Oh wow. Kemet goes all the way to Yemen.

I bet Iceland, Faroe Islands, and Denmark are glad that Midgard did not even touch them, eh? :P

Not that it helped Denmark much. The population there was heavily affected by Lupine Flu, including very deep into the government. It's generally viewed as a Fenris-controlled puppet state by "now" in the timeline.

Oh dear, it was even affecting life outside realm. Did the Sannr flu hit Sweden? :P

If Sannr flu survives the history rewrite, absolutely.

Better Sannr flu than Leprsy, which was literally just a joke because the bunnies were named "Lepr". :P

While I want to ditch some of the 'easy tf' aspects, I am still TF interested so...

I mean, it's possible and as established being TFed into a creature of some kind isn't always one-way. :P

What does "Minor Realm Activity" mean? My house would be smack-dab in the middle of one of those zones.

As much as it was ever defined originally, it meant that there wasn't a permanent presence. So there was no anti-tech field, but maybe a random frog spirit or whatever might show up.

That was pretty much as far as it originally went! Transient might be a better word.

A year or so of fantasy adventure life before it becomes mundane then. "I'm going to be late for work again. Look, I had a the family over for barbecue yesterday and now there's an angry pig guy sitting on my car. No, I can't get a ride from Steve, I'm not leaving some vengeful spirit alone with my car. I'm going to have to stay here until the police can bring an exorcist over."

"Sorry I'm late for work. The Chariots crashed."

Not that persistent! Heh.

Hmm... maybe Japan? It's not on the map, but considering some aspects of Shinto I could easily see that as being a region almost becoming a realm, but lacking quite the right sort of pantheon to make the jump - so it could well be a hub for 'major' rather than minor realm activity. The type of place where such events, though not everyday occurrences, are still a frequent enough event that the population have adapted. They've been respectful to the Kami for thousands of years, after all - does it make that much difference if the spirits choose to show themselves more directly these days?

Just make sure you pay your respects at the temple, maintain the family shrine, and never speak rudely to a stranger because you never know if they might be a kitsune in disguise.

That is one of the considered areas. There were hints around Japanese spirits in the original setting, and one of the other PCs became a mini-avatar of one. I'm considering how to handle that PC's actions (as they had distinct effects I can't remove), but I'm definitely considering more realms. That's part of the reason the name will change.

Sadly there don't seem to be a lot of good synonyms for "Pantheon". I'll figure it out.

I can imagine language would have to distinguish between 'pantheon' as the abstract idea of a group of deities and 'Pantheon' as the formal organisation of them acting as a (dys)functional form of supernatural governance in charge within a realm.

Japan may have a pantheon, but it does not have a Pantheon - just a disorganised supernatural presence, and while a few figures like Inari may have the sway to bring a little order to things, they can't be said to be in charge in any real manner.

With a Pantheon, you know which deities you need to establish a relationship with. You can have laws. And embassies. And treaties.

Somewhere like Japan may not have a Pantheon in that sense, so you're dealing with potentially hundreds of thousands of squabbling local gods and lesser but still dangerous beings, and there's no one in charge of it all who can enforce order.

The other groups don't have that either, to be fair.

Like Zeus is nominally in charge of Hellas, sure. On a individual level he probably does have the most power of the Hellenics.

Which matters for jack shit when the gods are involved in their own politics and power struggles and alliances and letting this or that weaker god do things because while they don't like them, it inconveniences someone else they dislike even more.

One thing I liked about mythology is how HUMAN the gods are in a lot of cases. While the Olympians were certainly the worst in the soap opera sense, all three of these groups got up to a lot of different bullshit internally. Loki comes to mind for the Norse...

But more the original setting is "Three Pantheons", and I want a new name, and just...trouble.

The Earth's surface is 3/4 covered by ocean. Since the gods have no idea how this happened, it appears to be a natural event. Which means no reason for it to favor land areas. So it would seem quite likely there are other realms which, though chance, ended up at the bottom of the ocean. They just haven't been discovered yet. And the physics of such pressures probably does unpleasant things to anyone who attempts to cross.

I imagine there are probably merfolk....

Sure are! Ernest might've met Dr. Ley...

Nathan: See, this is what Seafolk are like, here

Nah, these are the gods from those regions coming back. There is a bias against underwater areas because as a general rule, nobody lives on the ocean floor long enough to build up a culture.

No-one human, anyway... the cetaceans may be a little smarter than we give them credit for, and the entity that passes for their God is most unhappy.

Dionysus does get angry when you kidnap him.

Whales may not have the intelligence to worship in the way humans understand it, but there's quite a few million years of them believing in their alien way to build up a realm. Enough to perhaps spawn *something* not far beneath the ocean surface, something alien to our way of thinking. Not so much a god with an individual personality as the collective animimism of fish shoals and storms, protector of the pods. A not-quite-God that still remembers the terror of relentless chases, harpoon and ropes. Seldom seem by human sailors, but there have been enough encounters to get the point across: The sea is their realm, not ours, and we are only tolerated so long as we do not draw their attention.

Why are some cities like Murmansk or Edinburgh marked with thick black dots?

While I don't remember all of these appearing for my play, all the cities used as major play hubs for my characters were marked like so. So I'm going to assume that was "Here's the important cities for the RP."

I feel that even Kemet 's pantheon finds running Israel to be an endless source of frustration. Turn their back on that place for five minutes and the population will be at each other's throats again. It's going to take more than divine intervention to bring peace there. And the Jewish population is so absolute in their commitment to monotheism that most of them wouldn't acknowledge another God even if said god were literally standing in front of them doing miracles.

In the original plot play, while none of my characters were in the relevant scenes, Bast was the primary power in what was left of Tel Aviv, including having her own Avatar reside there.

I was told by the GM that she explicitly commented on the significant issues presented by having that territory. Probably have the line somewhere, but I'm not posting it here. DM me if you want me to look.

Most of the areas are in the "minor realm activity".

If I continue with minor realm activity, a good way to think of it is "Realm activity has been recorded in the last 24 years in this location, but it only lasted a bit." Like a lightning strike or weather event.

Whereas the three main realms are 'persistent', they're always there.

I find it interesting that even when three lost pantheons emerge and are doing literal miracles on a day to day basis, most of the world outside - and a good chunk of that inside - is going to go right on believing in their current religion. Because true religious conversion is a rare thing indeed - it's too central to peoples identity to change, even in the face of such irrefutable evidence as the Gods of another religion actually coming back and making their presence known.

There are still going to be Christians and Muslims and all the other religions around, as their followers start making up all sorts of outlandish excuses to explain why their deity didn't show up to the party, and all these new pretenders aren't real gods anyway. They are just demons in disguise, or maybe aliens, or it's all a conspiracy the UN is pulling with hollywood special effects to hide their evil schemes.

The conversations must grow frustrating after a while. Not only are there religious extremists around eager to wage holy war, but all those millions of stubbornly ignorant people who just do not want to admit any of this is happening because they can't face the implications.

(I could absolutely see this being played for comedy with one of the PCs having an NPC family member who just blanks any mention of the supernatural and insists their child has a perfectly respectable normal job with one of those big travel companies.)

One of the characters in the original play was a man from a staunchly anti-realm family, who ended up going in realm for some reason (don't remember, not my character) and got forcemarked, and quickly shut off after he got back out.

There's absolutely stuff there to play with and I plan to use it further than it already has been.

However I do not at this point plan to run this as a full RP setting. I'm just refashioning what's here to fit my own vision better so when I write books with Nathan, or do RP with him elsewhere, I have a consistent single reference point to use, instead of a mess of decisions from a creator who's no longer interested in this version.