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Description
It's going to take forever for me to finish the writeup at this rate, so I figured I might as well post everything I currently have and update it in the future as I continue writing.

The backstory for this is that I managed to convince a bunch of my IRL friends to play an ISOT map game with me, but since I’m the only one who knew what a map game was in the first place, it was like herding cats if we’re being generous. However, we got a pretty nicely screwed-up world by the end of it, so I figured I’d make a map of it a couple decades post-ISOT. I might post some more content for this if y’all are interested, but I don’t even know where half the turns are anymore, so I probably won’t be able to post the full timeline.

It’s been thirty years since the ISOT, and the world is a drastically altered place. While NATO, also known (informally) as the Euro-American bloc, dominates the world, both the Indian bloc and Russia are rising to challenge its power, and the constant threat of the supernatural has the whole planet on edge.

The key reasons for the dominance of the countries that later reformed NATO are that they were in a good position immediately post-ISOT and many of its members were more technologically advanced than the rest of the world. Additionally, smaller ISOTs which gave them further boosts (usually technological) helped them keep this up until things had settled down, at which point they were still in charge of most of the rest of the world. (Then, of course, things like the Black Friday riots and the Ritual of the Magnus Archive happened, but thankfully they were kept pretty contained, even if the UK’s never recovered from the latter.) The one thing that unifies them, though, is that they’re mostly left-leaning democracies of various types.

The United States of America is much, much leftier than it used to be in just about every way- the country’s kind of like OTL Norway or Finland on steroids and then some these days. The formerly-centrist Democratic Party has been transformed into a left-wing big tent party primarily split between different economically left-wing ideologies (social democracy, democratic socialism, neosocialism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.), though the syndicalist wing tends to dominate thanks to the Donald Trump presidency (the man himself, who still insists on being called “Comrade Donnie,” is alive and well despite his advanced age and spends most of his time attempting to promote anarcho-syndicalism overseas and playing D&D with his children, friends, and Barack Obama). When it became clear that hardline Reaganomics and Bible-bashing were only harming the party, the Republicans purged most of the older politicians, swung closer to the center, and absorbed most of the defecting neoliberals from the Democrats, and the current Republican party is reminiscent of the Bill Clinton-era Democrats. Political reform has led to several minor parties gaining new prominence, the most prevalent being the Libertarians (finally relevant, but mostly unchanged), the Greens (also mostly unchanged), CPUSA (tankies), the Revolutionary Communist Party (*Bill Wurtz voice* even craaaazier tankies), and the Ameroreform Party, a new party based around a sort of weird protectionist multiethnic/multispecies (though very anti-supernatural and anti-magic) center-nationalist pseudo-technocratic ideology. After “Comrade Donnie,” General John MacNamara took the presidency in a landslide, and since then it’s gone back and forth between the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens (CPUSA and the Revolutionary Communists never win anything that isn’t on the local or state level, and Ameroreform only pushed itself onto the national stage half a decade ago)- the only president to win two consecutive terms since MacNamara is the current president, former Massachusetts Senator Terri Waters-Waters. The other major thing that makes America unique is its large population of dragons, which were evacuated from their world (which was going to be destroyed by a meteor) through a portal PEIP found in Maryland mere weeks post-ISOT, and now make up a decent chunk of the population east of the Mississippi, as most of them have American citizenship now thanks to the efforts of the MacNamara administration. Smaller minorities exist in the western United States, the nations making up the former Third Reich, Egypt-in-South America, Brazil, western Europe, Japan, and more recently Nippon. The hyper-advanced generators they brought with them killed two (three, technically) birds with one stone as soon as the country got to work producing more of them: they solved most global energy needs, put America at the forefront of distributing this technology, and for the most part killed the fossil fuel industry (at least, within its alliance- there are still parts of the world that stubbornly cling to oil for whatever reason, India foremost among them). Though America seems to be a pretty happy and shiny place nowadays, the dark legacy of the Black Friday riots still looms over the country, and though Wiggly has been long annihilated, Black Friday itself has been transformed into a solemn day of remembrance for all of those who were killed or driven to insanity thanks to the eldritch abomination.

The Third Reich remained a festering sore in the heart of North America even after its defeat by the United States. Appearing in the northern Great Plains newly landlocked and being surrounded by a hostile nation several decades more technologically advanced than it under a far-left president meant that it didn’t even last six months, and the execution of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials was broadcasted live on several major American television networks (the famous recording of “Comrade Donnie” kicking back and watching the executions with a bowl of popcorn by his side still pops up occasionally). Germany’s problems weren’t over yet, however, as far-right terrorism continues to this day and mass amounts of immigration from the post-Reich nations did all kinds of weird things to the demographics of the American states around them (Kansas has more Austrians, Czechs, and Poles combined than Americans these days, Minnesota and Iowa are both around 40% Polish, the West Coast has a large, thriving German community, and almost all of the Jewish population of the former Reich left for the by-comparison religiously hyperprogressive United States at the earliest possible opportunity). Modern Germany, Austria, Czechia, Poland, and East Prussia are fairly advanced democratic states that have been heavily culturally influenced by America, but there is still an existing (if shrinking) neo-Nazi movement that continues to set off bombs in subways and the like despite heavy government crackdowns.

The organization known as PEIP has come a long way from its pre-ISOT days as a secret branch of the US military designed to cover up the supernatural and paranormal. After absorbing the SCP Foundation (which was crippled by the ISOT and forced to cooperate with PEIP as it attempted to reestablish itself), PEIP was transformed into something resembling a combination of a Lawful Good SCP Foundation, a pseudo-nation-state of directly-controlled zones of heightened supernatural activity and secure facilities, and NATO (in that countries that are co-signatories to the PEIP “treaty” are brought under its formal protection and PEIP will cooperate with domestic supernatural affairs organizations, though there are very few countries that aren’t under PEIP protection to some degree- Cuba, notoriously isolationist despite the best efforts of “Comrade Donnie,” is the most glaring example). PEIP has established several secure facilities for containment of supernatural, magical, or otherwise anomalous artifacts and entities on every continent along the lines of the SCP Foundation’s Site-19 and Site-06-3 (the only SCP sites to be ISOTed, the latter along with the entirety of the French province of Lorraine), with the new Site-1 being the original PEIP headquarters in D.C.. After General John MacNamara stepped down, initially temporarily to pursue the presidency and then permanently when he went into retirement after leaving office, Xander Lee took over after a brief attempt by the Architect to gain the leadership position (she had only been part of PEIP for six years since she was ISOTed and wasn’t anywhere near as well-liked as Lee, and it didn’t help that she herself had some supernatural-adjacent powers that led to many within the organization distrusting her, forcing her to concede) and continues to control PEIP to this day. With PEIP being open about its existence to the rest of the world, it’s opened parts of its less dangerous sites to tourism (though visitors must sign affidavits voiding responsibility for any harm that may occur to them while in the facilities) to help with funding, and becoming a PEIP agent is a legitimate career option that many high schoolers around the world consider in lieu of going to college.

[...to be filled in...]

Global culture has been shifted up drastically. Knowledge of the existence of parallel universes, ISOTs, magic, and the supernatural has led to the creation of all kinds of new, interesting subgenres in international media, as well as a general cultural understanding of this can happen to anyone thanks to Austria-in-Europe already having experienced an ISOT two hundred years prior. Every national government has contingency plans in place for every type of ISOT known to exist, from whole countries to parts of the country to singular provinces to cities to buildings to individual beings- they’d be stupid not to. After the Ritual of the Magnus Archive overtook Britain, General (by then President) John MacNamara made the highly controversial decision to reveal to the public everything that PEIP knew about the supernatural- most notably, the existence of Smirke’s Fourteen. While knowledge of the existence of eldritch fear entities preying on the world did freak everyone out, the whole Wiggly thing had already desensitized them a little and PEIP was able to distribute information on what kinds of fears are more likely to single out what kinds of people and how to counter them, or at the very least survive, which helped calm people down at least a little. Most households have some kind of anti-supernatural weaponry, mostly based on those made with animus magic or those already owned by PEIP and the SCP Foundation pre-ISOT, such as General MacNamara’s “blade of truth,” but it turns out that Andalite shredders, especially when cranked up to the highest setting, also do the trick most of the time (that’s how PEIP finally took down Jared Hopworth, among many others, after all)- not that the Andalites are willing to share without some compensation, of course. (Much to Comrade Donnie’s displeasure, the Second Amendment was never abolished.) One good side effect of all this, however, is that most discrimination against minorities has been stopped worldwide- not out of the pure goodness of people’s hearts, but rather because living in fear empowers the Entities and most people don’t want them to get any more powerful. This has led to politicians promoting discriminatory laws often being accused of wanting to unleash the Domains of Fear onto the entire rest of the world, and such accusations tend to be very good at totally destroying political careers given the precedent set in Britain. Similarly, the knowledge of Wiggly’s existence- specifically, the fact that he was most successful at gaining power in hypercapitalist countries- did some serious damage to the credibility of the economic right that it’s still struggling to regain even decades after Wiggly’s annihilation. (The fact that the exposure of these supernatural entities has largely benefited the international left has not been ignored, but people who try to bring attention to this, regardless of whether they believe it to be a positive, negative, or neutral thing, have been largely lumped in with the kinds of people who believe the unhinged “a Satanist cannibal cult led by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders caused the ISOT to bring about a communist world government”-type conspiracy theories.)

[...to be filled in...]

Where are they now?

(For the sake of time, this won’t be covering every single character that was ISOTed, just the major ones.)

In the end, Lex, Ethan, and Hannah made it through the Black Friday riots unscathed (well, mostly unscathed: Ethan talks with a slur thanks to the jaw damage and still has problems breathing due to his ribs healing wrong, and the doctors have said that Lex probably will never regain full motor control in her left hand again) and got to California. Lex Foster-Green didn’t make it as far as she’d hoped, only being a B-list actor/celebrity at best at the height of her career, but all in all, she’s still happy with her life. Hannah still lives with her sister and brother-in-law and has since become a reclusive author of cosmic horror novels that have been critically acclaimed for feeling “stunningly realistic,” and depending on who you ask, she’s better-known around the country than her older sister. If anybody’s noticed during her few televised interviews that her shadow looks like it has several tails and/or arachnid-like legs at certain angles, her hair has an off-white glow in the right lighting, or that her eyes sometimes flicker red, they’re too polite (or too scared) to comment on it. While she isn’t officially associated with PEIP, she’s high on their “people to beg for help if something goes seriously wrong” list.

After spending eight years as one of the most popular presidents in America’s history, John MacNamara retired both from politics and leading PEIP, much to the dismay of both the country and everyone in PEIP. However, he retains a consulting role of sorts, much to the relief of Xander Lee (the new head and public face of PEIP), as well as other major members of PEIP, such as Indiana Jones (best known for bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to American soil, where it remains under lock and key in a secure, undisclosed PEIP site, though a thoroughly mundane replica that the public is told is the real thing exists in the tourist sections of Site-19) and Leon Kennedy (hero of the “Las Plagas Crisis,” as PEIP has termed it).

Most of the dragons who came through the portal are doing pretty well these days thanks to the laws allowing them to integrate into the country passed after their arrival, and for the most part they have all of the same rights as humans do. Bryce, Sebastian, and Maverick are still police officers, albeit in a sleepy town in upstate New York now (Bryce briefly joined the NYPD during his time living in New York City, but the corruption was too much for him- the radical police reformation which occurred under “Comrade Donnie” and MacNamara wasn’t underway yet- and he resigned in disgust). Perhaps due to the sheer novelty of it being made by a dragon, Lorem’s game did astronomically well despite being rather similar to the already-existing Animal Crossing; one thing led to another, and Lorem now stands as the creator of the largest American gaming cooperative east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, Reza wasn’t arrested by the Americans due to the evidence of his crimes being destroyed along with the dragons’ world, but karma caught up to him and he was killed in the Black Friday riots- to his credit, though, he did not succumb to the Hunt or the Desolation when either attempted to take him as an avatar in his final moments. As for the other ambassador, they’re now a major political activist and are contemplating trying to snag a seat in the Senate- dragons and other nonhuman sapient species may have full rights in the United States, but in both their eyes and those of their partner Adine, the country still has a lot of problems that need to be resolved before they can go into retirement.

Most of the staff of the Magnus Institute escaped Britain alive, and the Institute was subsequently reestablished in a section of Brussels with a lot of other British refugees under PEIP supervision (Britain’s dangerously nationalistic turn post-Ritual meant that most of them didn’t feel safe staying in the UK), as General MacNamara didn’t think it’d be a good idea to let all that supernatural information be cast to the side, though obviously the new building would have to be constructed differently to avoid being a temple to an eldritch fear god. (In fact, it was specifically constructed in such a manner as to repel the Entities.) Sasha James is the current head of the rebranded James Institute, as she has been for the past few decades, and under her leadership, for the first time in a while the Institute workers have felt the unending gaze of the Beholding lift away from them and drift elsewhere. Jon and Martin Blackwood-Sims have left the Institute (one of the upsides of Elias and the Eye being preoccupied with lording it over Britain was that they could quit their jobs at the Institute now) and currently live a rather peaceful life together in the Belgian countryside, with the former now being a teacher at a local secondary school- his lingering Beholding powers have at least made it a lot easier to get coherent essays out of his students, who circulate “Mr. Blackwood-Sims is secretly an avatar of the Eye” memes amongst themselves with the same seriousness and frequency as Americans used to joke about Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer. Once every year, Jon, Martin, Sasha, Melanie, Georgie, Basira, and Daisy reunite to go to the Stoker Memorial in Brussels to pay their respects, but other than that, they don’t see each other much anymore. (Tim might not be officially declared dead, but he was trapped in Britain when the Ritual of the Magnus Archive happened- being dead is probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him, especially given how close to the Hunt he was veering towards the end.)

Prince Hamlet’s brief time spent as the avatar of Pete the Griffin gave him the power to do wonderful, terrible things, such as killing his uncle and taking the throne as the king of Denmark, transforming the country into Pete’s personal fiefdom in the process. However, when Pete lost his climactic duel in the Black and White with Wiggly and was violently assimilated into the latter, Hamlet was cut loose in a rather jarring and traumatizing fashion and did his best to reform Denmark into a more modernized state afterwards, hoping to atone for his sins. Hamlet still remains king of Denmark, but he has been increasingly isolating himself for fear of harming his subjects with his lingering cosmic powers, and ever since an elderly sea captain arrived in Denmark and began acting as an on-and-off advisor to the king, the attention of the Lonely has been increasingly drawn towards him…

Pete the Griffin, Spirit Dragon, and the Great Kitsune were terrified by the existence of the Entities from the moment they appeared in this world and found themselves unable to escape, their “game” tossed to the side in favor of survival. After Pete was killed and absorbed by Wiggly, the other two hastily began cooperating with PEIP in keeping the world a halfway-decent place and have helped insulate it from the Entities, their most obvious interference in the world being the creation of memetic hazards surrounding Britain to keep the grip of the Entities from spreading past the island (otherwise, the Ritual of the Magnus Archive could have very easily led to the Entities overtaking the rest of the world, but they don’t like to think about that). Kitsune was also responsible for killing Wiggly at the height of the Black Friday riots, alongside a temporary avatar of his whose identity has been kept a secret by PEIP, but refused to reveal how he did it (though PEIP security footage shows that the Ark of the Covenant went missing for a few minutes at around the point that Wiggly died) and claims that it won’t work on the Entities- trying to kill them would be like trying to kill wind or rain, he states.

The Gayle Waters-Waters of before the ISOT would never have thought she could have a career in national politics. Yet, a decade post-ISOT, she managed to gain the Republican nomination as a populist candidate emulating Donald Trump (minus the part where he abruptly went from an unstable far-right populist to an unstable anarcho-syndicalist on the day of his inauguration). Despite incumbent Democratic candidate John MacNamara’s strong record, many anticipated Waters-Waters would have a decent chance of defeating MacNamara- that is, until her daughter leaked a recording of her enthusiastically discussing her usage of kitchen appliances as masturbatory tools to the news. (OOC note: Yes, this is something that happened in the original series she was ISOTed from. I wasn’t the one who introduced that plot element- I actually thought it would’ve been funny if she won the election, or at least lost in a more PG fashion, but I was unfortunately overruled.) Gayle became the laughingstock of the nation overnight and lost in a landslide to MacNamara (who had reportedly only reacted to the news of the leaked audio with a raised eyebrow), and a few months after the election she disappeared. Some assumed she had committed suicide, but a few inhabitants of Northbread, Massachusetts claim to have witnessed her walking through a yellow door with a matte-black handle that vanished when they looked away. Not long after, PEIP reported that the entity known as “Michael” that had previously frequented the infinite hallways of the Distortion had been replaced by a muscular woman with curly hair wearing a tracksuit. PEIP files on the Spiral have since had a new tip added to them- if you ever run into the new face of the Distortion, do yourself a favor and don’t mention egg frothers.

Tintin is still a well-known journalist across Europe, though his left arm had to be replaced by a prosthetic imported from France after he was caught up in the Black Friday riots while in New York City (on the plus side, he had quite the firsthand encounter to write about) and his hair has started graying. He is reportedly amused by the actions of his doppelganger over in the Socialist Republic of Britain, though he has not commented on the situation there beyond that.

The NightWing assassin named Deathbringer was killed by fellow NightWing Blackout when he tried to assassinate Princess Blaze, and afterwards, he was absorbed into the Black and White and became a puppet of Wiggly much like Uncle Wiley. However, when Wiggly was annihilated by Hannah Foster, the Great Kitsune, and Webby, the two were cut free of his control, and while Wiley regained his prior identity as Wilbur Cross and came crawling back to PEIP an apologetic amnesiac, Deathbringer absorbed what parts of Wiggly’s and Pete’s power were left and became the new ruler of the Black and White as an eldritch abomination just as terrifying as Wiggly himself, if not more so. (Deathbringer’s apotheosis was received with the eldritch equivalent of a tired, apathetic sigh by Webby, who figured “this might as well happen at this point.”) He is currently number one on PEIP’s list of dangerous entities that need to be contained or destroyed, preferably the latter.

Darkstalker may have made himself immortal, but he neglected to make himself immune to mundane chemical effects on the body. After he emerged from the mountain he had been sealed under for millennia, PEIP, in cooperation with the SCP Foundation (the two hadn’t merged yet), pumped him full of tranquilizers and Class-E amnestics and moved him to a specially-built site in the heart of Antarctica. While his scales are impenetrable and he can’t die, PEIP has surgically removed several key parts of his brain and severed his tongue, spine, and several major muscles so that he would be no threat even if he did somehow wake up. The only way he could present any kind of danger would be if his broken body were possessed by some other entity that could ignore its physical damage- unfortunately, there are a lot of entities like that in this world, hence why he is under constant guard while PEIP tries to puzzle out a way to permanently kill him.

The NightWing now known as “Blackout” is a well-known figure across Pyrrhia for aiding the Dragonets of Destiny on their journey, being the hero who called PEIP and the SCP Foundation in to neutralize Darkstalker after his appearance, and being behind the creation of the Pyrrhian Human Republic and New Night Kingdom in eastern Africa, and they’ve even married Tsunami after she formally forsook her royal title (leaving the throne to be taken by her younger sister Anemone following their mother’s death) and had two sons with her. However, their lies about being an amnesiac have begun to fall apart as the gradual modernization of Pyrrhia makes it increasingly clear that they didn’t exist before the ISOT, and their guilty conscience resulting in their brain blocking out most of their pre-ISOT/immediate post-ISOT memories as a coping mechanism- meaning they genuinely don’t remember the circumstances of their arrival here by this point- isn’t exactly making things easier. With what little self-trust they had increasingly falling apart as the lies they don’t remember telling to secure their current position crumble around them, it’s debatable what might happen next to the tormented former human, and they may just get desperate enough for an escape from accountability to make a metaphorical deal with the devil...

After the Architect’s appearance in PEIP headquarters, she was taken in by PEIP and reluctantly worked for them for a while, not having anything better to do. During PEIP’s involvement in the portal crisis and the subsequent evacuation of dragons into the United States, she met the scientist dragon Anna (who was also later employed by PEIP), their relationship slowly evolved from outright loathing to begrudging mutual respect to vitriolic friendship to something other than that, and now they’ve been an item for over twenty years. Though things haven’t turned out how Architect might have imagined they would have before the ISOT, she certainly can’t complain- better than constantly having to deal with Pax’s fuckups, at least. She has no idea that Pax’s siblings and final creation are currently living on the opposite side of America, and honestly, that’s probably for the best.

Legoshi’s story was altered considerably due to the appearance of Seeker and the Family on the Cherryton campus at the time of the ISOT, and while he helped them hide for a while (not knowing how the country, let alone the rest of the world, might react to their existence and not really wanting to find out), they were unfortunately finally exposed to the nation in the process of bringing Tem’s murderer to justice. After months of media harassment, the Family and Seeker fled to the United States, and while Legoshi initially only intended to stay with his new friends until they were fully settled in, he ended up never returning to Nippon. While they all live in San Francisco now, the Family doesn’t tend to leave their apartments much to avoid being gawked at (except for Seeker, who can pass as a Nipponese rabbit easily, and Rul and Fen, who can both pass for dragons from a distance), but they haven’t wholly cut ties with the people they knew back in Nippon (Rul and Gouhin are still great friends, though given their personalities it’s probably for the better that they haven’t met face-to-face in decades).

The world is an ever-changing place, and even with the majority of the planet now split up between the forty-eight countries occupying its surface, it continues to change. The exploration of the galaxy is still dominated by the Andalites, and they’ve recently found a planet that matches most of the records about their original homeworld (apparently there are a few things that are just a little off, but nothing concerning, surely- otherwise, they would’ve told the rest of the world). PEIP, meanwhile, is more concerned about some… interesting things on the dark side of the moon they’ve discovered recently, and already Xander Lee has ordered the construction of several moon bases to make studying their discoveries easier. (Speaking of which, since Lee is getting on in age, there are rumors that he’ll be stepping down soon, and foremost among those who might be selected next to lead the organization is the Architect, who would be a... controversial... pick at best.) Deathbringer continues to reach through the Black and White for the body that was once Darkstalker that lies so tantalizingly close to the magnetic South Pole, pushing and pulling on the minds of the PEIP employees there in the hopes that one of them will break long enough for him to get close enough to touch the body, just long enough to gain the ability to puppeteer it and claim all that latent power as his own. Through Jonah Magnus, the Eye pushes against the boundaries around Britain that prevent it from expanding itself any farther- a practically-infinite volume of latent fear surrounds it, and yet it can’t manifest fully to consume any of it! And around the world, supernaturally-sensitive/-aligned beings are sensing a realignment in… something. What it is, they can’t tell, but it’s probably not good.

Foremost among them is Gulf, the youngest son of Blackout and Tsunami, who has been obsessed with the supernatural since he was old enough to read about it. Fortunately, his parents have always encouraged his interests despite their reservations, and he’s since become one of the youngest independent supernatural researchers in the world, taking inspiration from the Magnus Institute in the creation of his own research center, the Oversea Institute (currently located in the western Sea Kingdom). There, he and his employees labor over statements and statistics, compiling and creating charts and graphs, searching for a conclusion Gulf has had his mind set on proving true ever since the establishment of the Institute. Gulf has willingly become an avatar of the Beholding for the knowledge and power it offers (he hasn’t told his parents about it and doesn’t intend to, but he has a feeling Blackout knows somehow anyway- they’ve always known things they shouldn’t and refused to explain how they found out, which is why he has his suspicions that they’re tied to the Beholding as well), and what he has Seen only proves his theory true: there is something on the other side of the sun, a planetary body the same size as Earth that has somehow been kept shielded from anyone who might have sought to prove its reality. Even the Andalites have remained ignorant to its existence, but Gulf knows for a fact that this other planet exists- even without the Beholding to confirm his suspicions, all of the readings the Oversea Institute has taken via their own independently-launched space probes (which were absolutely not stolen from PEIP, how dare you even suggest such a thing) confirm the gravitational pull, mass reading, etc. of another world. Not only that, but more supernatural means of analysis have confirmed it to be a populated world.

There’s another planet on the other side of the sun, and Gulf intends to expose its existence to his world. No matter what it takes.

Description
It's going to take forever for me to finish the writeup at this rate, so I figured I might as well post everything I currently have and update it in the future as I continue writing.

The backstory for this is that I managed to convince a bunch of my IRL friends to play an ISOT map game with me, but since I’m the only one who knew what a map game was in the first place, it was like herding cats if we’re being generous. However, we got a pretty nicely screwed-up world by the end of it, so I figured I’d make a map of it a couple decades post-ISOT. I might post some more content for this if y’all are interested, but I don’t even know where half the turns are anymore, so I probably won’t be able to post the full timeline.

It’s been thirty years since the ISOT, and the world is a drastically altered place. While NATO, also known (informally) as the Euro-American bloc, dominates the world, both the Indian bloc and Russia are rising to challenge its power, and the constant threat of the supernatural has the whole planet on edge.

The key reasons for the dominance of the countries that later reformed NATO are that they were in a good position immediately post-ISOT and many of its members were more technologically advanced than the rest of the world. Additionally, smaller ISOTs which gave them further boosts (usually technological) helped them keep this up until things had settled down, at which point they were still in charge of most of the rest of the world. (Then, of course, things like the Black Friday riots and the Ritual of the Magnus Archive happened, but thankfully they were kept pretty contained, even if the UK’s never recovered from the latter.) The one thing that unifies them, though, is that they’re mostly left-leaning democracies of various types.

The United States of America is much, much leftier than it used to be in just about every way- the country’s kind of like OTL Norway or Finland on steroids and then some these days. The formerly-centrist Democratic Party has been transformed into a left-wing big tent party primarily split between different economically left-wing ideologies (social democracy, democratic socialism, neosocialism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.), though the syndicalist wing tends to dominate thanks to the Donald Trump presidency (the man himself, who still insists on being called “Comrade Donnie,” is alive and well despite his advanced age and spends most of his time attempting to promote anarcho-syndicalism overseas and playing D&D with his children, friends, and Barack Obama). When it became clear that hardline Reaganomics and Bible-bashing were only harming the party, the Republicans purged most of the older politicians, swung closer to the center, and absorbed most of the defecting neoliberals from the Democrats, and the current Republican party is reminiscent of the Bill Clinton-era Democrats. Political reform has led to several minor parties gaining new prominence, the most prevalent being the Libertarians (finally relevant, but mostly unchanged), the Greens (also mostly unchanged), CPUSA (tankies), the Revolutionary Communist Party (*Bill Wurtz voice* even craaaazier tankies), and the Ameroreform Party, a new party based around a sort of weird protectionist multiethnic/multispecies (though very anti-supernatural and anti-magic) center-nationalist pseudo-technocratic ideology. After “Comrade Donnie,” General John MacNamara took the presidency in a landslide, and since then it’s gone back and forth between the Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens (CPUSA and the Revolutionary Communists never win anything that isn’t on the local or state level, and Ameroreform only pushed itself onto the national stage half a decade ago)- the only president to win two consecutive terms since MacNamara is the current president, former Massachusetts Senator Terri Waters-Waters. The other major thing that makes America unique is its large population of dragons, which were evacuated from their world (which was going to be destroyed by a meteor) through a portal PEIP found in Maryland mere weeks post-ISOT, and now make up a decent chunk of the population east of the Mississippi, as most of them have American citizenship now thanks to the efforts of the MacNamara administration. Smaller minorities exist in the western United States, the nations making up the former Third Reich, Egypt-in-South America, Brazil, western Europe, Japan, and more recently Nippon. The hyper-advanced generators they brought with them killed two (three, technically) birds with one stone as soon as the country got to work producing more of them: they solved most global energy needs, put America at the forefront of distributing this technology, and for the most part killed the fossil fuel industry (at least, within its alliance- there are still parts of the world that stubbornly cling to oil for whatever reason, India foremost among them). Though America seems to be a pretty happy and shiny place nowadays, the dark legacy of the Black Friday riots still looms over the country, and though Wiggly has been long annihilated, Black Friday itself has been transformed into a solemn day of remembrance for all of those who were killed or driven to insanity thanks to the eldritch abomination.

The Third Reich remained a festering sore in the heart of North America even after its defeat by the United States. Appearing in the northern Great Plains newly landlocked and being surrounded by a hostile nation several decades more technologically advanced than it under a far-left president meant that it didn’t even last six months, and the execution of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials was broadcasted live on several major American television networks (the famous recording of “Comrade Donnie” kicking back and watching the executions with a bowl of popcorn by his side still pops up occasionally). Germany’s problems weren’t over yet, however, as far-right terrorism continues to this day and mass amounts of immigration from the post-Reich nations did all kinds of weird things to the demographics of the American states around them (Kansas has more Austrians, Czechs, and Poles combined than Americans these days, Minnesota and Iowa are both around 40% Polish, the West Coast has a large, thriving German community, and almost all of the Jewish population of the former Reich left for the by-comparison religiously hyperprogressive United States at the earliest possible opportunity). Modern Germany, Austria, Czechia, Poland, and East Prussia are fairly advanced democratic states that have been heavily culturally influenced by America, but there is still an existing (if shrinking) neo-Nazi movement that continues to set off bombs in subways and the like despite heavy government crackdowns.

The organization known as PEIP has come a long way from its pre-ISOT days as a secret branch of the US military designed to cover up the supernatural and paranormal. After absorbing the SCP Foundation (which was crippled by the ISOT and forced to cooperate with PEIP as it attempted to reestablish itself), PEIP was transformed into something resembling a combination of a Lawful Good SCP Foundation, a pseudo-nation-state of directly-controlled zones of heightened supernatural activity and secure facilities, and NATO (in that countries that are co-signatories to the PEIP “treaty” are brought under its formal protection and PEIP will cooperate with domestic supernatural affairs organizations, though there are very few countries that aren’t under PEIP protection to some degree- Cuba, notoriously isolationist despite the best efforts of “Comrade Donnie,” is the most glaring example). PEIP has established several secure facilities for containment of supernatural, magical, or otherwise anomalous artifacts and entities on every continent along the lines of the SCP Foundation’s Site-19 and Site-06-3 (the only SCP sites to be ISOTed, the latter along with the entirety of the French province of Lorraine), with the new Site-1 being the original PEIP headquarters in D.C.. After General John MacNamara stepped down, initially temporarily to pursue the presidency and then permanently when he went into retirement after leaving office, Xander Lee took over after a brief attempt by the Architect to gain the leadership position (she had only been part of PEIP for six years since she was ISOTed and wasn’t anywhere near as well-liked as Lee, and it didn’t help that she herself had some supernatural-adjacent powers that led to many within the organization distrusting her, forcing her to concede) and continues to control PEIP to this day. With PEIP being open about its existence to the rest of the world, it’s opened parts of its less dangerous sites to tourism (though visitors must sign affidavits voiding responsibility for any harm that may occur to them while in the facilities) to help with funding, and becoming a PEIP agent is a legitimate career option that many high schoolers around the world consider in lieu of going to college.

[...to be filled in...]

Global culture has been shifted up drastically. Knowledge of the existence of parallel universes, ISOTs, magic, and the supernatural has led to the creation of all kinds of new, interesting subgenres in international media, as well as a general cultural understanding of this can happen to anyone thanks to Austria-in-Europe already having experienced an ISOT two hundred years prior. Every national government has contingency plans in place for every type of ISOT known to exist, from whole countries to parts of the country to singular provinces to cities to buildings to individual beings- they’d be stupid not to. After the Ritual of the Magnus Archive overtook Britain, General (by then President) John MacNamara made the highly controversial decision to reveal to the public everything that PEIP knew about the supernatural- most notably, the existence of Smirke’s Fourteen. While knowledge of the existence of eldritch fear entities preying on the world did freak everyone out, the whole Wiggly thing had already desensitized them a little and PEIP was able to distribute information on what kinds of fears are more likely to single out what kinds of people and how to counter them, or at the very least survive, which helped calm people down at least a little. Most households have some kind of anti-supernatural weaponry, mostly based on those made with animus magic or those already owned by PEIP and the SCP Foundation pre-ISOT, such as General MacNamara’s “blade of truth,” but it turns out that Andalite shredders, especially when cranked up to the highest setting, also do the trick most of the time (that’s how PEIP finally took down Jared Hopworth, among many others, after all)- not that the Andalites are willing to share without some compensation, of course. (Much to Comrade Donnie’s displeasure, the Second Amendment was never abolished.) One good side effect of all this, however, is that most discrimination against minorities has been stopped worldwide- not out of the pure goodness of people’s hearts, but rather because living in fear empowers the Entities and most people don’t want them to get any more powerful. This has led to politicians promoting discriminatory laws often being accused of wanting to unleash the Domains of Fear onto the entire rest of the world, and such accusations tend to be very good at totally destroying political careers given the precedent set in Britain. Similarly, the knowledge of Wiggly’s existence- specifically, the fact that he was most successful at gaining power in hypercapitalist countries- did some serious damage to the credibility of the economic right that it’s still struggling to regain even decades after Wiggly’s annihilation. (The fact that the exposure of these supernatural entities has largely benefited the international left has not been ignored, but people who try to bring attention to this, regardless of whether they believe it to be a positive, negative, or neutral thing, have been largely lumped in with the kinds of people who believe the unhinged “a Satanist cannibal cult led by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders caused the ISOT to bring about a communist world government”-type conspiracy theories.)

[...to be filled in...]

Where are they now?

(For the sake of time, this won’t be covering every single character that was ISOTed, just the major ones.)

In the end, Lex, Ethan, and Hannah made it through the Black Friday riots unscathed (well, mostly unscathed: Ethan talks with a slur thanks to the jaw damage and still has problems breathing due to his ribs healing wrong, and the doctors have said that Lex probably will never regain full motor control in her left hand again) and got to California. Lex Foster-Green didn’t make it as far as she’d hoped, only being a B-list actor/celebrity at best at the height of her career, but all in all, she’s still happy with her life. Hannah still lives with her sister and brother-in-law and has since become a reclusive author of cosmic horror novels that have been critically acclaimed for feeling “stunningly realistic,” and depending on who you ask, she’s better-known around the country than her older sister. If anybody’s noticed during her few televised interviews that her shadow looks like it has several tails and/or arachnid-like legs at certain angles, her hair has an off-white glow in the right lighting, or that her eyes sometimes flicker red, they’re too polite (or too scared) to comment on it. While she isn’t officially associated with PEIP, she’s high on their “people to beg for help if something goes seriously wrong” list.

After spending eight years as one of the most popular presidents in America’s history, John MacNamara retired both from politics and leading PEIP, much to the dismay of both the country and everyone in PEIP. However, he retains a consulting role of sorts, much to the relief of Xander Lee (the new head and public face of PEIP), as well as other major members of PEIP, such as Indiana Jones (best known for bringing the Ark of the Covenant back to American soil, where it remains under lock and key in a secure, undisclosed PEIP site, though a thoroughly mundane replica that the public is told is the real thing exists in the tourist sections of Site-19) and Leon Kennedy (hero of the “Las Plagas Crisis,” as PEIP has termed it).

Most of the dragons who came through the portal are doing pretty well these days thanks to the laws allowing them to integrate into the country passed after their arrival, and for the most part they have all of the same rights as humans do. Bryce, Sebastian, and Maverick are still police officers, albeit in a sleepy town in upstate New York now (Bryce briefly joined the NYPD during his time living in New York City, but the corruption was too much for him- the radical police reformation which occurred under “Comrade Donnie” and MacNamara wasn’t underway yet- and he resigned in disgust). Perhaps due to the sheer novelty of it being made by a dragon, Lorem’s game did astronomically well despite being rather similar to the already-existing Animal Crossing; one thing led to another, and Lorem now stands as the creator of the largest American gaming cooperative east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, Reza wasn’t arrested by the Americans due to the evidence of his crimes being destroyed along with the dragons’ world, but karma caught up to him and he was killed in the Black Friday riots- to his credit, though, he did not succumb to the Hunt or the Desolation when either attempted to take him as an avatar in his final moments. As for the other ambassador, they’re now a major political activist and are contemplating trying to snag a seat in the Senate- dragons and other nonhuman sapient species may have full rights in the United States, but in both their eyes and those of their partner Adine, the country still has a lot of problems that need to be resolved before they can go into retirement.

Most of the staff of the Magnus Institute escaped Britain alive, and the Institute was subsequently reestablished in a section of Brussels with a lot of other British refugees under PEIP supervision (Britain’s dangerously nationalistic turn post-Ritual meant that most of them didn’t feel safe staying in the UK), as General MacNamara didn’t think it’d be a good idea to let all that supernatural information be cast to the side, though obviously the new building would have to be constructed differently to avoid being a temple to an eldritch fear god. (In fact, it was specifically constructed in such a manner as to repel the Entities.) Sasha James is the current head of the rebranded James Institute, as she has been for the past few decades, and under her leadership, for the first time in a while the Institute workers have felt the unending gaze of the Beholding lift away from them and drift elsewhere. Jon and Martin Blackwood-Sims have left the Institute (one of the upsides of Elias and the Eye being preoccupied with lording it over Britain was that they could quit their jobs at the Institute now) and currently live a rather peaceful life together in the Belgian countryside, with the former now being a teacher at a local secondary school- his lingering Beholding powers have at least made it a lot easier to get coherent essays out of his students, who circulate “Mr. Blackwood-Sims is secretly an avatar of the Eye” memes amongst themselves with the same seriousness and frequency as Americans used to joke about Ted Cruz being the Zodiac Killer. Once every year, Jon, Martin, Sasha, Melanie, Georgie, Basira, and Daisy reunite to go to the Stoker Memorial in Brussels to pay their respects, but other than that, they don’t see each other much anymore. (Tim might not be officially declared dead, but he was trapped in Britain when the Ritual of the Magnus Archive happened- being dead is probably the best thing that could’ve happened to him, especially given how close to the Hunt he was veering towards the end.)

Prince Hamlet’s brief time spent as the avatar of Pete the Griffin gave him the power to do wonderful, terrible things, such as killing his uncle and taking the throne as the king of Denmark, transforming the country into Pete’s personal fiefdom in the process. However, when Pete lost his climactic duel in the Black and White with Wiggly and was violently assimilated into the latter, Hamlet was cut loose in a rather jarring and traumatizing fashion and did his best to reform Denmark into a more modernized state afterwards, hoping to atone for his sins. Hamlet still remains king of Denmark, but he has been increasingly isolating himself for fear of harming his subjects with his lingering cosmic powers, and ever since an elderly sea captain arrived in Denmark and began acting as an on-and-off advisor to the king, the attention of the Lonely has been increasingly drawn towards him…

Pete the Griffin, Spirit Dragon, and the Great Kitsune were terrified by the existence of the Entities from the moment they appeared in this world and found themselves unable to escape, their “game” tossed to the side in favor of survival. After Pete was killed and absorbed by Wiggly, the other two hastily began cooperating with PEIP in keeping the world a halfway-decent place and have helped insulate it from the Entities, their most obvious interference in the world being the creation of memetic hazards surrounding Britain to keep the grip of the Entities from spreading past the island (otherwise, the Ritual of the Magnus Archive could have very easily led to the Entities overtaking the rest of the world, but they don’t like to think about that). Kitsune was also responsible for killing Wiggly at the height of the Black Friday riots, alongside a temporary avatar of his whose identity has been kept a secret by PEIP, but refused to reveal how he did it (though PEIP security footage shows that the Ark of the Covenant went missing for a few minutes at around the point that Wiggly died) and claims that it won’t work on the Entities- trying to kill them would be like trying to kill wind or rain, he states.

The Gayle Waters-Waters of before the ISOT would never have thought she could have a career in national politics. Yet, a decade post-ISOT, she managed to gain the Republican nomination as a populist candidate emulating Donald Trump (minus the part where he abruptly went from an unstable far-right populist to an unstable anarcho-syndicalist on the day of his inauguration). Despite incumbent Democratic candidate John MacNamara’s strong record, many anticipated Waters-Waters would have a decent chance of defeating MacNamara- that is, until her daughter leaked a recording of her enthusiastically discussing her usage of kitchen appliances as masturbatory tools to the news. (OOC note: Yes, this is something that happened in the original series she was ISOTed from. I wasn’t the one who introduced that plot element- I actually thought it would’ve been funny if she won the election, or at least lost in a more PG fashion, but I was unfortunately overruled.) Gayle became the laughingstock of the nation overnight and lost in a landslide to MacNamara (who had reportedly only reacted to the news of the leaked audio with a raised eyebrow), and a few months after the election she disappeared. Some assumed she had committed suicide, but a few inhabitants of Northbread, Massachusetts claim to have witnessed her walking through a yellow door with a matte-black handle that vanished when they looked away. Not long after, PEIP reported that the entity known as “Michael” that had previously frequented the infinite hallways of the Distortion had been replaced by a muscular woman with curly hair wearing a tracksuit. PEIP files on the Spiral have since had a new tip added to them- if you ever run into the new face of the Distortion, do yourself a favor and don’t mention egg frothers.

Tintin is still a well-known journalist across Europe, though his left arm had to be replaced by a prosthetic imported from France after he was caught up in the Black Friday riots while in New York City (on the plus side, he had quite the firsthand encounter to write about) and his hair has started graying. He is reportedly amused by the actions of his doppelganger over in the Socialist Republic of Britain, though he has not commented on the situation there beyond that.

The NightWing assassin named Deathbringer was killed by fellow NightWing Blackout when he tried to assassinate Princess Blaze, and afterwards, he was absorbed into the Black and White and became a puppet of Wiggly much like Uncle Wiley. However, when Wiggly was annihilated by Hannah Foster, the Great Kitsune, and Webby, the two were cut free of his control, and while Wiley regained his prior identity as Wilbur Cross and came crawling back to PEIP an apologetic amnesiac, Deathbringer absorbed what parts of Wiggly’s and Pete’s power were left and became the new ruler of the Black and White as an eldritch abomination just as terrifying as Wiggly himself, if not more so. (Deathbringer’s apotheosis was received with the eldritch equivalent of a tired, apathetic sigh by Webby, who figured “this might as well happen at this point.”) He is currently number one on PEIP’s list of dangerous entities that need to be contained or destroyed, preferably the latter.

Darkstalker may have made himself immortal, but he neglected to make himself immune to mundane chemical effects on the body. After he emerged from the mountain he had been sealed under for millennia, PEIP, in cooperation with the SCP Foundation (the two hadn’t merged yet), pumped him full of tranquilizers and Class-E amnestics and moved him to a specially-built site in the heart of Antarctica. While his scales are impenetrable and he can’t die, PEIP has surgically removed several key parts of his brain and severed his tongue, spine, and several major muscles so that he would be no threat even if he did somehow wake up. The only way he could present any kind of danger would be if his broken body were possessed by some other entity that could ignore its physical damage- unfortunately, there are a lot of entities like that in this world, hence why he is under constant guard while PEIP tries to puzzle out a way to permanently kill him.

The NightWing now known as “Blackout” is a well-known figure across Pyrrhia for aiding the Dragonets of Destiny on their journey, being the hero who called PEIP and the SCP Foundation in to neutralize Darkstalker after his appearance, and being behind the creation of the Pyrrhian Human Republic and New Night Kingdom in eastern Africa, and they’ve even married Tsunami after she formally forsook her royal title (leaving the throne to be taken by her younger sister Anemone following their mother’s death) and had two sons with her. However, their lies about being an amnesiac have begun to fall apart as the gradual modernization of Pyrrhia makes it increasingly clear that they didn’t exist before the ISOT, and their guilty conscience resulting in their brain blocking out most of their pre-ISOT/immediate post-ISOT memories as a coping mechanism- meaning they genuinely don’t remember the circumstances of their arrival here by this point- isn’t exactly making things easier. With what little self-trust they had increasingly falling apart as the lies they don’t remember telling to secure their current position crumble around them, it’s debatable what might happen next to the tormented former human, and they may just get desperate enough for an escape from accountability to make a metaphorical deal with the devil...

After the Architect’s appearance in PEIP headquarters, she was taken in by PEIP and reluctantly worked for them for a while, not having anything better to do. During PEIP’s involvement in the portal crisis and the subsequent evacuation of dragons into the United States, she met the scientist dragon Anna (who was also later employed by PEIP), their relationship slowly evolved from outright loathing to begrudging mutual respect to vitriolic friendship to something other than that, and now they’ve been an item for over twenty years. Though things haven’t turned out how Architect might have imagined they would have before the ISOT, she certainly can’t complain- better than constantly having to deal with Pax’s fuckups, at least. She has no idea that Pax’s siblings and final creation are currently living on the opposite side of America, and honestly, that’s probably for the best.

Legoshi’s story was altered considerably due to the appearance of Seeker and the Family on the Cherryton campus at the time of the ISOT, and while he helped them hide for a while (not knowing how the country, let alone the rest of the world, might react to their existence and not really wanting to find out), they were unfortunately finally exposed to the nation in the process of bringing Tem’s murderer to justice. After months of media harassment, the Family and Seeker fled to the United States, and while Legoshi initially only intended to stay with his new friends until they were fully settled in, he ended up never returning to Nippon. While they all live in San Francisco now, the Family doesn’t tend to leave their apartments much to avoid being gawked at (except for Seeker, who can pass as a Nipponese rabbit easily, and Rul and Fen, who can both pass for dragons from a distance), but they haven’t wholly cut ties with the people they knew back in Nippon (Rul and Gouhin are still great friends, though given their personalities it’s probably for the better that they haven’t met face-to-face in decades).

The world is an ever-changing place, and even with the majority of the planet now split up between the forty-eight countries occupying its surface, it continues to change. The exploration of the galaxy is still dominated by the Andalites, and they’ve recently found a planet that matches most of the records about their original homeworld (apparently there are a few things that are just a little off, but nothing concerning, surely- otherwise, they would’ve told the rest of the world). PEIP, meanwhile, is more concerned about some… interesting things on the dark side of the moon they’ve discovered recently, and already Xander Lee has ordered the construction of several moon bases to make studying their discoveries easier. (Speaking of which, since Lee is getting on in age, there are rumors that he’ll be stepping down soon, and foremost among those who might be selected next to lead the organization is the Architect, who would be a... controversial... pick at best.) Deathbringer continues to reach through the Black and White for the body that was once Darkstalker that lies so tantalizingly close to the magnetic South Pole, pushing and pulling on the minds of the PEIP employees there in the hopes that one of them will break long enough for him to get close enough to touch the body, just long enough to gain the ability to puppeteer it and claim all that latent power as his own. Through Jonah Magnus, the Eye pushes against the boundaries around Britain that prevent it from expanding itself any farther- a practically-infinite volume of latent fear surrounds it, and yet it can’t manifest fully to consume any of it! And around the world, supernaturally-sensitive/-aligned beings are sensing a realignment in… something. What it is, they can’t tell, but it’s probably not good.

Foremost among them is Gulf, the youngest son of Blackout and Tsunami, who has been obsessed with the supernatural since he was old enough to read about it. Fortunately, his parents have always encouraged his interests despite their reservations, and he’s since become one of the youngest independent supernatural researchers in the world, taking inspiration from the Magnus Institute in the creation of his own research center, the Oversea Institute (currently located in the western Sea Kingdom). There, he and his employees labor over statements and statistics, compiling and creating charts and graphs, searching for a conclusion Gulf has had his mind set on proving true ever since the establishment of the Institute. Gulf has willingly become an avatar of the Beholding for the knowledge and power it offers (he hasn’t told his parents about it and doesn’t intend to, but he has a feeling Blackout knows somehow anyway- they’ve always known things they shouldn’t and refused to explain how they found out, which is why he has his suspicions that they’re tied to the Beholding as well), and what he has Seen only proves his theory true: there is something on the other side of the sun, a planetary body the same size as Earth that has somehow been kept shielded from anyone who might have sought to prove its reality. Even the Andalites have remained ignorant to its existence, but Gulf knows for a fact that this other planet exists- even without the Beholding to confirm his suspicions, all of the readings the Oversea Institute has taken via their own independently-launched space probes (which were absolutely not stolen from PEIP, how dare you even suggest such a thing) confirm the gravitational pull, mass reading, etc. of another world. Not only that, but more supernatural means of analysis have confirmed it to be a populated world.

There’s another planet on the other side of the sun, and Gulf intends to expose its existence to his world. No matter what it takes.