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This is based on David Brin's "Thor Meets Captain America." I didn't really like what he did with the comic book sequel ("The Life Eaters") so I decided to do my own version.

1977.

The war goes on. The lands of the north have been lost, but in the hot, tropical realms where winter never comes and the Aesir are out of place and memetically enfeebled, battles still rage. Factories in Central America and Brazil and Venezuela pour out munitions, rocket planes that fly far above any Aesir-generated storm, atomic weapons, “genius” smart missiles, and other tools of death and destruction. The United States is gone, save for Puerto Rico, but the United Nations of America lives on.

Loki may have avoided letting the Allies in on the secret of how the Aesir came to be, but it was not long after the rather unique events on Gotland, shortly after the Lake Huron debacle and the occupation of Michigan, that a high-ranking member of the SS (more than a little peeved that after Hitler’s death, the new Fuhrer was a mere Aesir puppet) managed to smuggle some papers into allied hands describing, in gruesome detail, how the Aesir had been created. There was considerable disbelief on the part of the US and allied governments (the exact nature of the information was kept from the general public), but certain elements in the US intelligence community put the government in touch with a community of scholars headed by two members of the faculty of Miskatonic University, who were able to provide independent corroboration with records of experiments going back to the 1910s. (Said experiments had been small-scale, involving large numbers of rabbits and chickens and the occasional goat, but had achieved measureable results: given the larger implications, faculty experimenters had in the end discontinued the program of experiments and the information had been kept close within the so-called “Arkham circle.”).

In the end, the US did not give in to the temptation to kill millions of its own to create a Superman (or a Bugs Bunny, for that matter) to fight the Aesir. Rather, the US government revealed “new data” that the Aesir quite literally fed off death (which was true, as far as it went), making it a vital necessity to avoid being taken prisoner by the enemy, and making surrender impossible: humanity would at best become cattle to the Aesir, bred to be killed and eaten, and quite likely would be wiped out entirely. Energetic propaganda was directed by all available methods at the Germans: while before they were warned that they were being used as cats-paws by alien conquerors, now they were compared to chickens helping foxes to take over the farm.

(Experimentation on the nature and limits of necromancy did quietly get underway on a small scale: given the conditions of wartime, “vanishing” a few hundred or a few thousand German prisoners, condemned criminals, Traitors to humanity (AKA mutineers or deserters, in most cases) wasn’t too difficult).

Like the Soviets before them, the US moved their industries wholesale, south to hot tropic lands. Such places did not exist in any of the old Eddas and myths.
The Gods of the ancient Norse came from a cold and stormy land, of snow and glaciers, short intense springs and summers: the perpetual heat of the tropics, palm trees and jungles, was an alien setting, in which their self-knowledge and self-belief were weakened, their miraculous powers lessened. Not enough, not nearly enough, but humans would take any edge they could. The governments of the US and its allies also promulgated techniques of memetic warfare for those encountering the Aesir: beings created of psychic energy, belief factored into their strength – both self-belief and the belief of others in their power, their godliness. Laughter, mockery, loud expressions of disbelief in their nature – these baffled and shook the Aesir: not enough to really hurt them, but again, any edge is better than none.

Nothing, however, could save the northern US, especially in winter. Storm and hurricane sweeping Allied planes from the skies and freezing ground forces in place, hordes of wild beasts attacking population centers, the Bifrost Bridge opening behind Allied lines and disgorging entire German armies, the hammer of Thor hurtling again and again from the skies and shattering skyscrapers like cheap pottery, black madness and terror from Odin’s magery sweeping Allied forces. Tens of millions were evacuated south, but millions more were trapped behind enemy lines: many failed to take government advice to die rather than surrender. The Deep South and Southwest were a longer and slower slog, but in the end fell as well. Among the survivors Germans found quislings willing to declare themselves leaders of a new “American Reich” allied to Germany: sacrifices became more selective and concentrated on Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Slavs, rather than taking whoever was available. Much of the population was drafted as support forces for the front-line German troops: by the mid 60s it was noted by Allied intelligence that the “German” troops were increasingly French, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Scandinavian or Spanish rather than ethnic Germans: in spite of the total subjugation of German women to the task of making babies, German losses over a generation of warfare had been horrendous.

It had taken the death of millions to bring the Aesir into the world: millions had to be sacrificed every year to keep them at “full power.” Prisoners were necessary: the necessary rituals were difficult at best to carry out on the battlefield, and the Gods could only eat the deaths of those they slew in personal combat: as powerful as they were, they could not kill humans fast enough that way to keep up their energies. Russia was essentially “used up” by the early 60s: the supply of prisoners dropped off rather sharply after “death before surrender” became the official policy of Allied governments. Israel-Iran (by the 60s a wild mix of Arabs, Turks, Central Asians, Persians, Jews, Pathans, Russians, even sub-Saharan Africans) was quite good at socially and ideologically pressuring its citizens into killing themselves rather than being captured, as was Japan: while in China, the National Salvation Government, under the leadership of one Mao Se Tung, had by the 60s become an utterly brutal dictatorship willing and able to use scorched-earth tactics at the expense of its own people, if necessary force-marching tens of millions of starving Chinese peasants south out of German hands.

The US, less willing to use such methods and with much of its population willing to convince themselves that could survive as servants to the Aesir and Nazis (there were a lot of those people to sacrifice yet, right?) ended up with nearly half its population “netted” by the enemy. The still free Latin American states and the some 70-million odd US refugees reformatted themselves as the United Nations of America, with its capital in inland Brazil. (Millions of British had arrived earlier).

The actual nature of the Aesir got out: as the US slowly crumbled 1962-1967, certain high-strung members of government decided that using Nazi methods was the only real chance, and illegally released the Facts over the radio and other media. In-fighting in the US government reached bloody levels, and debates on the floor of Senate and Congress (moved by this point to Lousiana) reached levels of violence not seen since the run-up to the Civil War. In the end, President Stevenson’s speech, flatly laying out the choices, may have been decisive in making it impossible to adopt “German methods”: which of their neighbors were the American people willing to sacrifice to save their own skin? Such things might be doable in the dark, out of public sight in the realm of denial, but the Presidents insistence that the American people would have to publically decide who they would murder and take part in bloodying their hands made it a bit too uncomfortable. In the last days of the evacuation, the “emergency government” of South Carolina seems to have made an attempt at creating some sort of savior through mass murder of their own black population (which were highly uncooperative): what exactly it was they brought into existence remains uncertain, it having apparently ceased to exist after a short period in which it murdered everyone responsible for its creation.

An increasing shortage of victims, the tropical location of most of the remaining centers of resistance, and new Allied weapons led to a slowdown of the Aesir-German advance by ’68. The new Neutron Bombs were coming into production, allowing for elimination of German troop concentrations without all those pesky atmospheric particulates: new chemical warfare methods also allowed for mass slaughter sans atmospheric side effects. Laser-guided missiles made it possible to occasionally knock a winged chariot or a Valkyrie out of the sky. Bogged down in Mexico, the mountains of southern Turkey, the Yangtze valley, the Aesir seemed to be running out of steam: and then, in ’69, came the Indian disaster.

The invasion took place in spite of the horrendous difficulties of managing an advance through the mountains of Afghanistan and Tibet in early winter: the Aesir were strong enough to make up for the weaknesses of their human allies. Hundreds of thousands of European troops (by this point most non-Slavs were “honorary Germans”) perished in the mountain passes, but millions more made it, with Aesir clearing the paths for them and destroying the fortified positions that India had built at great costs. The immense supply depots that had been built up in India over the last two decades were burned through at fearsome speed. People fled the invaders: the Aesir targeted and destroyed railways when they could find them, trapping millions who on foot were unable to make it to safety. The advance was only stopped by a totally profligate expenditure of nuclear weapons by the Indian government (relocated to Madras) and the weakening of the Aesir in the alien south: a new frontier came into existence, vague amid the radioactive ruins of the Deccan. The winter was unusually cold thanks to the massive amount of crap kicked into the atmosphere, and the Aesir consolidated their position. Ten million northern Indians went into the fire in the next year: in the south, tens of millions starved, the long and tenuous line of supply from the lands of surplus across the Pacific being insufficient, especially in a year of poor harvests. The Aesir grew strong again. Israel-Iran, now isolated save by sea, lobbed several incredibly dirty nuclear missiles (missiles built in America, warheads of their own design) at Europe and announced that there would be much, much more of the same if the Germans attacked them next. Thor materialized in Baghdad and wrecked much of the city in a fit of pique before being driven off by the heat and an incredibly heavy missile barrage.

More desperate measures seemed called for.

Japan had survived in spite of its geographically isolated location thanks to German sentimentality re their ally and the assessment that conquering the place, given the known suicidal tendencies of the Japanese, would be more trouble than it was worth. After Hitler’s death and the fall of north India, a decision was made to eliminate Japan, which although cautiously refusing to allow itself to become a platform for attacks on the mainland, had become a major supplier of war materials to the Americans and Southeast Asia. A large-scale naval invasion, backed by several Aesir, was launched in the summer of ’70.

The Aesir were met by Amaterasu, Fujin, Hachiman, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, Raijin, and a number of other Shinto deities. The Aesir were thrown back in some confusion, and withdrew to the mainland: while the Shinto deities failed to kill any of them, several were badly injured. Without the Aesir, the German fleet proved easy meat for the Shinto gods, which whipped up a mega-typhoon with extra waterspouts: those few Germans that survived their ships running aground on Japanese beaches were slaughtered by Japanese forces.

As was soon revealed, a month earlier some six million Japanese men, women and children had sat down, closed their eyes, and been swiftly put to death with swords, guns, axes, and other tools. Some killed themselves. The rituals, as detailed in the documents provided by the SS traitor, were carried out, and the Gods of Shinto walked the earth.

************************************************** **

In 1977, the war goes on. Loki’s effort to create his own power base in the cool lands of Argentina and Chile failed: it remains uncertain whether the trickster and shape-shifter still lives. Germany is now a theocracy, ruled by the Aesir through the SS priesthood: all young Germans, and those Europeans which are being ruthlessly Germanized, are heavily indoctrinated at an early age in the divinity of their rulers, the weakness and folly of their enemies, and the inevitability of their victory. Valhalla is promised: an empty promise, for even the deaths of millions and tens of millions is not enough for the Aesir to create another world. The conversion of non-Germans is slow at best: contaminated from birth by the beliefs of those who created them, the Aesir long parroted German racial propaganda, and only by necessity have turned to making Germans out of Frenchmen, Italians, etc. (Not Slavs: there aren’t many of them left).

Europe is backwards by American standards: people with questioning minds don’t tend to live long in the Reich. There is a lot of heavy industry, but high-tech increasingly lags, and the economy is shaky: far too much of Europe’s resources go into the military, and sans magical horns of plenty the Aesir have no idea how to run a modern economy (corruption, at least, is kept in bounds by bloodily sacrificing those that get caught). Pollution in the big cities is terrible, and secret policemen and informers are in fact far more prevalent than when the Reich was run by human beings. Britain, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries, along with the depopulated Slav lands, have been incorporated directly into the Reich: France may soon follow. Rebels are sacrificed en masse. At horrendous expense, the Reich long-range missile program finally achieved success, and now atomic warheads will rain (or drizzle, at least) down on German enemies if a direct atomic assault takes place on the German heartland.

As the worship of the Aesir is increasingly imposed in the satellites, unrest rises in Spain, Eire, and Italy, where there are still plenty of Catholics: less so in Greater Romania, where any religion save that of Blood and Soil is discouraged, and “Long live Death!” is still a popular salute. The Italians still show some signs of humanity in their European possessions: Croats in Italian Yugoslavia are encouraged to change their names and language, and if possible move to Italy proper: bureaucrats are encouraged to lose such things as birth certificates and other evidence of their former Slav-ness. There is less humanity in Africa: rebellious Arabs in Italian North Africa have been punished with mass deportations to the Nazi Heart of Darkness, while in Ethiopia the salubrious highlands have been largely ethnically cleansed. The always-rebellious Somalis are largely extinct save for those who managed to escape by dhow or raft to Arabia.

Africa still has sacrifices, but returns are diminishing. High reproductive rates almost kept up with the slaughters, and use of tribal divisions allowed the Germans to use next generations sacrificial victims to round up those of this one, but the Africans have generally caught on: the rebellion of those with absolutely nothing to lose constantly bubbles, and increasingly African mothers kill themselves and their children rather than allow them to be taken as sacrifices. European (and of late, American Reich) forces on the continent largely have to handle things themselves: the Aesir prefer not to dirty their own hands with the rounding up of sacrifices, and dislike the African climate.

The puppet regime of the North American Reich is increasingly plagued by suicide bombers.

For the sake of the nation, Japanese women, like German ones, are kept almost continuously pregnant. Over the last seven years the Japanese have killed another fourteen million of their own to keep their Gods strong enough to stave off the Aesir, a total of one fifth of the population before the invasion: the rate is probably unsustainable, biologically as well as psychologically, and it is still not enough. The Shinto Gods are not as strong as the Aesir: they are at best able to defend the islands, unable to take the fight to the mainland, and several of the lesser Kami have been killed. They do not receive as many sacrifices as the Aesir, and worse, they doubt themselves. While the Aesir knew human sacrifice in their day, and were created by genocidal minds, in an age and a half nobody has had their lungs pulled out through a cut in their back to honor a Shinto deity: and those who die so they may remain strong are their own people, their children. The Shinto gods suffer from a perpetual low-level existential crisis.

South India fell in the spring, to forestall a desperate Indian government from carrying out a program involving the shipping of several million untouchables to unknown locations. After a mass killing of Africans and north Indians, the Aesir gained the strength to open a few wee Bifrost gates to the sites of Indian nuclear missile sites, just enough to send through German Special Forces to prevent launch. The invasion was horribly bloody, and weakened Aesir and raw German recruits died in droves: the Indian government managed to pull off a half-assed version of what some have come to call the Thanatos Ritual, with insufficient victims: the “Hindu deities” that resulted were weak and half-formed, and ended up fleeing before the Aesir. Control over south India remains shaky at best, and there is talk of a counterattack from Southeast Asia: the Aesir are temporarily exhausted in their efforts, and their ability to manifest meteorological phenomena in the hot, sunny Indian Ocean in summer is limited at the best of times.

A counterattack, if it comes, will come from South China and the arc of lands from Thailand to New Zealand. These make up a rapidly developing and economically integrating area. One in five of its inhabitants are Chinese, some long resident, others part of the Chinese Diaspora. Australia and New Zealand have more than twice their OTL population, thanks to other refugees from Great Britain and North America. Although by necessity the UNA has concentrated on self-development, it has given what assistance it could to build up local industries. As yet, the locals have not desperate enough to murder each other en masse to raise their own superbeings; it is official doctrine among the Muslims of Indonesia that the Aesir are creatures of Satan and to attempt to duplicate their creation is certain to bring damnation. Before the fall of south India, the Burma Front had not been particularly active: but the people are now badly frightened, and are calling for a response. Millions of Indians fled by boat or even raft to SE Asian waters, with tales of new horrors: worse, judging from reports of humanoid “monsters” on the loose in SE Asian jungles and carrying out mass murders in isolated villages, some of the Hindu “deities” seem to have fled there, as well.

The Chinese may or may not help: with a long, long border in the north (cobalt-60 contaminated as it is) they have their own worries. Mao is dead, but his successors are hardly less coolly ruthless. They sneer contemptuously in private at Indian incompetence at concentrating their nuclear arsenal in a few locations: are they not aware that the Germans now have spy satellites of their own now? China’s missiles are scattered over hundreds of well-hidden sites, and every single Chinese citizen is part of the People’s Militia, with their own automatic weapon and packet of cyanide pills. Many of these missiles are targeted at India and Africa: the military planners of China have coldly made the calculation that if nuclear winter comes, starving the Aesir of their “fuel supply” will be vital. (American planners have their own contingency plans, but do not make them a matter of public record: see below).

Still, one does not progress by letting the grass grow under ones feet: after all, if the People’s army is fighting the Aesir and the Europeans in India, it may keep them away from the Yangtse. Chinese forces will be led by heroes, Chinese fighters whose exceptional skills and courage inspire fanatical devotion in the rank and file troops: as well they should, for they were made to do so. The Chinese too have done some tinkering with the Thanatos Ritual: it may take millions to create a God, but only thousands to create a Hero, and there are always enough traitors and defeatists to provide the necessary ingredients.

Israel-Iran, which covers the Arabian peninsula less the radioactive wreckage of the former Holy Land, Iran, some parts of Turkestan and the lowlands of western Afghanistan, is isolated save by sea and low-orbital rocket plane. It still stands, glaring defiance at the Reich, its hot, Monotheist deserts alien to the Aesir, bristling with atomic weapons, its population indoctrinated in “death before surrender” from childhood. The apocalyptic theocrats whose numbers (huge families) and influence grow each day stand united, Jew and Muslim and some Christians: the Polytheist menace, the servants of hell summoned through necromancy, will perish in flame when the soon-to-arrive End of Days come. People of the Book will sort their problems out when the Messiah, whoever he may be, arrives. As in the days of ancient war-torn Anatolia, the people increasingly move underground, in deep winding caverns where the Aesir cannot pinpoint them. Currently, the government struggles to resettle vast numbers of Indian refugees washing up on the shores of southern Arabia, where the non-Muslim ones are looked upon with some suspicion as followers of a polytheist faith…

Extending from the isthmus of Tehuantepec to Patagonia, the United Nations of America remains the leading center of the global resistance to the Aesir and their European (and north American) servants. Also including the Philippine islands, it has close to 400 million inhabitants and the most developed industrial base (in spite of chronic raw materials shortages): it’s military and technological lead over the surviving Asian nations is substantial.

Great industrial complexes and new cities, powered by atomic energy, grow deep beneath the surface of the South American Earth, where the eye of Odin cannot see them. The population is concentrated in the tropics, where people feel safer: what with Loki and various attempts by the other Aesir to establish footholds in Patagonia in the winter, the lands south of Buenos Aires are under permanent military authority and as the years go by are increasingly converted into an ever more insanely dangerous killing field. Although English speakers by heritage make up under a third of the total population, English is the common language learned by everyone in school, what with Portuguese and Spanish speakers being unable to agree which should have priority.

The economies of the Allied nations tend to an odd mix of state planning and capitalism: a heavy tax burden pays for a never-ending war economy, constant industrial buildup and development, and massive scientific research both primary and result-centered. On the other hand, even China allows for abundant small-scale Capitalism, and in Australia and America and Indonesia, big-ass private corporations still exist and retain considerable autonomy even as they mostly fulfill government contracts. Standards of living are generally low, if higher than in Reich territory: people are well housed and fed and get medical care, but they ride public transportation and everything that could be of use to the war effort is rationed.

Space remains dominated by the Allied nations: the Aesir have no space capacity, [1] and can give their human servants no useful information re rocket science. The Germans have satellites of their own now, but nothing like the manned research stations now maintained by the UNA, and Near Earth Operations Command (the “space commandoes”, as they are nicknamed, are confident in their ability to blind all of Germany’s eyes in the sky within half an hour of any conflict breaking out. The new low-orbit rocket planes are beyond Aesir reach (if still at risk from rocket attack) save when launching or re-entering the atmosphere, allowing for fairly safe transportation between the Allied states (even in tropical waters, the Aesir can often be deadly to regular shipping if they really exert themselves, although the equipping of increasing numbers of container ships with their own atomic shells is usefully intimidating – not that the Aesir would ever admit it). Manned bases are growing in numbers: if self-sustaining space colonies become feasible, that will be another possible escape clause for humanity.

Scientific cooperation remains at a high level between the Allied Powers, and Japanese, American, Aussie, Israeli/Iranian, etc. R&D continue to produce new nasty shit to make things unpleasant for the Aesir’s servants. Project Pluto ([link] ) is a reality in this world and a number of atomic automated jets await doomsday in heavily shielded hangers. The new “Iron Man” project is more a matter of propaganda than a really practical weapons system, but the ten-ton nuclear powered, jet-propelled power armor will allow a human soldier to actually do some damage to Aesir in hand-to-hand scenarios. So what if a few hours use will give the pilot lethal radiation poisoning? There are plenty of volunteers.

Herman Kahn’s equivalents in this world have detailed scenarios that would give our world’s nuclear planners the willies. Cold weather may make the Aesir stronger, but in a situation where everyone who they could use as a sacrifice dies, projections show the “starvation diet” would rapidly weaken them below baseline levels. Of course, their human servants would use missiles of their own, so the total death toll would be more like 90% percent than the “necessary” 50% or so: latest secret reports emphasize the importance of increasing the funding of Project Mole Man, and building up underground bases of operation capable of continued operation through a full-blown nuclear winter and massive atomic retaliation against any Aesir attacks: the smaller the portion of one’s own citizenship that need be sacrificed, the better, no?

So far such planning has proven rather indigestible, and various other approaches are under way. There is some sentiment that perhaps a permanent “cold peace” may be possible: the now Aesir-controlled zones have enough people to maintain the Aesir without shrinkage, as long as birth rates remain high: surely the Aesir are rational enough to understand that continued warfare can only lead to human extinction and Aesir starvation? Others vehemently disagree and hold out for no peace until the Aesir are extinct. What both agree on is that the Fall of India cannot be allowed to stand: a line must be drawn, if the Aesir are not to conclude they can pick off the remaining free nations at their leisure…

And then there are the other options, the secret options. Small-scale experimentation with necromancy has never ceased in the UNA, and given that necromancy actually works, all other sorts of magic and mythic weirdness has been carefully explored, in case there is something else out there that can be used. Unlike the Chinese, the American government decided against trying to create Heroes: the American myth of the Common Man made the concept seem in bad taste, and in any event American warfare had developed in a long-range, hardware-heavy, soldier-chary direction, especially when in direct confrontation with the Aesir. Efforts were made to create super-scientific geniuses: unfortunately, it turned out (perhaps due to the limits of the human imagination in picturing a mind more intelligent than their own) that the “geniuses”, although equipped with prodigy-level math skills and perfect memory, turned out to not actually be more creatively intelligent than the scientists involved in their “birth”, and tended to be rather annoying (“tempermental genius”) people to boot. Varying the experiment parameters and bringing in different people to carry out the rituals eventually produced some super-gadgeteers, but their machines turned out to be un-duplicable, being powered by magic rather than technology: they had simply managed to create mad scientists and pulp heroes, whose “science” was inevitably technobabble. Furthermore, keeping the gadgeteers creative and the machines working required continued regular use of the Thanatos ritual. A few of the wilder talents are kept alive: they have created a variety of doomsday machines, which although scientifically nonsensical, might be useful in a worst-case scenario. They must be careful kept uninformed of the real situation, since if they discover that their genius is hokum and their machines necromantic apparitions, they tend to come down with severe existential angst, sulk, and cease to be productive.

Psychics turned out to be a bit of a disappointment: there are some real ones, but they are very rare, tend to be severely neurotic, and have rather limited powers: at best capable of providing some concealment from Aesir senses, or pick some surface thoughts from a prisoner’s mind. The Arkham Circle’s researches into alternate magical traditions came to a dead end. [2] Somewhat embarrassingly, tantric magic has some power, sex being almost as powerful a force as death: the oversight committee for Project Big Bang is a bit uncertain about how to arrange for several million couples to achieve orgasm simultaneously while certain rites are performed in their vicinity. And then there is the theory behind Project All A Dream: according to some theories as to the nature of the Aesir (data gathered from the more cooperative Shinto gods hints they are beings of pure mental energy, whatever their “physical” incarnation), if everyone in Allied Territory can be successfully hypnotized into believing that the Aesir do not exist, the Aesir would be unable to enter Allied territory without ceasing to be. The possible consequence of flaws in this theory has led to calls for further research.

The Aesir have their own worries. The world is wrong: it is not flat, there is no Asgard, no world-tree (Loki’s efforts to recreate it having failed), space and the stars are so terrifyingly vast that most of them avoid thinking about it. They also avoid thinking about the fact that they are artificial creations and to some extent parodies of themselves: they try very hard to convince themselves they were summoned rather than created. And they worry about Ragnarok.
When they were brought into reality, a number of other creatures came with them: some elves, a number of dwarves, some trolls. This was merely an unwanted side effect of materializing the inhabitants of a myth: the Germans had no intention to bring into the world anyone other than the gods themselves, and mostly succeeded. No Frost Giants arrived, no Midgard Serpent, no half-rotted Hela, no Surtur and his realms of fire. Yet their existence is implied by the existence of the Gods: the Gods cannot help but believe in them, and as the human enemy grows harder and colder, as nuclear arsenals spread like cancer across the globe, as strange new Gods arise to challenge them, the Aesir feel a chill in the air. There are strange reports of giant figures seen striding across the frozen north of Siberia, European shipping in the North Sea disappears mysteriously. And after a troubled night, when Odin left his gilded bed to pace the gardens of his palace, on the freshly fallen snow he beheld three (three only) vast imprints: twelve feet wide, largely shapeless, ill-defined, but somehow reminiscent of the paws of an enormous wolf.

[1] Thor’s hammer and Odin’s spear can reach orbit, but they simply lack the aim to hit a target so far away and moving so fast save by amazing luck.

[2] The one surviving member of Research Team “Nodens” told government agents that they should count themselves lucky that they just had fake Gods to worry about. He then tore out his eyes and tried to bash his head in against the interview table.

Description
This is based on David Brin's "Thor Meets Captain America." I didn't really like what he did with the comic book sequel ("The Life Eaters") so I decided to do my own version.

1977.

The war goes on. The lands of the north have been lost, but in the hot, tropical realms where winter never comes and the Aesir are out of place and memetically enfeebled, battles still rage. Factories in Central America and Brazil and Venezuela pour out munitions, rocket planes that fly far above any Aesir-generated storm, atomic weapons, “genius” smart missiles, and other tools of death and destruction. The United States is gone, save for Puerto Rico, but the United Nations of America lives on.

Loki may have avoided letting the Allies in on the secret of how the Aesir came to be, but it was not long after the rather unique events on Gotland, shortly after the Lake Huron debacle and the occupation of Michigan, that a high-ranking member of the SS (more than a little peeved that after Hitler’s death, the new Fuhrer was a mere Aesir puppet) managed to smuggle some papers into allied hands describing, in gruesome detail, how the Aesir had been created. There was considerable disbelief on the part of the US and allied governments (the exact nature of the information was kept from the general public), but certain elements in the US intelligence community put the government in touch with a community of scholars headed by two members of the faculty of Miskatonic University, who were able to provide independent corroboration with records of experiments going back to the 1910s. (Said experiments had been small-scale, involving large numbers of rabbits and chickens and the occasional goat, but had achieved measureable results: given the larger implications, faculty experimenters had in the end discontinued the program of experiments and the information had been kept close within the so-called “Arkham circle.”).

In the end, the US did not give in to the temptation to kill millions of its own to create a Superman (or a Bugs Bunny, for that matter) to fight the Aesir. Rather, the US government revealed “new data” that the Aesir quite literally fed off death (which was true, as far as it went), making it a vital necessity to avoid being taken prisoner by the enemy, and making surrender impossible: humanity would at best become cattle to the Aesir, bred to be killed and eaten, and quite likely would be wiped out entirely. Energetic propaganda was directed by all available methods at the Germans: while before they were warned that they were being used as cats-paws by alien conquerors, now they were compared to chickens helping foxes to take over the farm.

(Experimentation on the nature and limits of necromancy did quietly get underway on a small scale: given the conditions of wartime, “vanishing” a few hundred or a few thousand German prisoners, condemned criminals, Traitors to humanity (AKA mutineers or deserters, in most cases) wasn’t too difficult).

Like the Soviets before them, the US moved their industries wholesale, south to hot tropic lands. Such places did not exist in any of the old Eddas and myths.
The Gods of the ancient Norse came from a cold and stormy land, of snow and glaciers, short intense springs and summers: the perpetual heat of the tropics, palm trees and jungles, was an alien setting, in which their self-knowledge and self-belief were weakened, their miraculous powers lessened. Not enough, not nearly enough, but humans would take any edge they could. The governments of the US and its allies also promulgated techniques of memetic warfare for those encountering the Aesir: beings created of psychic energy, belief factored into their strength – both self-belief and the belief of others in their power, their godliness. Laughter, mockery, loud expressions of disbelief in their nature – these baffled and shook the Aesir: not enough to really hurt them, but again, any edge is better than none.

Nothing, however, could save the northern US, especially in winter. Storm and hurricane sweeping Allied planes from the skies and freezing ground forces in place, hordes of wild beasts attacking population centers, the Bifrost Bridge opening behind Allied lines and disgorging entire German armies, the hammer of Thor hurtling again and again from the skies and shattering skyscrapers like cheap pottery, black madness and terror from Odin’s magery sweeping Allied forces. Tens of millions were evacuated south, but millions more were trapped behind enemy lines: many failed to take government advice to die rather than surrender. The Deep South and Southwest were a longer and slower slog, but in the end fell as well. Among the survivors Germans found quislings willing to declare themselves leaders of a new “American Reich” allied to Germany: sacrifices became more selective and concentrated on Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Slavs, rather than taking whoever was available. Much of the population was drafted as support forces for the front-line German troops: by the mid 60s it was noted by Allied intelligence that the “German” troops were increasingly French, Dutch, Hungarian, Italian, Scandinavian or Spanish rather than ethnic Germans: in spite of the total subjugation of German women to the task of making babies, German losses over a generation of warfare had been horrendous.

It had taken the death of millions to bring the Aesir into the world: millions had to be sacrificed every year to keep them at “full power.” Prisoners were necessary: the necessary rituals were difficult at best to carry out on the battlefield, and the Gods could only eat the deaths of those they slew in personal combat: as powerful as they were, they could not kill humans fast enough that way to keep up their energies. Russia was essentially “used up” by the early 60s: the supply of prisoners dropped off rather sharply after “death before surrender” became the official policy of Allied governments. Israel-Iran (by the 60s a wild mix of Arabs, Turks, Central Asians, Persians, Jews, Pathans, Russians, even sub-Saharan Africans) was quite good at socially and ideologically pressuring its citizens into killing themselves rather than being captured, as was Japan: while in China, the National Salvation Government, under the leadership of one Mao Se Tung, had by the 60s become an utterly brutal dictatorship willing and able to use scorched-earth tactics at the expense of its own people, if necessary force-marching tens of millions of starving Chinese peasants south out of German hands.

The US, less willing to use such methods and with much of its population willing to convince themselves that could survive as servants to the Aesir and Nazis (there were a lot of those people to sacrifice yet, right?) ended up with nearly half its population “netted” by the enemy. The still free Latin American states and the some 70-million odd US refugees reformatted themselves as the United Nations of America, with its capital in inland Brazil. (Millions of British had arrived earlier).

The actual nature of the Aesir got out: as the US slowly crumbled 1962-1967, certain high-strung members of government decided that using Nazi methods was the only real chance, and illegally released the Facts over the radio and other media. In-fighting in the US government reached bloody levels, and debates on the floor of Senate and Congress (moved by this point to Lousiana) reached levels of violence not seen since the run-up to the Civil War. In the end, President Stevenson’s speech, flatly laying out the choices, may have been decisive in making it impossible to adopt “German methods”: which of their neighbors were the American people willing to sacrifice to save their own skin? Such things might be doable in the dark, out of public sight in the realm of denial, but the Presidents insistence that the American people would have to publically decide who they would murder and take part in bloodying their hands made it a bit too uncomfortable. In the last days of the evacuation, the “emergency government” of South Carolina seems to have made an attempt at creating some sort of savior through mass murder of their own black population (which were highly uncooperative): what exactly it was they brought into existence remains uncertain, it having apparently ceased to exist after a short period in which it murdered everyone responsible for its creation.

An increasing shortage of victims, the tropical location of most of the remaining centers of resistance, and new Allied weapons led to a slowdown of the Aesir-German advance by ’68. The new Neutron Bombs were coming into production, allowing for elimination of German troop concentrations without all those pesky atmospheric particulates: new chemical warfare methods also allowed for mass slaughter sans atmospheric side effects. Laser-guided missiles made it possible to occasionally knock a winged chariot or a Valkyrie out of the sky. Bogged down in Mexico, the mountains of southern Turkey, the Yangtze valley, the Aesir seemed to be running out of steam: and then, in ’69, came the Indian disaster.

The invasion took place in spite of the horrendous difficulties of managing an advance through the mountains of Afghanistan and Tibet in early winter: the Aesir were strong enough to make up for the weaknesses of their human allies. Hundreds of thousands of European troops (by this point most non-Slavs were “honorary Germans”) perished in the mountain passes, but millions more made it, with Aesir clearing the paths for them and destroying the fortified positions that India had built at great costs. The immense supply depots that had been built up in India over the last two decades were burned through at fearsome speed. People fled the invaders: the Aesir targeted and destroyed railways when they could find them, trapping millions who on foot were unable to make it to safety. The advance was only stopped by a totally profligate expenditure of nuclear weapons by the Indian government (relocated to Madras) and the weakening of the Aesir in the alien south: a new frontier came into existence, vague amid the radioactive ruins of the Deccan. The winter was unusually cold thanks to the massive amount of crap kicked into the atmosphere, and the Aesir consolidated their position. Ten million northern Indians went into the fire in the next year: in the south, tens of millions starved, the long and tenuous line of supply from the lands of surplus across the Pacific being insufficient, especially in a year of poor harvests. The Aesir grew strong again. Israel-Iran, now isolated save by sea, lobbed several incredibly dirty nuclear missiles (missiles built in America, warheads of their own design) at Europe and announced that there would be much, much more of the same if the Germans attacked them next. Thor materialized in Baghdad and wrecked much of the city in a fit of pique before being driven off by the heat and an incredibly heavy missile barrage.

More desperate measures seemed called for.

Japan had survived in spite of its geographically isolated location thanks to German sentimentality re their ally and the assessment that conquering the place, given the known suicidal tendencies of the Japanese, would be more trouble than it was worth. After Hitler’s death and the fall of north India, a decision was made to eliminate Japan, which although cautiously refusing to allow itself to become a platform for attacks on the mainland, had become a major supplier of war materials to the Americans and Southeast Asia. A large-scale naval invasion, backed by several Aesir, was launched in the summer of ’70.

The Aesir were met by Amaterasu, Fujin, Hachiman, Susanoo-no-Mikoto, Raijin, and a number of other Shinto deities. The Aesir were thrown back in some confusion, and withdrew to the mainland: while the Shinto deities failed to kill any of them, several were badly injured. Without the Aesir, the German fleet proved easy meat for the Shinto gods, which whipped up a mega-typhoon with extra waterspouts: those few Germans that survived their ships running aground on Japanese beaches were slaughtered by Japanese forces.

As was soon revealed, a month earlier some six million Japanese men, women and children had sat down, closed their eyes, and been swiftly put to death with swords, guns, axes, and other tools. Some killed themselves. The rituals, as detailed in the documents provided by the SS traitor, were carried out, and the Gods of Shinto walked the earth.

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In 1977, the war goes on. Loki’s effort to create his own power base in the cool lands of Argentina and Chile failed: it remains uncertain whether the trickster and shape-shifter still lives. Germany is now a theocracy, ruled by the Aesir through the SS priesthood: all young Germans, and those Europeans which are being ruthlessly Germanized, are heavily indoctrinated at an early age in the divinity of their rulers, the weakness and folly of their enemies, and the inevitability of their victory. Valhalla is promised: an empty promise, for even the deaths of millions and tens of millions is not enough for the Aesir to create another world. The conversion of non-Germans is slow at best: contaminated from birth by the beliefs of those who created them, the Aesir long parroted German racial propaganda, and only by necessity have turned to making Germans out of Frenchmen, Italians, etc. (Not Slavs: there aren’t many of them left).

Europe is backwards by American standards: people with questioning minds don’t tend to live long in the Reich. There is a lot of heavy industry, but high-tech increasingly lags, and the economy is shaky: far too much of Europe’s resources go into the military, and sans magical horns of plenty the Aesir have no idea how to run a modern economy (corruption, at least, is kept in bounds by bloodily sacrificing those that get caught). Pollution in the big cities is terrible, and secret policemen and informers are in fact far more prevalent than when the Reich was run by human beings. Britain, Scandinavia, and the Low Countries, along with the depopulated Slav lands, have been incorporated directly into the Reich: France may soon follow. Rebels are sacrificed en masse. At horrendous expense, the Reich long-range missile program finally achieved success, and now atomic warheads will rain (or drizzle, at least) down on German enemies if a direct atomic assault takes place on the German heartland.

As the worship of the Aesir is increasingly imposed in the satellites, unrest rises in Spain, Eire, and Italy, where there are still plenty of Catholics: less so in Greater Romania, where any religion save that of Blood and Soil is discouraged, and “Long live Death!” is still a popular salute. The Italians still show some signs of humanity in their European possessions: Croats in Italian Yugoslavia are encouraged to change their names and language, and if possible move to Italy proper: bureaucrats are encouraged to lose such things as birth certificates and other evidence of their former Slav-ness. There is less humanity in Africa: rebellious Arabs in Italian North Africa have been punished with mass deportations to the Nazi Heart of Darkness, while in Ethiopia the salubrious highlands have been largely ethnically cleansed. The always-rebellious Somalis are largely extinct save for those who managed to escape by dhow or raft to Arabia.

Africa still has sacrifices, but returns are diminishing. High reproductive rates almost kept up with the slaughters, and use of tribal divisions allowed the Germans to use next generations sacrificial victims to round up those of this one, but the Africans have generally caught on: the rebellion of those with absolutely nothing to lose constantly bubbles, and increasingly African mothers kill themselves and their children rather than allow them to be taken as sacrifices. European (and of late, American Reich) forces on the continent largely have to handle things themselves: the Aesir prefer not to dirty their own hands with the rounding up of sacrifices, and dislike the African climate.

The puppet regime of the North American Reich is increasingly plagued by suicide bombers.

For the sake of the nation, Japanese women, like German ones, are kept almost continuously pregnant. Over the last seven years the Japanese have killed another fourteen million of their own to keep their Gods strong enough to stave off the Aesir, a total of one fifth of the population before the invasion: the rate is probably unsustainable, biologically as well as psychologically, and it is still not enough. The Shinto Gods are not as strong as the Aesir: they are at best able to defend the islands, unable to take the fight to the mainland, and several of the lesser Kami have been killed. They do not receive as many sacrifices as the Aesir, and worse, they doubt themselves. While the Aesir knew human sacrifice in their day, and were created by genocidal minds, in an age and a half nobody has had their lungs pulled out through a cut in their back to honor a Shinto deity: and those who die so they may remain strong are their own people, their children. The Shinto gods suffer from a perpetual low-level existential crisis.

South India fell in the spring, to forestall a desperate Indian government from carrying out a program involving the shipping of several million untouchables to unknown locations. After a mass killing of Africans and north Indians, the Aesir gained the strength to open a few wee Bifrost gates to the sites of Indian nuclear missile sites, just enough to send through German Special Forces to prevent launch. The invasion was horribly bloody, and weakened Aesir and raw German recruits died in droves: the Indian government managed to pull off a half-assed version of what some have come to call the Thanatos Ritual, with insufficient victims: the “Hindu deities” that resulted were weak and half-formed, and ended up fleeing before the Aesir. Control over south India remains shaky at best, and there is talk of a counterattack from Southeast Asia: the Aesir are temporarily exhausted in their efforts, and their ability to manifest meteorological phenomena in the hot, sunny Indian Ocean in summer is limited at the best of times.

A counterattack, if it comes, will come from South China and the arc of lands from Thailand to New Zealand. These make up a rapidly developing and economically integrating area. One in five of its inhabitants are Chinese, some long resident, others part of the Chinese Diaspora. Australia and New Zealand have more than twice their OTL population, thanks to other refugees from Great Britain and North America. Although by necessity the UNA has concentrated on self-development, it has given what assistance it could to build up local industries. As yet, the locals have not desperate enough to murder each other en masse to raise their own superbeings; it is official doctrine among the Muslims of Indonesia that the Aesir are creatures of Satan and to attempt to duplicate their creation is certain to bring damnation. Before the fall of south India, the Burma Front had not been particularly active: but the people are now badly frightened, and are calling for a response. Millions of Indians fled by boat or even raft to SE Asian waters, with tales of new horrors: worse, judging from reports of humanoid “monsters” on the loose in SE Asian jungles and carrying out mass murders in isolated villages, some of the Hindu “deities” seem to have fled there, as well.

The Chinese may or may not help: with a long, long border in the north (cobalt-60 contaminated as it is) they have their own worries. Mao is dead, but his successors are hardly less coolly ruthless. They sneer contemptuously in private at Indian incompetence at concentrating their nuclear arsenal in a few locations: are they not aware that the Germans now have spy satellites of their own now? China’s missiles are scattered over hundreds of well-hidden sites, and every single Chinese citizen is part of the People’s Militia, with their own automatic weapon and packet of cyanide pills. Many of these missiles are targeted at India and Africa: the military planners of China have coldly made the calculation that if nuclear winter comes, starving the Aesir of their “fuel supply” will be vital. (American planners have their own contingency plans, but do not make them a matter of public record: see below).

Still, one does not progress by letting the grass grow under ones feet: after all, if the People’s army is fighting the Aesir and the Europeans in India, it may keep them away from the Yangtse. Chinese forces will be led by heroes, Chinese fighters whose exceptional skills and courage inspire fanatical devotion in the rank and file troops: as well they should, for they were made to do so. The Chinese too have done some tinkering with the Thanatos Ritual: it may take millions to create a God, but only thousands to create a Hero, and there are always enough traitors and defeatists to provide the necessary ingredients.

Israel-Iran, which covers the Arabian peninsula less the radioactive wreckage of the former Holy Land, Iran, some parts of Turkestan and the lowlands of western Afghanistan, is isolated save by sea and low-orbital rocket plane. It still stands, glaring defiance at the Reich, its hot, Monotheist deserts alien to the Aesir, bristling with atomic weapons, its population indoctrinated in “death before surrender” from childhood. The apocalyptic theocrats whose numbers (huge families) and influence grow each day stand united, Jew and Muslim and some Christians: the Polytheist menace, the servants of hell summoned through necromancy, will perish in flame when the soon-to-arrive End of Days come. People of the Book will sort their problems out when the Messiah, whoever he may be, arrives. As in the days of ancient war-torn Anatolia, the people increasingly move underground, in deep winding caverns where the Aesir cannot pinpoint them. Currently, the government struggles to resettle vast numbers of Indian refugees washing up on the shores of southern Arabia, where the non-Muslim ones are looked upon with some suspicion as followers of a polytheist faith…

Extending from the isthmus of Tehuantepec to Patagonia, the United Nations of America remains the leading center of the global resistance to the Aesir and their European (and north American) servants. Also including the Philippine islands, it has close to 400 million inhabitants and the most developed industrial base (in spite of chronic raw materials shortages): it’s military and technological lead over the surviving Asian nations is substantial.

Great industrial complexes and new cities, powered by atomic energy, grow deep beneath the surface of the South American Earth, where the eye of Odin cannot see them. The population is concentrated in the tropics, where people feel safer: what with Loki and various attempts by the other Aesir to establish footholds in Patagonia in the winter, the lands south of Buenos Aires are under permanent military authority and as the years go by are increasingly converted into an ever more insanely dangerous killing field. Although English speakers by heritage make up under a third of the total population, English is the common language learned by everyone in school, what with Portuguese and Spanish speakers being unable to agree which should have priority.

The economies of the Allied nations tend to an odd mix of state planning and capitalism: a heavy tax burden pays for a never-ending war economy, constant industrial buildup and development, and massive scientific research both primary and result-centered. On the other hand, even China allows for abundant small-scale Capitalism, and in Australia and America and Indonesia, big-ass private corporations still exist and retain considerable autonomy even as they mostly fulfill government contracts. Standards of living are generally low, if higher than in Reich territory: people are well housed and fed and get medical care, but they ride public transportation and everything that could be of use to the war effort is rationed.

Space remains dominated by the Allied nations: the Aesir have no space capacity, [1] and can give their human servants no useful information re rocket science. The Germans have satellites of their own now, but nothing like the manned research stations now maintained by the UNA, and Near Earth Operations Command (the “space commandoes”, as they are nicknamed, are confident in their ability to blind all of Germany’s eyes in the sky within half an hour of any conflict breaking out. The new low-orbit rocket planes are beyond Aesir reach (if still at risk from rocket attack) save when launching or re-entering the atmosphere, allowing for fairly safe transportation between the Allied states (even in tropical waters, the Aesir can often be deadly to regular shipping if they really exert themselves, although the equipping of increasing numbers of container ships with their own atomic shells is usefully intimidating – not that the Aesir would ever admit it). Manned bases are growing in numbers: if self-sustaining space colonies become feasible, that will be another possible escape clause for humanity.

Scientific cooperation remains at a high level between the Allied Powers, and Japanese, American, Aussie, Israeli/Iranian, etc. R&D continue to produce new nasty shit to make things unpleasant for the Aesir’s servants. Project Pluto ([link] ) is a reality in this world and a number of atomic automated jets await doomsday in heavily shielded hangers. The new “Iron Man” project is more a matter of propaganda than a really practical weapons system, but the ten-ton nuclear powered, jet-propelled power armor will allow a human soldier to actually do some damage to Aesir in hand-to-hand scenarios. So what if a few hours use will give the pilot lethal radiation poisoning? There are plenty of volunteers.

Herman Kahn’s equivalents in this world have detailed scenarios that would give our world’s nuclear planners the willies. Cold weather may make the Aesir stronger, but in a situation where everyone who they could use as a sacrifice dies, projections show the “starvation diet” would rapidly weaken them below baseline levels. Of course, their human servants would use missiles of their own, so the total death toll would be more like 90% percent than the “necessary” 50% or so: latest secret reports emphasize the importance of increasing the funding of Project Mole Man, and building up underground bases of operation capable of continued operation through a full-blown nuclear winter and massive atomic retaliation against any Aesir attacks: the smaller the portion of one’s own citizenship that need be sacrificed, the better, no?

So far such planning has proven rather indigestible, and various other approaches are under way. There is some sentiment that perhaps a permanent “cold peace” may be possible: the now Aesir-controlled zones have enough people to maintain the Aesir without shrinkage, as long as birth rates remain high: surely the Aesir are rational enough to understand that continued warfare can only lead to human extinction and Aesir starvation? Others vehemently disagree and hold out for no peace until the Aesir are extinct. What both agree on is that the Fall of India cannot be allowed to stand: a line must be drawn, if the Aesir are not to conclude they can pick off the remaining free nations at their leisure…

And then there are the other options, the secret options. Small-scale experimentation with necromancy has never ceased in the UNA, and given that necromancy actually works, all other sorts of magic and mythic weirdness has been carefully explored, in case there is something else out there that can be used. Unlike the Chinese, the American government decided against trying to create Heroes: the American myth of the Common Man made the concept seem in bad taste, and in any event American warfare had developed in a long-range, hardware-heavy, soldier-chary direction, especially when in direct confrontation with the Aesir. Efforts were made to create super-scientific geniuses: unfortunately, it turned out (perhaps due to the limits of the human imagination in picturing a mind more intelligent than their own) that the “geniuses”, although equipped with prodigy-level math skills and perfect memory, turned out to not actually be more creatively intelligent than the scientists involved in their “birth”, and tended to be rather annoying (“tempermental genius”) people to boot. Varying the experiment parameters and bringing in different people to carry out the rituals eventually produced some super-gadgeteers, but their machines turned out to be un-duplicable, being powered by magic rather than technology: they had simply managed to create mad scientists and pulp heroes, whose “science” was inevitably technobabble. Furthermore, keeping the gadgeteers creative and the machines working required continued regular use of the Thanatos ritual. A few of the wilder talents are kept alive: they have created a variety of doomsday machines, which although scientifically nonsensical, might be useful in a worst-case scenario. They must be careful kept uninformed of the real situation, since if they discover that their genius is hokum and their machines necromantic apparitions, they tend to come down with severe existential angst, sulk, and cease to be productive.

Psychics turned out to be a bit of a disappointment: there are some real ones, but they are very rare, tend to be severely neurotic, and have rather limited powers: at best capable of providing some concealment from Aesir senses, or pick some surface thoughts from a prisoner’s mind. The Arkham Circle’s researches into alternate magical traditions came to a dead end. [2] Somewhat embarrassingly, tantric magic has some power, sex being almost as powerful a force as death: the oversight committee for Project Big Bang is a bit uncertain about how to arrange for several million couples to achieve orgasm simultaneously while certain rites are performed in their vicinity. And then there is the theory behind Project All A Dream: according to some theories as to the nature of the Aesir (data gathered from the more cooperative Shinto gods hints they are beings of pure mental energy, whatever their “physical” incarnation), if everyone in Allied Territory can be successfully hypnotized into believing that the Aesir do not exist, the Aesir would be unable to enter Allied territory without ceasing to be. The possible consequence of flaws in this theory has led to calls for further research.

The Aesir have their own worries. The world is wrong: it is not flat, there is no Asgard, no world-tree (Loki’s efforts to recreate it having failed), space and the stars are so terrifyingly vast that most of them avoid thinking about it. They also avoid thinking about the fact that they are artificial creations and to some extent parodies of themselves: they try very hard to convince themselves they were summoned rather than created. And they worry about Ragnarok.
When they were brought into reality, a number of other creatures came with them: some elves, a number of dwarves, some trolls. This was merely an unwanted side effect of materializing the inhabitants of a myth: the Germans had no intention to bring into the world anyone other than the gods themselves, and mostly succeeded. No Frost Giants arrived, no Midgard Serpent, no half-rotted Hela, no Surtur and his realms of fire. Yet their existence is implied by the existence of the Gods: the Gods cannot help but believe in them, and as the human enemy grows harder and colder, as nuclear arsenals spread like cancer across the globe, as strange new Gods arise to challenge them, the Aesir feel a chill in the air. There are strange reports of giant figures seen striding across the frozen north of Siberia, European shipping in the North Sea disappears mysteriously. And after a troubled night, when Odin left his gilded bed to pace the gardens of his palace, on the freshly fallen snow he beheld three (three only) vast imprints: twelve feet wide, largely shapeless, ill-defined, but somehow reminiscent of the paws of an enormous wolf.

[1] Thor’s hammer and Odin’s spear can reach orbit, but they simply lack the aim to hit a target so far away and moving so fast save by amazing luck.

[2] The one surviving member of Research Team “Nodens” told government agents that they should count themselves lucky that they just had fake Gods to worry about. He then tore out his eyes and tried to bash his head in against the interview table.