By morning there would be a rush on the gemstones, with many people eager to try to sell them, study them, decorate with them, or use them to replace the Himalayan salt lamps on their nightstands. But during the night of the fireball, there were hundreds at least out in the open, while many ended up on rooftops, in yards and gardens, among the trash in alleys, stuck in trees, sunk underwater, or elsewhere, continuing to be discovered in various locations for days to come.
Though not for many days, as the gemstones would soon begin to change...
The day after the fireball, a small number of the gemstones started hatching. Rumors were scattered at first and not all of the accounts were readily believed, but those that experienced it (and survived) described the egg emitting sounds like a lullaby. Cracks formed with chiming sounds, and gentle warbling and cooing and purring echoed out of the spaceborne eggs, causing many to listen with anticipation, even adoration. And the faces that emerged were fuzzy and soft, set with large, sleepily blinking eyes, stubby beaks, and tiny cat-like ears.
Impressions soon changed when the creatures fully emerged from their eggs. Some were octopus-like, little heads perched on top of a mass of finger-like tendrils; others had segmented limbs that clicked and skittered along like horrifying dolls; some like toads with two faces, others built like ponderous old dinosaurs...
But by far the most common were the long ones.
Each creature hid rows of fangs behind its little beak, and an insatiable bloodlust behind its sleepy eyes. They cooed and purred and burbled at their prey before they struck. Some extended sharp quills through their soft coats, while the long ones had the ability to constrict their prey; but they all moved quickly and went into a frenzy as soon as they tasted blood.
Many loved to perch in high places, and pounced on their prey from above with surprising strength for their small size.
By the second day after the fireball, far more of the eggs had begun to hatch, and word spread more widely about the dangers they posed. They could be destroyed before hatching by exposing them to intense fire or a very strong hammer.
The third day was when the vast majority of the eggs seemed ready to hatch (those not already destroyed), while the last emerged on the fourth.
It was not clear what the spaceborne hatchlings wanted, or what their survival strategy was. They attacked nearly everything in sight, which meant that they would only last but so long in a place as violent as RhyDin; though they did not attack each other. They did not hunt in packs, but if an attack had started and others were within earshot, sometimes they swarmed opportunistically.
By the end of the weekend, the spaceborne hatchlings were all but wiped out; but until then, they rained down death from above!
(( This event is meant to start with the eggs arriving tonight, May 25th, with eggs hatching from the 26th through the 29th. Feel free to witness the fireball, find one of the eggs or as many as you want, figure them out, take them into your character's home, destroy them, have them hatch, fight the hatchlings, kill the hatchlings, tame one, or whatever else you can come up with! If you want, you can roll these dice in our Discord server's #green-room to determine things about an egg your character finds:
Color: ?roll 1d6
1: Red; 2: Orange; 3: Yellow; 4: Green; 5: Blue; 6 Purple
Hatch date: ?roll 1d20
1-2: Wednesday; 3-8: Thursday; 9-18: Friday; 19-20: Saturday
Type: ?roll 1d8
1-4: Long; 5: Hand-octopus; 6: Double toad; 7: Doll-limbed crawler; 8: Dino-chimera
Feel free to send me a private message, or on Discord as Miskatonic09#8031, if you have any questions! Enjoy! Also, you're welcome to use this thread to post your character's adventures, link to your own posts or threads about it, or add your own hatchling images! >:D ))
