Seattle, WA (Mage)

*A little learning is a dangerous thing ...*

*- Alexander Pope*

**The City**

Seattle has about eight hundred thousand residences, three million in the metro area. It is the largest city in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. It is situated on an isthmus between the Puget sound, an inlet of the Pacific ocean, and Lake Seattle. It is one of the largest shipping ports in the U.S. and a major gateway to East Asia.

The city is a center of shipping and a major air traffic hub. It also has a lot of high tech industry, including software, aerospace, and a growing biotech industry. The city is also known for its hundreds of coffee shops and roasters. The logging industry is still present but has slowly been replaced by high tech. It has a high minimum wage which makes it very friendly to artists and musicians. It is known for its Jazz and Rock scene, as well as its indie films.

The city and bay are surrounded by heavily forested mountains with lots of wildlife. It is sometimes known as the Emerald City because of all the greenery. The weather is overcast and dark three out of four days of the year, and it rains half of the days of the year, so it is also sometimes known as the Rainy City. It used to be known as the Queen City.

Native Americans have inhabited the region for about four thousand years. The Duwamish were once a prosperous tribe. White explorers first came in the late seventeen hundreds. Eventually settlers established a small town known as New York Aliki (Aliki means “by and by” or “someday, in the future” in the Native language). Eventually the city came to be known as Seattle, after Chief Seattle, a prominent Duwamish leader.

The city came to have a large Chinese population. In 1885 there was a massive anti-Chinese riot. During World War II, many of the city’s Japanese residents were displaced and sent to nearby internment camps. It took many years for families affected to reclaim lost and stolen property. 13 people were murdered in 1983 in a massacre at the Wah Mee, an illegal gambling house, as part of a dispute between warring triad gangs.

In 1999, the city was shaken by protests and riots surrounding the general conference of the World Trade Organization. There was also a large riot caused by seemingly random acts of unprovoked violence, murder, and vandalism on Mardi Gras, 2001, that did not end until a 6.8 Mw earthquake shook the entire city.

**The Free Council**

The Free Council Assembly is the dominant political force among the Awakened in Seattle. There are somewhere between two to three hundred mages in Seattle and the majority of them align Free Council. As is frequently the case among mages, especially Free Council, there are many factions, but the two dominant ones are the conciliar group that advocates working with Diamond mages to take a defensive stand against Seers and Banishers, and a militant group that refuses to work with members of the Atlantean orders, and advocates for a offensive posture towards the Seers. The extreme members of this group are actively at work on projects aimed at ending the Lie once and for all and dream of a day when all of humanity will awaken.

**spellacademy.com**

There has been a recent surge in the number of awakenings in the Seattle area, as well as around the world. A group of like minded mages, functioning more or less as a cabal, have formed a new online mage education program to meet the rising demand. The group functions on an anarchistic model that eschews hierarchy between teachers and students, promotes free thought and discussion and encourages new and radical ideas regarding willworking. Members of the site can take master classes from more experienced mages or work together on projects, such as creating a wiki based online lorehouse.

**The Diamond**

While the Free Council is dominant in Seattle, the other orders are present in small numbers (very small numbers in the case of the Silver Ladder). The Guardians of the Veil keep an eye on the shipping and airports especially, as well as the various online media outlets, film and music, and other “opinion makers”.

**Seers**

There is a lot of money coming in and out of Seattle, which means power. And while it seems like the Lie is very weak, and revolution is in the air, there are always forces of backlash present. And behind those forces lurk the Seers of the Throne.

**The Unknown**

A city with less than ninety days of daylight a year. Nicknamed the Emerald City and the Queen City. Surrounded by woods and wild animals. Native Americans. Gateway to Asia. Acres of shipping containers with who-knows-what inside. High Tech industry, gigantic supercomputers, and Biotech. Hydroelectric power plants. Saw mills.