Concords of Setting

The beating heart of the City, where most of the shifting and churning of cultures, languages and skylines take place. Most of it shifts randomly and out of sight, in an almost dreamlike logic, where in a given moment you're seeing Paris and the next you take a turn and you're in Rio de Janeiro. Damage to buildings and people seems to be erased after a shift. Pivots are the only exception of this rule, as they seem immune to the City's whims. The closer one gets to the center, the more the City will shift in nighttime, regardless of local time; it also becomes more densely populated. At the center, or what is considered so, it always looks like a sleepless metropolis at night. In this center, some major Pivots house the Triumvirate HQ and their living quarters. Citizens also generally live here, but they accept the chaos of Downtown and just live wherever the City puts in front of them.

The most likely place where you ended up when you first arrived. It's a deceptively vast area full of homes, town wide super-malls and huge urban natural reserves that rarely shift and when they do, they are not dramatic enough to require Pivots to store your stuff. The limits of the area are ill defined, as most roads will either make you drive in circle or go towards Downtown, which the Suburbs completely surround. Most people trapped by the City live here and it's considered the United Courts’ territory.

When someone tries really hard to leave the Suburbs, usually with supernatural aid, they eventually find themselves into a forest. It's possible to find strange buildings and heavenly meadows inside it. Its nature is less capricious than the Suburbs and it tends to rarely shift. Not that it matters much, since most of it starts to look the same once you go deep enough. Nobody managed to return from an extended expedition into the forest yet, as it seems to gobble anyone that would brave it.

A vast collection of piers and harbors that extend almost impossibly along the coastline of the City, where it meets with the Sea. All activities in it are ephemeral, as no ship actually comes or leaves the City. Nevertheless, people are seen loading and unloading goods into the inert cargo ships every day. Nights are exponentially longer towards the center of the Harbor, but not quite everlasting like in Downtown. It's usually as stable as the Suburbs. Unaffiliated like to stay (or eventually drift) here, as no major faction cares to claim it.

A major river that seems to cut Downtown in two, flowing into the Sea. It's deeper than it seems, but nobody made extensive expeditions in it yet. Following the River upstream makes it narrower and narrower, and eventually you reach a small hole in an unassuming little hill located deep into the Suburbs where the water seems to originate from. Following the River backwards appears to be the only way to find this source. Nobody returned from investigating into this rat sized hole yet, as it seems to open into an intricate underground and completely flooded claustrophobic cave system.

An endless expanse of water that meets the City through the Harbors. As with the Forest, it has not been explored intensely, as anyone going beyond the curvature of the horizon never came back. Its abyssal depths seem to hold only things that despise whatever comes from the surface and information about it is scarce. Where the Sea meets land near the Suburbs, it creates a lovely beach that's usually full of unaware people enjoying endless Summer. When it meets with the Forest, it creates a fjord. Going further along this fjord also counts as going beyond the curvature of the horizon for the purpose of disappearing forever.

Not much to say, if you go above the clouds you disappear. Otherwise flying for extended periods is ill advised as the shifting of the City below is known to create great turbulence and sometimes it shifts a raging storm around you.

Digging seems a fruitless endeavor for the most part. Some caves have been recently discovered in some great park in the Suburbs. They haven't been explored yet, but many groups are now preparing to brave this new frontier.

For those that can travel to different realms, they'll find that those dimensions are segmented and butchered, like the shifts in the City can't or won't adjust its invisible counterparts. They are now almost completely alien and navigating them is extremely hard and dangerous even when the appropriate mean of transportation is used inside them. For now, even these realms seem cut off from the rest of existence to loop back into the City. Most Twilights are shuffled and stacked on and inside themselves, like Escher paintings given life. Going deeper: dreams pool in a stagnant and stillborn local Temenos (with no Anima Mundi); spirits are forced to grow in alien and non euclidean ways to navigate the horribly mangled Shadow; the souls of the dead just get shredded into nothingness by the jagged geometry of the butchered Underworld; and so on. Still, some say that an exit from the City can be found, in the utmost depths of these broken realms.

Wonders presented in the #ideas-bin might be available through the shop (if appropriate). A player may ask, if the item has not been checked before, roll 1 die, on a success it is available for trade in the shop.

A player may also ask for a single use imbued item with a single rote in it using the same process above (repeatable 1/week). The item may be under the effect of Energize Object or Spell Potion (plus the single desired rote in it). [SoS, p.69]. If the effect requires Potency, assume it has 1. If the effect requires Duration, assume it has either 1 Turn or 1 Scene (your pick). If you require a more specific effect (more Potency, Attainments, etc.) you need to use investigation rules.

The shop may also hold clues to how or where to find wonders if they don't have it in stock. This will be handled by an ST directly for each case, as it will lead to an ST Scene.

All purchases are done through favors appropriate to the purchase, never with currency.

"A triumvirate (Latin: triumvirātus) or a triarchy is a political institution ruled or dominated by three powerful individuals known as triumvirs (Latin: triumviri)" -Wikipedia

The Triumvirs represent the highest political authorities in local Vampire, Mage and Werewolf society and they lead the more expansive and systematic efforts to get out of the City. While it is said that their alliance is fueled only by the desire for freedom, many old members denote how efforts to achieve it seemingly waned over the years, to the point that now seems purposely ineffectual. Under their rule, generally, Mages explore the various unseen realms attached to the City, while Werewolves explore the more physical and spiritual edges of the City, both testing and pushing the limits of its influence. Vampires are tasked to generally keep order, be a front line against seditious threats (especially the Courts), and fund the efforts of the Triumvirate as a whole. All supernatural creatures are expected to join the Triumvirate's protection when they get stuck in the City, and not doing so will eventually brand one as a traitor to the cause of Freedom.

Vampire Triumvir: Willa Sandoval, American elder
Mage Triumvir: Maphikelela (He Who Perseveres), South African Hierarch
Werewolf Triumvir: Asmik Rollan Sergeyevich, Russian ruler of the Lodge of Freedom

The United Courts represent an antithesis to the Triumvirate, an equal and opposite reaction to their general abuse of power in the name of escaping the City. Or so they say. Once its members found out about the terrible things the elite members of the Triumvirate were doing unchecked to the Uninvited and Invited alike in the name of finding a way to escape, they quickly convened that some sort of opposition for the humane treatment of everyone in the City needed to exist. Thus they rallied all other strange creatures of the night that weren't already under the thumb of the Triumvirate and founded the United Courts. They are mainly led by Changelings rulers, which more than anyone else understand the importance of freedom, but encompass and try to protect pretty much anyone that's not Triumvirate, with few exceptions. Their efforts to escape the City are as varied as their colorful members. Whispers of unknown origin and validity say that the Courts' leaders care only to escape (and very little about the suffering of others) and just find the Triumvirate's slowness a troubling sign that its leadership might have grown accustomed to rule this little realm away from the major threats of the real world.

Spring Royalty: Mariana Nunes Velho, Brazilian Queen
Summer Royalty: Icaro Catena, Italian King
Autumn Royalty: Cao Liuxian, Chinese Queen
Winter Royalty: Durgawati Deshmukh, Indian Queen

The Citizens are a group of individuals that decided that living in the City is actually a blessing. After all, every time it shifts, the City wipes away most damage that the creatures of the night inevitably do in their cursed existence. Or, at least, it doesn't seem to surface ever again. Many of its members desire the freeing sensation of not having to hide anymore, to hunt indiscriminately, to destroy, to let go of inhibition, or just to not feel guilty about the destruction they bring. Members that proudly show their allegiance to this faction are hunted by both Triumvirate and United Courts, and can hardly organize as a fully fledged faction, having to rely more on gorilla tactics and sabotage to survive. Some say they are the reason the Triumvirate became corrupt and the United Courts came into being as their adversaries. Divide et Impera. They are led unofficially by a Promethean, the one creature that more than anything else understands what it means to bring ruin by merely existing.

Mayor: 01 (Owen), Promethean scourge

Everyone else. The vast majority is just new people that just entered the City and hasn't been scouted yet by the Triumvirate or the United Courts. The only notable exceptions are Demons, which collectively decided to not pledge allegiance to one faction or the other, but enjoy a sort of neutral position and sell their services to the best bidder. Also Mummies and their cults generally dislike mingling with other creatures of the night. Hunters and mortals with supernatural powers generally gather in small groups and are left to their own devices. Individuals that stay unaffiliated long enough are considered seditious by the Triumvirate and under the protection of the United Courts (whether they like it or not). This usually happens after a couple of months. After that point, being hostile to the Courts will just make you hated by both factions and your lifespan will reduce drastically.

Of course, any individual creature may belong to any faction, but this is just to indicate where the leadership generally stands.

The mortal population that inhabits the City, their numbers are unknown, but seemingly infinite. The name is opposed to the Invited, who are all the people that got invited into the City and are thus aware of its idiosyncrasies. They go on their lives like nothing strange is going on in the City. They talk the language of the City in their immediate vicinity. If you find yourself in Tokyo, the Uninvited there will look and speak Japanese. They appear to be, under any mundane and magical scrutiny, just regular mortals with lives, families, virtues, vices, aspirations and so on. They have souls, feelings and anything else you'd expect a mortal to have.

The Triumvirate doesn't care about them and sometimes they recruit them for jobs that no one else wants to do, like janitors or secretaries. Recruiting an Uninvited counts as Inviting them, so they become aware of the City at that point (but they rarely, if ever, rise above the meager jobs they were invited in the City for in the first place). The United Courts wants to protect the Uninvited from the abuse that the Triumvirate and the Citizens regularly dish out towards them; they prefer to avoid inviting more innocents into the City, so their efforts often go unappreciated. The Citizens sees the Uninvited as non-entities, City constructs that exist to entertain or nourish them. Unaffiliated have as many opinions about them as they have members.

Meaningful interaction with any Uninvited makes them Invited. If an Uninvited construction company is hired by an Invited, they become Invited. It is possible for magical abilities such as using teleportation effects to bring chunks of places into the City, causing the inhabitants to become Invited. This is also a viable option for a PC Invitation and Arrival Scene.

It's not possible to join this faction.

Most post/precognition attempts have found that the City was always like this and will always be like this, but it doesn’t seem to account for inhabitants’ actions. While a character is in a part of the City that is presented as some real city in the world, its inhabitants will tell the character about the history of their own city. The inhabitants don’t think they live in the City, they think they live in the city it represents at the moment. Only people that have been invited know of the true nature of the city.

Very, very rarely, small parts of the City will shift into impossible cities, places that never existed in this timeline. There characters will find people from New York telling them (in German) about the Nazi victory of WW2. There have been a couple reports of these in the past two decades.

Atlantean lore and Mysteries exist, but it’s in no way more relevant than any other lore or mystery. It’s just that one will know something is packing a magical punch if it’s Atlantean and it’s easier to recognize for a trained eye.