Closing an island is the simplest and most practical solution.
After all this discussion, I think I've come to the same conclusion. These ideas for scrolls and blighting sounds like things that will be detrimental to the core BattleMaster experience. It wasn't the most well received thing even when it was done in the context of Beluaterran Invasions - and having seen what has happened to the geography of that island I'm not sure it has helped to make war any more certain or likely than before. In fact, it seems like on every occasion that territory has been re-jigged, removed or what have you on any continent on BattleMaster it has had very little effect on anything.
If it's really true that every single continent would need to be reduced by 70 regions (though I think that's skewed a bit by Dwilght being so big - Colonies doesn't even have 70 regions to start with!) to reach an ideal player density, it seems like efforts to blight regions and shrink continents here or there is dabbling on the sidelines. Although Beluaterra has already shrunk considerably on her former size (in part, presumably, to address this very problem), the situation of low density persists within the game.
Instead of all these contrived solutions perhaps it would be best to just close a continent and be done with it. Just make sure that characters do not go down with them. Whilst there are some fantastic realms out there, none have ever had a divine right to exist. They rise and fall all the time. Characters, on the other hand, are all but permanent. The beauty of BattleMaster is that no matter what happens to your realm, you can still play with the characters and players you always did. That should be the focus now. We need to find a way to ensure the players and characters of realms on a dead island aren't wrenched apart by the island's closure. Try and help keep them together in some way. But accept that we're probably going to lose an island.
