After Sundown 2e

by Frank Trollman and The Gaming DenThis material is available to you under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

June 2, 2014

Table of Contents

Table of Contents 2

1 Introduction 3

2 The World At Night 42.1 The Secret Histories . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.2 A World of Nightmares . . . . . . . . . . 52.3 New York by Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Appendices 20

List of Tables 21

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Chapter 1:

Introductionfoo

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Chapter 2:

The World At NightThe world is a dark and lonely place. And it is full of monsters.

After Sundown posits several distinct nightmare worlds that one can travel to or be affected by, but theEarth itself is something of a world of nightmares compared to our own. Monsters out of horror inhabit thisworld, and the number of violent deaths is considerably higher than in ours (though still probably not as highas people think it is – all forms of violent death combined aren’t as big a killer as cancer or heart disease areby themselves).

2.1 The Secret HistoriesThen there are unknown unknowns: things we don’t know that we don’t know.

It is not simply that the world in After Sundown is our world with a generous sprinkling of monsters, it isa world in which there have been monsters for a very long time. Monsters have been around and doing thingsfor longer than there have been historical records, and so while the high school history courses in this worldteach similar subject matter to what they do in ours, supernatural creatures have been involved in actualevents the entire time. There are secret histories which are perhaps closer to the truth. How this managed tobe the case is not simple, because it happened over the course of thousands of years.

Before the Vow of Silence, there was the Tradition of Misdirection. This was the idea that it was totallyfine to show mundane humans that magic existed, but in no way acceptable to let on how it actually worked.Even into Greek and Roman times, it is simply taken for granted in official histories that corpses walked,blood fell from the sky, heroes with divine parents shattered stone walls with their fists, and whole shiploadsof soldiers were slaughtered by dragons. Earlier histories are even more mythic. The general opinion ofmodern scholarship is that these events didn’t really happen and are rumors or exaggerations written downinto historical records because of a lack of good fact checking. However, according to the secret histories,these events actually represent real supernatural events – with the supernatural creatures of the time spinningelaborate tales not to hide their powers, but to hide the way their powers worked. Herakles almost certainlywas a real person with real super strength and near invulnerability, but he probably wasn’t the son of thegod of lightning. Based on the claim that he restored himself to life by beating Death in a wrestling match,monsters of modern nights conclude that the original Herakles was probably a vampire of some kind.

Supernatural creatures can indeed turn the tide of battle, and had even greater abilities to do so backwhen armies were smaller and lacked the powerful weapons of the modern world. Still, there have beensupernatural creatures in every part of the world, and their presence on the field of battle has usually canceledout. The Aztecs brought Daeva to war, but the Spanish met them in battle with Troglodytes. Therewas indeed an elite unit of Werewolf women of the SS, but they were slain on the banks of the Volga bySoviet sympathizing Witches. Some secret histories suggest that some of the really remarkable upsets anddevastating victories in the historical record may have been helped along by supernatural creatures choosingone side or another. Of course, if you go far enough back in time it was simply assumed that the mightychampions of armies and nations were in some sense supernatural. Seemingly no one at the time thought itstrange that Achilles was able to bounce bronze spear points off his skin or that Cú Chulainn would transforminto a giant monster while fighting.

Starting in the Dark Ages of Europe, and rapidly spreading through most of the old world, a concertedeffort was made to destroy historical records and enforce the Vow of Silence. Human religious teachings ofthe period encouraged the burning of books and the slaughtering of sages, and the syndicates of the agemade sure that records of the existence and weaknesses of supernatural creatures were expunged from tomeand mind. At its height, the churches of Europe burned people who so much as suggested that Witches andVampires were real. For a time, even the words for supernatural creatures were almost completely unknown.

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Starting with the printing press, humans found ways to disseminate information faster than agents ofthe syndicates could destroy them. For a time attempts to double and redouble the burning of knowledgewere made. The empires of the Americas burned and their histories of mundane and supernatural alike wereturned to ash by the conquering European armies. But this ultimately proved futile, for every manuscriptdestroyed, two took their place. Dedicated groups of hunters sprung into being and as the age of reasondawned, the systems of science allowed human hunters to acquire enough serviceable information to takedown many powerful elders. New strategies were clearly required.

For the last three hundred years or so, the Vow of Silence has for the most part been preserved through amore nuanced form of cover up. Information about supernatural creatures has been suppressed through primarysecrecy, through the destruction of existent evidence, and through the deliberate spread of misinformation.Syndicates will work to keep a story from getting out in the first place, and if that fails they’ll try to consignit to the memory hole, and if that fails they’ll attempt to discredit the story or change the details in retellingsso that it no longer points to real supernatural creatures. Over a thousand years after the Vow of Silencereplaced the Tradition of Misdirection, a synthesis of sorts has been formed. Though it is still called the Vowof Silence in modern nights.

Even these more advanced techniques are breaking down in the 21st century. The syndicates cannotmonitor the entire internet, nor can they track all the phone cameras in circulation. While some success hasbeen had creating false flag videos purporting to show werewolves and demons that are easily debunked asfakes, there are cracks in the system. Enough humans know or suspect enough true information that groupsof hunters are starting to mobilize once again. So far, the syndicates have successfully branded such groupsas dangerous lunatics, but there is genuine fear that this is a losing battle. Different strategies are beingemployed in different areas and by different groups.

More creatures than ever before are withdrawing to rural and wilderness areas, keeping their magicalnature and strange appetites away from prying eyes through simple isolation. And many others are flockingto the great metropolises, where people mind their own business and people don’t think it’s weird that theirneighbors are weird. Some creatures have taken to infiltrating governments and media outlets to disseminateanti-magical propaganda, while others have taken to simply spreading rumors, innuendo, and lies to propagateirrelevant superstitious beliefs. All of these strategies have had mixed results, and there is concern that thelack of a coherent global strategy ultimately dooms the entire project.

How much does the government know? There is no such thing as a monolithic entity called "thegovernment". We live in a world where the president of the United States can find out about a controversialpolicy employed by a federal agency by watching the news. The truth is that the government is made up ofagencies and those agencies are made up of people. People use policies to get other people to behave theway they want them to, and they know what is going on in their agency to the extent that other people tellthem. To a first approximation, this often looks like the government is doing things in response to knowingthings. But that approximation only holds as long as there aren’t moles and traitors. And for the question ofthe supernatural, there definitely are those things.

The FBI as an agency doesn’t know that there are supernatural creatures. There are people in theFBI who know about supernatural creatures. But most of those people either are supernatural creaturesthemselves, or work for one of the syndicates. And that means that when they learn something about thesupernatural, they don’t pass it up the chain of command. The truth is that the FBI does have special taskforces to deal with supernatural crimes, but these task forces do not tell the director what they are reallydoing, and if their activities got on the news it would be the first that the president heard of it.

2.2 A World of NightmaresSurprisingly, sometimes light does not dispel our fears. For there are worse things in this world than darkness.

The world is some forty thousand kilometers around, and there are ways in which each place is different.What follows is not an attempt to fully encapsulate the planet, but to give a starting idea of how parts ofthe world are viewed by supernatural creatures. Each continent (or subcontinent) is described in the loosestpossible terms and a handful of places that are of special note over and above the major cities in them.

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AfricaIn a very real sense, all earth is pretty much the same age. But in a perhaps more important sense, Africa ismuch much older than any other place.

Most of Africa is considered "uncontrolled" by any syndicates. The Makhzen controls more domains thananyone else, and you might think that would qualify them to claim Africa as Makhzen territory. But theydon’t. Humanity evolved in Africa, and lived and died there tens of thousands of years before setting foot onany other continent. Humans lived only in Africa for longer than all of history can remember. And for atleast some of that time, there were monsters in Africa. The humans in Africa are much the same as they areanywhere else: while they are physically closer to the birthplace of the first human, they are the same numberof generations removed from that first human as anyone born elsewhere might be. But the monsters are not:When African monsters talk about "the old ways" they aren’t talking about something from a thousand yearsago or even five thousand years ago – they are talking about ways that existed before sharpened sticks or themastery of fire.

There are places in Africa claimed not by syndicates, but by individuals. Individuals so impossibly ancientand powerful that they can challenge societies of monsters and mortals by themselves – and they do. No oneactually knows how old the ancient terrors that stalk Africa’s interior really are. Some of the ones activetoday were already old when the first written records of them exist, and they probably predate the inventionof written records. Truth be told, the creatures themselves don’t seem to know how old they are as some ofthem sleep for years at a time and in any case were around before the invention of calendars. The closestthing to a local syndicate that Africa had was the Laibon, a group of immortal sorcerer kings that were takenout by the Cauchemar in 1888 to consolidate the syndicate’s hold on Nairobi.

Kukuana

There is a small slave-holding kingdom in south eastern DCR near the borders of Angola and Zambia.Trees here are cultivated to make a strong canopy over every village and no direct sunlight ever reaches thestreets. Beneath the kingdom are quite extensive tunnel complexes, where slaves mine for copper, silver, andgems. While sadly Kukuana is not the only mining colony to employ slave labor in the region, it is the onlyone to be completely unknown to the mortal world. The area is covered by "The Voice", a powerful Authorityeffect that seizes control of the mind of any extras that venture into it. Even supernatural creatures don’tknow who or what generates The Voice, nor how it is made or what the true limits of its range might be.

The Brass City

There exists a region of the Sahara Desert which is a bleed into the Dark Reflection. It is in As-Sahraal-Libiyah, and if you walk into it on foot from any direction, you will be taken to Limbo where there is a citymade of Libyan desert glass and brass. It is ruled by an Ifrit and the inhabitants are Goblins and Demons.The entire city has a population of about twenty thousand, making it the largest Goblin city in the world.The bleed extends about ten meters above the dunes, meaning that the Brass City is invisible from the air(or space, it does not appear on Google Earth). Secret histories indicate that the city was probably built inthe 12th century CE, but the Ifrit sultan claims that his kingdom is much older than that.

Ol Doinyo Lengai

This volcano is fairly typical for the demesnes of an ancient terror. The locals have been told that thereis a god that lives in the mountain. There is a terrible ancient thing that hibernates for years at a time insidethe molten core of the volcano. Periodically, and to no particular schedule, it emerges to gorge itself onhumans and cattle. The creature doesn’t attempt to communicate with any syndicates, but it is fiercelyterritorial and will emerge to threaten or attack other supernatural creatures that enter the Arusha region ofTanzania.

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AsiaIt is difficult to get Europeans to understand the scale of Asia. Things are simply bigger here than they areother places. Even people from the Americas are unnerved by the numbers involved.

The continent of Eurasia is so dramatically larger and more populous than other continents that byconvention Europe, the Middle East, and India are counted separately and the remaining landmass still hasmore land area and more people than any others. Asia has the largest mountain, the largest plain, and thelargest city. It has the largest number of humans and the largest number of supernatural creatures. And ifyou aren’t from Asia, you still rarely hear about it – primarily because the supernatural creatures in Asia haveso much to fight over that their conflicts rarely spill onto other continents.

The ratio of "things that happen" to "things that happen that you’ve heard about" is probably higher forAsia than it is for anywhere else on Earth. Some of this can be blamed on the numerous closed societiesin Asia or the racism of the international media. But a big portion of this is actually the simple bignessof everything. Ultimately, 10% of all deaths in China are violent ones, which means that of the peoplealive today more than one hundred and thirty million of them will die a violent death. That is more peoplethan actually live in all but nine countries in the world. With the absolutely staggering number of violentdeaths that entails (about one violent death every forty seconds), it takes truly spectacular death tolls to beconsidered "newsworthy" in that country. It is not that any particular life is worth any less, or that familymembers do not grieve, but that the the sheer numbers cause the wailing of widows to be a continuous tonethat the media does not bother to report. And if events within China are met with a shrug, the chances ofthem being taken up in discussion in foreign lands are slim. And while China is obviously the most extremeexample of this phenomenon, the rest of Asia approaches that level of structural indifference.

Ergenekon

The Bumin Horde of Ergenekon was a syndicate based in Central Asia from some time in the 13th centuryCE until 1844. Their leader was Asena the Wolf Mother, and she preached a philosophy of the strong takingfrom the weak until she was slain by a Cauchemar Vanguard unit. The center of their feudal empire was"Ergenekon", which was also called "The Valley of Iron" because of all the mining that the Bumin Hordewas doing there. In the collapse of the Bumin Horde, the location of this valley was simply lost. No recordsremain in the secret histories of any syndicate, and if any living creature remembers how to get there theyaren’t telling.

The Delve

Several million people go missing in Asia every year. Many of them move and try to start a new life,many run away from their families, many get involved with drugs or psychiatric problems and drop out ofcontact with people in their lives. For most of Asia’s missing people, no criminal actions are involved andyet the people involved are not "found" for years if at all. People vanishing without a trace simply isn’tnewsworthy unless there is some other detail of the case to make it so. The Shattered Empire maintains aprison near the China/Myanmar border which they keep full by kidnapping a thousand people a year. That’salmost three people every single day, and they get away with it because they don’t kidnap pop stars or beautyqueens, they don’t kidnap people from the same place twice, and they are willing to travel thousands ofkilometers just to kidnap one drunk man staggering home late at night. The prison is called "The Delve" bythe syndicates because the prisoners are forced to dig down until they are unable to continue. The ShatteredEmpire doesn’t seem to be mining anything, just digging, but the brutal working conditions kill almost threeprisoners a day. The World Crime League has objected to The Delve, but it’s not clear what, if anything,they can do about it.

Plain of Jars

On the Xieng Khouang plateau in Laos, there is a field with thousands of giant stone jars partially buriedin the earth. Some of them are "only" a meter wide, but others are large enough for several people to standor sit upon. In the first century BCE, this was a massive Troll encampment, and they used the huge stone

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jars to make alcohol by fermenting fruits and blood. The Trolls attempted to conquer the Earth, but weredefeated by iron weapons that they were unprepared for. The bodies of countless Lao warriors lie in thesefields, and buried here also are the stone remains of the Troll army. The World Crime League patrols thisregion, making sure that no one allows the Trolls to revive themselves to once again raise their fists againstthe Earth.

EuropeWhile it does not have more history than any other patch of dirt, it does have more history books writtenabout the history that it has.

Europe is small. Everything in Europe is small. The coffee is small. The distances between things aresmall. The countries are small. Europe has 16 countries in it that wouldn’t make the top ten most populatedcities in the United States. And that’s not metropolitan areas, that’s city limits. And when you look at themap and realize that several of the countries are defined by what lands some family or another happenedto own in the recent past and ruminate on how insane that is, it is important to remember that until quiterecently most of the world was like that. The rest of the world has had the national borders carved up bylarge empires and divided into pieces which are mostly large enough to gain real economies of scale. But inEurope, despite (or perhaps because of) centuries of the bloodiest wars known to humanity, every attempt toimperialize the borders has failed since the collapse of the Pax Romana in 180 CE. No generation has livedunder a single map of Europe for nearly two thousand years. And from all this chaos and land redivision, it istempting to think that there are fundamentally more differences between the Lithuanians and the Latvians orthe English and the Scots than there are between the Ewe and the Yoruba or between the Thai Yuan and theMon – but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Europe was the birthplace of the Covenant and a bit over a thousand years later it was the birthplace ofthe Cauchemar as well. Even in the supernatural world, the borders of Europe are neither clean nor stable.

Baltia

During particularly nasty storms, a rift opens up in the Baltic Sea that allows passage into the Gloom.Once across, there is a shadowed island covered with amber and leafless trees. There is a tower on the island,and a group of the Empties have some machinery and several boats on the Gloom side of the island. Whatthey are doing there is anyone’s guess. The Earth side of the island has a dock suitable for small and mediumboats and a small shack managed by Valdis the necromancer, who is usually welcoming to visitors. Wispscongregate around the island and bemoan their fate at all times of the day and night.

Scholomance

Located in Romania, this lakeside villa in the mountains is the training ground of the dreaded BloodKnights – perhaps the fiercest warriors in the Covenant. Only the faithful and anointed are allowed entranceinto Scholomance. Rumors of demonic pacts and strange goings on have dogged this place since it wascreated by Dracula in 1460. Certainly Hell Hounds and Dragons have been seen patrolling the grounds.

Prypiat

The Chernobyl Exclusion zone is the area around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster of 1986. Extendingnearly fifty kilometers from the blast site, people are still not allowed to go there. The town of Prypiat isinside the zone and was at one time a community of fifty thousand people. After the disaster, it becamea ghost town overrun with strange plants yet curiously antiseptic with kitchen tables left as-is for decades.The borders between worlds here are incredibly weak, and if a person were to stand in one place, they mightfind themselves shifting into Maya or the Dark Reflection with no action on their part at all. Sometimeshumans go into the exclusion zone and don’t come out again because they are attacked by monsters fromother worlds. Sometimes humans go into the exclusion zone and don’t come out again on Earth becausethey shifted to another world and don’t know how to get back.

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IndiaYou can’t have 33 million gods without having a few monsters here and there.

India is the name of the subcontinental landmass which extends from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and SriLanka. It is also the name of the biggest country in the landmass, both in terms of area and population.Just as "America" can refer to the continent of North America or the nation state of the United States ofAmerica. The nation state of India has two thirds of the people in the region living in it, so the regional andthe national name aren’t different and people just have to deal with that. India is incredibly crowded, havingjust 3.3% of the world’s land mass and fully a quarter of the world’s people. The region comprises eightcountries (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and of course India), andthe majority religion in all of those countries is Hinduism, Islam, or Buddhism. Christianity, so prevalentin much of the world, amounts to less than 2% of the population of the subcontinent and is essentiallyinsignificant as a cultural or political force. It should be noted that the largest single local religion (Hinduism)is similarly almost unknown in the rest of the world. 15% of the world’s population are Hindus, and 97% ofthose Hindus live in the Indian Subcontinent.

On the supernatural end of the spectrum, India is largely a power vacuum. For several hundred years,India was under the control of a local syndicate called the Broken Wheel Society, but they were destroyedin the 19th century by the World Crime League. However, neither the World Crime League nor any othersyndicate has managed to effectively take over all of the territory. The WCL holds more territory than anyother syndicate, but most of the cities and almost all of the villages are, supernaturally speaking, essentiallyin a state of anarchy. The WCL wanted and attained some key trade routes and cities in the region, butin the last 180 years have lacked the manpower or the will to impose their way of life on the rest of theregion. Many supernatural creatures in India live night to night without knowing that global supernaturalcreature culture is a thing that exists. For now, global media seems sufficiently content to ignore stories ofvampires and forest monsters from the villages of India that these activities do not seem to endanger theVow of Silence on a global scale. But its not at all clear how long that will hold.

The Kingdom of Prester John

In the 11th century, a group of Blood Knights from the Covenant undertook a black crusade to India inorder to take control of "Christian lands" that they had heard of, apparently having something to do with thespread of Nestorianism in parts of India. This crusade was ultimately a failure, in no small part because thenumber of Christians was always fairly small and the Blood Knights were amazingly outnumbered by the localfactions. They ended up withdrawing into a bleed into Maya and creating their kingdom there. The Kingdomof Prester John is a strange place that follows old anti-papal bulls but not new ones. The Blood Knightshave also tamed the giant ants of the local Dreamlands and use them as riding beasts and beasts of burden.

The Oath Pillar

Before there was the Black Hand, there was the Broken Wheel Society. It was a syndicate that operatedin South Asia and affected something similar to the Vow of Silence through mass murder. They workedclosely with some mortal death cults, most notably the Thuggee. Gradually more and more of their territorywas lost to the World Crime League, and in the early 19th century the World Crime League made a concertedeffort to wipe them out on the grounds that they were bad for business generally and running the risk ofcreating a real global human effort to wipe out supernatural creatures specifically. In 1835, the Broken WheelSociety was defeated, and those who surrendered were allowed to live if they swore an oath to stop doing the"seven intolerable things". This deal was sealed by having all the swearers press their hands into an ironpillar just after it had been cast. The pillar sits alone on a hilltop, and the hand prints of all the newly named"Black Hand" members are still visible impressed upon its surface.

Bhangarh

Located in eastern Rajasthan, the fortress of Bhangarh is a ruin. It was built in 1613 by King MadhoSingh, and abandoned in 1618 after a local Witch named Scindia cursed the place over a disagreement about

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the sunlight to his garden being blocked. Every night, a shadow gate opens in the ruins and Poltergeists runamok until they are banished by the dawn. Humans are allowed to tour the place during the day, but nomortal is allowed on the premises after the sun goes down until the sun rises once more. The gate to Mictlanis in the heart of the fortress, and the Poltergeists swarm out of it the moment the last bit of the solar discdescends out of view. However, once it is open, creatures can travel both directions through the shadow gate– provided they can get past the Ghosts. Once in Mictlan, the palace appears as it did in the 17th century.Eerily silent, but the walls are intact on the other side rather than being full of broken bricks and crackingplaster.

Middle EastWhile the region has no geologic reality, its political and religious importance are as real as any social constructcan be.

To most mortal humans, the Middle East is a region which is essentially defined by the spread of Islam.There are Muslims who live outside the Middle East, and there are people who live in the Middle East whoare not Muslims, but the shadow of Islam looms large over every part of the Middle East. However, even acasual glance at a map of the Islamic world will show a considerable area in Morocco, Malaysia, Somalia,and Pakistan which are not in fact in the Middle East. The region is actually defined by the extent of theAssyrian Empire’s sphere of influence in about 750 BCE – the period of the Makhzen’s founding. Turkeyto Yemen, Egypt to Iran, and everything in between. The fact that human newscasters today talk abouta region defined by an empire nearly three thousand years dead as if it had modern political relevance iscertainly interesting, and the interfering hand of the Makhzen is probably indicated on some level.

The Middle East is unquestionably the Makhzen’s playground. Their European members broke off andbecame the Covenant, and their Southeast Asian members broke off and became the World Crime League,but the heart of the syndicate has stayed strong the entire time. Empires come and go, religions come andgo, but the Makhzen remain. The Middle East currently has a reputation for being violent and war torn, butit wasn’t always thus. Over the last couple thousand years it hasn’t really had more periods of war and strifethan Europe or India. However, right now the reputation is essentially spot on. Saudi Arabia may not be atwar with anyone in particular, but almost one person in six dies by violence there – an amount of lethal injurynot seen in 21st century warfare. The continuous strife and poor public safety is not only equivalent to a warwithout end, but to a war from the past when civilian casualties were much larger in number. The avals andinner circle of the Makhzen seem to be basically OK with this state of affairs. They view the purpose of thesyndicate to be to provide wealth and protection to supernatural creatures, and whether mortal humans aredying in road traffic accidents is not their concern.

The Sands of Time

Deep in the dune seas of Oman there is a sink hole surrounded by a vortex of sand that always swirls intothe dark pit. The hole never seems to fill and there is some kind of disturbance in the flow of time there.People standing within a few meters of the hole see strange things and appear to stop and skip fractions ofseconds. It is uncomfortable to be there. However, an ancient Endala lives in the hole, balancing on herwebbing and feasting on people and animals that get caught in the pit or thrown there as sacrifices to her.She has been studying the vortex for a long time and is able at times to utter True Prophecy. If sacrifices toher are of sufficient quality, she will tell her prophecies to petitioners.

Derinkuyu/Irkalla

The Hittites built a number of underground cities in Cappadocia, some of them extending a considerableways beneath the earth. The underground city of Derinkuyu goes down 85 meters, making it the deepestunderground city in the world. But that’s just the part that humans know about, because there is actuallya secret path and a hidden door that takes you deeper still. This path leads through seven increasinglyimpressive doors and opens up into the Troglodyte city of Irkalla. About seven hundred supernatural creatureslive here in the darkness below the cavern city below the Turkish city of Derinkuyu.

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The New Alamut

The original Alamut was a castle in what is now Iran that hosted the original Hashshashin until they fellwith the castle to the Mongols in 1256 CE. The Hashshashin of modern nights are a drug addled death cultcreated by supernatural creatures in the 17th century based on the more fanciful depictions of the originalmovement. Their fortress is also called "Alamut", but because the historical ruins of the old Alamut stillexist, creatures outside the Hashshashin call it the "New Alamut". It’s primarily a smuggler’s fort in themountains near the Syrian/Lebanese border. They deal in drugs, humans, and weaponry and have a shakyrelationship with the Makhzen. Many Hashshashin consider themselves to be members of the Makhzen, butit seems clear that many would like to replace the Makhzen inner circle with their own.

North AmericaThe global hegemony is mostly set by the world’s only super power, a fact that is unliked by almost everycountry in the world. Including the world’s only super power.

When you talk about the countries in North America, people often stop at three: The United States ofAmerica, Mexico, and Canada. But while those three comprise the substantial majority of the populationand land area of North America, there are actually 38 more countries and more than one fifth of the world’snations are in North America. Turns out there a number of countries in Central America (which is geologicallypart of North America) and really a lot of islands in the Caribbean. The United States of America comprisesa majority of the population of North America, and North America comprises a majority of the population ofthe Americas. But while this superstar status leads some people to refer to the United States of America as"America", it should be noted that the USA is still slightly less than a third of the population of the Americas.Also, the long form of Mexico is "The United States of Mexico", so though even Mexicans normally meanthe USA when they say "Los Estados Unidos", that term is technically ambiguous.

The Cauchemar are the most powerful faction in North America, but they do not enjoy anything likehegemony. Ciudad de Mexico and points south are under Covenant dominion. San Francisco and the coast upthrough Vancouver are claimed by the World Crime League. Houston, Charleston, and Havana are kingdomsof the Makhzen. The New York area is divided among all the major syndicates. But from Boston andMontreal to Chicago and Kansas City, the Cauchemar are the biggest movers and shakers.

Frank Slide

On April 29th, 1903, 82 million tonnes of Turtle Mountain fell onto the mining town of Frank in Canada’sNorthwest Territories (now the province of Alberta). This killed 84 people in an instant and left the entirearea a field of barren, jagged stones. The railroad and the highway both go through the area of desolation,but no one and nothing lives there to this day. Lingering long after dark is ill-advised, as an uncontrolledburst of Orphic power erupts there at 4:10 in the morning for several minutes every Wednesday. Bodies inthe area when that happens rise as Zombies.

Centralia, Pennsylvania

Centralia was a mining town in the middle of Pennsylvania which was abandoned over decades followingthe veins of coal in the ground catching fire in 1962. The area gradually became more and more inhospitableas the ground heated up and poisonous gas seeped out of the ground. The entire area slowly descendedinto the Dark Reflection, and is now a ruin inhabited by a scant few infernalists remain. The area became ableed gradually, with activities by Goblins and Demons gradually increasing and the region becoming moreand more inhospitable. By 1992, the US government declared the region uninhabitable, but even in modernnights not all humans have left. Visitors today see ruins mostly reclaimed by wilderness, but when the mistscome (as they do with increasing frequency), they see ruins covered in ash and crawling with monsters.

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La Zona del Silencio

In Durango, Mexico there is a road that leads into the Mapimí Desert and terminates mysteriously. Thosewho get near the end of the road find that their radios no longer work, and sometimes visitors are treated tostrange sights. Some would-be explorers don’t come back at all. The official story for the road is that theUSAF lost control of a nuclear missile and they built the road out to the crash site in order to clean up thedebris. Keep in mind that this is the story the government tells people to calm them down. The region is ableed into the Dark Reflection, and car radios do not work there because while in the Shallows of Limbothe car is on the wrong planet to receive Earthly radio broadcasts. In 1970, agents of the King with ThreeShadows performed a mighty ritual of power to strengthen the bleed in order to send a powerful Dragon andother forces to Earth. Members of the Cauchemar who had infiltrated the United States of America’s militarydid indeed cut the invasion short with a nuclear missile, and then have a road built out there to facilitatedestroying the remaining evidence. If approached with the appropriate keys, the road does not end in thedesert, but instead continues into Deep Limbo where there is a ziggurat that the Cauchemar use as theirforward base in the Dark Reflection.

OceaniaThere are islands without number or name.

Oceania is not a continent in the same way that the other continents (or even sub continents) are. Thereare no agreed upon borders or contents. The Pacific Ocean is very, very large, and there is a lot of stuff in it,and so it is generally assumed that there should probably be a continent in there somewhere. This ambiguityextends not only to the limits of Oceania, but to the interior as well. There are islands that are on no mapand more mysteriously there are islands that appear on maps but not in reality. The number of islands thatno one lives on is large, but no one knows what that number actually is. Indeed, ambiguity is such that manyof the countries in Oceania do not know how many islands their country contains. It’s not that there aredisagreements about which country owns one set of islands or another (although there is that too), it’s thatcountries like the Philippines and Indonesia do not know how many islands are in the areas they claim andpatrol. Small islands raise and sink in storms, and even if they did a perfect land mass census today it wouldprobably be out of date within a week.

Population density in Oceanian nations is incredibly low by the standards of any inhabited continent.Partially this can be laid at the feet of the fact that most of the area of the continent is water upon whichno house can be built (or at least, hold a static position if we were to include house boats). But even theregion’s largest island is largely uninhabited. While the Federated States of Micronesia are mostly filled withan uninhabited ocean, the interior of Australia is filled with almost equally uninhabited deserts.

Skull Island

Perpetually surrounded by fog, distant from all major trade routes, surrounded by treacherous rocks, andavoided by currents, Skull Island is an island that you really have to want to get to. It does not appear onmortal maps, but is mentioned in the secret histories. Several Kaiju live there, and there is a massive gate toMaya there that opens erratically. The surface of the island has been described as a "hellish jungle". Thereis a permanent base of the Marduk Society on Skull Island, and it is unknown what they are doing there.

The Sunken City

The water levels of the Earth have not been static. Twelve thousand years ago, the world was in an iceage and the level of the ocean was almost forty meters lower than it is today. Oceania had dramatically moreland then than it does now, and structures built during that period have been long ago claimed by the waves.North of New Zealand there was a set of megalithic structures that was built on the coast when the landextended much farther than it does today. And when the melting of the ice caused the ocean to claim thiscity, the children of Tiamat claimed it from the ocean. Deep Ones live here, beholden to no syndicate. Overthe last several thousand years, the city has grown substantially, and the original cyclopean temple has been

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elaborated upon with eight additional wings made of basalt and glass. All Deep Ones are welcome in theSunken City, but the residents try to get such visitors to stay and are very pushy about it. Other supernaturalcreatures are shunned and treated with close-mouthed suspicion and given the literal fish eye. Those whohave visited and returned report that they have a piece of Tiamat, or perhaps Dagon, in the middle of theancient temple complex and that they are growing something from it.

The Pacific Garbage Patch

There is a place in the Pacific where currents push things that have nowhere to go. North of Hawaii, thereis an area of about a million square kilometers where the concentration of flotsam, pollutants, and sludge isnoticeably higher than it is elsewhere in the sea. Garbage thrown into the sea might wash up anywhere, butif it doesn’t it will end up floating around in the garbage patch until it decays. Plastics that take a very longtime to decay will thus float in the garbage patch for a very long time. There is a similar effect with theghosts of those who have died at sea. Those whose spirits have somewhere specific to go will try to getthere, and those who do not will float aimlessly in the Gloom coterminus with the garbage patch – seeminglyforever. The ghosts who have more on the ball have gathered flotsam and wrecks that have fallen into theGloom and built a number of garbage fortresses in the Mictlan of the seas.

South AmericaThere are no wars in South America. People are too busy killing each other to bother with wars.

While almost the entirety of South America is in Latin America (the Falkland islands arguably are not),there are a considerable number of people in Latin America that do not live in South America. While SouthAmerica is an obviously meaningful geologic formation, its use as a political, cultural, or historical markeris more questionable. One simply cannot talk about Latin American politics and culture without talkingabout the two big countries: Brazil and Mexico. But of course, Mexico is in North America, not SouthAmerica. Of the approximately one billion people who live in the Americas, a clear majority live in LatinAmerica, while only two thirds of the people living in Latin America also live in South America. Confusing?Absolutely. It should be noted that cities in Latin America include the highest reported murder rates on Earth,with nineteen of the twenty cities with the highest murder rates all coming from that region. In part, thisrepresents a willingness and ability of people in the Americas to report and track murders in the first place.Honduras boasts a homicide rate double that of the Ivory Coast (it’s closest non-Latin American competitor),but actually less people die violent deaths there. The reported epidemic of violence gripping Latin America isreal, but the truth is that there are comparable epidemics of violence in other parts of the world that aresimply going unreported.

People live almost exclusively on the coasts of South America, and the east, west, and north coastsat that. The interior of the continent is delineated by the Andes and is filled with amazingly inhospitabledeserts and jungles, and humans mostly don’t live in those places at all. The reach of the syndicates issimilarly limited geographically. The Covenant is dominant in most coastal cities of South America, withthe Cauchemar being the main movers and shakers in Caracas, Maracaibo, and Santa Cruz de la Sierra, theMakhzen being the main players in Lima, and the World Crime League having a stranglehold in Medellin andnearly half of São Paulo.

The Cities of Gold

There are a total of seven secret cities in the Andes which have one or more buildings leafed in gold. Sixof them are apparently Incan in construction, but the seventh is of an unknown architectural style. All ofthem are mostly made of concrete and stone, with the "city of gold" moniker being applied because buildingsare faced with gold, giving the city a gleaming appearance. Two are named: El Dorado and Paititi, and ifanyone knows the names of the other five they aren’t sharing. Despite the presence of gold for the taking,few creatures go there. A palpable feeling of dread overcomes everyone who approaches any of the cities,with only the bravest able to even set foot inside.

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The Arcanotower

The Amazon Rainforest is a vast jungle covering over five million square kilometers (3.7% of all landarea on the planet), but is almost completely empty of human inhabitants. While millions of people lived inAmazonian settlements five hundred years ago, those settlements have mostly been claimed by the jungle andtoday less than half a million people live in the entire forest. And in a truly inaccessible portion of this jungle,the Marduk Society has been growing an Arcanotower. It’s kind of like a tree and kind of like a machine,made of magic and steel and biological bits, and the Marduk Society has been growing it from a seed since1991. It’s currently about three stories tall, and what can be gleaned from the True Prophecies is that wereit to be completed, that would be "bad". It doesn’t look like anything from Earth, but it’s hard to get aclose look as the area around it is guarded by Evil Plants. The Arcanotower is equally present in both theDreamlands and the mortal world. Whether it was planted in a bleed or creates one as part of its function isknown only to members of the Marduk Society.

Nazca

The Nazca Desert in Peru is a dry, windless plateau. The ground is reddish, but the reddish stone is quitethin, and with minimal digging the light gray earth below is revealed. Over the course of three years startingin the early 6th century, mystic diagrams two hundred meters across were carved into the ground. Thesesymbols cannot be discerned from ground level, but from sufficiently high above they are extremely clear.The magic symbols are not particularly strong or numerous, but their immense size creates a region that isamazingly potent for the conduction of certain kinds of mighty rituals of vast power when the stars line aligncorrectly.

2.3 New York by NightI want to be a part of it all, in the city, county, and state of New York.

New York has perhaps the greatest claim of any city for being the center of the world. That’s whyeveryone loves it, and that’s why terrorists keep trying to blow it up. New York has a yearly GDP of well overa trillion dollars, making the city have approximately the total net worth of the entire Russian Federation.

New York is portrayed in songs and stories. In movies, TV shows, and radio plays. The New York skylineis perhaps the most recognized on Earth, and landmarks throughout New York are considered treasures bypeople all over the world. New York gets trade from all over the Earth and beyond, and it is said that thereis literally nothing that cannot be acquired in The City. This is very nearly true; as things, people, and ideasare constantly flowing into New York. That The City never sleeps is something of a catchphrase, but it’s animportant cultural concept there. The subways runs all night, and so do nightclubs. There is no time of thenight or day when you can’t listen to live music or eat a slice of pizza.

And there’s a cost for all this. People want to live in New York. And the market has spoken: rents areobscene. New Yorkers live in cramped apartments with no kitchen table, and they pay out the nose even forthat. You’re throwing down four digits to live in a cramped studio in Hoboken, and people are okay with it.Because people would seriously rather live in a tiny flat in New York than an actual mansion in Alabama.

City Statistics

New York is several things. It’s the City of New York, it’s the State of New York, it’s the Five Boroughs, it’sthe Twelve Counties, and of course it’s the Tristate Area metropolis. The Five Boroughs by themselves aremore than 8 million people, with the entire Tristate Area encompassing more than twenty. Its sheer size leadsto hilarious statistics: there are more Irish in New York than in the Republic of Ireland; more Jews in NewYork than in Israel. New York ranks number one in the world as a city that people would like to live in ornear, and a goodly number of people have made good on that desire, more so than any city in history otherthan Tokyo.

New York has no dominant syndicate, and indeed many residents do not feel that they need a syndicate, onthe grounds that local protection is provided by non-syndicate organizations such as cults or even disorganized

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gangs. The largest of the major syndicates is the Cauchemar, who boast about 2400 members (whichironically makes New York one of the largest Cauchemar cities on the planet even though they don’t actuallycontrol the city), but the Cauchemar in New York sort of behave like two different syndicates and are moreconcerned with their own schism than they are with most other goings-on. The syndicate that can probablyexert the most force is the Makhzen, with about 1900 members and an infernally disciplined regime. Therichest syndicate in terms of dollars is the World Crime League, who are actually based across the riverin what is technically New Jersey with about 1500 members. The Covenant is the smallest of the majorsyndicates in New York, with a total flock of about 1000.

The King with Three Shadows has a satellite fiefdom here under the iron and silver gauntlets of BaronCapac. They have about 600 magical beings in fealty to the Baron, but they are mostly Mirror Goblins, soit’s not quite as big a threat as that sounds. The Shattered Empire has maybe 100 actual supernaturals, butthey have nearly a thousand humans and ghosts in their weird local theocracy. The Marduk Society has adivision in New York, and it appears that they have perhaps 200 actual men in black.

Because of the lack of total control by any syndicate, other forms of organization hold various territory.About 1500 supernatural beings are formally unaligned, but nearly half of them have allegiance to organizationsthat are considered cults everywhere else. All the cults maintain an independent presence, of which thelargest is probably the Ulmi (at 120 members running their territory) and the smallest is the Chain of Coronis(with only a couple dozen). The remaining 800 or so "unaligned" are often members of various supernaturalgangs that are relevant only within and around New York. The Morlocks, the Sharks, the Spiders, and theJets are all gangs that have made a name for themselves to one degree or another. But not a few creatureshave simply elected to stay loners and fade into the background of New York as other peoples’ problems. It’snot entirely clear how many of these "monsters of the week" there might be.

Supernatural creatures must also be on the lookout for local threats. The Special Threats Bureau hasabout 40 detectives in it, but their firepower is way in excess of what that would imply since they run jointoperations with NYPD. The House of Murphy has about 30 supernaturals working for it in town. Significantlymore mortals, many of whom have been indoctrinated into sorcery to become Cultists. The Blue Star Factionappears to have about 50 Triffid Soldiers, maybe 10 normal Earthly supernaturals, and perhaps a hundredarmed human fanatics. More worryingly, no one has a guess as to how many Pods or Mantraps are runningthe show from their base(s) of operations.

City History

As the song says, New York was once New Amsterdam, a possession of the Dutch Crown. The city was soGerman that it nearly pushed German as the official language of the country (it failed by one vote). Butyears of Irish and Italian immigration followed by the harsh cultural reprisals against Germans during WWIhave all but erased New York’s German speaking past. Tonight, New York is the most multicultural city inthe world, with more languages spoken than any other city on Earth (claims made by London and Torontoboosters notwithstanding).

New York was famously once the stomping grounds of the Manhattans, a tribe from whom the islandgets its name. It was first visited by Europeans in 1524. New Amsterdam got its start in 1609 and wasfought over by the Dutch and British starting in the 1650s and lasting for two decades before it was finallyabsorbed into New York as a British possession. This makes the city substantially older than the vast majorityof permanent settlements in the Americas, and a good bit of the architecture gives that away.

New York has gone through numerous subway systems, with the first demonstration line going up (down?)in 1869. New York City ended up taking Edison’s side in the battle between him and Tesla in the 1880sand to this day the New York MTA runs on direct current instead of the AC that everything else runs on.There are also numerous tunnels left over all over the place down there from various aborted or terminatedprojects. Like in Ghostbusters II. But it’s not just old subways. The City has replaced its gas lines, waterpipes, electricity connections, sewer outlets and much more on numerous occasions, leaving pipes, conduits,and access tunnels abandoned all over the place.

New York has been on the forefront of city planning and going back to the drawing board of thosecity plans in social as well as engineering progress. New York was already a major international metropoliswhen the modern concept of the Police and Fire Department were invented. And the scars of those early

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experiments are still clearly visible in the modern order. New York has gone through a past where FireFighters were rival gangs that fought each other over the right to put out fires and charge the victims forthe service. New York has been through a past where order was maintained by having self interested armedgangs run protection rackets. The modern systems we are familiar with solved a lot of real problems, andNew Yorkers take their civil servants pretty seriously as a result.

Power

No specific syndicate lays enforceable claim to New York as a whole. The city is simply too large, and itfunctions more like a series of cities or even a series of nations than a single metropolitan area from thestandpoint of supernatural governance. There are enough supernatural creatures in the New York area thatit is simply unreasonable to expect that even a long term resident know the names of even all the majorpower players of the sprawling metroplex. However, while one can think of the city as being divided intomultiple domains, each under the control of a different syndicate (or cult, or in some cases coterie), it isdifficult indeed to map the city out along those lines. A single city block may have the streets claimed bya branch of the Black Spot, while the offices in the building above are Makhzen territory and the subwaysbelow are crawling with the skulking members of the Church of Set.

Because New York is such an "every Werewolf for himself" kind of place, every major cult operatesregions of actual control as if they were syndicates themselves. The Daziban have a vault on 42nd Streetnear 5th Avenue, but unlike in other cities, the area around it is treated as Daziban territory, and their rulesapply as totally as syndicate laws. The codicier there is an Android named Susan Calvin, and she is rathermad with power. But the thing to remember is that that sort of thing just isn’t rare. There are gangs thatpatrol individual regions and even just powerful individuals who refuse to acknowledge the authority of othergroups. And with the balance of power so precarious, it is often not worth the attention of any of the largergroups to try to enforce their writ. Of course, sometimes a creature will push their luck too far and get anentire syndicate or even more than one to come down on them simultaneously. This was the case of "TheWhisper War" where the Covenant, the World Crime League, and the Black Hand allied to take down TheWhisperer in Darkness in 1933.

The Mayor’s Office of New York City is astoundingly powerful, and the mayor personally wields as muchsocial and economic clout as the heads of state of many nations. At any given time, the Mayor of NewYork is a major public figure on a national and even international scale. You probably can even remembersome former New York Mayors like Giuliani, Bloomberg, or Koch. This is because the mayor is simply moreimportant than the Governor of Alabama or the Taoiseach of Ireland. And so it is relatively unsurprisingthat the Mayor’s Office constitutes its own supernatural group which acts as a miniature syndicate andoperates under the auspices of the city government. This organization, which is called the "Special ThreatsBureau" is headed up by a Nosferatu known as "Anchor" who is sometimes called "The General". Allsupernatural creatures under his command rise rapidly to the rank of "Lieutenant Detective Commander"and are empowered to call in regular human police to enforce the mayor’s will. Each new Mayor of New YorkCity is brought in on the realities of the supernatural and the importance of the Vow of Silence by Anchorshortly after their election. So far, all of them have seen things his way.

The House of Murphy is a group of body snatchers and assassins who operate as an Irish alternativeto the predominantly Italian Ulmians. They were originally a family of necromancers and ne’erdowells thatwas recruited into the Ulmi sometime in the 19th century, but Father Murphy got too big to accept takingorders from Venice and broke off, forming his own crime syndicate around 1914. They’ve been independentoperators ever since, growing in power and reach and becoming justifiably feared. The leadership of thefaction always passes to the eldest son of the last Murphy, even if that person is not a luminary. Indeed, thecurrent Murphy head is merely a cultist who does paperwork. But he’s really mean, and his little brother is aKhaibit who appears to be played by Ron Pearlman.

Wall Street is a force to be reckoned with even while hiding behind the veil of the Vow of Silence. Whilemany supernatural creatures trade in public companies or appear to through the pre-arranged selling of stockon the "open market", the fact remains that Forex as a whole is blissfully unaware that Vampires are anythingmore than a metaphor for what they do. And pretty much everyone behind the mask has agreed to keep itthat way. The use of magic of any kind is by mutual agreement totally banned in the financial sector, and

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hunting parties are fast assembled to eradicate any monster that violates that rule. The bankers are simplytoo well connected in the mortal realm, and all rational magical creatures fear the kind of armed responsethose bankers could pull down if they panicked.

The World Crime League in New York runs their affairs from across the river in New Jersey, amongst aset of factories and refineries called "The Chemical Coast". The local Captain is an albino Mi Go known as"The Swede" by people who respect him and as "The Swedish Chef" by those less favorably disposed. Thelocal Quartermaster is a Golem made of brownish limestone and flint named Iztli. The WCL mostly doesembezzlement and drug running through the ports to fund itself in New York. And it is pretty well funded.

The Cauchemar in New York have two separate social experiments going. One of them is a cult ofpersonality inspired by Fallen visionary Amelie Goudarte. They hold inspirational meetings in the Long IslandCity Ice Pavilion and follow her 7 point plan for success. The other major faction is an informal set ofmeetings that occur at some apartments, cafés, and a record store around 7th Avenue and W25th. Theycall themselves such evocative titles as "Coffee Night", "Taco Time", and "The Upright Citizen’s Brigade".These loose knit meetings have no clear overall leadership, and have literally dozens of Demagogues, oftenwith purviews that are seemingly quite limited.

Makhzen activities in New York have a tendency to take place on the 13th floors of buildings. Cayuga,the Daeva Prince of the Bronx has noticed that a lot of elevators in New York don’t officially go to the13th floor, thus leaving the possibility of renting out actual 13th floors and requiring special keys or buttoncombinations to get there. The Prince apparently thinks this is awesome, because the Makhzen uses thissetup all over town. The Mehtar Council meets in different locations on different days. Unusually for aMakhzen domain, the Bronx Domain has a couple of Asura in its Council.

The Covenant in New York have an insular and paranoid church whose cathedral is located undergroundin a now defunct area of a previous generation of New York’s subway system. The Apolostolic Exarch is aFallen named Vigo who stores people in paintings. Vigo wants his Priests to prepare their flock for a war thathe believes is coming, a series of demands that have served to alienate the clergy from the flock.

Baron Manco Capac has a demonic fiefdom in North Brooklyn. It’s apparently associated feudallyto The King with Three Shadows, and it is run out of a series of nominally abandoned buildings in CrownHeights. The Mirror Goblins and Spriggans at his command seem to not care a whit about accumulated filth,and the human residents are generally convinced that it is a series of meth labs. They are kind of right, inthat the Barony does sell meth to finance itself with human dollars.

Port Ivory in Staten Island is host to a chapter of the Shattered Empire. They have a cult going calledthe Temple of the Rain Dragon, which they use to get ordinary people to worship what appears to be a DeepOne as the prophet of the "Rain Dragon". They move around and operate in secret, but their indoctrinationof ordinary humans has left them with the kind of media presence that makes other supernaturals verynervous.

The Marduk Society has infiltrated the FBI field office in New York. Their offices are on the 24thfloor of the Federal Building, and they have convinced the local Bureau chief that they are a top secretinvestigative branch charged with taking over any cases with the "X-" or "Fringe" designation. They alsohave some sort of bio labs off site, but their location is at least currently a successfully hidden secret.

The Blue Star Faction is a group of zealots who appear to work for Pods. Inductions are forced, andthey appear ambivalent about taking casualties. They have contacts somewhere in Central Asia from whomthey get weaponry and heroin which they use to finance themselves. Blue Star soldiers appear to not eat wellor sleep often, but are generally highly motivated and frighteningly well armed. Some of their equipmentappears to be otherworldly. The location where they actual convert people into soldiers is probably somewherein Riverdale but its exact location is unknown.

Places to Go

Getting around New York is something of a trial. On the one hand, chances are good that wherever you’regoing isn’t actually that far away – there are literally millions of people within a couple of kilometers of youat any time, and if you want to go to an Ethiopian restaurant or a Korean bakery, you can just do that. Andyet, the island is just long enough that the place you’re going could very plausibly be 5 or 10 kilometers away.People end up taking the subway a lot, and yet there are still places that the subway does not go. People

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would like to drive a lot of places, but there is nowhere to park. Actually owning a car is madness, and mostapartments don’t even have available street parking, so using cabs is considered respectable and normal. Theaverage New Yorker takes so many cab trips that they won’t even blink on sharing a cab with a total stranger.And most cab drivers won’t blink at taking a weird monster across town. Werewolves in war form might noteven be the worst they’ve seen that evening.

Mr. Wing’s Antiques is a hub of sorcerous trading, and an excellent place to barter for magic orinformation. The place is just off Mott street in Manhattan’s crumbling Chinatown, and there are somecompletely unrelated apartments upstairs. Mr. Wing does not take American Express (or any other creditcard), but he is willing to part with mere historical relics for cash (especially White Lotus Hell Money) orkittens. Agree to proper feeding and care and putting down the right price, he might even sell you a MirrorGoblin.

The Central Perk is an upmarket and impossibly hip coffee shop in Greenwich Village where patrons cansit at tables, at the bar, or on the couch. The place closes at 11:30 and reopens at midnight as a Cauchemarmeeting place. Meetings are informal, and supernaturals of all types and allegiances are invited to hang out,philosophize, or just kvetch about their lives.

Pearl’s is a restaurant, bar, and nightclub that serves the tastes of decadent Asian businessmen andcriminals in the front, and the even more decadent tastes of supernatural creatures in private rooms. Theproprietor is a grotesquely obese and ancient Strigoi named Pearl. Supernatural creatures come because Pearlhas a quite extensive collection of artifacts and prophecies in the basement and is willing to buy and sellmagical goods and information. But they also come for the food, which is made to the exacting specificationsof monsters. Pearl’s staff are willing to literally bleed to make the perfect dishes for the establishment’spickier clientele.

It’s the realm of horror, so of course there are alligators in the sewers of New York. Well, sort of. NewYork City has an archaic system of storm drainage called the Combined Sewage System. It is a singleset of tunnels that receive effluvia from the sewage outlets of buildings and also receive storm water runofffrom the street. This has several effects, most notably that these tunnels are incredibly gross, but totallytraversable during dry weather. Also this means that during storms, all the water and untreated sewagemixes together and has to be stored in underground reservoirs to keep it from overflowing directly into theHudson. And as you might imagine, these reservoirs do not cover the entire tunnel system, so after everymajor rain there’s a bunch of untreated sewage popping out of the combined sewage overflow anyway. Soyes, a rain storm sends poop into the water, and yes there are massive cyclopean underground structures thathave brown waterfalls into voids and albino alligators. But the alligators don’t technically live in the sewerpipes, they live in the Combined Sewage Overflow Reservoir. Tunnel dwelling supernatural residents call itthe "Sea Sore" and get totally snooty if outsiders call it "the sewer".

Nowhere better embodies the Yogi Berra quote of "No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded!" thanTimes Square. Traffic became such a nightmare that the Mayor’s office shut it down to vehicular trafficaltogether. The place is now a pedestrian mall, and getting a hot dog or kebab at Times Square is still aleast a dollar more expensive than getting it elsewhere in town.

New York’s Central Park is likely the most famous urban park. It’s very large, and comes in at 3.4square kilometers. It has its own zoo, more than one ice skating rink, and a famous carousel. Central Parkappears in more movies than you can count, and wherever you live, you’ve probably seen parts of it. Thepark gets about 25 million visitors a year, which works out to about 3000 visitors an hour. Needless to say,wherever you are in the park, you’re not actually alone. As such, Central Park really doesn’t host much inthe way of outdoors magic. When sorcerers want to do stuff amongst trees, they leave the boroughs andfind a discrete place to do it in Jersey. Which is not to say that supernaturals don’t do stuff around there,because they do. But they do it inside, either in the basement of the Natural History Museum (where theChurch of Set keeps a magic golden tablet) or The Met (where the Hashshashin have regular meetings), orthe Guggenheim (where the Rolnicy have some sort of laboratory). Central Park is considered a high valuetarget to control, but actually fighting or using powers in Central Park is considered to be insane.

The Hot Lap Dance Club is, according to a number of reliable reports, the number one strip club onEarth. It was shut down by a paramilitary assault stemmed from a pissed off police commissioner attemptingto suppress the owners (who are themselves high powered lawyers and liberal political activists). None of thecharges stuck, but the damage was done, and the Hot Lap Dance Club now operates only unofficially in a

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shallow dark reflection of a Hell’s Kitchen loft. The red, fire themed decor is particularly apt considering thatis in fact in Limbo. Which means that whatever you think of the rest of the top ten list, the Hot Lap DanceClub is definitely not the best strip club on Earth, because it’s not on Earth at all.

The Goblin Market is well accessible from an alleyway that is near the Brooklyn Bridge. Despite beinga major entrance to Limbo, it does not seem to be part of Baron Capac’s domain.

The building with the crazy gate in it from Ghostbusters is a housing cooperative at 55 Central ParkWest. And yes, it has a locked Shadow Gate in it. So if you do things right you can pull through a bunch ofPoltergeists.

New York in Horror

New York is one of the two major centers of media production in the United States, and is probably secondonly to Los Angeles in terms of international media impact. As such, it’s in a lot of movies, and a lot ofthem are very bad. But it’s the centerpiece for Ghostbusters and that counts for a lot.

Gremlins only takes place in New York proper during the scenes at Mr. Wing’s, with the rest taking placein a New Jersey Suburb called Kingston Falls. The second movie takes place in New York pretty much thewhole time. This is as good a time as any to talk about the freneticness of life in New York, and how filmsportray this in terms of monster attacks. Whether it’s a horde of ghosts in Ghostbusters or a horde of mirrorgoblins in Gremlins, New York is metaphorically overrun by things you have to deal with all the time, sohaving it actually overrun by monsters makes emotional sense. The place is so frickin huge that these sorts ofthings can actually be covered up later – Gremlins II pretty much takes place in one building, so despite theincredible carnage, that’s something that might not make the news if creatures were pulling the right strings.

But it’s not just little monsters that attack New York, indeed the city is second only to Tokyo in beingthreatened by giant monsters. Whether it’s Groverfield or King Kong himself, New York is a classic giantmonster target. Possessed of some of the most iconic giant buildings, New York is an ideal playground for thetitans to scuffle in. That tree thing from Hellboy 2 or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man are classic examples.People feel small walking through New York, and nothing brings that out in people like taking on a 17 metertall ape.

New York is also a good metaphor for isolation, perhaps ironically considering its status as the secondmost populous city on Earth. But that metaphor totally works, because everyone is aggressively aware at alltimes that there are millions and millions of people all around them and they literally can’t share a thoughtwith all of them – or even look them all in the eye before they die of old age. So New Yorkers have somethingof a "not my problem" field protecting them at all times. And that really works as a good source for horror.Many movies capitalize on that sense of social isolation to good effect, such as Rosemary’s Baby or CatPeople.

And lest we forget, New York is the template for a very large amount of superhero movies. Spiderman,Batman, and so on. Yes, Gotham is identifiably New York. Superheroics work well in the context of NewYork’s constant rain of problems and total anonymity for the individual. That is: first there are 8 millionstories in the naked city, and this story is just one of them; so your prospective hero never has to wait aroundfor something to do, there’s a monster of the week every week; and secondly people seem ugly when you’realone; and in New York you’re totally a stranger. You could fight crime without a mask on, and people mightstill never figure out who you are.

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Appendices

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List of Tables

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