What Happens if the Nightlands and Earth are Separated Again

[LostOne]

I don't remember reading this in the books anywhere. But if somehow, at the end of a major campaign with an enormous ritual or other triggering factor the Nightlands and Earth are separated again, what happens? Do the nightbane go back to vanilla human? Guardians? I assume Hounds and Night Princes and other minions are stranded, are they weakened?

[Blackwater Sniper]

I don't think this was ever thought out as a game-playing possibility.

You would probably have to look into how the two merged in the first place when dealing with the "natural" denizens.

I would be interested to see which side you have wanting to make the split. I'm assuming it would be Earth-prime wanting to move from the Nightlands, but some stories are better with a little dissent from the inside.

Whatever you do keep us informed.

[LostOne]

Whatever you do keep us informed.

Right now it's wild speculation and brainstorming. It might never come to fruition as my group is pretty great at torpedoing long term storylines unintentionally or zigging when I expect them to zag. They're rather chaotic.

[Shark_Force]

there were nightbane before dark day, they'd stick around. stuff wouldn't be able to cross the boundary easily any more. crossing the boundary would still be possible (separated is somewhat of a strong word to describe it), but rare. I'd expect most nightlands creatures would still be around, but many would be trying to escape (when you can no longer call in nearly-unlimited numbers of minions, it starts to feel like less of a good idea to wage war on all of humanity at once, especially when they've also got a war on the vampires and still have to worry about nightbane who are frankly quite powerful), especially the night princes who don't have a huge amount of power. some of the nightlords would undoubtedly continue to spread their influence (or at least, their avatars would) and may even become fully independent of their masters. I would expect dopplegangers might also go rogue more often, considering that they would be more difficult to replace.

guardians would continue to be around, I don't believe they were a result of dark day in the first place (if anything, they seem to have a closer connection to the astral plane).

I don't think the minions of the nightlords would be weakened directly, however. they just wouldn't be easy to replace any more. every hound you kill would be nigh-impossible to replace. and the vampires in particular I think would act very quickly the moment they figure out what is going on, because they would still have their ability to replenish their numbers no problem. the moment a vampire intelligence figures out that it could wipe out its most dangerous threat and then comfortably have time to replace its losses, I'd expect them to start being a lot more reckless (I mean, they're not going to settle for 1:1 trades when they could get 1:2 or better, but if they can trade a handful of wild or lower-ranked secondary vampires to kill off a dozen or more hounds, I'd expect them to take that opportunity gladly).

given that humans are still by far the most numerous, I'd expect the conflict to stay in the shadows (or at least, those fighting it would try to keep it there), because in the end none of the factions can really withstand hundreds of million humans uniting against them.

[Warshield73]

there were nightbane before dark day, they'd stick around. stuff wouldn't be able to cross the boundary easily any more. crossing the boundary would still be possible (separated is somewhat of a strong word to describe it), but rare. I'd expect most nightlands creatures would still be around, but many would be trying to escape (when you can no longer call in nearly-unlimited numbers of minions, it starts to feel like less of a good idea to wage war on all of humanity at once, especially when they've also got a war on the vampires and still have to worry about nightbane who are frankly quite powerful), especially the night princes who don't have a huge amount of power. some of the nightlords would undoubtedly continue to spread their influence (or at least, their avatars would) and may even become fully independent of their masters. I would expect dopplegangers might also go rogue more often, considering that they would be more difficult to replace.

guardians would continue to be around, I don't believe they were a result of dark day in the first place (if anything, they seem to have a closer connection to the astral plane).

I don't think the minions of the nightlords would be weakened directly, however. they just wouldn't be easy to replace any more. every hound you kill would be nigh-impossible to replace. and the vampires in particular I think would act very quickly the moment they figure out what is going on, because they would still have their ability to replenish their numbers no problem. the moment a vampire intelligence figures out that it could wipe out its most dangerous threat and then comfortably have time to replace its losses, I'd expect them to start being a lot more reckless (I mean, they're not going to settle for 1:1 trades when they could get 1:2 or better, but if they can trade a handful of wild or lower-ranked secondary vampires to kill off a dozen or more hounds, I'd expect them to take that opportunity gladly).

given that humans are still by far the most numerous, I'd expect the conflict to stay in the shadows (or at least, those fighting it would try to keep it there), because in the end none of the factions can really withstand hundreds of million humans uniting against them.

I agree with almost all of this but I think the one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the Nightlords should still be in control of many of the Earth's governments so in addition to fighting the remnants of Nightlord minions you still have the human agents that think they are working for a government and are likely still after your characters.

[Shark_Force]

I agree with almost all of this but I think the one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that the Nightlords should still be in control of many of the Earth's governments so in addition to fighting the remnants of Nightlord minions you still have the human agents that think they are working for a government and are likely still after your characters.

this will be true initially. I'd expect them to gradually lose control over time, though... avatars could not just be replaced freely (and over time could become their own faction as they become more independent), and while assassinating a president would likely be a bit more overt than most of the factions might like, I would expect attrition in the "middle management" levels of the nightlord's agents to become a major problem, and at the lower ranks it is going to get a lot harder to explain why people need to act a certain way when you can't just tell them that they're looking for a vampire or a nightbane in facade because they aren't all actually hollow men or dopplegangers.

plus I'd suspect that at some point, actual human managers are going to have more issues with keeping on the "angry mob with pitchforks and torches" approach to law enforcement (the dislike of that approach will unfortunately not be universal, but when some of the people being recruited actually have "enforce laws and protect citizens" as a priority rather than all trying to ruin everything, this shift is bound to happen).