The Celestial Collision
Disaster / Destruction
A great celestial object, later discovered to be the ball of Alan's hip joint, descended into The Shard's atmosphere at terminal velocity, striking the centre of the planet, starting a chain reaction that would bring The Age of the Elements to an end, and usher in The Age of Religion.
Leading up to the Celestial Collision
Following The Great Accident, a few pieces of
Alan were jettisoned off into the great unknown at great speed. Not, however, enough speed to clear the gravitational pull of the newly formed star created by The Great Accident, but as the invention of the telescope was a few hundred years away, the inhabitants of the Shard were none the wiser. One day, they learned very quickly of the existence of other celestial objects when the ball from
Alan's hip joint crashed into their planet.
Touchdown
Though the impact was a glancing blow, there was still enough force to cause a compound fracture of
Alan's femur, and send a great tsunami across one of the Shard's three sides. A third of the planet (the third now known as
The Republic of Taurinestein was plunged back into The Age Before Time, the population almost entirely wiped out by the devastation. The other two thirds of the planet, while rocked by an earthquake that would break even the sturdiest of seismometers (if they had been invented), were protected from the tsunami by the planet's
Steep-tides. The greatest impact of The Celestial Collision, greater even than the widespread destruction of a third of the planet, was the appearance of a host of new objects in the sky. Many fragments of land and Alanmantium bone were launched up into the air after the impact. Some reached as far as the planet's second gravitational wave, and the ones that didn't have the speed to escape it again became suspended, creating a series of floating islands far above the mainland. One more object also appeared in the sky - a great eye of stone. Now known as The Moon, the great eye would change the fate of Shardinia forever.
From elements to deities
During The Celestial Collision, the hip joint lost just enough momentum that it couldn't escape The Shard's gravitational pull, and it began to orbit The Shard, looming over the population like a giant eye of stone. The presence of the eye prompted much pondering and thought. A few theories were adopted by different groups of people trying to make sense of what the thing was, the most popular of which was simply that it was a god. Many who previously worshipped the Earth element believed the eye to be a physical manifestation of Earth, that came to Shardinia to bring the destruction of the other elements. Others formed their own stories about the great eye, and began their own religious journeys, taking the world into the Age of Religion.
