The town's other features includes a market square, a church, a synagogue (about a third of the region's population is Jewish, a third is Christian, a third are irreligious and about 5% can be classified as other), two blacksmith's shops, four carpenter's shops, a tailor's shop, a doctor's office, several other shops, a small port, two dozen wooden fishing boats, a small shipyard for maintaining fishing boats, a sawmill, a schoolhouse, a town hall/courthouse, A police office home to three constables with uniforms, bikes, breastplates, revolvers and truncheons with a lock-up cell, several storage facilities, a cinema (basically an old warehouse with a screen, projector, benches and a popcorn seller) and the militia hall. Every adult is required to be trained in basic firearms use and there are some 200 bolt action rifles, 400 STEN guns and 100 revolvers in said Militia Hall in case a call to arms is given, as well as two Masters-At-Arms who act as instructors and guards for said militia hall. Thirty two km away is the local Commonwealth Army fort, which houses two batallions (in total 1,200) Regular Soldiers with bikes and horses for mobility, proper uniforms, Helmets, Padded Steel and Canvas torso armor and armed with Cutlasses, Revolvers, Assault Rifles, machine guns, Hand Grenades, Mortars, Rocket Launchers a couple of 75mm cannons. The New Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is largely democratic and has a strong constitution, all adult citizens can vote though about 10-15% of the population at any given time are Residents, which are peoples which have been recently annexed by force into the the NCP and have not yet proven themselves loyal.
In general things have been going well in the town and the Commonwealth in General. This area had been incorporated into the commonwealth about eighty years beforehand and as a general rule things have gotten safer and more prosperous since then. All children get six years of public education, infant mortality is down to one in twelve and the average lifespan is about 45. Even so for all this the almost mythical prosperity of the pre-war era remains largely mythical and many people say it may never be achieved again since the people of old used up the oil and coal.
For all of that some odd stuff has happened. It begins when a strange acorn shaped device about a half a meter tall falls from the sky and lands in the town square with parachutes. It then opens and begins projecting a hologram showing something which has been speculated about, but never confirmed. It shows the ancients launching rockets to mars, first probes, then manned scoutships and finally manned spacecraft loaded with supplies and colonists which build domed cities on the surface of that barren world, which then watch in horror as in 2092 (or Year 1 of the Martian Era) as earth self destructs in nuclear war. The peoples of Mars then unite to found the Unified Martian Federation, which faced much hardships over it's early years cut off from the earth but met the challenge, overcame it and thrived. Now in the year 120 ME the children of Mars shall return to the Homeworld to share with the People of Earth what had been lost.
The next day in they begin showing up. First there are flyovers by trio of arrowhead shaped airplanes which put the biplanes of the New Commonwealth Air Force to Shame which drop off packages onto the town which are full of packages with confections. There are also a pair of tiltroater aircraft which fly overhead doing the same thing. Then four landing cylinders touch down outside of town and then open up and the Martians come out. There are 96 of them in total, two thirds of them are civilians wearing jumpsuits and labcoats and the rest are outfitted like this...
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Martian Army troopers clad in bulletproof power armor (which they are glad to show off the enhanced strength of) carrying a pair of 4mm railguns that are there for security purposes. The Civies include doctors, anthropologists, linguists, teachers and engineers and they offer gifts to the people of your town including water purifiers and solar panels. All of the martians on earth (of which there are about 200,000 at the moment) are a bit on the tall side, but have been given cybernetic augmentation, drug therapy and training in 1G centrifuge stations to allow them to operate in Earth Gravity. Their doctors offer advanced medicine to the people of earth and instructions to local, the teachers hand out tablet computers to the children with videos showing the History of Earth and the History of Mars, which they also show at the Cinema and they offer displays of Martian Art and Culture and information. They offer you a box of Martian chocolates and soft drinks to sell at whatever price you see fit and generally try to put on a good show. All of which is showing off the benefits of Martian Society and Cooperation with the people from the Red Planet.
What do you do?
Zor
