One of the many alternative world along the slippage line of Folded Space. The population is mostly human and it has many aspects of the universe we live in. A world filled with Magic and Danger. A somewhat tribal society even after cars and guns are invented.
Where the hell did they come from? Millions and billions of grasshoppers. Digging up from the earth. The fields look like great green insects. Writhing, as the wheat and corn are devoured, the total plants. These hungry hoards. The ate all the fields, all the grass. They ate baby chicks and kittens. They got in the house everything you opened the door.
One year Thornland gets an extra season. Its between summer and fall. A season of scented winds and colored rains. It goes on for three weeks every year now. We had to event a couple new Holidays for it.
We stopped using the barn for anything but storing old junk to be forgotten but not thrown away. Games never again to be played, a rock polisher never used a second time. But around two years ago something made the barn its home. We have only caught glimpses of it. Furry walks on hind legs. Its fur is matted and faded looking like it is very old. Long grayish coiled feces is found around the farm these apparently come from what lives in the barn now.
When disease and famine kill off most the folks in the cities and rural life grows more feudal. When hope is a fading thing and fear rushes in to fill the gap. The new feudal Lords are wealthy farmers with big families with lots of guns. They convert the combines into battle machines. Weapons for killing people and for battering down the houses they hide in. Clashing battle combines in a field war.
Seven years in a row sees 3 or less storms a year. Normally these are torrents of hard driving rain. But never enough rain to quench the cracked earth. All the fields die, the animals die or more on to wetter lands endless miles away. Bones line the dead fields. Ancient ruins are exposed as the earth becomes drifting sands. New towns are buried. Old bones resurface, mummies are stripped of they're mounds.
Small countries for tribes emerge after the break down. Families banding together, groups of people claiming land all over the plains. Barb wire borders.
A sudden unexpected festival erupts. People share what food and wine they have stored back, parties spread to many houses and even more yards. Cheering as the cool breeze thrills the skin after a long hot drought.