Mashup Stross x Saunders

[dsrtao]

I wonder what would have happened if, in The Nightmare Stacks, it wasn't the Alfar invading Britain but a Line Company (with standard-captain and attached artillery, perhaps an Independent) had been pushed through.

Nothing simple.

Comments

[graydon]

They wouldn't start a fight -- they'd be trying to get home -- but it's iffy if the Line commander would expect a rule-of-law polity to be possible. So interacting with local authorities has an opportunity to go horribly wrong. Especially because there's no magic fix for the language barrier.

If there's anything much in the way of biocompatibility going on and they come through with a volume of air or an extent of terrain the results would likely make the introduction of Eurasian diseases into the the Americas look entirely mild.

[dsrtao]

Even if they don't come through with any significant air, weeds or soil, there's going to be whatever the diverged equivalents of e. coli, rhinovirus, and everything else that a life mage thinks of as a perfectly normal symbiont or commensal. Food. Horses.

Come to think of it, I wonder that the Alfar didn't all die of dysentery in the camp.