Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I assumed PTTG maybe meant it was an obvious coronavirus skit, but now I'm not sure! :-D Even if it is, "some of the magicians are real" sounds like a clever twist.

Astromancer normally likes Britain, so I'm guessing the reason they didn't make it in this one is that they really weren't self-sufficient enough to pull off a full quarantine in that era. Although Ireland and Iceland may have been the survivors just for numerical reasons, they could be interesting picks - they both have their own relatively well-preserved and distinctive traditions about magic, so they might be interesting wild cards. (Or settings, if a GM didn't want to set the game in the AAC). They also, of course, both have distinctive and sometimes unfriendly ecologies of fairy folk - the sidhe and alfar, respectively - if a GM wanted to go that way.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I assumed it was how much of an Astromancer timeline it was. "A horrible plague descends on the world and destroys everything but America and also Ireland, also also America is going to rebuild the world now!" is practically self parody of one of the patterns you fall back on.

It's not so much illogical, as it's convenient. A hyper virulent and deadly (a rare combo) plague breaks out where Americans are unlikely to frequent. The second strain breaks out just when armies are ready to march in and spread it around. The knock on effects wreck Latin America and Africa.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

I'm a little surprised that the United Kingdom government didn't survive. I would have thought that they could have duplicated the quarantine of Ireland and Iceland.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

My assumption there was between the bombing and refugees the quarantine simply didn't work. Outlying sections of Britain, if isolated from London, a possibility in period, might do better.

Note: Spain still torn from the Spanish Civil War has little chance. Sweden just might be able to pull off a quarantine. It would be a close run thing. No nation occupied by Germany would have a chance.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The UK has too much population to be fully self-sufficient. It needs to import food. I suspect 1940s Iceland could have managed a full quarantine.

Ireland is the doubtful case: the UK part of the island is more densely populated, and the groups there that were politically dominant in the 1940s were very, very attached to the concept of being part of the UK. They'd have had huge objections to being isolated from Great Britain and co-operating with Eire, and I'm not confident that a virulent epidemic would have changed their minds fast enough.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

You'd also get smaller places. The Channel Islands, Falklands, Sri Lanka, maybe some of Indonesia, same with the Philippines, Mascarene Islands, lots of smaller Polynesian islands. Valuable resources and people but convincing them to allow contact could be interesting.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The Channel Islands and the Philippines are occupied by Germany and Japan respectively--toast. So are a lot of other smaller islands.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

The New Found Land

This Q6 Low Mana parallel was fairly close to Homeline history. Which was odd as Magic (Path/Book) is moderately well known and taught at European universities. But there seems to be a high level of Historical Inertia on this parallel, or there was the Mascarene Plateau has recently risen above sea level. Ships from Britain, France, and the Netherlands, have made claims to the vast new island.

Like the locals, Homeline, Centrum, and the Cabal, are stunned. No one knows how such a large area of land could rise up in a space of weeks without causing massive tidal waves.

Basically, the local year is 1704. This is exploring a new continent while dealing with pirates, sorcerer's, and European power politics. Lumerians optional, but possibly fun.

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

Expedition Report Day 24. Today we finally crested the ridgeline and encountered a new type of terrain, our first since beginning the expedition. Instead of barren rock, the ground on the far side of Desolate Ridge consists of barren salt mud....

Re: New Reality Seeds
 

It does have a tendency towards "Where every prospect displeases/ And only man is entertaining." But Pirates, Sorcerers, and Lumerians, that's got to have some pluses.