I'm not sure how familiar you are with the whole Sartar story arc. In rough terms, the lunars have been working ritually to "kill" orlanth for some time, and the fall of Whitewall fulfills the necessary conditions. At the same time, and somehow tied to this, they've been working on a new, more potent, Temple of the Reaching Moon (and when the empire comes up with a new and improved version of their ultimate weapon, you know how that will turn out in the end....), which will project the glowline for a 250 (IIRC) mile radius.
What ends up happening after teh fall of Whitewall is that within the area that teh the new temple is supposed to affect, it essentially becomes the Great Darkness. Orlanth is "dead" (i.e. in the underworld), and Ernalda is "sleeping" (part of the mythology of Ernalda is the whole predictable death/re-awakening type cycle of the seasons, expressed in "She isn't dead, just sleeping" expressing the confidence that she will wake again).
Further, and potentially just as campaign disruptive, for followers of the storm tribe it becomes like the Great Darkness. It becomes the horrible cold winter, getting worse and worse until animals freeze where they stand. There is no wind (and in the rest of the world, all of the winds blow towards this region, then disapear). Storm tribe worshippers can't breathe well. All of these effects end, I think, after the Battle of Iceland.
Just to make it worse, this kicks in during harvest, and doesn't end until the next "harvest" time, meaning you get a partial crop, lose huge numbers of your herd animals, then get no crop the next year. Even without the loss of magic and killing cold, this would be a massive disaster. The effects on Esrolia have to be severe (they may have the food stores to survive it overall, but they aren't so used to winter, and in the cities there must be rocketing food prices, starvation, and incredible riotting), and my minds shuts down when I try to figure out how this would affect MirrorSea bay and the fishers and merfolk (do the sea deities keep the water warm? Or does it all freeze over?)
One way to fudge it without dropping it altogether is to play with the duration. I don't think you'd have to make too many adjustments to have, in your game, the Battle of Iceland happen in Sea Season, so essentially you just have a long and especially severe winter. Given the episodic nature of many HQ games, you may be able to then just have one or two episodes during this period, if they aren't in Heortling territory--or even none at all. You could also rule that Ernaldan magic in Esrolia doesn't fail, reducing the impact there. If there are actual Orlanth worshippers, you could either decide that in your game their magic comes back after the battle of Iceland, or have them soon meet someone who was there that can help others recover their magic (don't know how the official recovery of magic works, but all that really matters is that after some time, magic works). Or you could just send them on a nice long sailing trip to the east or west around then....."You guys won't believe what happened while you were gone! It was the end of the world, but then it came back again!" "Doh, I guess that tops my story about being attacked by merpeople."
--Bryan
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