Part 1: Twilight And Nightfall

"This is the personal journal of Leon Vault, the council has suggested that some of us keep a record of events, for whatever purposes later, or to be found later in case we fail in our mission.

Anyone finding this should know what happened during Twilight and The Fall, but I'll start at the beginning just in case. Earth wasn't always like this. There used to be more of us, more humans. Around 7 billion in fact. Then something happened, no one is really sure but everyone tells stories.

It all seemed to happen after the end of AW3, the third alien war. We had just closed the dimension gates and all seemed right, there was an official broadcast by the leaders of Mega-Primus and the leader of the X-Com project there, Commander Zander. Some people say the androids started acting funny in the months after the official victory broadcast, some with family or friends on mars or on the frontier said they couldn't contact them anymore, and a few claim they saw huge explosions in the night sky, fireballs filling the darkness. Who knows what was really going on, the reports are all slightly different up until the next event. All of our technology went out, everything all at once. No sensovision, no hover cars, not even a god damn light bulb, everything that required power to work just died, even the androids with their own power sources were all dead. People panicked of course, there were huge riots world wide as no one was able to restore any kind of service. It didn't last long though. Two days later the skies darkened and turned black, covered with clouds of stuff, no one was really sure what the clouds were made of, no one could tell. It blocked out the sun and we were left in a whole new darkness. It was all about to be over... Welcome to the Aftermath. / Backup




Earth lived a moment in perpetual twilight. The clouds blocked just enough light so we couldn't see the sun or stars. The earth began to cool in the days that followed, I had feared a new ice age, not enough light and heat would reach us and we'd die out like the dinosaurs. I was wrong, and the grim reality was far worse,the clouds that blocked our sky came raining down on us. They sky fell on to our heads quite literally. This mass came down in such volume it buried everything, people, buildings, nothing was safe. We're still not sure on how bad the damage was, or how wide spread, but if the Greater USA was this decimated, there was little reason to believe the rest of the world did any better.




Not everyone died obviously, there were some of us that were spared. Most of the survivors were from suburbs or rural areas, farmers with tornado shelters, or people with bomb shelters, one guy claims he had a shelter built for Y3K, something about computers turning evil and trying to take over, said thats what made everything stop working. I survived because I was in an underground base at the time, I am part of the US Military... Was part of the US military. There really isn't anything left of pre-Nightfall governments.

It was anarchy out there, the few survivors formed roving gangs, looting and killing for food and supplies. A fair number of the men at the base with me survived, we stayed in the base for as long as we could but there wasn't enough supplies for long. We ventured out, went looking for what survived, that's sort of how this all started.

I was out scouting another location we thought a base should be, Boulder Colorado, near Denver. There wasn't any signs of life as I wondered down the streets, just cars piled up, little fires burning away, and mounds of this crap. It's probably something left over from Nightfall. Well, I did find life eventually, a man wondering around with a shotgun looking for supplies.




I thought he was crazy at first, talking about aliens and monsters. But he was armed and knew the area, even was willing to come back to the base and work with me and the rest of the guys. I didn't think Malcolm was crazy for long when this thing came buzzing by.




I didn't know what the fuck that was, but at least Malcolm wasn't scared of it. He walked right up to it and put a 12 gauge right in to it.




It died in a bloody green mess. Green blood flying everywhere as the pellets ripped through its body. I'm still not sure what the hell it was, but I remember looking at it as it floated towards us. It had the upper half of a human body hanging from it. What in gods name happened here? Suddenly I didn't want to go any further, but I had to press on.




We found another survivor. He was badly wounded, something got to him before we found him. As luck would have it, Malcolm had a medical kit on him.




He turned out to be fine, told us his name was Brian. Thats about all he had time to say before another monster showed up.




Malcolm and Brian sprang into action pretty quick, they weren't soldiers, but it seemed obvious they'd dealt with these sort of monsters before.




Brian took it down with a spray of fire from his Uzi and the thing collapsed. It looked almost human. We stood around it, they mentioned they'd seen dozen of them before, they behaved almost like zombies, just wondered around and attacked anyone they saw. It could even use a gun, it shot Brian in the leg, but it wasn't serious and we patched him up with out trouble.

It was still alive, laying on the ground and obviously dying. I wanted to study it some, but there wasn't anyway we were getting it back to my base. Malcolm had the most practical solution.



Eh, what were we going to do?


It didn't take long after that to find the base. Fucking thing was locked up tight, no real surprise.




Brian had a key.




And in we walked, anxious to loot the place and set up shop when we found one last disturbing thing before entering.



Some poor bastard smothered in the shit that fell from the skies. God rest his soul.


And that about gets us to where we are now. We've got the base near Denver, and the one I was in near Houston. The base near Denver was a old Air Force base, we found a huge hanger underground stocked with F-18's. Its not hover technology or elerium based, but we'll take what we can get at this point and they still turn on and run just fine, there is something to be said for low-tech. The one in Houston was a tech base, no gun stockpiles or anything, but its got a good computer network. It took a few days of solid work to get the computers up and running again, but we managed and have set up links to the observation satellites in space that are still operational. We've set up a sort of command view from the satellites, our bases are pinpointed and overlaid with icons showing their status. The bullseye is out combat base at Denver, we can launch aircraft from there and are our primary store houses for guns and gear. The half nuke sign is our research base, what goes on there is pretty obvious. Lightly guarded, mostly by the militia type that secures the area and tends to local survivors. And as necessity dictates we're going to need somewhere to build supplies, and plan on making the next suitable location a manufacturing base, which we'll put up as a cog. Also of note is the borders around the base, this is our estimated area of influence, where we can reasonably protect any survivors and draw in the resources of the area.



There was more fighting in the weeks that followed setting up the two bases, including desperate encounters where survival was the only objective, but eventually order emerged amid the chaos. We forged an organization, calling it the Council of Earth, aiming to unite what is left of humanity and wrest control of the planet from the monsters. At present, the Council controls only two bases and the area around them. Due to my previous military experience and officer training I have been chosen to be the commander of earth's military, and the leader of the spearhead unit: Phoenix Company.

Now that we are on our feet and have some resources to work with, I've decided the first thing to pour our efforts into is finding out exactly what happened to us.



It may take some time, but with the effects of it everywhere, we should be able to get a good idea of what caused this apocalypse.
For now though, I'm tasked with reviewing soldiers and hand picking my team. I also need to go look through the armory to see what I can arm them with, though I was told the pickings are pretty slim at the moment, shotguns, pistols, some SMGs, and some old armor we found in the base near Denver, Kevlar vests and the like. I'll see what I can do."