The Lost Fleet [The Day After Ragnarok]

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The Lost Fleet
[The Day After Ragnarok]

Most of the post-Serpentfall world has more or less forgotten about the Battle for the Atlantic. There are several good reasons for this: first off, that particular battle had been effectively over prior to the sudden end of the world, which meant that most of the heavy ships of the Allies had been already diverted to the Pacific theater — and that the naval forces of the Axis had largely ceased to exist. What naval forces did remain in the Atlantic are generally assumed to have been lost in the mega-tsunami that destroyed the American East Coast; certainly almost none of them later reported in. And, of course, the North Atlantic is now a watery deathtrap of rogue icebergs, expanding ice cap, and bitter cold. If any ships did survive, they would now be crewed by ghosts.

Still… there are rumors. Arguably, a destroyer escort or submarine with a good captain and crew might negotiate the wave of a tsunami well enough, if the ship was lucky to be sufficiently out to sea before the wave crested. Assuming that it survived, those ships would have been cut off from civilization, as America and England drowned under Serpent venom and bile. But Iceland’s west coast was largely spared the effects of the tsunami; the country was already under American control; the island’s abundant geothermal energy would keep any number of lights and heaters on; and it would have been somewhere close to go.

Currently, the rest of the world knows that Reykjavik in Iceland at least still survives, and that’s about it. There are certainly no reports that refugee American submarines and cruisers — or perhaps even Kriegsmarine U-Boats, or perhaps even both — operate out of those waters, but that just means that there are no reports. There could be anything from the nucleus of a stalwart fleet ready to set sail and reclaim the Drowned Coast to an increasingly tainted colony of Serpent cultists who dream of modern day Viking raids against four continents. Or there could just be the more usual sort of freebooters’ haven, full of cheerfully amoral pirates with torpedoes and machine guns. Depends on what’s needed in the campaign, really.