Dresden Files RPG Play-by-Post Planning

[Mardoc]

The Big Dig
(Needs writeup, easy tie in is some of its crumbling areas and issues have a more sinister undertone.)

The Big Dig began planning in the 1970's; coincidentally right after the Seelie began their counterattack on the Charles. It began work in 1982, lasted 25 years, and spent $15 billion: three times what it was estimated to cost.

Of course, some of that budget went elsewhere. There was your usual amount of contractors lining their pockets, but the main drain was the part no one saw. The Winter Court caused an entire branch to be built underneath the Charles. It's rumored that the whole project was inspired by Unseelie influence, in fact. This branch is their fort, their bridgehead for a renewed assault on the river. An armory, a garrison, and magical sally ports let them send out raiding parties underwater. Being Fae, there's also a ballroom and feasting halls, of course.

On the highway side, they have direct access, although you might need Fae reflexes to make the exit. That assumes you can even see through the glamour hiding it. There are known instances of falling roof, lights, and 'Ginsu safety rails'; these aren't what they seem, but are instead operation of their landward defenses.

The Winter Court branch is the biggest, but there were also a number of maintenance areas built, and false starts, that are now mostly abandoned. Many minor predators have moved in to these nooks and crannies. The Winter Fae toss them a bone from time to time; anything from the scraps from their table to fish from the Charles or used-up mortals. Keeping a bunch of dangerous, territorial nasties around gives them a bit of a moat, and a bit of an early warning system. No one really knows all the residents here. Even if you did a survey, next month someone new will have moved in and evicted or consumed the previous resident.

The Dig is quite safe when you have a ton of metal wrapped around you, moving quickly. Don't stop, don't unlock your doors, and look straight ahead, and you've nothing to worry about.

[Commodore]

Okay, got a few...

Faction: The Silver Twilight Lodge
The Paranet never seemed to dig in deep in Boston; most minor practitioners here already have an organization to call home. Secretive, harsh, but protective, the lodge maintains extensive lists of all the talented families of Boston; minor talents are inducted in hushed ritual ceremonies...or encouraged to leave. Knowledge is power, and the rich halls of the lodge smell of both. The lodge is neither aggressive nor ambitious, but it protects its own fiercely. Members are afforded some physical protection, but more than that their secrecy is sacrosanct. The White Council has no love for the little lodge, but old Warden Beckitt assures his masters that the lodge enforces the Rules of Magic with all the zeal of its Puritan roots. And a hundred other arcane codes of conduct aside.

Face: Warden Beckitt
As the war with the Red Court rages ever hotter, there are old wardens and there are bold wardens, but there are no old, bold wardens. Warden of the White Council Matthew Beckitt is old even for a wizard, one of the first children born in New England. He hasn't survived this long by being rash. Beckitt keeps his head down, mostly, in his comfortable home just outside the city limits, but if a foolish warlock or vampire raises more ruckus than the old Warden can really ignore, they will find themselves targeted by a canny, tough wizard without anything like mercy or grace tempering his New England justice

[Commodore]

Faction: Pickman's Pack
Ghouls are awful, stinking, terrifying creatures who hunger for dead human flesh. Most of of them are also kind of unpleasant. But crawling beneath rotting timbers of the older ground in Boston are ghouls who are merely ravenously hungry eaters of corpses...but don't go out of their way to create those corpses. Some say the legend of Richard Upton Pickman, the witchblood painter of horror, is based on one of these ghouls; it isn't known for sure and certain, but Pickman's Pack don't murder for hire, or for sport, or barely ever at all...and have been known to show a taste for some of the more awful intruders in the city as well.

[Ranamar]

Mardoc:
You did that so much better than anything I had put together yet.

Commodore:
Poking around on the internet, it sounds like the Paranet is sort of a trade organization for groups like the Silver Twilight Lodge or Bishop's Apostles. That said, it sounds like the Silver Twilight Lodge is a bit more of a heavyweight than Bishop's Apostles; the latter is a full member of the Paranet, whereas the former may be interested in signing onto the Unseelie Accords as a separate signatory from the White Council.

Also, thanks: I was trying to find a home for my "weather wizard" (more like most of the way to sorcerer) concept, and that sounds right up his alley.


Now, from the faction end, thinking about vampires...
The White Court Vampires came into their own as Boston developed into a trading hub. The triangle slave trade amply slaked the appetites of any of House Skavis willing to brave the open ocean, and, if a few extra died to emotional feeding, well, everyone knows slaves die in the Atlantic crossing... and the ones despairing the most were probably the weak ones who wouldn't bring in much anyway. It was a double win: much negative emotion to feed on, and extremely profitable to build a base of power. Since the end of the slave trade, careful investment has maintained this wealth base to this day. The smart ones don't throw it around too publicly, though: that's a good way to get the herd angry at you, and there's plenty of comfortable living to be had while you let the newly-rich take the heat.
The Red Court, however, is an invasive force. Their base of power is far to the south, but they've taken an interest in North America, especially now that they have an excuse to assault mortal spellcasters willy-nilly. The vanguard has been building a cover story in universities, but surely they will make a play for power over the city soon.
Basically: WCV are highly pro-status-quo, while the RCV are interested in claiming dominion over the city, especially given the White Court's reluctance to get in a war with mortals.

[BRickAstley]

Awesome write ups here guys! Feel free to edit them into the relevant archive posts, or I'll do that later tonight as I get time.

[Ranamar]

Poking around on the internet, it sounds like the Paranet is sort of a trade organization for groups like the Silver Twilight Lodge or Bishop's Apostles. That said, it sounds like the Silver Twilight Lodge is a bit more of a heavyweight than Bishop's Apostles; the latter is a full member of the Paranet, whereas the former may be interested in signing onto the Unseelie Accords as a separate signatory from the White Council.

Some of my ideas are stupid. It occurs to me that, whatever the Silver Twilight Lodge does, if it wanted to sign onto the Accords, it could have done so long ago. At a guess, many of its more powerful members are actually also members of the White Circle, too. (What are other people's opinions on this?)

[BRickAstley]

Yeah, it probably depends the most on how much the Lodge desires its exclusivity. Being on the white council requires a degree of openness and attending their meetings and such. However, signing on to the accords would also be somewhat of an act of making themselves more publicly recognized in the supernatural world, which they also wouldn't like. But, if they weren't connected to the accords in some way, they would be free game for any baddies to pick on. Would that be worth not having to associate with a larger party of people? I'm not seeing an evident answer, we might just need to pick one and let it sit.

Or, we could just leave that part undefined, and I can interpret it in the story however it comes up to be best to do so. The goal here is to get at least a short description of what's there, not necessarily define every part of them; that can come out through the story of the game later on.

[Mardoc]

It occurs to me that, whatever the Silver Twilight Lodge does, if it wanted to sign onto the Accords, it could have done so long ago. At a guess, many of its more powerful members are actually also members of the White Circle, too. (What are other people's opinions on this?)

I guess I was picturing the Lodge as less powerful than that. Maybe only Warden Beckitt has the strength to join the White Council. The Council would tend to protect the practicioners anyway (well, occasionally collect revenge or weregild) but I don't think they'd tolerate an independent signatory to the Accords.

We could use some non-magical places, too, and some more non-magical factions. Don't have to be quite real, but Real-ish would be nice. Not every problem is magical, after all - and even the magical ones can fight at a mundane location or be complicated by mortal interference. DaveV - I'm sure you're on a level field with the rest of us for this, at least Anywhere that strikes you as a good backdrop for action?

[Ranamar]

Some neighborhood information that isn't as obviously from a realtor as some of the other stuff I found:
http://www.mymove.com/guide/moving-to-bo...hoods.html
Also, here's a map: http://www.cityofboston.gov/neighborhoods/

An interesting thing to note from the first of those two links is that most of what I think of when I hear "Boston" is actually in Cambridge, starting with MIT and Harvard. Part of this is because the town lines are basically not marked anywhere, and every square inch of land is claimed by one municipality or another. (This is a New England thing... even when you get out into the more sparsely-settled parts, all the land is claimed by or assigned to a town or city level entity, leaving not a lot as a responsibility of the counties, which do still exist for some reason.)

Some other standout facts:

• Apparently Boston's Chinatown is the third-largest enclave of people of Asian descent in the US.
  
• South Boston ("Southie") is arguably ground zero for "Boston Proud". (Although, in the case of Southie, it may be significantly more locally-concerned than even all of Boston.) It's mostly Irish and historically known for being the home of the mob and housing projects. These days, it is gentrifying at a measurable pace.
  
• The North End is one of the original Boston neighborhoods, including being home to such landmarks as the Old North Church. These days, it is about a third people of Italian descent and has apparently had its ups and downs. Reading between the lines, this is the kind of place where someone looking for a cheap place to start a new venture would go. However, the roads were first laid down so long ago that the streets tend to be narrow.
  
• The two neighborhoods tagged as having LGBT communities are the South End and Jamaica Plain. The former is described as having a large African American population, while the latter is described as having a large Latino population. I expect these two communities would be welcoming of other marginalized types as well.
  
• Newton is an all-up incorporated city of its own, but it's close enough to Boston to act like an overgrown suburb. (Contrast this with Cambridge, which feels to me like it might as well be part of the city itself.)
  

Not in the above links, the Wikipedia article on Cambridge notes that it is built around a series of "squares", none of which are actually square. Instead, they are all insane junctions of an enormous number of streets which tend to also be commercial centers. Obviously, this is not everything, as people have to actually live somewhere, but, while plenty of it is in urban apartments (which often look quite old on the outside, and sometimes the inside, too...), a lot of it is outsourced to the surrounding towns. Those towns can reach as much as 95% residential, housing the people who work in Cambridge or Boston but prefer a less urban (think 1-2 family houses instead of crammed apartment buildings) place to live. Of the squares, I am most familiar with Harvard Square, which sits on the edge of the Harvard campus and also happens to be a bus nexus for the MBTA ("The T" to the locals).

Speaking of the T, this is too funny to pass up, although I don't know if it's useful.
Face: Charlie [of the MTA]
Most people think Charlie is not even an urban legend but rather urban fiction: his only chronicle is a campaign song from 1949 which made it big after The Kingston Trio recorded it in 1959. However, Charlie exists. He got on that subway, changed trains, and didn't have the money to pay the exit fare at the other end... and then someone bound him to that subway line, in what was almost certainly a violation of the Fourth Law of Magic. (This is why his wife can't just slip him some money with his sandwich some day. He's compelled to stay on the Green Line.) Charlie's dead by now: he'd have to be somewhat over 100 years old. However, his ghost seems to be bound to the subway system as well. He doesn't like to talk about about what got him stuck there, since that was a long time ago and he's used to things by now, but, if you manage to track him down, he's heard plenty of gossip on the trains while trying to keep himself entertained.
http://www.mit.edu/~jdreed/t/charlie.html
(Who says folk songs are dead? )

[DaveV]

As far as public places, http://www.cityofboston.gov/freedomtrail/default.asp seems like a good guide. Faneuil Hall seems to be the place where everyone mixes together. There are a couple really old churches and graveyards, which could have some plot points hung on them.

Boston is a hotbed of startups, and I'm planning for my character's initial adventure to be tied to one of those. Do we have to tie everything up in a neat bow, or can we leave loose ends?