Post by Catsmate on May 5, 2021 9:28:13 GMT
A quickie, from inspired by the headlines.
I've mentioned before that the current climate change the Earth is undergoing are causing glaciers to melt, allowing all sorts of previously hidden artefacts to be found. Normally one thinks of the arctic/antarctic or places like Siberia but I read this story about objects, and bodies, from the 'White War' campaign of the Great War, fought in the ice and snow of the Alps between (mainly) Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces.
That campaign was a bitterly fought one, with the elements accounting for more casualties than rifles, machine guns and artillery.
So what might be found there today? Could something have emerged from the snow and killed troops on both sides, leading perhaps to a short term truce and alliance to hunt it down? What might it be? A transplanted Yeti (organic or robotic), a crashed alien, an injured Ice Warrior1, badly hurt in a crash millennia earlier and disturbed by the fighting and digging, not reduced to a bestial killer or a geneered monster from the far furure, displaced in time by Zygma experiments?
Perhaps a human body is discovered, in the vein of Ötzi the Iceman2, the body discovered in 1991 and dating back five thousand years. But this corpse shows signs of being killed by a sonic weapon.
Do the PCs mind evidence that they were there in the Alps for the confrontation? Are they predestined to arrive, n=knowing something of what is to come, but perhaps powerless to prevent many deaths.
For added effect the discovery and the events could be related to 'White Friday'; the culmination of a series of avalanches in the Dolomites in December 1916, some purely natural and others (allegedly) deliberately triggered by artillery fire. About two thousand troops (and some civilians) died on that day alone, while the overall death toll was between 10,000 and 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers over two next weeks.
At about 5:30AM on 13DEC1916 about a million cubic metres of snow (~200,000 tonnes) collapsed onto a Austro-Hungarian barracks on Mount Marmolada. A few soldiers escaped but 270 men are buried alive. Most of the bodies are never recovered.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. A bit hackneyed perhaps but knowing the characteristics and weaknesses of the Martian might not help much in the freezing, paranoid atmosphere of a Great War dugout.
2. In 1991 'Ötzi the Iceman' was discovered in the Alps (near Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch), on the border between Italy and Austria, the naturally mummified body of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100BCE. He's believed to have been murdered; an arrowhead has been found in his left shoulder, which would have caused a fatal wound. The nature of his life and the circumstances of his death are the subject of much investigation and speculation.
I've mentioned before that the current climate change the Earth is undergoing are causing glaciers to melt, allowing all sorts of previously hidden artefacts to be found. Normally one thinks of the arctic/antarctic or places like Siberia but I read this story about objects, and bodies, from the 'White War' campaign of the Great War, fought in the ice and snow of the Alps between (mainly) Italian and Austro-Hungarian forces.
That campaign was a bitterly fought one, with the elements accounting for more casualties than rifles, machine guns and artillery.
So what might be found there today? Could something have emerged from the snow and killed troops on both sides, leading perhaps to a short term truce and alliance to hunt it down? What might it be? A transplanted Yeti (organic or robotic), a crashed alien, an injured Ice Warrior1, badly hurt in a crash millennia earlier and disturbed by the fighting and digging, not reduced to a bestial killer or a geneered monster from the far furure, displaced in time by Zygma experiments?
Perhaps a human body is discovered, in the vein of Ötzi the Iceman2, the body discovered in 1991 and dating back five thousand years. But this corpse shows signs of being killed by a sonic weapon.
Do the PCs mind evidence that they were there in the Alps for the confrontation? Are they predestined to arrive, n=knowing something of what is to come, but perhaps powerless to prevent many deaths.
For added effect the discovery and the events could be related to 'White Friday'; the culmination of a series of avalanches in the Dolomites in December 1916, some purely natural and others (allegedly) deliberately triggered by artillery fire. About two thousand troops (and some civilians) died on that day alone, while the overall death toll was between 10,000 and 18,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers over two next weeks.
At about 5:30AM on 13DEC1916 about a million cubic metres of snow (~200,000 tonnes) collapsed onto a Austro-Hungarian barracks on Mount Marmolada. A few soldiers escaped but 270 men are buried alive. Most of the bodies are never recovered.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions?
1. A bit hackneyed perhaps but knowing the characteristics and weaknesses of the Martian might not help much in the freezing, paranoid atmosphere of a Great War dugout.
2. In 1991 'Ötzi the Iceman' was discovered in the Alps (near Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch), on the border between Italy and Austria, the naturally mummified body of a man who lived between 3400 and 3100BCE. He's believed to have been murdered; an arrowhead has been found in his left shoulder, which would have caused a fatal wound. The nature of his life and the circumstances of his death are the subject of much investigation and speculation.