Posit: Banestorm on Merlin ...

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Suppose - just suppose - on Merlin-1, when the Trinity Event took place, that a Banestorm-like event occurred. That is, Banestorm like in Banestorm - all in Trinity's Shadow, small groups of Elves, Goblins, Halflings, Centaurs, Ogres, et al were swept in from other worlds. How would that have altered Merlin's society and history?

Commentary welcome.

[David Johnston2]

Well, they'd have a plausible explanation about how they learned so much actual magic so fast.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well, they'd have a plausible explanation about how they learned so much actual magic so fast.

And why it conforms to the Yrth magic so well. I hadn't considered that.

[Spudzill]

That would be,say, Merlin 3.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

Originally Posted by Spudzill

That would be,say, Merlin 3.

Nope. According to Infinite Worlds Merlin-3 has a techno-magical Third Reich currently in the middle of World War II. No mention of Elves or Orcs or anything like that.

Maybe Merlin-4.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Suppose - just suppose - on Merlin-1, when the Trinity Event took place, that a Banestorm-like event occurred. That is, Banestorm like in Banestorm - all in Trinity's Shadow, small groups of Elves, Goblins, Halflings, Centaurs, Ogres, et al were swept in from other worlds. How would that have altered Merlin's society and history?

Commentary welcome.

This is sort of what did happen depending on how some ambiguities in the existing material is interpreted, only Merlin was closer to worlds populated with more fell creatures than the ones that Yrth was pollenated from.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well, they'd have a plausible explanation about how they learned so much actual magic so fast.

What did you find implausible about the given explanation?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

What did you find implausible about the given explanation?

I'm only familiar with Merlin from Time Travel Adventures and there wasn't really one there.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'm only familiar with Merlin from Time Travel Adventures and there wasn't really one there.

I'm reluctant to dig out my copy of that or Technomancer, so I'll just ditto that. I've always found Merlin's magitech to be highly questionable, given the relatively limited timeframe in which all the advances supposedly took place. It seems more like a world where magic has existed for for longer than a number of decades.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

What about the original question?

What would the the effect on Merlin-1's history have been to have fully-developed fantasy races and cultures (Elves, Orcs, Centaurs, etc) suddenly appear in the wake of the Trinity Event? On the one hand you have the institutionalized racism and reflexive xenophobia of post-war America, on the other hand you have magically-adept-and-adapted races. When I try to visualize how Merlin-1 would have turned out, I get either no real change or a distorted Shadowrun or Yrth milieu.

We know the effect on Yrth - the destruction of the indigenous Elf culture over the course of centuries. But what about the effect on the more dense and adaptable human population over the course of a couple of generations?

To eliminate it early, the Shadowrun reality isn't a valid comparison, since fully-developed non-human cultures didn't show up instantly. Shadowrun is more like the template for the Chimeras of Merlin-1.