The Great Crater

This odd crater is a barren hole in an otherwise relatively fertile semi-desert landscape. When the Hole was first noted in late 2022, it was almost universally a similar depth — approximately 4 meters (a little over 12 feet). Most of the useful topsoil was gone, and what was left quickly blew away due to natural site erosion. The peak ring was of an almost uniform height, and extremely shallow compared to peak rings of other craters.  

Most of the time, a peak ring represents the dispersal of major debris dislodged by an explosion, whether that comes from above or below. This one, though... it's like the dirt just shifted out of the way.

— Jess Nielson, Meles School of Literomantic Technology and Mining Engineering

  It is also a point of note that the Great Crater is located just off of State Highway 197, and the highway seemed to have sustained only minimal damage from whatever catastrophic event caused it. However, the offramps from the highway simply stopped at the peak ring, showing increased destruction and fragmentation the closer they got to the Crater.   Perhaps most significantly, the Hole is irregularly shaped, not perfectly round. It is roughly 10 km longer north to south than it is east to west.   Since its initial appearance, the highway and offramps have been repaired, and access to the site is now possible by road, which was an important consideration in Operation GTFO.

The surrounding ecosystem is a temperate semi-desert, within tributary range of the Columbia River. Flora and fauna common to such climates in Western North America are present in usual numbers, such as sagebrush, ponderosa pines, oregon grape, saskatoon berries, buckwheat, and phlox; and mule deer, Pacific chorus frogs, wild turkeys, grasshoppers, and anise swallowtail butterflies. Little of it invades the Crater, however, since necessary topsoil to sustain a working ecosystem is lacking. Dandelions, some oregon grape, and other extremely hardy plants have begun to make recent incursions, but the majority of the Crater remains barren.

Wasco County has hot, dry summers and cooler, wetter winters, with significant temperature shifts, and transitions from a Mediterranean-like climate to a semi-arid one. It receives relatively low amounts of annual rainfall (about 12 inches) and seasonal snow. The lower elevation of the Great Crater in the landscape, combined with the rain shadow of the peak ring, tends to make it wetter than the surrounding area, with some significant water pooling during the spring thaw.

Wasco County, while not known for being a center of mining, is an important source of aggregates and other minerals associated with volcanic activity. While many of these elements are present at the crater site, they are not present in significant numbers. There are many superior sites for mineral extraction in the local area. The best mineral sources the Crater can offer are borax and some basalt.

Mysterious Appearance

To anyone's best knowledge, the Great Crater did not exist until some time in late 2022, when it was discovered via satellite. There is absolutely no record of it prior to that point, which seems incredible, since it is in the middle of a populated area. Naturally, previous satellite footage was studied to determine if it had simply not been noticed somehow, but any footage of the site, regardless of which nationality or corporation recorded it, is either completely blank, or distorted and unusable.   Nobody can remember it, or anything that existed before then in that place, either.   The most widely accepted theory, based on chemical analysis and the presence of the broken offramps, was that there was once a city there, and that sometime in late 2022 it simply disappeared, leaving the Great Crater behind. Urban engineers point out that its depth would be exactly enough to account for city sewers and piping, should something wish to completely obliterate all traces of a city.   A few of The Castaways feel they once had some connection to the location, but none of them remember a crater having been there, and none of them remember what was there before. This suggests that it was created by the same catastrophe that resulted in the disappearance of The Missing, and it may even have been the cause of the same.  

Operation GTFO

Being a large, mostly level, empty space, with easily repairable road access and stable ground, the Great Crater was chosen as the terminal site for the Tomeverse Portal during the evacuation of the 1337 Speak Reality during Operation GTFO in 2023. The portal platform was built over a period of several months, supervised by military engineers, but despite their careful efforts, Literomantic Power leak from the Literomantic Batteries at the base of the platform still caused structural instability that had to be repaired mid-operation. Approximately 2.5 million people were successfully evacuated before the collapse of the portal. Ground stability was restored within a few days, after the energy dissipated, leaving raised earth in a small hill at the center of the crater, and a raised track along the path of the Batteries.