CtL Setting Overview

Society

The City by the Bay Freehold follows the Bargains of the Seasonal Courts, with each Court maintaining their ‘stronghold’ within one of the semi-stable ‘timelines’ which overlap modern San Francisco. The Free Company known as the Crystal Web maintains a permanent presence in the city as well, keeping cordial relations with the Seasonal Monarchs but having no fixed Ironside base of operations.

The current Monarchs have held their Crowns since the fall of 1989, and the Freehold has enjoyed political stability for the decades of their rule - a welcome reprieve from the century of upheavals that preceded it. Despite this peace, however, the City by the Bay remains permanently on guard and somewhat insular, its deep scars from past terrors leaving their unfortunate mark. Those without a recognized Court of Compact to speak for them are oftentimes held under the deepest suspicion, regarded as security risks at best and as agents of the Dragon or the Others at worse.

The City by the Bay has relatively warmer relations with the Hobs of the local Hedge, Thorns as best they might, given the rampant dangers of unpredictable Time Shards and the frequent predations of Loyalists and Privateers; the vast majority of the Freehold’s number find it very much to their preference to go no further into the local Hedge than is needed to open a gateway into BriarNet.

History

"San Francisco, California, 2023. The messes of mortal society aside, it’s pretty great here: the Trods are secure, the Crowns are in harmony, and the Glamour and goblin fruits flow freely. I’m tellin’ you, pally, it’s great here.

But it always wasn’t.

See, once upon a time, this wasn’t the ‘City by the Bay,’ it was the City of Shackles. San Francisco,, even Ironside, always had problems with human-trafficking, and boy howdy, pally, did those serving the Lords and Ladies over Yonder take advantage of it. Privateer and Loyalist alike preyed on our fair city, and the Old Crowns just let it happen. They claimed to be doing all they could, of course, but they could only try sellin’ so many wooden nickels before folks stopped buyin’, and when it all came down around their heads, boy howdy did it fall hard and fast. On October 17th, 1989, while the city's mortal population turned their attention to the World Series game between San Francisco and Oakland, those heroes and their followers took to the streets in revolt. As the Old Crowns moved to quell the uprising, however, reckon they got gobsmacked by the fact the ‘rebels’ had a truly powerful ally on their side - The Wyrd Itself!

I was there personally, pally, there to see it with my own two peepers as the Wyrd turned on the Old Crowns, as their oaths failed them and the City of Shackles fell - literally. As the city was rocked by the Loma Prieta Earthquake, the Seasons anointed the brows of the revolutionaries with Their favor, and the Old Crowns were driven into the Thornss. The freshly-coronated Royal Circle sought to give chase, but quickly discovered that whether it had been the Earthquake or their successful banishment of the Old Crowns, the echoes of the conflict had brought about another, very-unexpected consequence in the Hedge. As the city and its Lost began to pick up the pieces and rebuild, explorers in the Hedge discovered three new Trods; following them, those same Thorn-wanderers discovered that seemed to lead not simply through space and Thorn, but through Time itself, each one finding its end in a past version of San Francisco: one in 1906, one in 1929, and a third in 1969. The Royal Circle initially forbid the Lost from delving too deep into these ‘Shards,’ but as time passed and other ‘San Franciscos’ of different eras were encountered only to disappear, leaving those within them confused but unharmed, the Crowns caught on that those three weren’t goin’ anywhere. They still were regarded as a curiosity more than anything else, but they were declared safe enough for the Lost to visit. Things slowly began to settle as San Francisco rebuilt, and the City by the Bay began to thrive - at least until the next calamity. Always somethin, pally…

That calamity came callin’ in 1999, good ol’ Y2K. Though the catastrophe the mortals feared was averted, the shadow it cast on the Briars and the coming of the 21st century violently shook the Hedge around the City by the Bay. When things settled down once again, there were new Trods: some led into the crazy joint the Webheads call ‘the Digital Hedge’, and the others… the others led to a new Shard. The first was dangerous enough, but the second, well that one was a real pack of trouble: it was the Shackled City reborn, a bare month ahead of the Quake and the Uprising. The Royal CIrcle welcomed the arrival of the Crystal Web soon after, and the Winter Court’s senior members moved to begin a shadow war against the ghosts of the past when the new Shard proved to be as seemingly permanent as the previous three.We all went to work, and soon enough the City by the Bay was thriving once again, another crisis dealt with like so many others. We all welcomed the new century. We finally had some well-deserved peace in our fair city, besides the tense task of keeping watch over 1989. You;d think we’d have learned by then, but do I even need to say it, pally? It was too good to last, and eight years later, in 2007, we got our introduction to our latest little problem… the Dragon.

We’d never fully shook the Privateers off our backs, and since the emergence of the fourth Shard, that problem had been a little toothier, but weren’t none of us prepared for the Dragon. Most Privateerin types tend to stay in the Thorns, or skulkin’ the fringes, but this one, he wasn’t the usual on either count. From what we’ve gathered, he turned a small chain of big-box stores into a small empire, then took that Web-side and now gives Bezos a run for his money. He’s in tight with the city government and his money buys all the cops he could need – and a lot of less-legal patsies besides, on both sides of the Thicket. We’ve been fightin’ a cold war against him since his arrival, but the Royal Circle eventually decided it was safer to move Courtly operations into the Shards after a particularly concentrated push by the Dragon’s forces under the cover of the tech bus protests of 2013. Some reason or other, the Dragon doesn’t meddle with the Shards, and we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth there, pally.

That’s how it’s been for the past decade, the Hold and the Dragon fighting a cold war on both sides of the Thicket. No one’s won, but they’ve kept him contained and kept it safe enough to be Lost in the City by the Bay, well, safe as it ever is.

It’s up to all of us to keep it that way."