[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Pre-20th century European mapping of Africa is norotiously hit-and-miss. Several national borders were based on rivers that never existed, and the same area could have three or four European names depending on the country where you bought your maps.

It's safe to assume that whoever gave it that name just assumed that anything using Timbuktu as a navigation reference would be in Algeria.

Indeed so.

I discover from the original source that 'south of Timbuktu' is mostly inaccurate for the area that is meant and it would be more precise to state that the southernmost terminus of the lozenge-shaped area might be placed somewhere south of Timbuktu, with the northern end reaching into the western Mediterranean, the lozenge being tilted from SW to NE.

I need have no compunctions defining the area vaguely enough to be able to justify any particular location somewhere in northern Mali and western Algeria, and even parts of Mauritania and Morocco are not excluded by the original definition.

Indeed, depending on taste, I can twist and turn the lozenge as needed, having it be centered somewhere around where Mauritania, Algeria and Mali meet, but having the northern terminus be anywhere I need on the Mediterranean. As far as I can tell, the original source can be interpreted to place the northern parts of the area almost anywhere between the Straits of Gibraltar to the seas around Malta, though it would probably be most in line with the text and accompanying map* if the northern terminus were fitted somewhere between Algiers and Tunis.

This gives me pretty much the whole of Algeria, as well as parts of Tunisia, even if I refrain from grabbing bits of Libya to go with it. It goes without saying that areas of Morocco and Mauritania which border Algeria and Mali can absolutely be pulled in, either because they explicitly lie within the lozenge-shaped Vile Vortex, or by reaching for magico-babble explanations in the form of ley line connections.

*Which, I'll note, even the text admits is not necessarily authoritative about the exact geographic boundaries of the lozenge, with the size of the area being not entirely determined in the article, though no doubt each Vile Vortex corresponds exactly to another one on the opposite hemisphere, either matching it in area or at the very least in some metaphysical way.

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

You're in luck - Krakatoa is just a little bit north of the Wharton Basin. It might even be considered part of the northern edge of the basin if you squint.

Being that close, you can easily claim some horrific supernatural event in the Basin triggered Krakatoa. Or Krakatoa triggered something horrible in the Basin.

Just so.

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Roanoake Island is on the east coast of North America, and you said the Bermuda Triangle is the PC's base. No problem, it's a quick few days' sail north. It's local.

Yes, but is there any proposed definition of the Bermuda Triangle that can stretch it far enough north to actually explain the disappearance of the colony?

Can anyone suggest particularly interesting and gameable crackpot theories, either online or in (not astronomically priced) ebooks available on Amazon that link the Bermuda Triangle and the disappeared colony on Roanoke Island?

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Tunguska is literally the middle of nowhere, and that's by the standards of Siberia. You can say anything happened out there. There might even be an uncharted Vortice out there. Of a nonhuman civilization. Or an asparagus farm. With Terra Incognita, the possibilities are limitless.

I'll ponder it.

Originally Posted by Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2

Remember to have an Over-Arcing Plot, the more obscure the better.

The gradual return of magic and the supernatural to Earth through dimensional vile vortices located at twelve mystically significant points is not enough?

Would it help if the incursions might be in some way shaped and guided by the hands (tentacles?) of Things Man Was Not Meant to Know and whose existence in this reality is impossible under current natural laws?

And if the presence of beings or energy from other worlds in this reality serves to weaken the fabric of our world by serving as an anchor to their own reality, meaning that the very existence of monsters, not to mention the use of magic, serves as a self-reinforcing mechanism which brings higher mana levels and enables the ever more blatant violation of the laws of reality through the existence of otherworldly beings here on Earth?