An Angel Has Fallen
The people of Blip are, if anything can be said about people at the end of the world, superstitious. They cling to their beliefs, daedal and shapeless like sea foam, to the exclusion of all else. Like sea foam, these beliefs are often washed away. When the gnoll cult arrived in Blip thirteen years ago, they found a ground unbroken for their dogma. The masses soon wore their hair as gnolls, loose and wild, and piety spread like a sickness. The believers built a massive temple, shed their previous obligations, and their faith has been a covenant to the poor and a blindspot to the rest of the city. The goings-on of the temple and its clergy have been entombed in mystery since they arrived. Beggars, deep in their cups on days of bountiful harvest, speak of angels walking into the temple at night.
The merchant government of Blip was leaned back on its haunches five years later and five years ago, finished with the preparatory wiggle cats and other State-like entities perform before leaping upon their prey, when a great sky whale fell upon the bay. The splash was big enough to darken the heavens and the tsunamis that followed washed the coastal city's nether regions free of their caked grime. The survivors of the whalefall, christened Skyfolk by their new neighbors, flooded Blip yet again, coagulating in the parts of the city closest to the open water. Almost all of them are divers, dredging up the scattered bits of windfall that washed away from the city when their land met the sea. They are tight-lipped about everything but angels, whom they admire and search for in the waters that hold the corpse of their God.
In the greatest city since the end of the world there fell an angel just last night. It did not arrive with trumpets and fanfare, there was no procession from the heavens with chariots manned by strange flying beasts and men of every color painted playing loudly twisting instruments, nor proud voice of celestial herald commanding calm. This angel fell in a ball of fire blue and hot. Its arc was loud and moral-true and it crashed upon the city, hidden, shadowed through, as a lantern dropped in a den of shadows. The arc met earth in the Old City, a quarantined part of Blip long abandoned in belief that its foundation lay on poisoned earth.
In the temple there was a rumbling. The arms of the gnoll clergy turned their hands upward to ask the Pharoah-Gnoll-Who-Knows for guidance and it spoke to them through silver-barbed tongue of domination and wishes and safety in their belief and the gem atop its crown glowed a truth. So the temple flew forward to the angel.
In the docks there was a rumbling. The families of the fallen whale, worked near-death in a land never theirs nor desired so, met in view of early pink sunrise against the holy waves and thought an angel fell to meet them in their listless mourning. And so the Skyfolk flew forward to the angel.
The Commercial Authority of Blip saw yet another intrusion on its market, the third such overstep in fifteen years, and was incensed by all the rumbling. The chiefs and principals that be spent their morning in commune with The Public and found their opinion unified, a rare occurence in an ursine time. And so the Commercial Authority flew forward to the angel.
What of the common folk? The individual, caught between three polis-forces after the end of the world? That person was also flown toward the angel, though not through their will alone. The people of Blip are, if anything can be said about them, a superstitious bunch, and it is commonly believed that an Angel rescued grants their savior's greatest wish.