The Shattered Continent

22nd July, 49BC. Somewhere in Germania.

Several strange creatures were spotted during that overcast day in Northern Germania. The local barbarian tribes were, initially, cautious about sending anyone to investigate. Eventually, one of them decided to make a move. 28 barbarian soldiers entered a cave to the west. 3 came out. They told of hideous monsters, that had never been seen before in anyone's territory. A larger force was sent after a group of the creatures was spotted running across the plains. When the barbarians came into contact with the creatures, a bloodbath ensued. Every single barbarian was either killed or sent running back to the tribe, wounded. This would prove to be a terrible mistake however, as the creatures would track the survivors by scent back to the tribe. There was no escape from the mass slaughter that followed. All of the tribesmen and women were killed, as well as the children and the elderly. The creatures had no sense of mercy, or even of self-preservation. Several were heavily wounded in the attack, but they still kept going. The creatures were all different, some had tentacles, some were almost 15 feet tall, some were only 3 feet tall but spewed poison, along with several other variations. Word never spread of the attack, because no-one survived to tell anyone. No-one knew about the second attack on a tribe on the night of the 23rd, and no-one heard when a small Roman garrison was wiped out on the border of Dacia that next morning. An alien invasion was beginning. But no-one knew it. Yet.

24th July, 49BC. Antverpia.Deaths so far: Around 775.
Governor Natus Imperator thought to himself. He had lost several garrisons along the border with Germania to an unknown enemy in the last 36 hours. No clues had been found as to who. The only thing that gave away the fact that they were not barbarians, or indeed, rogue soldiers was the brutal way in which they had been killed. There were dismemberments, disembowlments, decapitations, and all manner of gruesome deaths. No human was even capable of performing some of them. One particular soldier had actually had his lower half dissolved into viscous fluid. Another was found to have no inner organs. It was like nothing he had ever heard of. He had been a Governor for 8 years. He had faced his death several times before in his time in the Army. And he had never, in all his years, been more frightened of the unknown before. He was pondering what would happen if the threat were ever to hit home when a courier, or survivor, came running, screaming, with blood and some kind of yellow-red liquid on his clothes. He shouted, between sobs and gasps for air, about horrifying creatures attacking a town in the south. Though the soldiers stationed there managed to kill a few of them, but there were dozens of them, and they were inevitably overrun. This would be the 8th attack on a Roman settlement. The public still knew nothing of the attacks. They were rarely informed of certain things except at the eleventh hour. In the distance, meteors could be seen falling. Natus quickly to the conclusion that they almost certainly had something to do with the massacres. Doomsayers saw the meteors as an omen. They were not wrong.