Ashen Skies

The year was about 2013 - or so the record keepers estimate, with large error bars. The nations of the world were going about their business, some more appallingly than others, until the day everyone woke up to a red sky and a dying world. Less than two minutes outside could severely burn an unprotected human, and wrought havoc on wildlife everywhere. The final nail in the coffin for civilization in its current form was designated the Induction Effect. A slight misnomer, as there were many metals that the scorching celestial rays barely touched, but fully exposed electronics were melted into slag, along with nearly all complex machineries. Three weeks this lasted, and right as the survivors, numerous but isolated, were losing their last scraps of hope, another dusk came, and relief with it. For a year humanity was left in peace, rebuilding and reclaiming what they could from the ashes of the last world.   Then the storms began.   Week after week, at the same hour every time, a wintry snowstorm appears in the east, sweeps through each community, and dissipates into the west. The cold is not so bad on its own, usually, but every storm without fail has brought an attack of some sort with it. Creatures out of myths, technological horrors, eldritch abominations, and physics-defying phenomena, different and hostile every time. Some towns have succumbed to this by now, but in New Ilwaco, we are defended. Seasoned monster hunters and unexpected heroes alike rise up and have fought off the darkness every time. What terrors lie waiting in the coming storm?