NationStates Jolt Archive

Sharan smiles, walking slowly over to Miriel, looking over her body slowly as he does, he bows a little and introduces himself, smiling still. Miriel smiles. "A pleasure... Miriel," she says. "Miriel nos Fëanor." She eschews the title, but smiles warmly at him. He smiles back just as warmly, giving her his full name, and extending a hand, intending more to kiss hers than shake it though.

Miriel lets him do just that. She finds him quite handsome, and is just a little bit shy in general - certainly not a family trait, that, but everyone's different.
He smiles, and stands up straight again, gazing into her eyes for just a little longer than is considered normal, and not long enough to be considered rude, "Ah yes," he says after a moment, "I've seen you before, from time to time..."
Miriel nods. "I think I've seen you too," she says. "Governor of some planet or another, right?" she asks with a little smile.

He nods, "Quite so," he says. He restrains himself from elaborating though, for now. He's rather proud of his planet, but it's not the direction he really wants this conversation to go in... "So... what brings you to Vinyatírion?" she asks, quite happy to engage him in whatever conversation he likes.

He considers his reply for a moment, "I suppose one could say tourism. Taking in the breathtakingly beautiful sights as it were," he says, studying her face as he says that.
Miriel blushes a bit at that, smiling brightly at him. "Well... thank you." It's all she can think of to say. She's a little flustered, and not as well spoken as her illustrious great-grandmother in any event.

The necrontyr smiles a little more, "Though," he says, returning to discussion of city, as opposed to the woman. He decides to take a little gamble, "I've not actually been here before... I can't help feeling slightly lost. I don't suppose I could persuade you to show me some of the more classy, and shall we say... less-touristy parts of the city?" he asks, smiling, and doing his best to look adorable.

Miriel grins. "I'd love to... where would you like to go first?"
He quietly lets out a breath he hadn't been aware that he was holding, "Well," he says, with a smile, "I don't know precisely. I've been told there's some good skiing to be had around here," he says with a slight grin. It's a very unusual necrontyr that would consider that a sport as much as a form of masochism.
Miriel giggles. "There's lovely skiing around here... but wouldn't it be a little...cold for your people?"

He resists the option for a very clichéd line about beauty and warmth, and instead replies, "Absolutely, but after spending the past few years on a jungle planet where the most innocuous wildlife tends to eat people, a bit of snow doesn't seem so bad..."
Miriel might not have minded said cliché though. "Well, then..." She points out the window at the spectacular mountain peaks. "That one out there has a nice resort... and so does that one, it's smaller, but a little closer..." There aren't any, in fact, directly overlooking the city, but most of them are just north or south in the Hithaeglir.
Sharan smiles, saving the clichéd lines until they're actually up there. He looks at Miriel and smiles, "Well, which has the easier slopes?" he asks. He doesn't after all, consider "falling over and breaking your neck" romantic. "Falling over and looking silly in the snow..." is much better.

Miriel giggles. "The smaller one," she says.
He smiles, "Well then," he says, "that's where I'd like to go."
She smiles back. "Well, let's go then," she says. "I have a shuttle in the hangar bay, we can take that."
He nods decisively, "Right," he says, "I hope you're a good teacher..." he adds playfully.

At that very moment, far, far away on Northfell, something terrible happened. Maia Kazansky, Founder of Allanea, disciple of Melkor, stopped suddenly, staring uselessly in front of him. Dysaryn didn't know, but through some marvellous work of Iluvatar, Kazansky saw that scene clearly, as if through a Palantir. Then, the Maya began to fall. Just as he fall, terrible things happened.

In Haven, the Miriel Bridge, built by Allaneans for Ancient and Holy Terra, began to collapse into the Haven Straights. On Mars, the USS Miriel nos Feanor crushed, burying thousands of Allanean Marines under it. Soon, other ASN ships followed, and before Alexander’s body touched the ground, the Allanean Stellar Navy was no more.

In Allanea, crust layers where moving and magma was oozing from where rivers flowed. Within seconds, Allanea shook with terrible earthquakes, and thousands died every second. It didn’t matter. By the time Kazansky’s body rested on the floor, Allanea has sunk, and the waves have closed above it, like Numenor of old.

In Mangala, a short shake has caused the Allanean embassy to collapse into itself. So it was in Noachia, Tarasovka, Menelmacar, New-York and Jersey, Bryn Shander. Not a single diplomat lived.

In Menelmacar, all the stores and shipments of Allanean weapons disappeared. Vanished into the thin air. So did the Stephen Harper AV’s tested by the MIDF, everything.

Finally, on Miriel’s bookshelf, a single book was missing. Even for centuries later, she wondered what it was.


"Charra alaik," Senior Spaceman Sukainah bint Um-Kalthum whispers softly to herself as she blinks at her augmented reality monitor feed aboard Space Station Valhalla in antecedent Earth Trojan orbit. The scopedope room of the TYCS Voyeur satellite network is dark by tradition, rows of sensors technicians working together with powerful mechanoid intelligences to sort through the sheer volume of data absorbed every moment by the Voyeur Intelligence-Survelliance-Reconnaissance satellite network.

"What seems to be the problem, Spaceman?" Lieutenant Jack Tomilson, the officer-on-watch, perks up his ear at the quiet phrase spoken in the otherwise silent room. Getting up from behind his master control panel, he walks up behind the technician.

"Sat feed over Allanea, sir," she replies, pointing weakly at the screen without moving her eyes. Leaning over, the lieutenant blinks at the image whited out by clouds of rolling steam.

His first response is, of course, the most rational. "What the hell happened?"

Sukainah sighs softly. "The entire landmass just fell into the mantle. No other way to describe it. Poof." She puffs out her cheeks slightly, making a quickly expanding ball with her hands. Looking up, she sees the lieutenant looking at her quizzically. "You gotta believe me, sir. Look." Her hand goes back to the feed dial and spins it left, rewinding the footage.

In realtime backwards, the white clouds become momentarily brown, then suck inwards to rents of glowing magma that promptly heal themselves. Tiny puffs of smoke analogous to exploding reactors disappear as the terrain around them unblackens and returns to a healthy green.

Biting her lip, she turns the dial back to play; the nation's urban centers are covered by little explosions that visibly blast outwards, mountains collapse and form massive rents of magma as the entire nation basically turns inside out in a giant convection current, cream in a cup of coffee.

Lieutenant Tomilson reaches back under his officer's wheel cap and scratches the back of his lightly. "La charra... Jesus. Any survivors?"

The noncom laughs humorlessly, a high-pitched, choked squawk. "You serious, sir?"

The lieutenant shakes his head. "No... I guess I'm not." He sighs, then frowns. "Immediate dispatch to StratCom; mark it urgent but not vital. Make sure copies get into the Sky Marshals' and the CINCTYCS's sitreps."

"The note, sir?"

Jack shrugs. "'One less nation to watch.'" Turning around, he walks slowly back to his console; Sukainah turns back to hers, shivers, and starts on the work just assigned, filling in columns with the aid of her 'artificial' coworkers.

Just another day at work, and life doesn't deviate perceptibly from normal.