The Forbidden Fruit: New York, New York. A fan sourcebook ..

william

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Apr 1, 2004
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Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

We've talked a fair bit about continueing various WW game lines as fan
works similar to the Wraith Project. However, no one has actually done
anything about it. I think it's time to start.

So here, beginning with notes from my own campaign, is the first
submission for Mage's second Citybook: New York.

Current Long Island:
Technocracy's Back Yard

The Parkway System

Tradition Mages still argue if Robert Moses was a Technocrat or an
Orphan. Some even claim he wasn't a Mage. About all that is known for
certain is that he was not a member of the Traditions and his work
endures to this day, shifting millions of people and massive quantities
of quintessance in the second largest construction of artificial
ley-lines ever completed.

Ask what the greatest magical work ever performed in New York was, and
the Long Island Expressway is unlikely to come to anyone's mind. Nor
would Jones Beach or the Battery Tunnel. But all of these are true. In
1926 Robert Moses, already one of the most politically powerful people
in New York, took his staff to a deserted, swampy beach unaccessable
except by small boats, and told them they were going to create something
new. At it's opening in 1929, 25,000 cars drove across the Wantaugh
Causeway in a howling sandstorm that damaged them all and caused many of
them to break. The next year, 1.5 million people visited Jones Beach.
Now, the park attracts between 7 and 8 million people every summer.

Robert Moses continued to control major road development in New York and
Long Island until 1968, when his power was supplanted by the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority. By that time, he had created a
massive web of parkways and expressways linking New York City to 7 major
parks in Nassau and Western Suffolk. In some things, however, his work
was incomplete. Of all his roads, only the Long Island Expressway
reached into the eastern half of Long Island, and his planned
Cross-sound Bridge was killed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1973. Moses
died of heart failure in 1981, at the age of 92.

The original intent of the Parkway system was to benefit the middle
class of New York City. Accusations have been made that the bridges over
these roads were intentionally built too low for buses, in order to
prevent the poor from reaching the parklands. In fact, Long Island is
unusual in that none of it's major roads were built to accomodate mass
transit. Even as late as the opening of the LIE in 1962, the road was
built without enough room to fit mass transit tracks. Moses was an
unashamed promoter of the automobile and is held partly responsible by
many people for the extent of suburban sprawl around New York.

The roads have become powerful conduits of quintessential energy across
western Long Island. Every day, the travel of commuters creates an
ingoing flow of quintessance from the Island to the City. Every
afternoon, the opposite occurs. In addition, most weekends during the
summer, hundreds of thousands of people leave the city for the parks and
beaches of the Island. The result is a widespread purification of the
resonances these people have picked in the city by the cleansing of
wind, sun and water.

Systems:
All parkways and expressways on Long Island resonate with the
quintessance that washes them daily. This creates a one dot Travelling
resonance that affects all spells cast while near them.

In addition, at the height of rush hour, quintessance flows strongly and
sluggishly enough to be harvested with Prime 4. This quintessance always
has a one dot Travelling resonance, but often also acquires an entropic
(frustrated) or static(directed) resonance. Interfering with the flow of
Prime on one of these roadways is likely to cause traffic snarls and
delays throughout Long Island.

Brookhaven National Laboratories:

In 1917, the US Government established Camp Upton in the scrub and pines
of Brookhaven. It was immediately "settled" by 40,000 draftee soldier.
For the remainder of WWI, it was the largest city on Long Island. After
the war, it was dismantled. Literally everything was transfered or
auctioned and the woods grew back.

In 1940, the Army again resettled Camp Upton, first as a boot camp, then
as a convalescense center. Then, in 1947, the Second World War was over.
But Camp Upton was not torn down. The soldiers left, and scientists
moved in. Renamed Brookhaven National Labs, construction began on the
US's first peacetime nuclear reactor.

Since that time, Brookhaven National Labs has expanded into one of the
worlds largest and most prestigous physics laboratories. It houses the
east coast's only Supercollider, as well as extensive labs for
nanotechnology, energetic physics, neurochemistry and space biology.
Brookhaven's reactor is also one of the few sources in the US for
radioactive compounds.

While no technocratic Amalgam is known to base itself in Brookhaven, the
labs are firmly under the technocracy's control. In addition to the very
extensive mundane security, the sensors have been enhanced to detect
prime energies and scrying and feed to a dedicated transmitter as well
as the normal security systems. The gauntlet in the main compound is so
much stronger than in the surrounding area (9 vs 6) that it too is
almost certainly the result of direct technocratic tampering. Three
small, highly static nodes are known to exist on the site, but all their
quintessence is funneled directly into the various high-tech machinery
on the site, instruments literally just beyond the cutting edge of
science. However, the onsite radioisotope reactor is potent and often
used source of technological and medical tass. Lack of access to the
resources of this site is a constant irritation to the more ambitious
Sons of Ether on the Island.
 
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Archived from groups: alt.games.whitewolf (More info?)

William wrote:
> We've talked a fair bit about continueing various WW game lines as fan
> works similar to the Wraith Project. However, no one has actually done
> anything about it. I think it's time to start.
>
> So here, beginning with notes from my own campaign, is the first
> submission for Mage's second Citybook: New York.
>

I'd be happy to host discussion on WolfSpoor's forums, if you're so
inclined.