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Old 01-27-2013, 06:38 AM   #49
Edman
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Norrköping, Sweden, Europe, Earth
Default Re: The Shadow Court of HM Queen Elizabeth II

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
MI19 has not existed for many years. The plausible mundane explanations for the lack of an MI18 include it having been in a plan at some stage, but never created - it's entirely plausible that MI19 would not be renamed, since that would be hard work in an all-paper administrative system - or it being a deliberate gap to confuse people. Icelander does seem to be trying to keep the 20th century history of his campaign world very close to reality.
Oh, naturally, there are plenty of mundane explanations. That doesn't mean it can't be true - most of Icelander's fictionalizations are based in an assumption that the mundane explanation simply wasn't it, as opposed to anything else.

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
An occult study group to try to predict the effects that occultism would have on Nazi policy and strategy is plausible*, and doesn't require that the organisation doing it believes in the occult. (I play in a WWII secret-magic campaign that has used this as a cover story a few times.) But it doesn't sound plausible as an MI department in its own right, since that would require it having more official structure and paper trail; it would be easier to keep it secret as an internal branch of MI6.

* For the definitive account of how Germanic occultism did influence the Nazi worldview, see The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology: The Ariosophists of Austria and Germany, 1890-1935, by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke.
No, that's probably true, but a potential department that dealt with, say, anthropological and religious aspects of the Commonwealth, and how to use them as anti-Nazi propaganda isn't all that implausible, and if Churchill was a true believer, he could very well instruct them to gather artifacts and relics while they were at it. It could very well, because of these clandestine activities, be closed down and then more or less wiped from official records, especially since so many countries were relinquished from the Empire, and would, if they knew of MI18's existence, actually inquire as to if they had had a hand in the robbing of cultural heritage and why. It's not the most plausible explanation, but still far from impossible, if there were enough believers who worried about Nazi occult supremacy.
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