New Albion

New Albion during the Steampunk Era, art by Sarah DeBuck

**New Albion** is the central city of Paul Shapera's works. It was built spontaneously and ever since the first contact with Elysium it was repeatedly on the brink of destruction. New Albion is a place of improbable, yet possible things. It is the home of many of the extraordinary creatures, characters, groups and concepts. New Albion was first featured in *The Dolls of New Albion* and was the main setting of the following three albums in the *New Albion Tetralogy*. Later it would appear in various albums either as a mention, side location or a major setting.

## Founding

New Albion, being the legendary and mystical location it is, had a legendary founding. Several hundreds of years before Annabel McAlistair unknowingly started the demise of New Albion, a Gambler and a Monk walked through the endless prairies of the north, having a debate on chance, God and fate. They could not agree on anything, so they decided to play a card game to settle the question.

They stopped their roaming and started playing a never-ending game of cards. Not long after, people started gathering to watch the game that never ends. They first put up shelters against the rain and slowly started building streets, churches, bars and homes. Over the course of a few years, a spot the Gambler and the Monk had chosen for their experiment became a fully functional settlement.

As the two dealt the final hand and the game was about to be done, the Gambler cried out and swore he would be back to finish the game as he died.

## Steampunk Era

New Albion was considered a beautiful city with bustling bars, machines and cafes. Even in those days some may consider Golden, there were some issues but they were considered a part of daily life. A red-haired dwarf ruled the gangs of the city and decided on its fate with a pair of silver dice.

The zeppelins few high above the city. New Albion housed the Alchemists' Guild in the Ashland Street, requiring applicants to make a glass pearl from a young girls dreams. Hearing of it and assuming it was full of treasures a group of thieves once broke in to steal the pearls but they were found the next morning sitting in the corners of the room unperturbed. Apparently, there was a twilight mist containing aphrodisiac which made people copulate in the doorways.

Somewhere in the buzzing city, a couple of good-standing people had a daughter, Annabel. Annabel was pressured to be a high-achiever in life. Even when she would get into troubles with her teachers for it, her father praised her.

The pressure of being the best became Annabel's obsession that she never truly developed her social bonds. Having no friends, Annabel grew into an incredibly shy person. One of the most important decisions which defined the course of New Albion's future was Annabel's attendance at a party where young Jasper showed up. The two of them, knowing each other only in passing, talked for a long while. Jasper told Annabel of his arranged marriage, which was set for the next day. The two of them kissed and parted.

At some point Annabel was expelled from school because of her macabre interest in experimenting with corpses. She was in love with Jasper, the only person who paid any proper attention to her. So, after Jasper died in an accident, after living an unhappy life with his wife and seeing only traces of happiness in his daughter Fay, Annabel's fixation on him took a dark turn.

After experimenting for a while, Annabel managed to bring Jasper back to life and put him in a doll. This ended tragically with Jasper incredibly unhappy being back in the land of the living. Annabel dismantled him and left her notes hidden in the attic.

Annabel married and had a son, Edgar. After she died he was heart-broken but he later fell in love with Jasper's daughter Fay. After she turned his marriage proposal down for another man, Edgar was outraged. Wandering the house and looking through the family memorabilia, Edgar found Annabel's notes and attempted the experiment himself.

He succeeded in bringing back the dead and started a business, bringing the loved ones back to the citizens of New Albion. He also brought back Jasper in order to blackmail Fay into returning to him. His business grew and the dolls quickly flooded the streets of New Albion.

After Edgar's son Byron and Amelia joined the Voodoopunk movement, they advocated making a doll the mayor of New Albion. This created a big political divide. After Jasper composed a new song in attempts to communicate, it spread through the city and all the dolls started singing it. It was a song of how hard it was to live and how much he wished to return to Elysium. The song affected Amelia who was in love with Byron (who was gay and could not love her back). Amelia killed herself after writing the note containing mostly the lyrics of the song. The citizens quickly blamed the dolls and feared they would make everyone kill themselves. This, fueled by Byron's misunderstood public speeches, quickly became violent and the dolls were thrown in the bonfire.

The chaos in New Albion turns into such violence that the government gets involved and uses the chaos to impose martial law. Byron manages to hide Jasper in his house and lives out the rest of his days in misery, with a trophy wife and a daughter, Priscilla.

Jasper and Priscilla stay alone in the big house and start playing the never-ending game of cards to pass the time. New Albion is no longer the place it once was - now it turned into a police state. Hearing Jasper's longing for the afterlife, Priscilla breaks the cycle of the never-ending card game by calling the police and sacrificing herself so that Jasper would find his peace. The soldiers arrive to execute both of them, but one of them sees Priscilla's love for Jasper and her heroism moves him so that he pledges to start a rebellion dedicated to her memory.

## The Civil War

Soldier 7285 puts a truth serum in the water of the Parlament, thus starting a civil war. Later it is revealed he is taken into custody and his fate is unknown. Executing him, as Lloyd Allen says, would make a saint out of him and fuel the revolution.

Over the course of the following decade, the war slowly grows. The rebels bomb the city and in one of those bombings kill John O'Brien's wife. Bitter and depressed, John takes the Government's offer to be turned into a super-soldier fighting against the rebels who killed his wife.

At the same time, a machine known as MCG is talked about and whichever side gets it will gain the upper hand in the war. John is employed by the Government to take a platoon of soldiers to a substation where the MCG is. At the same time, his sister Jackie, fighting for the rebels and leading the radicalized Voodoopunks, gets the machine from John's daughter, Constance.

The final battle for New Albion starts when all the forces meet in The Crier's Boulevard. The MCG is used to possess the minds of all the soldiers with the Voodoopunks' songs of the dead, but he song spreads through the city pushing the whole of New Albion to complete annihilation. Constance manages to prevent this by singing another, optimistic song. However, the recuperated soldiers are now able to fight once more. The battle ends with Jackie and John O'Brien dying to protect Constance, but John takes down the soldiers with him.

The rebels storm the defenseless Parlament but they are still divided and they do not form a government. The city is separated into eight districts with check-points in between.

## Search For Elysium

After the Civil War had ended, Connor Morgan and his wife, both part of the Voodoopunk movement, conceive a daughter but Connor's wife gives her to the Arcadia Corp (run by the Voodoopunks). She is turned into the first prototype of the AI. This causes a divide in their marriage and they get divorced.

Both have children of their own afterward. Connor spends his years working against the Voodoopunks, hating them for the loss of his daughter. This causes a great divide between him and his son Lee, who falls in love with Connor's first wife's son Adrian.

Lee and Adrian are a part of the Voodoopunks and they join the Project Elysium. The Voodoopunks use the power of their corporation and the scientific breakthroughs to create a portal to reach the promised lands of the afterlife where they plan to build a new city.

However, Connor uses his influence with the City Council to cut the funding of the project but is quickly tricked into giving the money back, when Lee pretends to be possessed by the Voodoopunks. He gives the Voodoopunks their funding, expecting them all to leave New Albion for good, leaving him and his son alone. However, Lee and Adrian use the opportunity and with all other Voodoopunks cross through the portal and reach Elysium only to find it is hell.

At the same time, Connor gets a warrant to shut down Arcadia Corp. Before the Voodoopunks can get back from Elysium through their portal, Connor, not knowing Lee is trapped on the other side with the rest of them, dismantles the portal. He is happy to leave all the Voodoopunks on the other side whatever may happen to them but when he comes home and finds that Lee is missing he realizes his mistake.

Connor spends the rest of his life working on the portal. He uses all the means necessary, including his daughter turned AI and a girl from asylum, Rachael, who he suspects is Adrian reincarnated to reach Elysium. He manages to get the portal working twenty years after he had shut the corporation down. He sends Rachel and the AIs, Mascot 3000 to the other side to get Lee back.

Mascot 3000 explains that the vicious Creatures that are killing everyone in Elysium are a sort of blood cells of the afterlife, purging those who are still living as they do not belong there. Mascot 3000 gives the Voodoopunks a choice: they can cross through the portal and be reincarnated or they can become AIs just like her. Lee and Rachel stay behind as the process starts and just before Lee can be uploaded (per his father's request, so they can be together at last) he is killed by the Creatures.

The Creatures reveal that Rachel is not the reincarnation of Adrian, but that Connor is. Rachel is, in fact, reincarnated Brija, Alice, Priscilla and Constance and is offered to stay in Elysium since she was granted the pass on many previous occasions when she died.

Back in New Albion, a race of AIs now exists. Connor is left waiting for Lee's return and his fate is not clear. Presumably, he dies waiting.

## AIs and Time War

AIs start researching time and space in New Albion and discover tunnels beneath the city. They find that they can have contact with future New Albion but they find a message left for them in one of the tunnels. It comes from the Monastery in the Western Mountains. The message was left during the AIs' attack on the Monastery in the far future. The message begs the past AIs to prevent it.

Mary, the queen of AIs, understands that in the future all the AIs abandon their memories of empathy and decide to make themselves post-physical creatures. For it, the AIs will need to destroy New Albion with a nuclear implosion. She hatches a plan to create a narrative she can influence and thus affect the collective unconscious, affecting the future as a result.

Mary fails in this plan, but the AIs are destroyed in a battle, leaving Mary all alone, still trying to control narratives. Her fate is unknown, but the AIs are prevented form destroying the future New Albion.

## Later Years

New Albion is the setting of *The Forgotten Meme*, but not a lot is known of the state of it. Beneath New Albion there is a junkyard of the cyberspace. From it The Forgotten Meme escapes and sees New Albion with its neon lights and huge buildings. New Albion is a dark place now and a new trend emerged there. People indulge in VR games where their minds are eaten by the creatures formed from the abandoned cyber-information

## Trivia

* New Albion was originally named New Camden, after Camden Town in London.