Venue Introduction
“Welcome to the City by the Bay, pally. Yeah, yeah, stop staring at the skyscrapers, ain’t like you’ve not seen weirder thiings over Yonder. Fresh out of the Thicket, I can tell, and not just from the bloody scratches you’d do well to hide a bit better,
Yeah, yeah, I see you as you are, same way you see me as I am. You’re home, pally, or the nearest thing to it you’re gonna find. San Francisco, California,, Earth, 2023.
Yes, I said 2023. Look pally, just save the questions to the end, I promise it’ll all make sense. I’m a professional.
Anyway, the good news is you made it back, escaped Yonder, slipped the Thicket. The bad news is, if you haven’t guessed, is that even if you were lucky enough to have been from San Francisco, this probably ain’t your San Francisco. Or well, it is, but in the future. Or the past, sometimes we get – you know, never mind, the Mirrors can explain it to you if you really want to know the timey-wimey theoretical business. End of the day, the city seems to be a beacon for those Lost souls like you who didn’t quite take the right turn on the temporal expressway. Ask three of us, you’ll get four answers why that is, but in the end, it doesn’t change the day-to-day. The Lords and Ladies over Yonder way don’t care much about time, anyway, and you can’t go back.
Well, okay, maybe you can, but that’s a whole other mess. The Thicket goes where it wills through Time and Space, and sometimes Time goes backward. Most of the time, it doesn’t last, and you wake up back here when the loops end.
Yeah, ‘loops.’ What did I say about the questions, pally? Anyway, you can sometimes take a hop back in time, but so far we only know four roads that seem stable; as long as you don’t leave the boundaries, they don’t boot you out when the Loop ends. Those, the Courts saw the value in, laid claim, set up shop. Best to have a good base to run to when you’ve crossed the Dragon, or when the Lords and Ladies come calling, after all,, even if the nature of why that hideaway exists is a mystery, right? No one’s sure why they’re set like that, but hey, we’re working on it, pally.
After all, not like we ain’t got time, right?”
Themes
Another Time, Another Place
The Lost often have an interesting relationship with Time, but in San Francisco they find Time to be far less fixed than one might expect. The Trods of the City on the Bay lead not just through the Thorns but through Time itself, and the Courts have established strongholds in four of the most-stable ‘timelines’ along them. These ‘fixed points’ are not immune to changes, however, and the Lost of the Freehold is beginning to realize that there may be a connection between these Pasts, the Present, and a very uncertain Future…
A Digital World
In the shadow of Silicon Valley, the City by the Bay casts a digital shadow in the minds of humanity; it should be no surprise, then, that the Wyrd and the Thorns take note and shape to meet the digital dreams of humanity. The ‘digital Hedge’ known as BriarNet sprawls across the city’s Thorns and beyond, glittering towers and squalid slums of a thousand futures…
We Must Dissent
A center of counterculture and punk rebellion, San Francisco also hosts the offices of exploitative corporate juggernauts and has a long history of gentrification. Class conflict burns hot with seething resentment, and beyond the Thorns, the Others watch and take gleeful notes, finding such marvelous new ideas in the depths of corporate excess…
Moods & Inspiration
Music
3.0 Changeling
![Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young [Official Music Video] (Fire Inc.)](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6eln48BCELk/maxresdefault.jpg)
Film & Media
- Archer, Batman: the Animated Series, Gotham, Streets of Fire, and Riverdale present worlds where the year, or even the decade, is nebulous at best, where technology and culture of many eras collide and co-exist.
- Shadowrun is a cyberpunk classic, combining elements of the all-too-plausible future with the fantastic elements of the past.
Player's Guide/What to Expect
- Due to the nature of the setting, characters from a much wider range of times and places may end up in the City by the Bay than is normally common for Changelings. Please note, however, that this is a privilege the Changeling ST team expects our players to treat with responsibility and sensitivity; we do not wish to see this privilege abused to indulge in irrational behavior at the expense of other players’ enjoyment of the game, to partake in period-correct but insensitive attitudes gratuitously or out-of-character in any way, nor engage in historical revisionism.
- Characters from less-enlightened eras who cannot adapt to modern society will face consequences from the Freehold’s authorities, and as a ST team, we expect players to have at least minor knowledge of any historical era they choose to portray through their characters. Please also note that this privilege is given with the expectation that all Eternal Noire site policies regarding player respect and inappropriate character themes are still observed.
- The plot of the Chronicle will be heavily shaped by player action (or inaction), interest, and requests; the more our players invest in the story, the more we can tailor it to their characters and personal plots.
