[PTTG]

Nightfall

On June 26th of 1998, a wave of paranormal occurrences commences. Between nightfall and dawn every night, a wave of wild EM interference swings up, usually shutting down power grids and blocking all electronic communications. Within minutes, sometimes seconds, banestorm-like effects bring nightmarish creatures from annother realm, into anywhere exposed to open sky or deep darkness. These beings are generally rampaging animals, but no small number of them are dangerously canny, if not outright superintelligent. The polymorphic beasts hunt humans and seem to be organized, but respect some rules.

For every thousand humans in a given area, each nightly wave brings ten thousand lesser monsters (dumb, small, but nimble and fast) about a thousand middle-ranking monsters (unpredictable mixture of abilities, some of them quite clever) and a hundred or so monsters that are unquestionably "bosses," large, smart, and usually flanked with subservient beasts. That doesn't include the intermittent appearance of even more threatening monsters, some of which are towering behemoths and some of which are subtle manipulators and shape changers, and some of which are incredibly powerful sources of energetic destruction.

At approximately 10:30 of the 25th, local time on the East Coast of the USA, the first wave of EM interference and manifestations commenced (no prior activity was recorded aside from some ambiguous reports from South America). From that moment on, anyplace on earth in full night could be attacked at any time.

As contact was lost with the East Coast, panic gripped the rest of the continent. Network disruptions shut down global communications, limiting even the most rapid response, and military forces that drove or flew east to investigate were intercepted by night. One fighter jet managed to avoid intercept and reach a west coast landing strip ahead of nightfall, but nonetheless between confusion and the bizarre nature of his warning, it did no good; before he could even be properly debriefed, nightfall brought the wave of manifestations to the location and swiftly on across the ocean.

In the regions under nightfall, the largest monsters were least dangerous -- at least on a statistic level. The billions of small swarming creatures killed countless people in most of the civilized world, and where they faced resistance from armed citizens, the larger monsters charged and broke defensive positions.

As nightfall fell across the rest of the globe, a few places, such as western Europe, had some appreciable time to prepare, which in many cases broke down to rioting and hoarding. By nightfall, they had only rumor, but that was enough: something terrible comes in the night. Keep a gun and flashlight close at hand.

As dawn broke, the monsters gave one last surge of fury and violence, then vanished, leaving only the maimed, the dead, and the few survivors to pick up the pieces. The United States had the heaviest casualties at nearly 90%, with many communities (small and large) wiped out to the last. A few cities in Western Europe and South America, in contrast, were able to prepare quickly enough to have only 30% casualties in that first night, but on average the planet experienced about 70% in the first 24-hour period.

Now, the short days are spent preparing for the long, long nights. Society still exists, after a fashion, but it's fortified and clannish. It took years of trial, but the population is mostly stable now, though far depleted. Little do the humans know that this is exactly the goal of those that created the invasions in the first place: to create a humanity that is fierce enough to take a place among the manifesting monsters on another worldline...