Great Manastorm of 43

## The Great Manastorm of '43

Nobody saw it coming, but then, nobody would. Autumn of 2043 had been (relatively) mild, at least by local standards. Sure, there had been some strange temperature fluctuations and in September it had rained frogs for a few minutes, but that was well within the definition of "Normal" for the post-Awakening  midwest. October had been unusually nice and unusually predictable and early November looked like it was going the same way. And people blessed their spirits for that. 2043 was a tough enough year as it was, with civil unrest with the Non-partisan League taking to the streets over the privatization of the police (the "Fargo Police Corporation") by the Group and the first wave of 2-4-2  strikes in the building trade.

   November 3 started like any other Tues. Pleasant and sunny. And then, around noon, within the space of an hour, the background count spiked, the temperature plummeted. the Red River  surged and the skies went night-black with clouds, soon to be replaced with the blinding white of snow.

Even in Fargo, people were unprepared. It had risen up with no warning and was by far the most powerful mana storm that anyone had seen in this region since the Ghost Dance, later being classified as a Class 6 by the Oceti Sakowin 's weather service. The snow was bad. The wind was apocalyptic. The River rose up and smashed buildings along its banks, in areas previously thought far enough to be safe with the force of water and massive, icy chunks. But the magical effects were even worse. People were flash-frozen, animals turned feral and resistant, not just to the cold but to mundane bullets as well (mages hypothesized that hostile spirits might have possessed them), those caught in the storm, or even just caught staring at the arcane, hypnotic patterns of it walked in their own dreams, trapped in the labyrinths inside their minds, some never to return. And those who looked out too far swore that other, darker things strode the white hell, taking what they pleased, darker within the darkness. As always somebody even used the word "Ithaqua" in a sentence.

Emergency services were overwhelmed and people who couldn't get home or who's homes couldn't stand the damage took shelter wherever they could, many thousands took refuge in a temporary shelter set up at the Fargodome and when space ran out there, in schools and government buildings and churches (over a thousand waited out the storm in the basements of the Dormition of Mary Cathedral and Last Lutheran Church ). One of the greatest tragedies of the storm was when the wards failed on the Shanley High gymnasium and the blizzard rushed in, killing 17 high-school aged children and injuring dozens more.

Eventually, after nearly two days, on the morning of Thursday November 5th, the Manastorm subsided, wearing itself out as quickly as it had arrived and the rebuilding began. Some places that were destroyed in the Storm, like the venerable Turf , would be rebuilt, others, like the building development at Argusville , never would be. At last count, nearly a hundred died during the storm, one of the worst single tragedies in Fargo's history (including the Shanley 17 and Dan and Sarah Schlossman-Martin, who's bodies were never found). The devastating effects on Hector AFB sparked an international crisis as the weakened border defense station created a panic about a possible Sioux invasion (something always close to the surface in this area).

   The aftermath was almost worse than the storm itself. The recriminations and finger-pointing began even before the storm had subsided, with people blaming dark-cults, metahumans or the Sioux for the severity of the storm, no matter how much the magical experts at the local universities claimed otherwise. The emergency services were blamed for ineffectiveness, the city was blamed for underfunding them and the elections, which had to be postponed until the 10th, did not bode well for incumbents. The Fargo Police Corporation's inability to deal with the civil unrest and looting that followed was its death knell and by 2045, the FPC would be dissolved and Borderlands Security Inc would take up Fargo's Law Enforcement Contract (with Moorhead retaining Knight Errant the next year, just to prove they weren't the same as Fargo).

Other notes, children conceived during the Great Manastorm of '43 (and there were more than few), all had a similar look, bulging eyes and a greenish pallor, although they never presented as full Changelings . Dozens of lawsuits filed against both the City and the Group ultimately petered out, unable to trace a firm connection between the storm and the 'birth defects' and the storm and any outside source. Those who's minds had been lost to the dreams during the blizzard eventually died out and were forgotten by everybody but their loved ones.

And although nobody agreed on what it was, everybody who lived through it agreed that they would never forget it.

Return to: History