In the sky above Ansaf, towards the bright and 'east' of the sun by about twenty degrees, a new star is born in the sky.

To the people of Ansaf: If the comet impacts the drybright, it might put dust into the atmosphere, reducing light worldwide. We must be prepared to establish temporary farms on the bright edge, to be abandoned again when the dust clears. Therefore, Lei proposes:

A truce with the Freedom Democracy, so that the soldiers, mostly werewolves, can prepare to settle new growth.

A joint mission with the Allheart Alliance to visit every drybright shrine that becomes accessible.

A global treaty, signed now, before the exact effect of the comet is known, that if parts of the chartreuse are harmed more than others, whether due to dust or direct impact, the habitable land will be divided proportionally to the current occupied area.

To the people of Ansaf: See how the Lei scheme. They claim to know the results of this unprecedented impact. But who exactly do they claim knows? Elves. They can't share what they know to anyone else. Next, they will offer to 'lend' you educated elves to manage the migration for you.

As for this treaty, it is obvious that the comet will be likely to impact Lei. We will not shift our borders, especially not in the contested northern Wedge area where they will most likely request, and we are insulted that they think us so gullible.

To the people of Ansaf: sounds like kite mirrors are going to be vital to survival. Get yours now before the prices go up!

But if you do go into the drybright, we are eager to buy any metal you find. [Ore identification guide attached.]

To the people of Ansaf: We accept Lei's treaty. Due to our drydark colonization, we have twice the area one might assume based only on our length along the chartreuse.

You have one town in the drydark.

Two! More soon.

See how the elves unite to crush anyone who dares to question their omniscience.

As the 'comet' approaches, its trajectory is changing. Fairly rapidly. It takes a while to figure out and do the orbital math, and the catfolk working with goatseers to make detailed observations are baffled until the key insight.

The comet is accelerating. Slowing itself down relative to Ansaf and maintaining an intercept course. What looks like a dust tail is actually - some sort of titanic rocket.

Somewhere between four and a half wakes and five wakes four hours left, if it continues at the same rate of acceleration. 

At the tip of the star-bright rocket plume, focusing hard against the glare, the faint shape of a long box can be made out. It's framed by two thin wings, larger than the rest of the shape and glowing softly with dull-red heat. Below the working temperature of iron.

People of Ansaf, we must prepare to meet the aliens with peace, dignity, and pride. Let us all establish embassies near their landing site where we can show the best of our culture.

Says Lei, who isn't going to be the one hosting the aliens. Also a spacefaring society will obviously support Freedom.

The metahumans have returned! Repent!

Repent what? 

Failing to explore all the plant and animal species on Ansaf in the time allotted!

Exploring with improper motivation! Notice how the good species like werewolves and catfolk are from animals that are pleasant and fluffy?

Fools, all exploration is wrong! Human magic is a temptation we must resist!

Additional data on the planet has been gathered. Telescope shows signs of life.

Approach speed is still much higher than ideal landing plans. The drive will continue burning as long as possible in order to provide the best chance at a soft landing.

The fusion torch grows brighter and brighter and brighter in the sky, polite enough to point the drive plume away from where the exhaust will bombard the planet with charged particles. It never truly rivals the sun, but just being clearly visible in the sky is an achievement on that front. More details can slowly be gleaned as it approaches, along with an estimate of the ship's size. It's over a kilometer and a half long, and about 500 meters across. The massive radiators frame the main body like elegant dull-red wings, two great fans of pipes glowing in the dark.

In a completely sealed space between the inner and outer hull, nestled just below the drive's radiation shroud, there is a device.

The device is sensitive enough to magnetic fields to detect when the landing system, which changes the geometry of the radiation shroud by shifting it into a heat shield, activates. Just to be sure, it also contains a physical switch which will be depressed if the radiation shroud moves in the correct direction.

It's a very simple device. It has to be, to survive who knows how long with no maintenance, bombarded by radiation, in the cold rear workings of the vessel, and work perfectly at the correct time.

Long-term stable explosives are truly a wonder of modern chemistry.

The torch drive shuts off, at length, and the UNSS Exodus begins preparations for a controlled landing with heavy aerobraking. Each pod should have enough fuel in its independent housing to land safely, in ideal circumstances. The circumstances are far from ideal.

But the drive goes dark, and the radiators cool off and stop glowing and begin folding away for storage during the last few hours of approach, as the unstable Brigman Cores are moved forward in the hull where they won't be exposed to the rigors of re-entry...

BOOM

The UNSS Exodus is clearly visible to anyone who cares to look with magically enhanced vision as one of the great radiators shears off and tumbles into the void, scattering fragments everywhere. There is a fire aboard the ship, gouts of flame emerging from the engine section as it begins to tumble.

Closer... Closer...

The pieces hit Ansaf's atmosphere and begin glowing with friction plasma.

Exodus AI has been thinking at maximum speed ever since the first shockwave. It fires attitude thrusters. It strategically blows out more panels and equipment to stabilize the spin. It tries to control the tilt as the numbers dance wildly, the key one being the number of crew likely to survive, second being the pods with vital colonization equipment...

Aerobraking continues as the hull takes far more heat than it was ever expected to, though not quite as much as it was designed to. Just in case.

The ship sheds copious amounts of debris as it descends, a fireball streaking across the sky, crossing directly over the chartreuse. The boxes lining its side peel away, some smoothly and some spinning wildly. Some stabilize themselves with rockets, and others fall freely. What's left of the enormous molybdenum pipe radiator hits the side of a near-drybright mountain and shatters into thousands of pieces, still stinking of its boiled-off ammonia working fluid. A few small pieces of debris, mostly unrecognizable bits of metal, land in the thin green line where the tidally-locked planet is habitable.

Most of it lands fairly deep into the drydark.

Oh well the aliens were cool while they lasted.

The alien ship's big hot things don't seem to have a purpose, so being big and hot must itself be their purpose. They look like water-extraction books, but hot instead of cold. Is this how the alien ship survives the direct sunlight? But there's no air in space. Is there a way for heat to move without air? Is the sun gradually getting colder?

Wait. Is the heat from sunlight the same heat that the sun is losing?

We will buy all that metal! 

...We will buy some of that metal, at the attached prices, with a considerable bonus if you take payment in kite mirrors to be delivered in the future.

The debris is collected, the fleeting weird smell noticed, and -

Wait this is all molybdenum?!

Such an irony for it to fall so close to the contested Wedge molybdenum mine.

Their name for molybdenum is more like 'pure - Bb flat 4 beats - Ab sharp 20 beats - Bb flat 6 beats - Ab sharp 1 beat'. The way to identify a metal ore on Ansaf is: 

Grind it very fine.

Eat it.

With liefling help, don't die. Also, grow metal claws. 

The liefling can sometimes say if the metal is 'pure', but that means that one metabolic pathway is used, not that it's a chemical element - both concepts that Ansaf science does not have a solid understanding of.

Cut off of the metal bits of your claws and smash them into two precisely-shaped musical free reeds, like what's in a harmonica or accordion. It helps to have a werewolf make a mold and a mouseling use a very small cursor to check the measurements. 

Compare the pitches of the reeds to reference pitches, not only determining the notes but also the rate at which they beat against the reference pitches.

Finally, heat the reeds in a standardized glass flame and check the pitches again.

This is also often the easiest known way to extract metal from ore. But fortunately, the most important use of metal is nutritional, and for that, the ground ore can simply be mixed into soil.