This is actually something for my Let's Read threads over on RPGnet; I plan on the main character of those threads eventually joining the Sworn when the Contagion Chronicle comes out, and so I made a city for him to be in that's riddled by the contagion: New Bethlehem (though it's officially been renamed New Beth, to try and be less offensive), a utopian dream of a rogue Puritan that went horribly, horribly awry from almost day one, and now exists as a decaying husk of a port regarded largely as New York City's embarrassing screw-up of a cousin. The literal American Mafia reigns supreme, crime and drug abuse is rampant, and that's just the mundane side of things; the supernatural world is just as crooked and corrupt, to say nothing of the endemic infection by the Contagion-the city literally changes shape, new districts that personify its vices and urban blights popping in and out of existence, and things are so miserable and disorganized that the mortals simply can't tell the difference between a normal district and a Contagion one until people erupt in barbed wire, tentacles, and chitinous police uniforms.
Problem is, I also want New Beth to be a setting in its own right, because just being an urban hellscape; the New Beth story arc is about the people trying to save it from itself. So there's something redeemable there-I want it to come off as a city that is less inherently doomed and more a city where everyone who could just stopped trying after a disaster (specifically, one of the families summoning an urbiphage from mythology to ruin a rival utterly, and naturally it fed on the rest of the city too, causing a hideous economic downturn that set it off on its path towards self-destruction).
So, a little help here? I have the founder as a person who has been scorned by history for his fanaticism-because the Puritans didn't want to admit he was really exiled because he was an idealistic heretic, namely believing that the Puritan place of women was a sign of corruption in the faith, because it was a woman who proved so wise and pure that she was chosen to bear God's son. If Joseph had been more pure, he reasoned, then Jesus would be sent down in physical form without all that mucking about with gestation; no, God wanted the Messiah to have a mother. He still believed that Eve was weak and easily tempted, but one must be tempted to understand that what the Devil offers is nothing worth having. This caused a bit of schism, obviously, and the fact that he was a latent telepath who was capable of sensing the hypocrisies and hidden sins of the elders and husbands (and throwing it in their faces) didn't help ease tension (that may also have been why he became so much ahead of his time-with telepathy came empathy for all people, and the understanding that many teachings about people were simply not true). So, he took a significant portion of his followers and moved to the southern part of what would become New York, and founded the colony of New Bethlehem. Naturally, he was later murdered (though I'd like help on who murdered him, for tragedy without unfortunate implications), and his geist still haunts the city as the Scarlet Preacher to this day, bemoaning the loss of his dream.
Problem is, I also want New Beth to be a setting in its own right, because just being an urban hellscape; the New Beth story arc is about the people trying to save it from itself. So there's something redeemable there-I want it to come off as a city that is less inherently doomed and more a city where everyone who could just stopped trying after a disaster (specifically, one of the families summoning an urbiphage from mythology to ruin a rival utterly, and naturally it fed on the rest of the city too, causing a hideous economic downturn that set it off on its path towards self-destruction).
So, a little help here? I have the founder as a person who has been scorned by history for his fanaticism-because the Puritans didn't want to admit he was really exiled because he was an idealistic heretic, namely believing that the Puritan place of women was a sign of corruption in the faith, because it was a woman who proved so wise and pure that she was chosen to bear God's son. If Joseph had been more pure, he reasoned, then Jesus would be sent down in physical form without all that mucking about with gestation; no, God wanted the Messiah to have a mother. He still believed that Eve was weak and easily tempted, but one must be tempted to understand that what the Devil offers is nothing worth having. This caused a bit of schism, obviously, and the fact that he was a latent telepath who was capable of sensing the hypocrisies and hidden sins of the elders and husbands (and throwing it in their faces) didn't help ease tension (that may also have been why he became so much ahead of his time-with telepathy came empathy for all people, and the understanding that many teachings about people were simply not true). So, he took a significant portion of his followers and moved to the southern part of what would become New York, and founded the colony of New Bethlehem. Naturally, he was later murdered (though I'd like help on who murdered him, for tragedy without unfortunate implications), and his geist still haunts the city as the Scarlet Preacher to this day, bemoaning the loss of his dream.
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