and a good sized bay. Perhaps he could force them to approach his fleet in a manner of his choosing. Such was a good idea. Highly recommended, he'd be praised for it by his teachers. His gill feathers ruffled against each other in excitement.
He figured that he could use the space in this bay and between the large land mass and the larger peninsulas to his advantage. His rockets and mage-cannons should be able to carry the day for him here, and if that wasn't enough his carriers and especially his flagship...yes a lovely ship it was.
A few hours passed in relative silence as all the positioning required was made and he sketched out his plan in his head, tracing glowing arcane patterns on the illusory map generated by demiglobe on his command table to indicate his desired positions. Everything would be ready soon, he thought to himself before his musing was interrupted just as his plan was finished.
"Admiral, our scrying has detected incoming attacks in our near future. Interference will be heavy and future divinitations will be difficult, how shall we respond?"
"Do we have their likely position?"
"Glimpses" Their eye stalks extended a little closer to the admiral.
"How much?"
"We could fire on them with reasonable accuracy, enough to ensure at least some impacts."
"Fire our longest ranged weapons, strike them down!" He said, slamming his clawed fist on the table.
"Of course admiral."
The first aircraft and the first projectiles of the mighty fleet were launched forth while surreally coloured arcane energies danced in the skies, bidden to hunt the enemy's fleets.
Cannons augmented by spellcraft lobbed shells hundreds of kilometres down range in a staccato pattern to maintain a constant rain that was meant to arrive in sync with the air fleet. But as expected, the enemy had their own response at the ready.
Mystic energies crackled around their fleet of sleek and steely ships, deflecting and absorbing some of the incoming strikes while crimson craft ascended to meet their counterparts in deadly battle minutes later.
Each aircraft would withstand multiple missiles before being struck from the sky. Duels could not be settled at a distance but only in with their teeth at each other's throats with gunfire.
Deadly webs of magic spiralled around the sky, some forming into summoning gates to call forth aid from beyond. Some lashing out at nearby craft that approached these clusters of mystic energy in the form of scorching fireballs or cascading lightning. A few conjured walls and barriers in the air to force their foes to dodge around.
Another battle in this long war fought over a vast expanse of ocean. And a battle that was being keenly watched by nervous third parties.
Qingdao Naval Base ????
Li Yujie had been looking at the reports he was getting nervously for hours now. Satellites had been dead since the shattering and no means of reaching them had worked so far. Undersea cables to the Americas had also gone offline and none of the attempted fixes had worked. About the only good news was that his radar and visual equipment could see incredibly far over the horizon now, and the terrifying cracks in the sky had disappeared.
Despite the fear that had gripped the base and even wracked at his leader's nerves previously he had a job to do. It's not like not being at his post would make any difference in the face of the end of the world.
But the sun...though he was not sure when the sun had partners in the sky...rose again, the world continued to turn. And the people's liberation army navy still had to guard the shores of China.
Which made this set of reports very nerve wracking. Foreign vessels had brazenly pushed through the sea of Okhotsk, then they pushed through the Sea of Japan, and now the Yellow Sea, then they were approaching the Bohai sea. Another set of contacts had come around east of Japan and then hooked around between the Ryukyu islands and then gunned for the yellow sea on what seemed to be an intercept course.
His theory that they were the Americans and the Russians deciding to finish what the shattering could not was invalidated by Vladivostok's base giving him an especially irate call followed by COMUSJAPAN.
This left him with few sensible options. But now he was getting visual feeds from naval reconnaissance assets that didn't rely on satellites to provide an uplink and he wasn't at all understanding what he was seeing. No navy in the world used big gun ships anymore, nor had any navy ever made ships of that size.
They were of no design he recognised and their emblems were entirely foreign to him. As best as he could tell. However he had a new theory, one which was validated in a matter of minutes. And one which would be rather unpleasant news to give to his superiors.
Two alien navies were having a massive naval engagement in Chinese territorial waters and he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Any action by him, and as he suspected; any of the other naval forces here; could result in a war with powers nobody knew anything about.
Ann McClain stared out the porthole at the Earth one more time. She wasn't sure why, it wasn't like the planet would be going anywhere and the view had grown somewhat mundane.
"ISS, please come in we're picking up some massive interference." A voice came crackling in. Her heart sank briefly. You never wanted to hear something like that.
"Ground control, what's the situation?"
"All our telescopes and scanners are going ballistic. Can you see anything we can't?" The voice replied, clearly alarmed at what they were picking up.
"I'm not see…" She said, but it was like a frog leaped into her throat as it seemed that all at once; cracks started forming through the black void of space. The mirror of the universe was starting to splinter and something was straining to get through.
"Holy shit...ground control...it's starting to break."
"What's starting to break? ISS, can you clarify?!"
"Space it's starting to break!"
"Can you clarify less metaphorically?"
"No it's literally starting to sh-" The cracks started to spider web across the black void of space. Based on the swearing she heard in Russian, even the moon was starting to be enveloped in a three dimensional network of splinterlines.
"Jesus fucking christ what!?" Clearly ground control was able to see it as well to break professionalism so flagrantly like that.
For a moment everything seemed to be calm as the ISS flew by one of the splinters in space, through which she caught glimpses of...everything. A kaleidoscope of countless visions all played at random without any sense of coherence or stability. Part of her was terrified, but another part demanded that it be studied.
"I have visual on one of the cracks. I'm seeing...random visions. Stars, planets...people...war….corpses...christ what is this?" She said, now thoroughly shook by the images.
"Telescopes are confirming as much. The cracks haven't spread too far for now."
White House 13:01 GMT-6 Second of February 2019
"Look I have my best people on the situation, we're handling it beautifully. Everything is going to be okay!" President Trump said, trying to contain the emotions of a baying crowd as people started to fear the end of the world was at hand.
"Okay, before we all get crazy here, let's have some questions. Anyone want questions? I want questions. I got answers, and they're great answers believe me!" He said, figuring that if he spoke as quickly as possible nobody would figure out that he was internally panicking himself.
"Mr.President do you have any plans to investigate the cracks?"
"Look getting a rocket up into space is time consuming and expensive. We can't just launch now. I've been told we'll have to wait at least a week on that, maybe more. But we can maybe launch one of the old ICBMs there."
There was a furious murmuring among the crowds as people considered how to write that into what may be the last stories anyone would ever make.
"Are they dangerous?" Another asked, this one some lady from...France he thought. Must have been the accent.
"Look I dunno, maybe they are maybe they're not. They're not here yet so I think we've got some time."
"Don't you think you're being a bit cavalier about this?" Who was that guy? He didn't like them.
"Cavalier? No i think we're being very reasonable, we're the most reasonable administration this country's ever seen in the face of this crisis." He said, yeah that sounded brave.
"And what if it is the end of the world?" One asked, getting a wide array of stares from the gathered press.
"Then we'll pray. Next?"
European Space Agency HQ, Paris 20:12 GMT+1 Second of February 2019
"So you're saying we have no idea about what these cracks are?" Macron asked, his hands jittering like mad. The riots in France had aged him a decade and now he was facing the possibility of the end times themselves dawning upon him. He was going to die of stress before his presidency was over at this rate.
"They do not correspond to any known electromagnetic phenomena but based on our studies they seem to be distortions in space and time." The scientist said, Andrea adjusting her glasses and chewing her pen nervously. The redhead was in her twenties at most, but nerves made her seem to have aged years prematurely, and her expression bore a severe frown.
"Shit." Macron breathed, audible only to himself.
"Are they dangerous?" He asked, he knew that he already asked whether they truly knew nothing, but he needed to hear it from her.
"A distortion in the universe like this would be more than enough to tear the planet apart. Anything with the power to cause this is...inconceivable. Not even the largest black holes we simulated could do anything like this."
The politicians and commissioners behind him broke into a frenzy of mutterings.
"So this is the end then?"
"I don't see how it could be anything but that."
"What do I tell everyone?" He asked, utterly lost.
"Make your peace. Nothing we do will matter shortly." She said, resigned and clearly longing for all the wine she could drink.
"How shortly?"
"I couldn't say. But we may as well live life like tomorrow will never come." She said, looking at her phone and tapping in one last message to her girlfriend.
With that, Macron left the office looking at the sky, silently cursing it.
Tehran 23:58 GMT+3:30 Second of February 2019
The announcement that in all likelihood this was the world's grand finale caused quite the stir in Iran. There was rioting at first, protests later, then there was seeking solace in faith. The apocalypse had not unfolded as the Qu'ran or any other religious text predicted it, but it was coming and so people began to look to other answers. Many had taken their lives, wanting to die on their own terms; and many of their corpses had yet to be taken off the streets. What was the point? The end was here.
People were coming together, offering each other solace as the splinters in the universe began to grow ever larger, wider, and more pronounced. Eyes were glued to television screens that reported that the sun had been affected by these cracks, massive pieces being split apart from it while somehow the star kept on burning despite being essentially broken like a dropped jigsaw puzzle.
Mars was gone, as far as Farid could tell. The spirit rover reported the cracks consuming the planet before its signal cut out entirely and there was nowhere he or anyone else could run.
He had returned to his parents; wanting a few last words with them before the Earth came to an end, and was now wondering what would happen.
His parents had fallen asleep, figuring that they did not want to be awake when they died. He himself could only stare out the window as the ugly fractures in the cosmos grew wider and brighter like a strange aurora.
Random, incoherent visions filled his sight and he had spent many minutes trying to make what sense of them he could. Many a charlatan had spent their last few hours trying to offer prophecies or interpretations, but none of them made much sense to him.
To him though, he thought it may be visions of something new. He kept on seeing an image of some sphere with what he thought looked like continents. He had no idea what it meant. A new world perhaps? But the image of a black figure with circular glowing white eyes troubled him, an unnerving vision of a shadow man.
However, a mournful groan could be heard through the air as the earth began to tremble and the trees swayed with the wind. The cracks were expanding and advancing closer. The world was ensnared within them, and he wanted to just close his eyes and let his death come to him.
But his younger brother came out from the room behind him and said a few words. "Farid, I'm scared."
He shuddered and grabbed tightly onto him.
"I'm sorry I couldn't visit more often." He said, not wanting to let go as he felt a strange glow on his sunkissed unshaven face.
"What's happening?"
"It's going to be alright. We're going to heaven." He said, trying to offer what comfort he could as he looked to the splinter. The stars were broken, the void began to splinter apart to be replaced with an infinite grey expanse as the laws of reality came undone.
A noise like a deep howl and the shriek of shattered glass and the rumble of shaking earth reached his ears in defiance of the laws of sound, and the moon disappeared into the rift before enveloped the world like the jaws of a great dragon. Then he could feel everything falling as if the Earth had been thrown down some great pit by God himself. His body clenched and it took everything he could to not scream as all that was came asunder.
His vision was overwhelmed and nothing more could be perceived.
ISS ???
Everything that could go wrong was going wrong at once as space and time pulled apart and the whole of the earth fell towards some great pit. The crew of the ISS braced for whatever shelter they could find as they collectively screamed. But there was no feeling of shuddering or shaking, merely a tremendous plummet.
The earth plunged through impossible colours before they fell into an infinite grey expanse; an Ur-Null whose boundaries were determined by the mirror finish of reality and shimmering fields of imaginary nonsense that defied the infinite emptiness and the beings of nonexistence that dominated the unspace of the truest void.
A tunnel made of cracks in the emptiness carried the station and the earth to another tear, and everyone plummeted towards an unknowable and unguessable future. Time and space reasserted meaning where there was once none and the strange colours disappeared behind them.
Nothing could be seen for a moment, but the Earth as they knew it was soon gone amidst a shimmering field of auroras that seemed to concentrate themselves near what seemed like a far too flat map of the continents as if the Earth's crust had been peeled like an onion and laid flat on a…
No...Were those?
Oceans?
Continents?
Ice caps?
Moons!?
Nothing like this could be so big...not when…
The station was going to crash at cometary velocities into a world that had to be of a diameter at least comparable to quasi-star based on its tremendous all dominating horizon. The good news was that they were going to die long before they hit the ground.
The bad news is that they were going to die.
Everyone braced for a fiery re-entry that would kill them all in seconds at an orbital velocity that was enough to make anyone at NASA's head spin. But the impact never came. The auroras touched the craft and light enveloped them all.
Sensation returned seconds later, but the ISS was somehow, beyond all possibility; safely on the ground. Grass could be seen outside of the port holes, grown wild and free, and trees; albeit unlike any trees any of the Astronauts were familiar with; could be made out.
Where were they?
Eurwangni Beach ???? Second of February
Pang Sun-Hwa grimaced at the computer as she tried tapping on her keyboard. No, nothing still. She sighed, all the websites connecting to places like oceania and the rest of Asia were working fine, but anything based in America was unresponsive. It was like half the internet had just vanished.
Great, they survived the apocalypse only to not even be able to tweet about it. What cruel injustice the world had dealt to them. She guessed that this was their punishment for not panicking like everyone else.
She looked to her friend, Ran Chi-Won and spoke up. "The internet is fucked. I wanted to post about how we survived but half the websites seem to be down." She said angrily, gesturing at her computer before her friend turned around and tapped on her binoculars.
"The horizon looks wrong."
"Eh? How so?" She said, confused.
"Are you supposed to be able to see those islands from here?" She said, passing her the binoculars.
She took the binoculars in her slender hands and looked over the horizon to the east.
There were indeed, faintly visible islands in the distance visible through the binoculars. Too far away to make out much detail, but somehow still visible.
"Is the GPS still broken?"
"Haven't been able to get any maps since the cracks broke." She said, sighing. Who even knew how to read maps anymore?
"What do you think it is?"
"Maybe it's Godzilla?" They both laughed at that.
The sight of an explosion in the distance caught Ran's eyes though, and she turned her binoculars to the right.
Warships, but unlike anything she'd ever seen were firing at something or the other.
"What…"
"What is it?"
She passed the binoculars out to her friend who almost dropped them in surprise before gasping.
Zonth Ocean, 32:31, 6th of the Twelfth Month of Ulthrik, 4th Epoch of the 13th Age, 2136.
Admiral Olornd would be damned if he was going to let the Jothii hold the upper hand here. He checked the augurs and looked at the display crystal telling him of anything within the vicinity it could detect. He was sure that there wasn't supposed to be anything more than a few sea mounts in the vicinity. The whole place was supposed to be an abyssal plain.
Yet here was a fair sized continent in the way. Must be the work of some powerful mage...maybe an elemental or archplanar....hrm. He'd have to be cautious, but there were ways he could use this to his advantage he mused as his warship "Kolr's bane" navigated through the waters between some archipelago and a peninsula.
There was a larger landmass ahead and a good sized bay. Perhaps he could force them to approach his fleet in a manner of his choosing. Such was a good idea. Highly recommended, he'd be praised for it by his teachers. His gill feathers ruffled against each other in excitement.
He figured that he could use the space in this bay and between the large land mass and the larger peninsulas to his advantage. His rockets and mage-cannons should be able to carry the day for him here, and if that wasn't enough his carriers and especially his flagship...yes a lovely ship it was.
A few hours passed in relative silence as all the positioning required was made and he sketched out his plan in his head, tracing glowing arcane patterns on the illusory map generated by demiglobe on his command table to indicate his desired positions. Everything would be ready soon, he thought to himself before his musing was interrupted just as his plan was finished.
"Admiral, our scrying has detected incoming attacks in our near future. Interference will be heavy and future divinitations will be difficult, how shall we respond?"
"Do we have their likely position?"
"Glimpses" Their eye stalks extended a little closer to the admiral.
"How much?"
"We could fire on them with reasonable accuracy, enough to ensure at least some impacts."
"Fire our longest ranged weapons, strike them down!" He said, slamming his clawed fist on the table.
"Of course admiral."
The first aircraft and the first projectiles of the mighty fleet were launched forth while surreally coloured arcane energies danced in the skies, bidden to hunt the enemy's fleets.
Cannons augmented by spellcraft lobbed shells hundreds of kilometres down range in a staccato pattern to maintain a constant rain that was meant to arrive in sync with the air fleet. But as expected, the enemy had their own response at the ready.
Mystic energies crackled around their fleet of sleek and steely ships, deflecting and absorbing some of the incoming strikes while crimson craft ascended to meet their counterparts in deadly battle minutes later.
Each aircraft would withstand multiple missiles before being struck from the sky. Duels could not be settled at a distance but only in with their teeth at each other's throats with gunfire.
Deadly webs of magic spiralled around the sky, some forming into summoning gates to call forth aid from beyond. Some lashing out at nearby craft that approached these clusters of mystic energy in the form of scorching fireballs or cascading lightning. A few conjured walls and barriers in the air to force their foes to dodge around.
Another battle in this long war fought over a vast expanse of ocean. And a battle that was being keenly watched by nervous third parties.
Qingdao Naval Base ????
Li Yujie had been looking at the reports he was getting nervously for hours now. Satellites had been dead since the shattering and no means of reaching them had worked so far. Undersea cables to the Americas had also gone offline and none of the attempted fixes had worked. About the only good news was that his radar and visual equipment could see incredibly far over the horizon now, and the terrifying cracks in the sky had disappeared.
Despite the fear that had gripped the base and even wracked at his leader's nerves previously he had a job to do. It's not like not being at his post would make any difference in the face of the end of the world.
But the sun...though he was not sure when the sun had partners in the sky...rose again, the world continued to turn. And the people's liberation army navy still had to guard the shores of China.
Which made this set of reports very nerve wracking. Foreign vessels had brazenly pushed through the sea of Okhotsk, then they pushed through the Sea of Japan, and now the Yellow Sea, then they were approaching the Bohai sea. Another set of contacts had come around east of Japan and then hooked around between the Ryukyu islands and then gunned for the yellow sea on what seemed to be an intercept course.
His theory that they were the Americans and the Russians deciding to finish what the shattering could not was invalidated by Vladivostok's base giving him an especially irate call followed by COMUSJAPAN.
This left him with few sensible options. But now he was getting visual feeds from naval reconnaissance assets that didn't rely on satellites to provide an uplink and he wasn't at all understanding what he was seeing. No navy in the world used big gun ships anymore, nor had any navy ever made ships of that size.
They were of no design he recognised and their emblems were entirely foreign to him. As best as he could tell. However he had a new theory, one which was validated in a matter of minutes. And one which would be rather unpleasant news to give to his superiors.
Two alien navies were having a massive naval engagement in Chinese territorial waters and he had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Any action by him, and as he suspected; any of the other naval forces here; could result in a war with powers nobody knew anything about.
Last edited:
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Earth ISoT" into fantasy. Oh neat.
Wait a second... 2020... wouldnt that mean...
Wait!
Oh no
OH NO!
Earth's going to be at war with, like, fucking Numenor by the time a week's passed arent we?
Wait a second... 2020... wouldnt that mean...
Wait!
OH NO said:
Oh no
OH NO!
Earth's going to be at war with, like, fucking Numenor by the time a week's passed arent we?
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
As someone with an extreme familiarity with the setting they've been ISOT'd to, I'm gleefully waiting for the various planned events to unfold.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
At least the Jothii and Herfindic fleets aren't near the USA.
- Location
- The Old Dominion
Its Trump why settle for Numenor when he could try to invade Valinor because that always gone so well...
AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Numenor is closer! It'll take us /two/ weeks to be at war with Valinor!
> : V
Chapter 2: Shock
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Former Pacific Ocean: ???? February 2, 2019
"Honolulu, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, reporting complete loss of GPS tracking, over." Jenna Weaver buzzed in. The seconds ticked away. "Repeat: Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834 reporting GPS loss, do you read me? over."
The reply came painfully late. "We read you Hawaiian Airlines 834. Be advised, no contact has been made with Sydney since the Event; standbye for vectors back."
Her flight had taken off before the sky started to shatter, and she had been keeping herself busy with the control towers. When the sky broke, she held to her nerves and internally debated on whether it was time to head back or not. When it seemed inevitable that world would end, nobody bothered to give out orders for flights to return home. But then it turned out that there was still a world left, and still passengers to deliver somewhere and only so much fuel to expend.
However, all the GPS satellites had gone dark. INS systems were still functional, but what she was seeing out of her cockpit was...bizarre. For one thing it was a completely different time of day, for another thing there was more than one sun in the sky. And the horizon seemed to stretch into infinity with only the very faintest of curvature. The plane was also handling completely differently as if the air was thicker than it should be. Nothing made sense.
But that wasn't the only problem. A pair of delta winged aircraft rocketed past her plane, midnight and olive in colour with a roundel of some kind of winged creature she didn't recognise. Air intakes like old 50s jets sat on their front with no visible cockpits while blazing trails of blue flame followed behind them; twin tails extending out of the aircraft as they made harsh turns to circle around the airliner. She could feel sweat gluing her to the seat of her aircraft. This was the nightmare of every airline pilot in the world; confrontation with spooky looking military aircraft.
She tried to establish them on any radio frequency she knew of. None of the frequencies most militaries she knew operated with were responded to. But as she tried to adjust her set, she heard a voice. She paused and heard someone speak in a language that she couldn't understand. Still, words she couldn't understand were at the very least still words.
"Hello, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834. We have civilians on board, repeat, civilians on board! Please identify!" Maybe if she wished for it hard enough they'd be able to get the gist of some of that. Her aircraft was clearly not a military aircraft with no signs of weapons and no ability to make the sort of hard turns that defined high performance fighter jets or even bombers. But they refused to peel off, each plane lining up with her cockpit and remaining level.
She heard them speak again.
"Please identify!" She said, this time more desperate as the aircraft refused to leave her alone. Already her passengers were in an understandable state of panic due to being surrounded by military aircraft. The threat of being erased by the shattering was abstract, it probably wouldn't have hurt very much. Being shot down by a fighter jet however, that was a very real and understandable terror. Something they couldn't do anything about, but something many of them wouldn't die quickly enough in the face of to be without pain.
"Please identify!" She repeated, almost soaking her uniform with nerve induced sweat, wiping her brow to try and avoid the distraction of water in her eyes as other aircraft could be seen in the distance. Her heart just about leaped out of her throat at the sight of larger aircraft moving below, as if they were hunting for something in the waters and buzzing around something massive pushing through the clouds. She thought she could see the beginnings of...towers maybe? Did they build something incomprehensibly tall structure?
They spoke again, no identifiable words. Their craft drew closer still and she gulped hard as she made one last plea.
But as they spoke once again they slowly started to get more comprehensible until she heard perfect English. How she wasn't sure, but it felt like a herd of elephants had gotten off her chest.
"This territory is the airspace of the United Councils of Atericil; identify your origins and turn back or be detained."
"What is Atericil?" She asked to her co-pilot who simply shook his head.
"This is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834 from Honolulu, United States of America. We are a civilian craft, repeat we are a civilian craft."
"No such country exists and you have no clearance to pass through this airspace. Turn back or be detained." The female voice said, the clouds starting to break open with the shape of something vast moving through them.
"Roger willco, heading back now." She said as the aircraft began to bank around to make its trip back to Hawaii.
The enormous shape in the clouds was not long to emerge however, a vast prow began to break through the clouds as what seemed to be a skyborne citadel, bristling with firepower and with a large hangar bay she could easily fit this plane inside of without issue, receiving and dispatching aircraft with little issue.
The colossal aircraft's great forward swept blade like wings surrounded a hull that could best be described as two prows stacked atop each other at their wider bases, almost giving the impression of an executioner's sword. She had to figure that the aircraft was at least five kilometres long and was being flanked by a number of other, smaller but still enormous airships that sped through the cloud cover, gleaming under the sun. The helicarrier from the avengers would have seemed miniscule in comparison, and the entire cabin went dead silent at the sight of the craft.
"Are the plane's cameras taking this?" She asked.
"Uhhhhh..." He said, very intelligently.
"This is the Righteous Indignation. You will be escorted to the limits of our air space. This is not a safe place for unarmed aircraft without military protection." Another masculine voice came in as the air armada continued its journey; the distant shape of an even larger aircraft being visible over the horizon, likely a civilian craft given its more nonthreatening egg like shape...but did she really know which craft were civilian or military here?
She nodded as her craft began to bank away, a flight of aircraft hung near her airliner as she announced. "We've come to an agreement with the people of the uh...United Councils of Atericil. We'll be heading home without further incident hopefully. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience." She said, letting out a sigh of relief.
Honolulu Airport Control Tower, ???? 10 minutes later, 2 February, 2019.
"Dave." Akamu said, rubbing his shoulders.
"H-huh...what?" He said, having grown bored as most flights were currently cancelled and very little was going on at the airport. Most flights were given an order to turn back until what went wrong with the GPS could be determined and between the initial waves of aircraft there was a whole lot of nothing to do.
"Pearl's freaking out. Take a look man." Pearl Harbor. Oh shit.
A wing of aircraft launched from one of America's most important naval bases was rocketing through the sky and the US Navy was preparing a sortie. Whatever it was, it was enough for the air raid sirens from North Korea's nuclear scare a little while back to be activated.
"Honolulu, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, I've just been intercepted and ordered to return. I need vectors back to Honolulu, over." Jenna's voice cut in.
Well this just got interesting. "Copy Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, skies are clear, your discretion. For now. Be advised, it looks like Pearl is sortieing...well everything, your direction."
"...Shit." Jenna breathed.
"What's the problem?" Akamu asked.
"I bumped into some jets, they say I violated the airspace of something called the United Councils of Atericil, and I'm being escorted out. They weren't asking." She said.
"You're not pulling my leg right? There's no country called Atericil."
"They said there was no such country as America so touche."
"Hold up, so what you're saying is that you ran into planes from some country that we never knew and now they're sending you back here with an armed escort? Shit I've watched an anime like this." Dave said, and one could just imagine Jenna rolling her eyes on the other side.
"We can be weebs when I don't start world war three alright? How do I get the air force to back off?"
"Technically some of those planes are navy." Dave said before Akamu shot him a glare and mouthed the magical four words to get him to stop talking.
"This is why people named Dave are not protected by the constitution and need to be oppressed." She said following a brief, unbearably awkward silence.
"Alright alright, we need to contact the jets first..." Akamu said as he started quickly perusing his database.
White House Situation Room. 5 minutes prior February 2, 2019
"Okay what's this situation you've got me dragged in here for all about?" The president said as he sat himself down, a look of deep concern on the faces of nearly everyone except him.
"About twenty minutes ago USINDOPACOM detected a massive number of incoming unidentified aircraft approaching Midway island. All our satellites are down, NASA says they're probably gone, so we only have radar confirmation of these objects, but their radar profiles are consistent with the size and speed of military aircraft in most cases."
"What do you mean most?"
"Some of them are far too large to be aircraft as we know them. We're talking about someone putting up aircraft carriers or even cities into the air and moving towards Hawaii at supersonic speeds mixed in with what we guess are stealth planes. Problem is their radar signatures keep changing for reasons I cannot even begin to guess." Commander Phillip S Davidson said as he indicated the incoming objects with a stylus on a smartboard.
"Okay so anyone got any theories?" Trump said, spreading his arms and looking for anyone to say anything so he wouldn't have to say the first thing that came to his mind.
"Is it Chinese? Xi Jinping up to his tricks? I told you he was mad about my trade war. Must be trying to get back at me." He said, breaking his commitment almost as quickly as it was made to the surprise of no one.
"With due respect every other navy operating in the pacific combined couldn't project this much force at Pearl Harbour." General Selva said.
"Okay what are other options?"
A brief silence fell as many pondered how to explain the most insane sounding but most logical given the facts explanation to him. A poor choice of words could lead to precious seconds being lost in what may very well be a repeat of December 7th on an even larger scale. They might have the advantage of knowing what's coming, but sending a sortie out at sea might just get the pacific fleet gutted, especially when contact with the ships near China couldn't be made for the moment. But the explanation they were about to give might explain it.
"Based on the sky we're seeing and the loss of all our satellites as well as a massive expansion of the horizon we're theorising that somehow we've been transported to another world. One much larger than our own. Based on the horizon we're estimating it's comparable in size to a dyson sphere, and that by some impossible miracle our planet's continents have been essentially stretched across a flat surface like on a map. It sounds stupid and impossible, but there's not a whole lot else that fits the data." Admiral Richardson said, aware of how crazy he just sounded and signalling to Selva to speak up before the president could.
"So our theory, such as it is. Is that these are aircraft from a foreign nation. We're not sure why they're entering our airspace but we cannot rule out the possibility of an attack on American soil. Perhaps they hope to launch a preemptive strike after deeming our pacific assets to be a threat. Or maybe they're on the way to somewhere else. Whatever it is, we need to show that whatever this territory was before it's ours now." Selva said.
"Sounds good to me, launch 'em."
Hawaii Emergency Alert
LARGE NUMBER OF UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT INBOUND TOWARDS HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Twitter thread by @smollerroller
@smollerroller
Man I survive the sky breaking and three new suns fucking with my sleep schedule and now we're already trying to blow each other up.
@FakestGamersUKnow
Extremely fucked up that I legitimately can't tell if we're about to get gnomed again or not.
@HarderPosadasDaddy
If I have to show up to work tomorrow and don't die in a nuclear firestorm I'm going to be disappointed.
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@smollerroller
@DolphinsDidSkycracks Dude same.
@FakestGamersUKnow
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@HarderPosadasDaddy
@DolphinsDidSkycracks Putting this under relatable images.
@VeggieTalesStan
Anyone else watching the weather forecast guy having a meltdown because of some glitch in the radar? It keeps on picking up these gigantic objects coming right at us and he's losing his absolute shit.
@SkeleMommy
Are we sure that's a glitch if he can't get rid of it?
@VeggieTalesStan
What is this some independence day shit? I'm not ready to live in a Roland Eimmerech movie.
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@VeggieTalesStan @SkeleMommy No one wants to live in one of those. Not even Roland.
@HarderPosadasDaddy
@VeggieTalesStan @DolphinsDidSkycracks @SkeleMommy If they're aliens can I volunteer to be anal probed?
@smollerroller
@VeggieTalesStan @DolphinsDidSkycracks @SkeleMommy @HarderPosadasDaddy Horny on main alert!
Yellow Sea, ??? 2 February 2019
The PLAN had undergone a great deal of secretive expansion over the years. Already its navy had accepted a second carrier and even more were well under way and would likely be finished early this decade to make China the most powerful nation in the pacific; far surpassing America's committed ships in the ocean. Now it would have to sortie alongside an armada of other ships from other navies in a mission of peace.
The two foreign navies were seeking to obliterate each other in earnest with guns firing at ranges greater than anything ever observed from gun artillery; a massed volley of missiles, and great wings of aircraft. From what Admiral Ding Yi could tell the two sides had about four carriers each, along with six or so major capital ships besides that. However what interested him was the massive hybrid flagships at the heart of each of their navies. Easily at least twice the length of a supercarrier and seeming to serve as a sort of mothership for these armadas. Curious, he couldn't think of many reasons to build something so big.
"What do you make of it Sergei?" He asked of his Russian counterpart through what comms were available. Operating from the Varyag, the grizzled old commander muttered a curse mostly to himself.
"I'd say we're outmatched and outgunned here." He clearly was cynical about this whole operation. But Ding Yi had faith in the ability of naval maritime assets to make up for the weakness in surface ships, especially so close to Chinese waters. Anti-ship missiles on the shore were also being readied. A great panoply of firepower originally meant to deal with the American pacific fleet and its allies in the event of a new pacific war.
A massive explosion in the distance confirmed that the fleet that had sought refuge within the Bohai sea had lost one of its ships, the sailors on his carrier flinching in awe and murmuring as the eldritch, multi-coloured glow of strange munitions detonating one after the other before an even larger explosion made everyone hit the deck and avert their eyes as presumably the bulk of the ships' ammunition or some sort of delayed explosion finished off a ship he figured to be comparable to the Varyag in size.
"Fucking hell what was that?"
"I would wager it means that the eastern fleet is winning." He said, trying to keep the link to the drone steady as the drone sought to evade the notice of the enemy's defences. With any luck they'd be too busy to focus on the little drone and the Chinese could get a better idea of what exactly they were facing.
"The range on those guns are incredible. The Engineers would love to study such beauties I'm sure."
"Yeah assuming we aren't all dead."
"Don't be so cynical Sergei. We are here on a mission of peace."
"With enough firepower to level California?"
"As I said, a mission of peace."
Soon enough an ensign stood up and spoke out. "We have them on radio contact Admiral, do you wish to speak to them or should we let the General Secretary or the Ambassador do so?" They asked, Xi Jinping was rather...eager to put in a word for the People's Republic personally to get some sort of advantage out of this. Or at the very least to avoid causing the apocalypse. He had confidence however, they were likely as confused as he was and he had the advantage of not operating far from home.
"I will speak first. Let them know that a fellow man of the sea wishes to speak." He said.
"Of course Admiral. We have somehow established a common tongue, you may speak without issue."
With his radio speaker in hand he began. "This is Vice Admiral Ding Yi to the foreign fleets. You are within the sovereign waters of the People's Republic of China, and are asked to cease your battle and withdraw."
"This is Admiral Olornd hor Korphf of the Great Kingdoms of Herfind, such is unacceptable. The battle is engaged and shall not be ceased until victory is won. Your lands were not present mere hours ago, whatever magics your "People's Republic of China" have used to conjure this land earn you no rights to deny us our battleground." Whatever was speaking didn't sound human, far too wet and croaking. This one came off as something of a blowhard.
"This is Fleet Commander Xarli Meelre of the Liberators of Joth; unless we have a guarantee that the Herfindic ships will not engage in perfidy when they disengage we cannot accept even a momentary ceasefire." This voice sounded human, female, and quite authoritative. Though her answer disappointed him he understood the reasoning.
Another set of bombings dominated the view given to him by the drone, these bombs exploding into green flames that burned on the water and began to coalesce into humanoid figures who immediately went about attacking the fleet that he guessed was of Herfind. Their blows did significant damage to the baroque and bulbous designs of the ships, searing open holes and incinerating crews of axolotl like beings with sweeps or bursts of strange green fire. His eyes beheld something equally impossible however as a Herfindic conjured flashes of light to bring forth the ocean waves into tendrils to sweep the men of fire off of the ship and push them into the sea and intercept incoming guided missiles with a quickly conjured wall of water; detonating the warheads prematurely away from the hull of the damaged cruiser.
He had to wonder what the anti-submarine assets were picking up, surely they were waging some incredible sort of war beneath the waves if their surface battle was this fantastical. He was sure that the party would agree with him that understanding this technology was of crucial importance to China's future. And if he could reach some sort of deal...yes the accolades would make him famous. However he was prepared to let the Ambassador take as long as they wish to negotiate. The lines of supply were on his side.
CNC News Broadcast, 14 hours later.
CNC Anchor: The battle between the two foreign fleets in the Yellow sea has continued for its sixteenth hour in the largest naval engagement since the battle of Leyte Gulf in the global anti-fascist war. During this time, citizens are advised to avoid transit in the yellow sea while party leadership seeks to establish a dialogue that will bring this conflict to a peaceful conclusion.
The anchor continues to speak while a CGI graphic showing the two fleets path into the yellow sea and their battle. Herfind's fleets are displayed in yellow while Joth's fleets are shown in red.
CNC Anchor: From what has been gleaned from diplomatic conversations, the two fleets are from the nations of the Great Kingdoms of Herfind and the Liberators of Joth. From what can be understood and presuming that what has been told is accurate, the conflict between Joth and Herfind started over a conflict regarding the practise of slavery in Herfind.
CNC Anchor: The nation of Joth, which considers abolitionism the cornerstone of its moral philosophy declared war against Herfind when its efforts to smuggle slaves out of the Kingdoms were met with violence resulting in a major slave revolt and a massive purge.
CNC Anchor: While Jothii sources have obvious bias, they claim two million deaths in the resulting month long purge, including many of their own citizens. This was deemed an unacceptable transgression and war was declared shortly afterwards.
A graphic is shown visualing the amount of deaths of in the great slave crackdown, each person crossed out indicating a thousand deaths.
CNC Anchor: The Herfindic account is that the Jothii were deliberately inciting rebellion, chaos, and violence and have launched a violent assault out of moral busybodying regarding their internal affairs.
CNC Anchor: General Secretary Xi Jinping has expressed a desire for peace in the yellow sea, but has expressed shock, disappointment, and disgust at the existence of chattel slavery in this world and urges the leaders of Herfind to reconsider their antiquarian ways.
CNC Anchor: In an emergency meeting of the Communist Party of China, the central committee is considering all potential options for an immediate end to the conflict and whether action will need to be taken. However we must reiterate the desire of the central government for peace and stability within the region, including with our new neighbours.
"Honolulu, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, reporting complete loss of GPS tracking, over." Jenna Weaver buzzed in. The seconds ticked away. "Repeat: Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834 reporting GPS loss, do you read me? over."
The reply came painfully late. "We read you Hawaiian Airlines 834. Be advised, no contact has been made with Sydney since the Event; standbye for vectors back."
Her flight had taken off before the sky started to shatter, and she had been keeping herself busy with the control towers. When the sky broke, she held to her nerves and internally debated on whether it was time to head back or not. When it seemed inevitable that world would end, nobody bothered to give out orders for flights to return home. But then it turned out that there was still a world left, and still passengers to deliver somewhere and only so much fuel to expend.
However, all the GPS satellites had gone dark. INS systems were still functional, but what she was seeing out of her cockpit was...bizarre. For one thing it was a completely different time of day, for another thing there was more than one sun in the sky. And the horizon seemed to stretch into infinity with only the very faintest of curvature. The plane was also handling completely differently as if the air was thicker than it should be. Nothing made sense.
But that wasn't the only problem. A pair of delta winged aircraft rocketed past her plane, midnight and olive in colour with a roundel of some kind of winged creature she didn't recognise. Air intakes like old 50s jets sat on their front with no visible cockpits while blazing trails of blue flame followed behind them; twin tails extending out of the aircraft as they made harsh turns to circle around the airliner. She could feel sweat gluing her to the seat of her aircraft. This was the nightmare of every airline pilot in the world; confrontation with spooky looking military aircraft.
She tried to establish them on any radio frequency she knew of. None of the frequencies most militaries she knew operated with were responded to. But as she tried to adjust her set, she heard a voice. She paused and heard someone speak in a language that she couldn't understand. Still, words she couldn't understand were at the very least still words.
"Hello, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834. We have civilians on board, repeat, civilians on board! Please identify!" Maybe if she wished for it hard enough they'd be able to get the gist of some of that. Her aircraft was clearly not a military aircraft with no signs of weapons and no ability to make the sort of hard turns that defined high performance fighter jets or even bombers. But they refused to peel off, each plane lining up with her cockpit and remaining level.
She heard them speak again.
"Please identify!" She said, this time more desperate as the aircraft refused to leave her alone. Already her passengers were in an understandable state of panic due to being surrounded by military aircraft. The threat of being erased by the shattering was abstract, it probably wouldn't have hurt very much. Being shot down by a fighter jet however, that was a very real and understandable terror. Something they couldn't do anything about, but something many of them wouldn't die quickly enough in the face of to be without pain.
"Please identify!" She repeated, almost soaking her uniform with nerve induced sweat, wiping her brow to try and avoid the distraction of water in her eyes as other aircraft could be seen in the distance. Her heart just about leaped out of her throat at the sight of larger aircraft moving below, as if they were hunting for something in the waters and buzzing around something massive pushing through the clouds. She thought she could see the beginnings of...towers maybe? Did they build something incomprehensibly tall structure?
They spoke again, no identifiable words. Their craft drew closer still and she gulped hard as she made one last plea.
But as they spoke once again they slowly started to get more comprehensible until she heard perfect English. How she wasn't sure, but it felt like a herd of elephants had gotten off her chest.
"This territory is the airspace of the United Councils of Atericil; identify your origins and turn back or be detained."
"What is Atericil?" She asked to her co-pilot who simply shook his head.
"This is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834 from Honolulu, United States of America. We are a civilian craft, repeat we are a civilian craft."
"No such country exists and you have no clearance to pass through this airspace. Turn back or be detained." The female voice said, the clouds starting to break open with the shape of something vast moving through them.
"Roger willco, heading back now." She said as the aircraft began to bank around to make its trip back to Hawaii.
The enormous shape in the clouds was not long to emerge however, a vast prow began to break through the clouds as what seemed to be a skyborne citadel, bristling with firepower and with a large hangar bay she could easily fit this plane inside of without issue, receiving and dispatching aircraft with little issue.
The colossal aircraft's great forward swept blade like wings surrounded a hull that could best be described as two prows stacked atop each other at their wider bases, almost giving the impression of an executioner's sword. She had to figure that the aircraft was at least five kilometres long and was being flanked by a number of other, smaller but still enormous airships that sped through the cloud cover, gleaming under the sun. The helicarrier from the avengers would have seemed miniscule in comparison, and the entire cabin went dead silent at the sight of the craft.
"Are the plane's cameras taking this?" She asked.
"Uhhhhh..." He said, very intelligently.
"This is the Righteous Indignation. You will be escorted to the limits of our air space. This is not a safe place for unarmed aircraft without military protection." Another masculine voice came in as the air armada continued its journey; the distant shape of an even larger aircraft being visible over the horizon, likely a civilian craft given its more nonthreatening egg like shape...but did she really know which craft were civilian or military here?
She nodded as her craft began to bank away, a flight of aircraft hung near her airliner as she announced. "We've come to an agreement with the people of the uh...United Councils of Atericil. We'll be heading home without further incident hopefully. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience." She said, letting out a sigh of relief.
Honolulu Airport Control Tower, ???? 10 minutes later, 2 February, 2019.
"Dave." Akamu said, rubbing his shoulders.
"H-huh...what?" He said, having grown bored as most flights were currently cancelled and very little was going on at the airport. Most flights were given an order to turn back until what went wrong with the GPS could be determined and between the initial waves of aircraft there was a whole lot of nothing to do.
"Pearl's freaking out. Take a look man." Pearl Harbor. Oh shit.
A wing of aircraft launched from one of America's most important naval bases was rocketing through the sky and the US Navy was preparing a sortie. Whatever it was, it was enough for the air raid sirens from North Korea's nuclear scare a little while back to be activated.
"Honolulu, this is Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, I've just been intercepted and ordered to return. I need vectors back to Honolulu, over." Jenna's voice cut in.
Well this just got interesting. "Copy Hotel-Alfa-Lima 834, skies are clear, your discretion. For now. Be advised, it looks like Pearl is sortieing...well everything, your direction."
"...Shit." Jenna breathed.
"What's the problem?" Akamu asked.
"I bumped into some jets, they say I violated the airspace of something called the United Councils of Atericil, and I'm being escorted out. They weren't asking." She said.
"You're not pulling my leg right? There's no country called Atericil."
"They said there was no such country as America so touche."
"Hold up, so what you're saying is that you ran into planes from some country that we never knew and now they're sending you back here with an armed escort? Shit I've watched an anime like this." Dave said, and one could just imagine Jenna rolling her eyes on the other side.
"We can be weebs when I don't start world war three alright? How do I get the air force to back off?"
"Technically some of those planes are navy." Dave said before Akamu shot him a glare and mouthed the magical four words to get him to stop talking.
"This is why people named Dave are not protected by the constitution and need to be oppressed." She said following a brief, unbearably awkward silence.
"Alright alright, we need to contact the jets first..." Akamu said as he started quickly perusing his database.
White House Situation Room. 5 minutes prior February 2, 2019
"Okay what's this situation you've got me dragged in here for all about?" The president said as he sat himself down, a look of deep concern on the faces of nearly everyone except him.
"About twenty minutes ago USINDOPACOM detected a massive number of incoming unidentified aircraft approaching Midway island. All our satellites are down, NASA says they're probably gone, so we only have radar confirmation of these objects, but their radar profiles are consistent with the size and speed of military aircraft in most cases."
"What do you mean most?"
"Some of them are far too large to be aircraft as we know them. We're talking about someone putting up aircraft carriers or even cities into the air and moving towards Hawaii at supersonic speeds mixed in with what we guess are stealth planes. Problem is their radar signatures keep changing for reasons I cannot even begin to guess." Commander Phillip S Davidson said as he indicated the incoming objects with a stylus on a smartboard.
"Okay so anyone got any theories?" Trump said, spreading his arms and looking for anyone to say anything so he wouldn't have to say the first thing that came to his mind.
"Is it Chinese? Xi Jinping up to his tricks? I told you he was mad about my trade war. Must be trying to get back at me." He said, breaking his commitment almost as quickly as it was made to the surprise of no one.
"With due respect every other navy operating in the pacific combined couldn't project this much force at Pearl Harbour." General Selva said.
"Okay what are other options?"
A brief silence fell as many pondered how to explain the most insane sounding but most logical given the facts explanation to him. A poor choice of words could lead to precious seconds being lost in what may very well be a repeat of December 7th on an even larger scale. They might have the advantage of knowing what's coming, but sending a sortie out at sea might just get the pacific fleet gutted, especially when contact with the ships near China couldn't be made for the moment. But the explanation they were about to give might explain it.
"Based on the sky we're seeing and the loss of all our satellites as well as a massive expansion of the horizon we're theorising that somehow we've been transported to another world. One much larger than our own. Based on the horizon we're estimating it's comparable in size to a dyson sphere, and that by some impossible miracle our planet's continents have been essentially stretched across a flat surface like on a map. It sounds stupid and impossible, but there's not a whole lot else that fits the data." Admiral Richardson said, aware of how crazy he just sounded and signalling to Selva to speak up before the president could.
"So our theory, such as it is. Is that these are aircraft from a foreign nation. We're not sure why they're entering our airspace but we cannot rule out the possibility of an attack on American soil. Perhaps they hope to launch a preemptive strike after deeming our pacific assets to be a threat. Or maybe they're on the way to somewhere else. Whatever it is, we need to show that whatever this territory was before it's ours now." Selva said.
"Sounds good to me, launch 'em."
Hawaii Emergency Alert
LARGE NUMBER OF UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT INBOUND TOWARDS HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Twitter thread by @smollerroller
@smollerroller
Man I survive the sky breaking and three new suns fucking with my sleep schedule and now we're already trying to blow each other up.
@FakestGamersUKnow
Extremely fucked up that I legitimately can't tell if we're about to get gnomed again or not.
@HarderPosadasDaddy
If I have to show up to work tomorrow and don't die in a nuclear firestorm I'm going to be disappointed.
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@smollerroller
@DolphinsDidSkycracks Dude same.
@FakestGamersUKnow
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@HarderPosadasDaddy
@DolphinsDidSkycracks Putting this under relatable images.
@VeggieTalesStan
Anyone else watching the weather forecast guy having a meltdown because of some glitch in the radar? It keeps on picking up these gigantic objects coming right at us and he's losing his absolute shit.
@SkeleMommy
Are we sure that's a glitch if he can't get rid of it?
@VeggieTalesStan
What is this some independence day shit? I'm not ready to live in a Roland Eimmerech movie.
@DolphinsDidSkycracks
@VeggieTalesStan @SkeleMommy No one wants to live in one of those. Not even Roland.
@HarderPosadasDaddy
@VeggieTalesStan @DolphinsDidSkycracks @SkeleMommy If they're aliens can I volunteer to be anal probed?
@smollerroller
@VeggieTalesStan @DolphinsDidSkycracks @SkeleMommy @HarderPosadasDaddy Horny on main alert!
Yellow Sea, ??? 2 February 2019
The PLAN had undergone a great deal of secretive expansion over the years. Already its navy had accepted a second carrier and even more were well under way and would likely be finished early this decade to make China the most powerful nation in the pacific; far surpassing America's committed ships in the ocean. Now it would have to sortie alongside an armada of other ships from other navies in a mission of peace.
The two foreign navies were seeking to obliterate each other in earnest with guns firing at ranges greater than anything ever observed from gun artillery; a massed volley of missiles, and great wings of aircraft. From what Admiral Ding Yi could tell the two sides had about four carriers each, along with six or so major capital ships besides that. However what interested him was the massive hybrid flagships at the heart of each of their navies. Easily at least twice the length of a supercarrier and seeming to serve as a sort of mothership for these armadas. Curious, he couldn't think of many reasons to build something so big.
"What do you make of it Sergei?" He asked of his Russian counterpart through what comms were available. Operating from the Varyag, the grizzled old commander muttered a curse mostly to himself.
"I'd say we're outmatched and outgunned here." He clearly was cynical about this whole operation. But Ding Yi had faith in the ability of naval maritime assets to make up for the weakness in surface ships, especially so close to Chinese waters. Anti-ship missiles on the shore were also being readied. A great panoply of firepower originally meant to deal with the American pacific fleet and its allies in the event of a new pacific war.
A massive explosion in the distance confirmed that the fleet that had sought refuge within the Bohai sea had lost one of its ships, the sailors on his carrier flinching in awe and murmuring as the eldritch, multi-coloured glow of strange munitions detonating one after the other before an even larger explosion made everyone hit the deck and avert their eyes as presumably the bulk of the ships' ammunition or some sort of delayed explosion finished off a ship he figured to be comparable to the Varyag in size.
"Fucking hell what was that?"
"I would wager it means that the eastern fleet is winning." He said, trying to keep the link to the drone steady as the drone sought to evade the notice of the enemy's defences. With any luck they'd be too busy to focus on the little drone and the Chinese could get a better idea of what exactly they were facing.
"The range on those guns are incredible. The Engineers would love to study such beauties I'm sure."
"Yeah assuming we aren't all dead."
"Don't be so cynical Sergei. We are here on a mission of peace."
"With enough firepower to level California?"
"As I said, a mission of peace."
Soon enough an ensign stood up and spoke out. "We have them on radio contact Admiral, do you wish to speak to them or should we let the General Secretary or the Ambassador do so?" They asked, Xi Jinping was rather...eager to put in a word for the People's Republic personally to get some sort of advantage out of this. Or at the very least to avoid causing the apocalypse. He had confidence however, they were likely as confused as he was and he had the advantage of not operating far from home.
"I will speak first. Let them know that a fellow man of the sea wishes to speak." He said.
"Of course Admiral. We have somehow established a common tongue, you may speak without issue."
With his radio speaker in hand he began. "This is Vice Admiral Ding Yi to the foreign fleets. You are within the sovereign waters of the People's Republic of China, and are asked to cease your battle and withdraw."
"This is Admiral Olornd hor Korphf of the Great Kingdoms of Herfind, such is unacceptable. The battle is engaged and shall not be ceased until victory is won. Your lands were not present mere hours ago, whatever magics your "People's Republic of China" have used to conjure this land earn you no rights to deny us our battleground." Whatever was speaking didn't sound human, far too wet and croaking. This one came off as something of a blowhard.
"This is Fleet Commander Xarli Meelre of the Liberators of Joth; unless we have a guarantee that the Herfindic ships will not engage in perfidy when they disengage we cannot accept even a momentary ceasefire." This voice sounded human, female, and quite authoritative. Though her answer disappointed him he understood the reasoning.
Another set of bombings dominated the view given to him by the drone, these bombs exploding into green flames that burned on the water and began to coalesce into humanoid figures who immediately went about attacking the fleet that he guessed was of Herfind. Their blows did significant damage to the baroque and bulbous designs of the ships, searing open holes and incinerating crews of axolotl like beings with sweeps or bursts of strange green fire. His eyes beheld something equally impossible however as a Herfindic conjured flashes of light to bring forth the ocean waves into tendrils to sweep the men of fire off of the ship and push them into the sea and intercept incoming guided missiles with a quickly conjured wall of water; detonating the warheads prematurely away from the hull of the damaged cruiser.
He had to wonder what the anti-submarine assets were picking up, surely they were waging some incredible sort of war beneath the waves if their surface battle was this fantastical. He was sure that the party would agree with him that understanding this technology was of crucial importance to China's future. And if he could reach some sort of deal...yes the accolades would make him famous. However he was prepared to let the Ambassador take as long as they wish to negotiate. The lines of supply were on his side.
CNC News Broadcast, 14 hours later.
CNC Anchor: The battle between the two foreign fleets in the Yellow sea has continued for its sixteenth hour in the largest naval engagement since the battle of Leyte Gulf in the global anti-fascist war. During this time, citizens are advised to avoid transit in the yellow sea while party leadership seeks to establish a dialogue that will bring this conflict to a peaceful conclusion.
The anchor continues to speak while a CGI graphic showing the two fleets path into the yellow sea and their battle. Herfind's fleets are displayed in yellow while Joth's fleets are shown in red.
CNC Anchor: From what has been gleaned from diplomatic conversations, the two fleets are from the nations of the Great Kingdoms of Herfind and the Liberators of Joth. From what can be understood and presuming that what has been told is accurate, the conflict between Joth and Herfind started over a conflict regarding the practise of slavery in Herfind.
CNC Anchor: The nation of Joth, which considers abolitionism the cornerstone of its moral philosophy declared war against Herfind when its efforts to smuggle slaves out of the Kingdoms were met with violence resulting in a major slave revolt and a massive purge.
CNC Anchor: While Jothii sources have obvious bias, they claim two million deaths in the resulting month long purge, including many of their own citizens. This was deemed an unacceptable transgression and war was declared shortly afterwards.
A graphic is shown visualing the amount of deaths of in the great slave crackdown, each person crossed out indicating a thousand deaths.
CNC Anchor: The Herfindic account is that the Jothii were deliberately inciting rebellion, chaos, and violence and have launched a violent assault out of moral busybodying regarding their internal affairs.
CNC Anchor: General Secretary Xi Jinping has expressed a desire for peace in the yellow sea, but has expressed shock, disappointment, and disgust at the existence of chattel slavery in this world and urges the leaders of Herfind to reconsider their antiquarian ways.
CNC Anchor: In an emergency meeting of the Communist Party of China, the central committee is considering all potential options for an immediate end to the conflict and whether action will need to be taken. However we must reiterate the desire of the central government for peace and stability within the region, including with our new neighbours.
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DonutAttack
Self-Requested Ban
- Location
- The factory of pastries
Honestly, been a while since something's had me so thoroughly hooked.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
It's definitely one of my more ambitious works.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Trump is going to have a 2020/2136 to remember that's for sure.
Whats the magiteks world strongest weapon? and can they withstand a nuke? or do they have something stronger
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
That'd be telling. Though as I said, technology is very schizophrenic for many reasons. Some areas are too primitive to even be considered medieval.
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Baron Steakpuncher
Hopeful Idealist
- Location
- Australia
Well now THIS is interesting. Consider it watched.
- Location
- Philippines
Love it
Is this an existing setting? Nothing's Google-able, and it sounds like it's original.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
It is indeed.
It's into a setting I used a lot for crossover invasion games on SV and SB. It is original but this version of Earth is not the only planet to have been "saved" from the cracks.
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Flectarn
Uphold Kali Akuno Thought
- Location
- Queen City of the Ohio
So... Not all that lonely then?
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
Lol.
It's just a poetic name I wanted to use for something.
And in terms of being fish in a new pond, the nations of Earth are kind of politically lonely and need to find their way.
Of course due to the change of the plane the earth's continents are resting on and the impossibility of reaching Asia from Western America or vice versa through the same old route, expect some difficulties with Sino-American cooperation.
Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
How would that make cooperation difficult? Global trade is a thing.
Spartakrod
Judeo-Spartacist Bolshevik-Kabbalist
- Location
- Sanctum Arcanorum
- Pronouns
- Fae/Faer/Faers/Faerself
See normally you can just sail from Beijing to Los Angeles and make a straight line and be there in maybe a week or two. However the earth's continents are now flat relative to each other due to being on a far larger planet. If you went from Beijing and tried to reach Los Angeles you'd need to cross something like a thousand times more distance than before.
Now instead you can go through the African route (either through the suez or cape of good hope) but this adds a lot more time relative to the more convenient pacific route and you may as well stop at the east coast of America instead. Though not essentially infinite time like trying to circumnavigate the world would. The old pacific community we're used to which stretched from Vladivostok to Santiago though is thoroughly sundered due to the new geography.
America and China also have rather different new countries in their more immediate vicinities to deal with and their interests are likely to diverge.
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Cloak&Dagger
Definitely Insane
I guess this will be a problem when I book a... boat... from LA to Beijing? Or maybe my electronics will sit in the boat for a few extra weeks?
Earth is the most Earthlike thing around, they'd naturally act as a united front against the strange foreign magics, the UN would be getting a lot of use in this scenario.
I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger.
I am intrigued, go on!
Time is right for the great asian unification. If there be war let there be pan asian coopertion.
Just want to point out one thing as an indian , that we have millions of practising holy men whi meditate and try to achieve understanding of god, daily. So has china probably, so if the magic is about manipulating inner energies. China and india have a huge advantage over most nations.
Also if the setting has gods india has the advantage of havinging a religion that can accept other god very easily. Also we have a lot more people that work for religious institutes so we would have a lot of paladins.
Oh the indian navy has an air craft carrier as well. And we have one that was de commisioned so that could be re furbished.
My point is india exist. A lot of stories tend to forget that.
Sorry if i seem pushy. Not telling you to change your story.
Just want to point out one thing as an indian , that we have millions of practising holy men whi meditate and try to achieve understanding of god, daily. So has china probably, so if the magic is about manipulating inner energies. China and india have a huge advantage over most nations.
Also if the setting has gods india has the advantage of havinging a religion that can accept other god very easily. Also we have a lot more people that work for religious institutes so we would have a lot of paladins.
Oh the indian navy has an air craft carrier as well. And we have one that was de commisioned so that could be re furbished.
My point is india exist. A lot of stories tend to forget that.
Sorry if i seem pushy. Not telling you to change your story.