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

[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.