Out of Character (OOC):
Chronicle: Mage 2: The Dethroned Queen
Venue: Mage: The Awakening 2nd Edition
Chronicle Storyteller: Jerad Sayler
Assistant Storytellers: Hannah Nyland & Alex Van Belkum
Los Angeles:
The Lay of the Land (Part 5)
The Ring & the Fringe
The Ring & the Fringe
“Perhaps no city in modern times has been so universally envied, imitated, ridiculed, and, because of what it may portend, feared.” – Encyclopedia Britannica
Los Angeles City Building Posts:
The Ring of Regents
The second “ring” of Los Angeles is a little more difficult to qualify. Stretching roughly from Encino through Burbank, around Pasadena and south to Long Beach as well as the Pacific coast from LAX to Ranchos Palos Verde, the Ring of Regents is a vast and widely varied area. These domains lay on the fringe of the vampire court’s influence, and technically are held by supernatural beings that serve as regents bound to honor the dictates of the Prince. And while many of the beings who claim domain in these areas are regents of the Court who were given their lands and titles by various Princes, this is really only a technicality. While some of these regents do regularly attend Court, enforce the Prince’s law, and honestly strive to be dutiful vassals, just as many could care less. And in reality, without the expressed permission of the regents in question, there is precious little that either Court or covenants could do in these areas. The Ring of Regents is a place where ambitious young vampires can be turned loose with promises of feeding rights and regency should they succeed; and complete oblivious should they fail. These domains also serve as a useful buffer to the lawless lands beyond. The Ring of Regents also includes Encino, Burbank, Long Beach, Ranchos Palos Verde and Anaheim.
City: Anaheim/Site: Disneyland
Anaheim, California, home of the “Happiest Place on Earth” (though Orlando, Florida might contest this) is strange for one very unusual reason: strange things don’t seem to happen here. Even as the city decays around it, this oasis remains untouched by the horrors of the Fallen World. Vampires cannot stand the area around Disneyland, Lupines avoid it like the plague, ghosts do not congregate here, and even mages report feeling uncomfortable. And no one is entirely certain why. The park is not located on a place of power, it does not seem to be holy ground, and no evidence of magic or a curse of any kind has been found. And yet every so often, when an overconfident vampire, foolish mage, or brave werewolf does try to carve out a hunting ground or lair here the attempt inevitably ends in failure, sometimes quietly, sometimes violently. This has led some to wonder if this land is not so much free of horror but rather protected by something even more horrible. If so, what price do residents pay for the peace they enjoy?
The Angeles National Forest was, in fact, the first national forest to be established in California, a fact that the locals are quite proud of. The forest’s 694,187 acres includes almost the entire San Gabriel Mountain range, providing the striking backdrop to the city of Los Angeles. Topography on the forest ranges from mountain peaks over 10,000 feet to low-lying canyon bottoms at a mere 1,200 feet above sea level. Dense pine and fir stands cover the higher elevations, while shady riparian areas and broad expanses of chaparral cloak the foothills and lower elevations. It’s a breathtaking sight, and incredibly popular with both visitors and locals, drawing over 3.2 million guests a year. In addition to numerous campgrounds, over 500 miles of trails, and designated hunting and fishing areas, the Forest also sports six ski resorts and is quite popular as a location for Hollywood films.
But the locals understand that for all this grandeur, they are best advised not to spend the night beneath its branches, or at least to stay in well-traveled areas. Every year foolish individuals, or unknowing tourists, do just that. The lucky ones even wake up the next morning. This is very much an “urban forest,” and not just because Los Angeles borders it on all sides. For every tourist looking to gawk at nature and every local just looking to get away from it all, there are two businessmen, politicians, or criminals who look to the forest as a way to conclude a dirty deal or dispose of evidence. With nearly 700,000 acres of land and over 500 miles of nature trails, it’s not hard to do either. The Forest Service is woefully inadequate to the task of policing this domain, and for the most part they don’t even try. The more studious rangers will patrol the trails to look for any signs of trouble, but all they’re likely to find is a bit of trash and the occasional body. And beyond these well-defined areas of the park the patrols are almost non-existent.
Dark things, and not just vampires, roam this forest after night falls. For vampires, the Forest is almost a feeding ground in its own right, and were it not located in the Fringe more would probably hunt here. Even so, it does serve as a common stopover for nomads and other travelers, particularly of Gangrel, looking for shelter and blood. Several packs of werewolves also dwell here, but they are easily avoided and generally don’t look to start a fight. The same remains true or the handful of mages and “witches” that make use of the forest for their rites and rituals. But all stay clear of this land’s regent, the dreadful Lady of the Forest. Azrael, a particularly old and angry vampire, claims the Angeles Forest as her own domain and kills all those who claim otherwise. Even the Court has extended a loose regency over the forest to her, though this far out such a proclamation is little more than a placating gesture.
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| Symbol of the Forest Lords |
Not much is known about the mysterious group of vampires known only as the Forest Lords. Many dismiss them as myths, little more than the campfire stories bandied about by nomads or fanciful tales told to keep neonates in line. Many Kindred know better, but even they don’t know much of this group. The unbound in the Fringe know the most, and that can be boiled down to three facts:
1) The Lords seem to have ties to several local packs of werewolves, and maybe even a cabal of mages.
2) The Angeles National Forest is their domain, and they do not tolerate trespassers.
3) All of these powerful, feral vampires owe allegiance to an even older and more powerful vampire whose true name has been lost.
Thought to number about half a dozen or so, including their undisputed leader Azrael, the Forest Lords do not much participate in goings on in Los Angeles. The forest is their domain, their haven, and their hunting ground and they are loath to leave it, suggesting to some that they might be part of the obscure Annunaku bloodline. But when one of them does venture into the city, the wise simply get out of the way. Only once has Azrael ever attended Court, and then it was only to drag in the brutalized and torpid body of a fugitive who tried to take refuge in her forest.
Other entities have been spotted in the park: Magath spirits of synthetic and organic resonance due to the collision of urban and wildness, Azlu, and Abyssal entities from a Scelesti garden somewhere deep in the forest.
The Fringe
A no-man’s land. It doesn’t get any lower that this. If a vampire finds themselves in the Fringe, then odds are they burned all of your bridges in L.A. proper and had better get used to being unaligned. It’s not that these territories are all that violent, or that vampires from the center never travel there (though it is rare), it’s simply that this far from the known centers of power, wealth, and blood the Fringe seems a barren wasteland. This is, of course, not true, but out here the vampire court’s influence goes from slim to none very rapidly. A few, very few, areas are under the control of formally recognized regents, but these regents controlled their domains long before any formal recognition. Indeed the Court’s “recognition” of these lords and ladies was more a recognition of reality than anything else.
Rather loosely defined, the Fringe is anything beyond the Regent’s Ring out to the far edges of the suburbs. In reality, though, the Ring itself is in constant flux as old regents fall and new ones rise, and several powerful packs of Lupines are known to roam the fringes of the city, keeping the vampire population in the farthest reaches very low. Eventually you just hit the Edge, where the city gives way to the wilderness of mountains and desert. The Brujah are strong in this area, riding the south desert highways by night while packs of werewolves keep the mountains and the north under their claws. Although its reputation has certainly grown, the Fringe is nevertheless a dangerous place for vampires. There is blood to be had, but feeding is not nearly as easy as it is in L.A. proper. And while many consider it an advantage that the Court and covenants hold no sway here, it also means that the only justice available is that which you are willing or able to dish out. The unbound rule here and individuals scratch out what territory they can. The Fringe is also the home of malcontents and fools who thought that the city’s reputation for the strange meant they could ignore the Veil. It is also widely believed that large bands of nomads move through the Fringe, temporarily settling before moving on again.
For a mage, the Fringe is where Left-Handed, Nameless, Apostates, Banishers and other malcontents resided before the concilium fell, and many still remain.
City: Palmdale
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| Elizabeth Lake |
Palmdale is in the center of northern Los Angeles County. The San Gabriel Mountains separate Palmdale from the City of Los Angeles proper. Its population was 152,750 at the 2010 census, up from 116,670 at the 2000 census. Palmdale is the 33rd most populous city in California. In 2013, the Palmdale / Lancaster urban area had an estimated population of 513,547.
Site: Elizabeth Lake
Elizabeth Lake is a natural lake that lies directly on the San Andreas Fault in the northern Sierra Pelona Mountains, in northwestern Los Angeles County.
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| Sketch of Lake Monster |
Legend has it that a monster lives in Elizabeth Lake (17 miles west of Palmdale on Elizabeth Lake Road). It was said of old that the Devil himself created the lake and kept one of his pets in it. The stories go as far back as the 1830s when Don Pedro Carrillo abandoned a ranch on the lakeshore after a mysterious fire. In 1855, Americans settlers tried moving into the area but later abandoned it claiming that it was haunted. Not long afterward, Don Chico Lopez and two other men claimed to witness the ascension of a huge monster with bat-like wings from the lake. Lopez also abandoned his lakeside ranch, selling out at a loss. He claimed that his livestock were quickly disappearing. Rancher Miguel Leonis, who later acquired the lands, also claimed to sight a griffin-like creature over the lake. In 1886, yet another rancher, Don Felipe Rivera, claimed to see a beast over the lake. There have been no similar sightings reported since the 1880s.
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| Aboleth Acamoth in Twilight Form |
The creature has been described as having bat wings, the neck of a giraffe, the head of a bulldog, six legs, a length of at least fifty feet, and emit a horrible nauseating stench. Several ranchers and owners of land around Elizabeth Lake abandoned or sold their property at losses to get away from the beast. Supposedly Spanish missionaries dubbed the lake Laguna del Diablo and Indian Legend also supports the rumors that the Devil created the lake. Part of the lake is situated directly over the San Andreas Fault.
What is the monster that lives in the lake? It could be a large cryptid, an ancient enemy of Werewolves, or even a slumbering Acamoth… Chimera knows it as the location of an Acamoth known as the Aboleth. But Acamoth do not usually move around or have a physical form.
Site: The San Andreas Fault
Site: The San Andreas Fault
Mystically speaking L.A. is an interesting place, a fact that probably wouldn’t surprise many. But geomantically speaking it is an absolute treasure mine to those who know how to use it. The San Andreas Fault brings energy up from deep within the Earth where it meets with the power of the Pacific Ocean. Combined with the sheer energy of the city, and the buried blood of its past tragedies, the night air practically sings with power. Of course, there is a downside to all of this. The massive amount of energy available means that Los Angeles is a tangled snarl of ley lines that even the finest mystics and mages would be unable to untangle. As such, even though the city sports numerous nodes, many of them shift and even dissipate rapidly. Some move as often as once a month, a rare few even faster. This unstable nature means that permanent nodes and hallows are extremely rare. Interestingly enough, the most powerful hallows remain in public buildings and have not moved since the Conflagration.
The San Andreas Fault is one of the most powerful leylines in the world. This massive Leyline runs for a thousand miles along the coast of California. It is part of the reason for the shifts in Hallows and the resonance that leaks in from the ring of Fire. It is exposed in Palmdale, on the other side of Los Angeles and that is where its immense power can be tapped into.
City: Calabasas
Calabasas is a city in Los Angeles County located in the hills west of the San Fernando Valley and in the northwest Santa Monica Mountains between Woodland Hills, Agoura Hills, West Hills, Hidden Hills, and Malibu. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 23,058, up from 20,033 at the 2000 census. The city was formally incorporated in 1991. It is noted for its wealthy residents and gated neighborhoods.
Site: The Leonis Adobe
Leonis Adobe, built in 1844, is one of the oldest surviving private residences in Los Angeles County and one of the oldest surviving buildings in the San Fernando Valley. In 1961, the adobe had fallen victim to vandalism, and its owner applied for a permit to raze the structure and erect a supermarket in its place.
Preservationists succeeded in having the adobe declared a Historic-Cultural Landmark (the first structure in Los Angeles receiving the designation) in 1962. It is known as one of the most haunted sites in Los Angeles County, and it was profiled in the British paranormal television series Most Haunted in 2005.
Preservationists succeeded in having the adobe declared a Historic-Cultural Landmark (the first structure in Los Angeles receiving the designation) in 1962. It is known as one of the most haunted sites in Los Angeles County, and it was profiled in the British paranormal television series Most Haunted in 2005.
The adobe was restored and is operated as a living museum. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
Miguel and Espiritu Leonis originally inhabited the restored adobe. Miguel was a Basque immigrant who aggressively ranched much of the western part of the San Fernando Valley. He acquired a bad reputation for his harsh treatment of any perceived intruder or squatter on his land (much of which was legally public domain), hauling them to court and jail or allegedly just shooting them on the spot. He became one of the most hated men in the county. He died in a wagon accident in 1889, but it was rumored that he had been murdered. Miguel left almost nothing to his Indian wife, Espiritu, in his will, forcing her to fight his relatives in court over possession of the adobe and lands. Local authorities, having little interest in the well-being of an Indian woman, drew out the case until her death in 1906. Afterward, her son from a previous marriage acquired the property but agreed to sell to Miguel’s relatives in 1922.
Liminal Spaces
Raves
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| Rave in an abandoned warehouse |
While more sophisticated people prefer the more famous clubs like Confessions or the Asylum, many supernatural denizens of Los Angeles prefer their entertainment to be a bit earthier and a lot less restrained. The massive parties known as Raves are quite popular for this reason. Usually held by teenagers and other young people in abandoned warehouses and hangars; it’s a place to meet and greet, as well as a venue in which loud music, drugs, and sex are easily available.
Hallows & Leylines
Mystically speaking L.A. is an interesting place, a fact that probably wouldn’t surprise many. But geomantically speaking it is an absolute treasure mine to those who know how to use it. The San Andreas Fault brings energy up from deep within the Earth where it meets with the power of the Pacific Ocean. Combined with the sheer energy of the city, and the buried blood of its past tragedies, the night air practically sings with power across the entire Pacific Rim. Of course, there is a downside to all of this. The massive amount of energy available means that Los Angeles is a tangled snarl of ley lines that even the finest mystics and mages would be unable to untangle. As such, even though the city sports numerous Hallows, many of them shift and even dissipate rapidly. Some move as often as once a month, a rare few even faster. This unstable nature means that permanent nests of power are extremely rare.
Leylines and Hallows in Los Angeles tend to drift and change, flare up and flare out as time goes on. But some Hallows have stayed the same, concentrated on large public works buildings in the downtown area. The only constant ley lines are the Ring of Fire and the San Andreas Fault.
Infrastructure
The major Freeways of Los Angeles and indeed most of the west coast is part of massive systems of God-Machine infrastructure. Layers upon layers of systems from redundant power grids, telephone systems, etc. Everything builds upon power from something else. The Hallows were engineered. They are junk, sabotaged in subtle ways or made to rapidly. As a result they don’t work well and brownouts, systemic system errors, and other general weirdness happen quite a bit. LA is a huge hub of the God-Machine and powerful angels guard its systems. However demons hide between these colossi and the whole system is one major failure away from a total system crash that will trigger another earthquake the likes of which will cause California to drop into the sea…
The Undercity
Unlike many other large cities, Los Angeles does not have an extensive underground network of tunnels. Subways exist (notably the Red and Orange Lines), but most public transportation is conducted by above ground rail or bus. Large sewer networks and access tunnels have, of course, been carved, but the massive tunnels of the old sewers have been bricked up for years. For reasons no one can positively identify, Los Angeles is a city that avoids looking underground. There are, of course, many practical reasons (from geology, to finance, to economic viability and government corruption) for this, but many cannot help but wonder if something else is responsible.  |
| Nosferatu in Warrens |
Regardless of the efforts of city government and police to keep things quiet, stories persist. Stories of abandoned tunnels, storage bunkers, lost crypts and forgotten platforms constructed or discovered when the subways were first being carved, only later to be sealed away. And if you look out the window in just the right spot you can catch a glimpse of strange things as the train passes. Abandoned platforms, empty tunnels, boltholes, fallout shelters, and even stranger things.
For example, a proposed line to Santa Monica was abruptly abandoned during construction. Officially a geological instability that resulted in the loss of a boring machine created concerns about the tunnel’s safety, thus forcing its closing. Unofficially, the workers that had built the tunnel were given a generous severance package, quietly split up, and then let go. The tunnel plans have subsequently been “lost” by the Department of Transportation. Other stories from the 1940s discuss the discovery of a body washed out into the bay. Although not a terribly uncommon event, a subsequent search of the sewers discovered several other bodies (mostly of the homeless) that appeared to have been mauled to death, though zoologists failed to identify what had inflicted the wounds. The animal responsible was never found, but workers reported seeing strange things and hearing odd noises out of the shadows. Four months later the Department of Sanitation ordered several sections sealed off without explanation. In the seventies some of these tunnels were reopened and searched by police, but within a few weeks were sealed again. No one, not even work crews, have set foot in the tunnels since.
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| Huntspawn |
Most people scoff at such tales, and even the preternatural community is skeptical, but beware the underground, just in case. Hopi legends were said to describe a race of “lizard people” ((Servitors of the God-Machine)) who built three great underground cities near the Pacific Coast, including one beneath Los Angeles, some 5,000 years ago. In 1934, mining engineer W. Warren Shufeld took up the cause of researching these legends and locating the cities. Shufeld reported that the city beneath Los Angeles was laid out in the shape of a lizard that extended from Dodger Stadium to the downtown Central Library. Using a device Shufeld called a “radio X-ray,” he claimed to have located tunnels and a treasure room beneath Fort Moore Hill in downtown Los Angeles. After acquiring funds to do some excavating, Shufeld obtained permission from the authorities to drill a 350-foot shaft. The work was interrupted by cave-in concerns and, shortly thereafter, Shufeld disappeared.
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| Larger Huntspawn |
Still, the curious urban explorers flock into the subways and the old sewers seeking some inkling of the truth, whatever it may be. Most return with nothing but filth, or perhaps some interesting stories. Others never return at all. A small group of loosely aligned vampires, known as the Tunnel Rats, do make their lairs underground in the Warrens beneath Hollywood, but these strange Kindred do not speak of what, if anything, they have ever encountered. Yet the filthy, bedraggled, and more than slightly insane look that many of these vampires sport leads some to wonder...
Homeless squatters will sometimes break into parts of the Undercity for shelter, especially in the more dilapidated parts of the city. The Mysterium believes there is an Temple from the Time Before but it’s protected by bestial guardians that patrol the sewers ((Huntspawn)). Rumors or lizard people go hand in hand with the urban legend of finding huge alligators in the sewers. Swarms of rats and other vermin under control of the Tunnel Rats patrol the dark and Beshlu gnaw verges into the Shadow.
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