The city quest continues - with moved goal posts!

[sparkindarkness]

And added bonus of all the suggestions is it showed some more objections I didn’t know I had :) I was aware of them as possible but didn’t think I’d have many options so I thought I may have to give up on them.

So, extra conditions I’m taking into account (AKA Sparky‘s Moved Goal Posts):

1) The Sept of Gaia Triumphant was a Croatan Caern that was brutally stolen/nobly liberated by the Silver Fangs. Part of the ongoing theme of peacekeeping in the plot will be making overtures to the other Native tribes - the Uktena and the Wendigo.
Soooo... the city cannot be in areas that are canonically Uktena or Wendigo (northern Canada, south west US)

2) The sept of Gaia Triumphant was also conquered relatively early in the settlement of the US - ideally the city shouldn’t be tooooo far west (it doesn’t have to be an OLD city, since it could have been conquered long before humans got there, but it does have to be an area that western Garou would have been able to reach)

3) Hopefully, canonically, it will have the right werewolf populations that I have in my Septs.

4) The urban Sept is dominated by Glass Walker werewolves which, in turn, are rather out matched by a large and powerful vampire population. This really means that the city has to be rather large and have a powerful and/or diverse economy otherwise it simply wouldn’t interest the Glass Walkers enough or support the vampire presence

5) There has to be an element of back of beyond to the forest. This is not a forest where people go picnicking and hiking. This is the trackless wilderness where Red Talons will EAT YOU nom nom nom if you get too close to the Sept.


I was doing a lot of research on each city (political history etc) but first I think i need to weed out the options that my moving goal posts can’t let me have. So a list of those that I’ve had to put aside. To come debates on which one to go for!


Firstly I have to remove any city that has a British city’s name - because it’s going to cause all kinds of mental gear grinding. No matter how often I say “Birmingham Alabama” I’m going to think of lots of Brummies running round.

Because the city has to be relatively decent sized (at least it has to be big enough that I can expand it to suit the chronicle without completely ruining any research I may do) that counts a few cities out. Ideally the population would be 250,000+ and much bigger for preference

Maryville, TN Beautiful surroundings, great, close national park but just far too small - if I increase its size then I might as well make up a whole new town. Tomah, WI Is also out due to it’s small seize. Bangor, NH and La Crosse, WI aren’t so small that I couldn’t expand it but I would have to maul it a lot to bring it up to scale and if I do that then there’s not much point me researching it?

My need for a city that’s at least fairly east has stymied me more than a little - but I can’t get away from the story need of the Caern being taken from the Croatan by force and early in America’s settlement:

This rules out Seattle, Porland (Which is a crying shame), Salt Lake City (which, frankly, nearly made me throw out my “needs to be fairly eastern” requirement because there‘s a whole load of forests round there) Billings, MT, Denver C... uh, what‘s the second letter you use for Colorado anyway? CO? Probably CO

I need a city that fits the werewolf populations I have. I can’t have my extra-diverse Sept if they’re in an area that’s canonically dominated by 1-3 tribes (which is why I ruled out Europe). In particular this means avoiding Uktena, Wendigo and Fianna territories:

So anywhere that’s slap bang in the middle of Appalachia, or too close to Appalachia is out. Chattanooga. Anchorage is pure Wendigo territory (though having hunt down Palingites - evil Wyrm creatures of corruption would have been fun). Atlanta is out because of the situation with the city’s vampires and DC is out because of the issues running in the capital would bring

Comments

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Why is Appalachia out?

Have you considered Huntsville? It's in Alabama, similarly close to wilderness areas, has a really nice clash between the technocrats (heavy space/NASA industry) and the hick rednecks culture (it is Alabama after all.) There are a bazillion and one nearby caves and wilderness areas -- some of which are Nom-Nom-Nom territory. It's fairly small as a city, but it's still city-sized.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Appalachia is the domain of the Fianna tribe of werewolves - they are extremely numerous in the region. In my chronicle Fianna are a very small minority of the Garou present. That would be unusual to completely freaky in Appalachia


I'll throw another to have a nosy at :)

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

The scots + irish half of my ancestors are from up there. Tons of em.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Fom up where? Appalachia is up? *is all confused*

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

Appalachians= mountains. Also, northeastern.

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

*wince* see there it is again!! NASA = technocrats?? Having been in the presence of Buzz Aldrin (in his 70s, fit to kick ass, and enthusiastically outlining his transportation plans for Mars, while nearby people are playing games that read their brainwaves, and 2' high self-motivated blinking robot spheres chase each other around a 20' fire-spewing Lotus Tribe sculpture, and Amon Tobin is about to go on in the hangar next door), I just... it..... gah. NASA = supercool hardcore sci-fi motherfuckers.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

They are. But they are also part of the military-industrial complex. Two competing cultures clashing in one lovely peril-ridden orgy of doom.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

NASA always struck me as more Sons of Ether/Virtual Adepts than Void Engineers

But if you read the old Void Engineer book, a lot of them are pretty close to Marauder anyway (actually there's a skit in the convention book with a Garou, Dreamspeaker and Void Engineer all nattering away and the Dreamspeaker offers to find the VEs a place in the Traditions but the VE goes all insane laughter type and crazy)- which is why the Tehcnocracy is supposed to have cut back on Space Exploration since it feeds mankinds imagination - which is BAAAAD. After all, the moon landing caused the resurgence of the Sidhe.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Might consider Nashville, TN. It's been booming pretty good and, although it's pretty far from the Smokies, there's a large number of State Parks in easy driving distance.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Also Standing Stone State Park, while perhaps not as big or as howling-wilderness as you'd like, has got some interesting Native American history associated with it. It's about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Hmm, could be interesting to bring in some ex-croatan kinfolk. But I would like to have an idea of "this was our land, our place, our holy place and the holy place of our brothers, now there is no trace of us left"

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

While driving to Huntsville, we passed several Trail of Tears markers.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I'll have to wiki that

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

The Trail of Tears started in the foothills of North Georgia and ended in Oklahoma. When the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830, it gave Georgians (and others) permission to forcible remove all Native American tribes (primarily Cherokee) in their state and ship them off to reservations in the West. Some horrific number of Native Americans died during the journey, and all were traumatized by being ripped from their lands and forced to march a thousand miles away. It's one of the more squalid moments in Georgia history.

For the purposes of a game, Alabama could have been in Cherokee territory -- it technically wasn't, but it's close enough and there were no state borders at the time anyway.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure, but don't state parks lack the necessary "nom nom nom" feature?

[drharper.livejournal.com]

It depends. Some are piddily-dink, some are pretty big. Lemme look a few things up.

[drharper.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, at least from what I've been able to find, the State Parks and National Wildlife refuges in central TN are too recreation-fied to have the "nom-nom-nom" factor you're looking for. The ones closer to east TN are better, but then you're getting close to Fianna territory.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye, with the highly territorial and anti-human Red Talons I think we'd have a lot of nasty fall out with the nom nom factor

[polarbee.livejournal.com]

Not necessarily ;)

State parks too far east tend to be pretty small, but since you aren't looking for something right on the eastern seaboard, it should be fine.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Not right on the coast no, since vampire canon has a HUGE vampire war stretching from Miami to Philadelphia :)

[brownkitty.livejournal.com]

Just as a stray thought, had you considered using a decomissioned military base? Almost all military bases have towns built up around them, are widely multicultural, and many are in very strange locations. Ft. Leonard Wood might suit some of your needs, or at least give you some more on the "can't/gotta have" lists.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

The main problem with them is that a decomissioned military base would not likely produce a large enough city for my preference :)

I do have, I think, 8 names now and I'm going to do a dead heat between them :)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ottawa, Canada still fits all your needs.

[jerril]

To address the goalposts individually:

1) ... Soooo... the city cannot be in areas that are canonically Uktena or Wendigo (northern Canada, south west US)

Ottawa's in relatively Southern Canada! And you'll have southwest Ontario to play with, which is about as South as Canada gets, too.

2) The sept of Gaia Triumphant was also conquered relatively early in the settlement of the US...

Ottawa (As Bytown) was encorporated in the 1850s, but the area is quite close to the early British and French settlements, so it's within reach of werewolves. Especially with being close to the Saint Laurance (SP) Seaway.

3) Hopefully, canonically, it will have the right werewolf populations that I have in my Septs.

I'm not sure what you have in your Septs, so I can't comment here. But you've mentioned Silver Fangs, and we've got the Government here so this is a good start.

4) The urban Sept is dominated by Glass Walker werewolves which, in turn, are rather out matched by a large and powerful vampire population.

Ottawa is the site of Silicon Valley North, aka Kanata, which supported a major computer tech industry until the bubble burst. There's still a fair amount of R&D done out here. The government bureaucracy and various spin-off industries is about 40% of the local economy.


5) There has to be an element of back of beyond to the forest. This is not a forest where people go picnicking and hiking. This is the trackless wilderness where Red Talons will EAT YOU nom nom nom if you get too close to the Sept.

Algonquin National Park offers BOTH options, due to it being bloody enormous. There are fringe areas that are hiker friendly, and deep deep deep freaking woods.

Incidentally, this is a city where it's mildly interesting when a bear wanders into downtown or deep suburbia (And obviously alarming to locals), but not shocking. Moose, also, get into the downtown core, and deer have been known to go leaping through peoples kitchen windows, run around the house in a panic, and then bust out the picture window and run out into the night, leaving behind a lot of very confused humans.

I have passed a bear who was taking the highway straight downtown. He was in the slow lane and not particularly chuffed by all the traffic.

The huge ass "greenbelt" in the city and the federally-owned parkways result in us being spread out, but they also acts as a wildlife corridor right into the heart of the city. This is one of the few cities I'd actually call "Lupus friendly". Red Talons might ACTUALLY have a semi-significant presence somewhere within spitting distance of a "city".

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

Raleigh, NC is a large city with a substantial high-tech industry (good for Glass walkers) and financial and social presence (good for vampires). It has the advantage of being in the area that was traditionally Croatan - the mid-Atlantic seaboard. It might be too close to the Appalachians for your taste.

You're going to have some trouble with 'Croatan but not near the Appalachians', depending on what the Croatan range was exactly (I'm out of touch with the more recent round of WW setting stuff). I always think 'Roanoke Colony', since that's where they got the name from.

How close do the urban and rural septs need to be?

Take a look at:
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS

And in particular:
http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=stateView&state=nc&map=nceast

I especially like:
"The smallest of North Carolina's designated Wildernesses is just south of Great Lake in the middle of Croatan National Forest. The lake is acidic, the Wilderness a trailless pocosin (see Pocosin Wilderness, above), and the few who visit are a hardy breed who can cope with the deep muck, alligators, biting insects, poisonous snakes, and tangled masses of vines and shrubs. People come to see the wildlife and plants, but they rarely stay long. In case you fancy yourself to be the exception to that rule, be forewarned that there are no campsites."

Unfortunately, the Carolina coast isn't heavily populated. Raleigh's the nearest large city, and it's about 100 miles away. Though actually...you could look at Norfolk, VA. It's a large city with plenty of industry to interest the Glass Walkers (it's home to the largest US Navy base, major shipyards, etc), it's among the first settled areas of the US, and there's certainly wilderness nearby that isn't much touched, though it's more 'swamp' than 'forest'.

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

Harumph. How early is early, anyhow? Seattle was settled in 1851 (by some very bright people that kept trying to put it back up after it kept getting flooded away at high tide), dunno where that falls in your plan.

Although, the indians are a problem. Washington and Oregon have some pretty massive reservations (as such things go. Like 1/6th the total area of Oregon, for instance). Great places to get fireworks. The main reservation in Washington is across the Sound, over by the Olympics and such.

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

For future reference of westcoastness... Portland is like Seattle's mellower little brother. Population approx 1 million instead of 3.5 million. Seattle is... DANK, lending itself very well to a WoD feel, Portland is a little more fluffy and pretty. Actually possibly the prettiest major city on the west coast (of the US anyhow, I haven't been to Vancouver yet)

[home-of-usher.livejournal.com]

and somehow Portland still managed to smell funny when we went through there. *puzzled*

[a-roar-a.livejournal.com]

there are a number of breweries and commercial bakeries which can be pretty funky smelling depending where you were. of course I've found that almost every city has it's own particular olfactory scenery ;op

[gnarlycranium.livejournal.com]

That and the huge industrial area in the east. Depending which way the wind is blowing.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I thought the west coast was renowned for its mellowness in general anyway?

I remember reading soemthing about Porland in a journal once (I think it was Porland) - unfortunately it was about a neo-nazi group. I remember have a distinct "wtf?" moment about it, seemed so out of place.

Dank is good :) but just about every WoD city is dank - and if we're having werewolves horrfied by urban blight, pretty cities aren't so good :)

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

*European mindset boggle* can't quite get my head around the idea of a major city that's only 150 years old *boggle boggle*

It's less the age of the city so much as if werewolves landed with the first colonists and begun spreading out, how long would it take them to reach the area? Even if they scout well ahead of the other urban development to take caerns off unsuspecting Pure Ones. So Garou could roam up and down most of the eastern sea board and then some almost as soon as the first boats had landed even if there wasn't a city there (yet)

See, that's kinda a problem - if there were such massive native american reservations near the caern then the chances are the Silver Fangs wouldn't have taken it.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Atlanta's only about 150 years old. We put historical markers on anything that makes it past a century over here. When visiting Ireland, I'm pretty sure that there were sheds (in use) that were older than my city -- possibly even older than my state. That was a boggle moment.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I remember someone talking about a historical document in a museum and being impressed it was over 150 years old. My family owns documents older :)

And someone amused me muchly bragging about their "200 year old church." Churches come that young?

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

We have the reverse problem on our end. "Your toolshed is older than my country. And you still USE it. As a TOOLSHED." :)

Anyway...hmm.

Let's see: the Southwest is out, because it's Uktena territory. Eastern seaboard south of Pennsylvania is out because of the vampire war. Appalachian county is out because of the Fianna. Western Canada is out, since it's Wendigo territory. Most of the Midwest lacks the necessary wilderness, as it's pretty much all farmland. The Northwest is mostly settled too late.

Here's what's left:

* Eastern Canada. Can't speak much to this, but I think someone else had a specific suggestion in that area.

* Gulf Coast - Lousianna, Mississippi, bits of Alabama. Pros: It's in the right area for Croatan, had a Native American presence, was settled early, and has at least some wilderness (though again, it's as likely to be swamp as forest). Cons: The biggest city in this area (New Orleans) already has lots of White Wolf canon associated with it. The largest city in Mississippi is only 175k.

* Great Lakes - Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Pros: Plenty of wilderness, and it's even wooded. Probably still okay for Croatan, though you're getting closer to a border area. Explored in the 17th century, though urban development came later. Minneapolis-St.Paul is probably a good Glass Walker city. Cons: The largest city in Michigan is Detroit, which MAY have some vampire canon established.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

Aye all the cities on my short list are midwest, lakes or canada I think

Detroit is a Sabbat city, alas. Plus the lakes area lacks nom nom factor. It's all veyr tame. Great Glass Walker territory, awful Red Talon territory