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Such a place is hotly contested by the powers behind the Ascension War, and it is no miracle that one of the most successful chantries in combating the Technocracy lies here, in the heart of this microcosm.
Silicon Valley, the crown jewel of the Technocracy. Here the paradigm is pushed and engineered more and more every day. Just south of Berkeley, with Stanford University, Xerox PARC, hundreds of computer companies, and tens of biotechnology firms, this could well be considered the heart of the Technocracy in North America. But ringing Silicon Valley is a range of mountains, perched on the edge of civilization. A wild, rugged place, where cougars are occasionally found wandering down Main Street, where you can still buy property that doesn't even have power lines leading to it, where you can step off the trail and suddenly step back to the time before the coming of the Europeans to subjugate the continent. It is here where the Chantry of the Gold Coast lay, mostly unknown to the mages of the Technocracy.
The Chantry grounds themselves consist of a deep valley, sided by steep mointainsides to the north and south, and a cliff to the north. A large stream runs down from the top of the northern cliff down the heart of the valley, and out toward the San Lorenzo River.
Several buildings dot the preserve, listed as the Land Trust of Rafael Cantarro in the county records. Of these buildings, only the central one is of any importance. At the end of the road, this is the central gathering point for members of the Chantry, and includes the meeting hall, most of the training halls, and the "offices" of the Trust. No power runs into this preserve, which prides itself on being totally self-sufficient.
Then the Spanish came, bringing with them disease, death, and despair. The Dreamspeaker magi waged war against the Inquisitors, the conquistadors and the priests, but to no avail. Soon they were mostly all conquered.
During the time of the American conquest, the Inquisition in Spain was winding to a close. Several magi had sought to escape the burning torches and the equipment of torture that were the hallmark of the Inquisitors, and many of them found refuge by masquerading as the very people who were persecuting them, within the Church.
One such mage was Alejandro de Castille, who in his former life was a swordmaker and magi with the Order of Hermes. When the Inquisition began, he and the other members of his cabal were charged to infiltrate the Church and defuse this threat from within. They did not succeed, and of his original cabal, only Alejandro survived.
He rose slowly through the priesthood, always one step ahead of the Inquisitors that sought him. He looked hard for the chance to escape, however, and soon he found it, in the form of a missionary priest to the New World. Gladly accepting this mission into the unknown, he set sail on one of the first vessels bound for California, and the region near San Jose.
Their ship was forced ashore during a storm, while only a day's travel from the port of San Jose. Rather than wait and try to escape the settlement, Alejandro slipped out during the night, finding some magicks easier to do here. The ship's manifest marks him as having been lost in the storm, and wished good luck upon his soul.
Exploring the region, he soon found himself drawn toward the valley in the heart of the mountains. He felt the Power here, and knew that soon he would be able to find a place to bring his bretheren from the Old World and begin to reconstruct the centuries of learning that had been lost.
His letters told tales of mountains that reached for the sky, trees so thick you could not slip a sword between them, and game so rich that one could never starve. He also spoke of raging rivers, and wide beaches of sand that "glittered in the waning light of the sun, golden as the last rays of twilight". Thus the Chantry of the Gold Coast.
Over the next 4 years, Alejandro built a small settlement, sequestered high in the mountains, away from the prying eyes of the Church and the Spanish throne. He had brought over no fewer than 18 of his fellow Initiates, and a few of their acolytes as well, and they were well on their way to establishing a full-scale Hermetic College in the wilderness of California.
They did not count on the Dreamspeakers returning. Finding their sacred ground disturbed and defiled, they did not take kindly to their new bretheren, and thus war began. FOr many months they fought, magic on magic, stone against steel. Knowing that they would lose eventually, Alejandro vowed to make these "primitives" pay for destroying his dream.
Salvation came in the form of an expedition. A group of pioneers, from the Mission Santa Cruz, found their way near the valley, bringing with them the taint of civilization and the spirits of Corruption and Consumption. During the battle that ensued, the Hermetics and the Dreamspeakers found that they could do more together than they had ever dreamed seperate, and an alliance was formed.
This alliance was unsteady at first, but with repeated assaults by groups seeking entrance to the Valley, it grew in strength. In unity they found a new purpose, and began to extend their protectorate over most of what is now considered the Bay Area, and south to Monterey and Big Sur.
Then came the discovery of the Maze of Dreams. One of the female Adepts was roaming through the central Node and found a small conduit, leading through the Umbra. Soon she had found another Node, and more of these conduits. She began mapping these conduits, and the network of nodes, discovering that some of them drift, and sometimes conduits open and close. Each of these nodes was connected in turn to a small Horizon Realm, and through Prime and Spirit magics she was able to merge some f the smaller Nodes into larger ones, consolidating the strength into a new Node.
Aware of what their new secret meant, the leaders of the Chantry decided not to tell anyone save their successors what they had discovered, for fear of spies. And thus they began sloly consolidating more strength, waiting for the day when they would have to face the shining hordes of the Technocrats.
As it happened, that day would never come. Just as they were drawn by the rich potential of the Bay Area, so too were thousands of pioneers. The small port of San Jose became the capital city of the State of California, with San Francisco becoming the gateway to the Pacific. Once virgin land was carved into towns and then cities to house the people drawn by the dream that was California.
In the mid-1800s, the Chantry began to lose control over the lands it had held. Cannery Row was one of the first successes the Syndicate had in the area, turning the once beautiful coast of Monterey into a haven of industrial profit, reaping the oceans of their bounty. Shipping in San Francisco became big business, drawing people who exported and imported from China and Japan.
The Gold Rush brought thousands upon thousands more people to San Francisco and San Jose as they sought their fortunes. The growing pressure slowly edged out the influence of the Chantry, which had grown somewhat complacent with their success.
Then came a masterstroke by the leadership of the Chantry. In 1877, they approached the leaders of a few small cabals of Akashic Brothers that had come over from the Orient to seek work. As strange as this new land was, they were glad of any assistance, and soon the number of members of the Chantry again began to swell, revitalizing it and giving them the strength to survive the challenges of the future.
The Quake of 1907 is considered one of the most severe disasters in the history of North America. It levelled most of San Francisco, and severely damaged almost everything in the greater Bay Area. The members of the Chantry don't know what caused the quake, but being isolated in the mountains they were not as severely affected and thus had an incredible opportunity ahead of them. Out of the ashes of the quake was built a new Chantry... And a new Bay Area. With the older order gone, there was little to stop them from beginning to shape and reshape the Bay Area into an urban realm of their liking.
They did not count on two things, however, the first of which being the movement of an ancestral Chantry of the Cult of Ecstacy to San Francisco itself. Moving quickly to avert war, a truce was called between the two houses, though it has always been somewhat uneasy.
The Technocracy also proved to be incredibly resilient, and in the ashes of their old work, they created a vision of what they wished the world to be like. Factories, shopping facilities, and tract upon tract of housing began to spring up, and during World War II, they began funding a small company by the name of Lockheed, based in Sunnyvale. The age of space had begun.
The Chantry had always laid eyes on science as the tool of the Technocrats, and were very suspicious of the more technological Traditions, namely the Sons of Ether. But when faced with the growing encroachment of the Technocracy, in particular Iteration X, they felt it necessary to begn fighting fire with fire.
They adopted a small liberal arts college in Palo Alto, and over just ten years transformed it into a technological collosus, run mostly by the Sons of Ether. They kept the Stanford name when they took over, however, and their intervention is now somewhat minimal. But they succeeded in using this new college to begin to subvert the Technocratic paradigm from within.
The Virtual Adept revolution was the next event to shake the Bay Area, insofar as the Magi were concerned. After their success with the Sons of Ether, they quickly adopted the Virtual Adepts as brothers in arms, and following their prior success they melded a culture within another University, this time in the city of Berkeley.
During the 1960s, the Bay Area was one of the centers of the counterculture movement, spawning several bands and leaders of the time. A sort of behind the scenes war took place between the Scarlet Mansion and the Gold Coast, though not a war of spells and blades. Rather, they were both pushing the paradigm that was being created, until it finally broke amidst its own growing decadence. But both learned valuable lessons about the other, and a truce has existed between them ever since.
The modern Chantry faces several challenges as the Technocracy and the forces of Pentex begin to move in upon their lands. The times of them being able to easilly control the area are history, though they still hold a massive amount of sway on the persona of the area. In fact, it is one of the few areas where the paradigm is loose enough to allow some magic through (5% chance of the severity of a botch being reduced by 1), and this gives them hope.
What most don't realize is that there is an intricate kind of structure within the Chantry that defies classification by most. The traditional ranks are here, the Masters, Adepts, etc. But each Tradition represented seems to have its own hierarchy, with the exception of the Celestial Chorus, the Euthanatos, and the Verbeena, who are too poorly represented to have a true hierarchy.
There are some offices that are always held by members of each tradition represented, creating a central council somewhat analogous to the Congress of the United States. The offices are as follows:
Riteleader Order of Hermes Walker of the Ways Dreamspeaker Abbot/Abbess Celestial Chorus Sensei Akashic Brotherhood Herbmaster/mistress Verbeena Senior Professor Son of Ether Lead Programmer Virtual Adept Revelmaster/mistress Cultist of Ecstacy Executioner EuthanatosOne among these is elected every five years to the position of Chantrymaster/mistress, who is the effective leader of the whole Chantry. It is this person that other chantries deal with in any sort of diplomatic function.
Each office on the Council is elected by the members of that Tradition. The voting process begins by each person voting for who they believe to be the most competent to represent their affairs... Except themselves. Then the top two (or three if it's almost evenly split) and there is another election amongst the final candidates. This process is done annually.
There are other offices within the Chantry, however, that are about equal with the powers of the Council in regards to certain areas. These positions include the Sentinel, who is concerned about the security of the Chantry, the Seer, who is concerned with watching and learning of the motions of other supernatural (and natural) powers in the Bay Area, the Seneschal, who tends to the general day-to-day operations of the Chantry and the grounds, and the Barrister, who acts as arbiter, judge and legal counsel for the Chantry members. These positions are appointed by the Council, every five years, so that none of these positions is ever vacant at the same time another position (including Chantrymaster) is also vacant.
The only office that is held for life is that of Headmaster. The teacher of the new students is always, without question, a Hermetic, with a Dreamspeaker assisting. It is their charge to teach the Arts to the newest crop of initiates. In the case of the loss of the Headmaster or her assistant, the Council will select a replacement as appropriate.
The cabals themselves are often given a measure of autonomy, which confounds things even more. Entire cabals have been known to become subject to rebuke by the Council, but this is a rare occurrence. In the Bay Area especially, a mage learns the price of folly quickly on his or her own.
Some chantries of note that deal regularly with the Chantry of the Gold Coast:
The Scarlet Mansion: Relations are strained, but still close. After the altercations during the 1960s in the race to engineer mass-Awakening, they view each other with begrudging acceptance and respect.
Doissetep: Alternatively members of Doissetep are proud of their younger sibling chantry, and appalled at the unorthodox methods. Opinions are mixed, but strong in whatever direction they choose.
The Chantry is also one of the few Chantries that is actively researching new volumes on magic and the occult. The recent treatise on the Archaeology of the Ten Traditions by the members of the Triat have some of the more traditional Chantries up in arms, and their claims of the truth to the Atlantis and Lemuria myths are considered hodgepodge, though their scholarship has never once been called into doubt, simply their conclusions.
The libraries and research facilities are under heavy guard, considered to be the most important resources of the entire Chantry. Guards are always nearby, and no one is out of sight in the library. Needless to say, stealing or losing research materials is a serious offense.
Up to the NPC PageAnders Sandberg / nv91-asa@nada.kth.se