New Moon on Monday

On Monday, 15 Gener 547, at 9:14 in the evening, the full moon rose and the entire land was flooded with fear and loathing. While people had referred to a vague resemblance of the markings on the face of the moon as resembling a "man in the moon" for generations, in 547 (and every night since) it was no longer a vague resemblance; the resemblance of the moon to a grinning skull was unmistakable. "The Man in the Moon: DEAD!" headlines read in newspapers in Terrasa and other cities that were sufficiently advanced to have newspapers. Panics, riots, and all manner of social upheaval occurred that month. However, when the world didn't immediately end, as many predicted, things settled down. A few people had been murdered in the aftermath, a few governments overthrown, and the occasion was used as an excuse for both ethnic and religious pogroms throughout the area, but that was now twenty years ago. Scholars and pundits and others still have no idea what kind of omen the drastically rearranged face of the moon actually is. Some people, in fact, have recently started calling the entire thing a coincidence--the moon isn't a giant skull in the sky, it just coincidentally looks like one, and whatever changes happened to it must have happened while it was on the far side of the planet and therefore out of sight.

Most, however, still believe that there is some meaning to the omen. In faraway Baal Hamazi, it's said that the rebirth of Hutran Kutir happened that night. Qizmir retracted somewhat into its borders and has increased their military spending, seeing it as an omen of their long-ago mother nation finding them again and forcibly attempting to reintegrate them into the empire. Doomsayers in Terrasa and elsewhere in that empire predict that the architect of the Empire's unraveling was born that night. Anyone who's birthday is anytime within that entire month tends to keep that knowledge to themselves and pretend to be a few months older or younger.

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Coming next: the sinister Union of the Snake!