Catoptrics - a cosmic horror survival story

[PTTG]

Been working on threats and challenges. These are triggers for dice rolls that generally don't involve shooting things.

The initial incursion wave represented a peak of activity as countless incursion events occurred across the planet. After this initial spike, the rate of events declined somewhat due to two factors: firstly, some of the inital built-up 'charge' between the two Mirs was dissipated, and secondly, the moderating influence of the intelligent specular agent, i.e., the alien empire residing within Mir Specular. Further events would be tied to intentional incursions by the specular agency, or to surges of EM activity on Earthside triggering brief threshold breakdown events.

Natural:
Power Failure
Incursion events have a connection to EM discharges, triggering and being triggered by sharp spikes in electrical and magnetic fields. This is a double whammy for electrical grids, as the event causes severe power spikes in energy grids, and backups springing to life attracted new incursion events directly to vital infrastructure.

Earthquake
Rarely, specular matter and energy condenses into areas within Earth's crust, displacing and disrupting terrestrial matter. This results in significant earthquakes, often in unusual locations.

Vulcanism
Some of this tectonic activity in turn triggers volcanic eruptions; almost exclusively in preexisting volcanic regions. Nonetheless, smoke, ash, and toxic fumes from these events affected large regions.

Fire
Electrical failures, earthquakes, lightning, and conflict all contribute to sudden fires being quite common after the event, especially as regions grow increasingly abandoned.

Smoke
With many uncontrolled fires, volcanoes, and conflicts, smoke is nearly omnipresent. Additionally, dust storms and even infalling dust particles contribute to smokey, smoggy conditions on Earth. Dust masks are advised, even goggles.

Extreme Wind
A significant amount of infalling specular mass is various atmospheric gasses, these generally being humid and extremely hot air. This tends to disrupt atmospheric behavior on Earth, triggering extreme storm cells. Tornadoes become possible anywhere on Earth, as are hurricane-like storm systems.

Electrical Discharges
This increased rate of storm formation also results in more frequent lightning storms. More common but less extreme are electrical hazards created by damage related to the event; in many cases, even after first response efforts arrive, the jury-rigged solutions built by survivors are far less safe than what was built before.

Flooding
In addition to the increased storm activity, and earthquake-induced tidal waves, some major incursion events deposit matter in the ocean, resulting in particularly odd waves. Also, damage to infrastructure also results in relatively minor flooding. Finally, some incursion events are made up of water from Specular's seas, which is highly alkaline and extremely salty.

Radiation
The widespread damage includes disruption of service at nearly every nuclear power plant. 95% of all nuclear power plants avoided major disaster, but that still left 25 plants around the world facing severe leaks. With infrastructure down and emergency response in the best of times able to handle about one nuclear emergency at a time, these disasters bloomed out of control, resulting in large radioactive regions scattered relatively evenly over the planet (wealthy regions have many more plants, but they are generally more reliable). Additionally, some major incursions are associated with brief flashes of high-energy photons.

Hunger
Due to breakdown in logistics, food supplies almost immediately stopped flowing around the world. Supplies of food in densely populated areas grew scarce within days, in part due to incursions of Specular wildlife capable of attacking even well-secured stockpiles.

Thirst
Fresh water was an even more pressing concern. Not only were distribution systems shut down, microbes and other specular biota rapidly infested terrestrial water supplies. All drinking water should be boiled and ideally filtered.

Chemical Hazard
Many industrial accidents were triggered by the tremors, resulting in spills of practically every industrial chemical from hydroflouric acid to crude oil. Additionally, the invasive seawater is highly alkaline and much saltier than terrestrial seawater, resulting in toxic brine pools appearing in unexpected places.

Excessive Cold
The extreme climate shifts disrupted seasonal weather, bringing both hot tropical climate effects such as unseasonable hurricanes and mega-storms, but also freezing temperatures. Particularly in the immediate aftermath, prevailing winter weather in the northern hemisphere brought extreme cold to large regions even during thunderstorms and severe flooding.

Excessive Heat
As the disaster continued, more extreme fluctuations occurred. (Actually, possibly extreme heat first, then ash winter?)

Wildlife
Native Earth life was severely disrupted, driving terrestrial animals out of their normal ranges and leaving many domesticated animals in severe distress; wandering cattle that weren't preyed upon by specular biota traveled remarkably far after escaping abandoned ranches.

Disease
It goes without saying that the survivors were forced into unsanitary conditions. Additionally, sanitary sewers, waste processing plants, and landfills suffered breaches, releasing biohazardous waste into the environment.