Northampton is a middle-sized town in the Pioneer Valley, around which are located several organizations and areas significant to the Garou.
(For the real town, see Northampton, Massachusetts)
Overview[]
Northampton is a city of roughly thirty thousand people in Hampshire County in Western Massachusetts. The town center sits at the intersection of Route 9 (Main Street), which runs east/west, and Route 5 (King Street to the north, Pleasant Street to the south), which runs north/south. Northampton's city hall is notable for its neo-Gothic stylings. The First Church of Northampton is notable as a key site of the First Great Awakening, a major religious transformation that affected both humans and Garou in the 18th century. The Mountain Street Reservoir provides Northampton with most of its drinking water. Northampton contains the villages of Florence and Leeds, reached by following Route 9 west toward the foothills.
To the east, the Connecticut River separates Northampton from the farming settlement of Hadley and the city of Amherst (home to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Amherst College). The Daily Hampshire Gazette is the most-circulated newspaper in the region. Most local alt-weeklies vanished in the 2000s.
History[]
In early 2023, shortly after Eater-of-Names' rebirth, the mayor of Northampton abruptly resigned, leaving municipal politics to the Expanded Provisional Council Disbursement Committee. This was partly motivated due to many members of the old administration's involvement in covering up the truth of the Big Calc in exchange for being cut in on the potential payout. ExProCoDisCom swiftly caved to lobbying from Huvud Development and Eater-of-Names and granted them rights to construct numerous housing units west of town, then scaled all the way up to STATZ by halfway through the year.
Building a massively expensive training facility on protected wetlands as the Valley's schools and municipal functions struggled for funding, and the Expanded Provisional Council refusing to disclose its budget, triggered a wave of protests across Northampton. Police shooting 'suspects' on extremely dubious grounds occurred almost weekly, and a permanent circle of police and barricades was formed around Northampton's fairy-tale castle of a city hall.
In February of 2024, after the death of Eater-of-Names, the Provisional Council was disbanded due to most of them being directly in the employ of the Black Spiral Dancer. One councilman resigned by throwing himself off the northwest turret of City Hall, another by shooting at his police bodyguards and dying in a hail of gunfire. The fiasco was significant enough to draw the personal attention of the governor of Massachusetts.
Locations[]
Banicki Gunworks[]
A gunsmithing facility historically run by David Banicki. Has been abandoned ever since its proprietor became a fomor and abandoned Northampton to live at the nearby barrows.
Byzance Coffee[]
Byzance is a new yet nevertheless decrepit-looking cafe run by Pembe Bozer.
Epicycle Bikes[]
Epicycle Bikes is a bicycle store with an eccentric reputation owned by Udolpho Plotinus.
Gorsky Manor[]
Gorsky Manor is an assisted care facility run by Alan Gorsky.
GRC Media Group[]
A small media company run by the Glass Walker ragabash Daphne Clear, which provides greenwashing services to companies in hot water. Daphne also covertly uses its resources to cover up traces of the Garou around town.
Rosemary Street[]
A poverty-stricken stretch of urban blight between the deep forest of the Broad Brook caern and the big box stores of Northampton proper. Baking-hot, broken asphalt and brick, weeds growing up through the sidewalk, leaf-jammed culverts, squatters, ghost kitchens, unregistered stores and warehouses—a population furtive, criminal, but not altogether wicked. Desperate people on the edge, and desperate spirits, too, of electricity and steel and carrion-eaters. The Gauntlet is deceptively thin here and the Umbral spirit-pantheon is almost omnipresent if one knows where (and how) to look: Wooden statues of Rat in loading bays, abandoned office complexes hiding boxes filled with floppy disks of Spider's memory data, hidden shrines to Simurgh letting his wings stretch from one end of the slum to the other. The Patron Spirits of the Bone Gnawer and Glass Walker tribes continue to receive tribute from confused and desperate humans.
Rosemary Antiques[]
Obscure enough for its proper name to be forgotten by all but its owner, The dusty and neglected antique store is in a brick building that's slowly collapsing under the weight of gravity. Most of its windows are boarded up; the ones out front, intended for display, are fogged, filthy, and graffitied. This place used to be full in better times, but little remains now, and most of that is junk: battered old cookware, ugly lamps, overlooked books. A cracked vitrine holds a few more interesting and valuable items: pocket watches, jewelry, statuettes. A middle-aged Chinese person of indeterminate gender watches customers from behind poker player sunglasses, smoking a cigarette from an Art Deco holder in the shape of a slender woman, their fingernails improbably long and curled. The proprietor houses many artifacts that act as a gateway to the gods in service to the more fundamental entity of Gorgon.
Turfside Diner[]
One of Rosemary Street's only actual restaurants, in contrast to all the ghost kitchens staffed by overworked immigrants. Though the diner's parking lot is full of weeds, its Art Deco sign is illuminated and pale blue lights shine from inside. Unlike the brick buildings nearby, the Turfside Diner appears built of solid local stone. The diner is inhabited by a goddess of hearth and home from halfway around the world and a millennium back, transferred to this confusing and dismal environment, forced to adapt, struggling to make her desires known—her need to spread joy and happiness, to bring people together.
Minor Locations[]
- Aldrich Street homeless shelter
- Calvin Theater
- Forbes Library
- Masonic Street recording studio
- Pulaski Park
- Smith College
Mortal Inhabitants[]
- Al Goultier
- Pembe Bozer
- Nomi Paskalis
- Udolpho Plotinus
Supernatural Inhabitants[]
Garou[]
Spirits[]
- Azeban
- Beetle
- Madame Mouse
- Pigeon
- Xaman Ek
Vampires[]
- Alan Gorsky