MTT3 asked a bit about Three Pantheons setting and by the time I was done responding I decided to put it in a full post!
“So, were these geographic places entirely replaced with something else? What happened to the humans living there?”
The realms are more a metaphysical changing of how the rules work inside the boundaries. The actual geography of the locations didn’t change (initially) other than things caused by direct consequence of loss of electricity (such as areas below the water table starting to flood as the pumps shut off). While I’ve not played STALKER myself, my friend confirms that you can basically walk right into the Zone in that game other than mundane security measures (guards and fences). The realms are similar. There’s a line beyond which the rules of physics and such just change and are different. The edge of reach realm is a bit of a “no man’s land”, as while you can’t fire a gun while in realm, if you do it while outside of realm, it’ll keep going inside. And if you accidentally step inside without meaning, you might end up black bagged.
As for the people in the realms, they remained in existence largely. Anyone with a life-essential medical device like a pacemaker would be in immediate trouble. All electronic activity would cease immediately. “Humanitarian disaster” is not an unfair characterization. At the same time, the realm gods and their creatures basically ‘phased in’ to existence, and they’re not exactly sure what’s going on either, so there would be an extreme disruption period inside. People in those areas wouldn’t even be able to flee in most cases, as they have no way to know the boundaries of the realms.
Outside countries would attempt to intervene with the situation. The following NATO countries (per August 2001) would be subsumed by the realms to the point they would likely have trouble calling Article 5: Norway, Greece. Conversely, Denmark, Turkey, and Hungary would be directly threatened by the current crisis (and in Turkey’s case, would itself be partially absorbed), allowing them to easily justify the call against Midgard and Hellas. As for Kemet, well, Israel isn’t in NATO, but ends up inside Kemet and suddenly all the Abrahamic religions agree on something for the first time in hundreds of years, so that gets the military there.
In any case, this engagement was a disaster on both sides, as the very earliest excursions by militaries would find themselves crippled by the lack of usable equipment and logistics difficulties, as well as god magic and powers. Meanwhile, the gods would also be trying excursions out of realm and find that when your creatures can’t use their magic powers and the perimeter is secured with modern weaponry, you aren’t going to get far.
People in the realms would eventually end up either rescued/extracted (rare), dead, or some flavor of marked, overall. After a year or two, the situation settled into more of a ‘cold war’ containment situation and then trade of varying types opened up slowly after that. There was a short term economic downturn (tanker ships in the Black Sea!) and as much as I hate to say it given the real world, realistically Russia would swallow up what parts of the Norwegian peninsula that were out of realm, ostensibly as a ‘favor’ to administrate the remaining land and secure it against further realm incursion, but we know who’s really benefiting.
The trade from the realms includes initially things like advanced medical treatment not currently available. Things like restoring sight to the blind or other things. But as both sides learn more, other things will open up, either ways to handle the interior of the realms from outside (new weapons/tools, support networks), and the gods themselves will find things they can do that people might be interested in letting them do. Advanced chemical synthesis, transmuting materials, and other things that either can’t be done in the “Scientific realm”, or that the Divine Realms can just do EASIER and undercut normal suppliers. Inoperable congenital heart defect? Fixable. Blindness? Asclepius has a queue. Nusinersen or other ‘orphan drugs’? Antivenoms save lives, but worldwide, there’s a shortage, as they’re difficult and expensive to produce and marked up extensively for profit, particularly given how rarely they are actually used. I’m sure there’s other chemicals besides Coralmyn which are unprofitable to produce in the real world (between rarity of use, and opportunity costs associated with making them) but you get the idea.
-Arrow