Boston Mage
Contents
Boston Mage Setting
A Mage the Awakening 2nd Edition Setting
Who's Who in Boston
The Wise
Places in Boston
The Neighborhoods
Boston is known for its role in the Revolutionary War and gets a vast amount of tourist trade due to the city’s history. Those who visit, however, discover Boston to be a city of exquisite architecture, high culture, excellent restaurants and intelligent, liberal-minded people. Any of these can be found throughout the city’s many neighborhood areas, and these are the mundane attractions that keep the Awakened flocking to the city.
Boston is a Frankensteinian city that has grown by razing hills, filling in marshes and portions of the bay and ravenously annexing nearby towns. The city’s character comes largely from its component neighborhoods, which themselves span the gamut from the urbane to the desolate. Boston proper may be a relatively wealthy city with a college-educated populace, but many of its outlying neighborhoods and suburbs have a much more industrial, blue-collar feel. Rightly or wrongly, more refined Bostonians often develop a bit of a siege mentality with regard to venturing beyond the comfortable gentility of Boston’s more civilized neighborhoods. This is far less prevalent now than it was 30 years ago at the nadir of Boston’s decline, but Boston is a very traditional city and old habits die hard.
For mages, this siege mentality is a reality of life. For them, however, the causes of this attitude are far more rational. For the Awakened, some areas really are much more dangerous than others, for any number of reasons.
The following list provides a taste of Boston’s neighborhoods. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it does emphasize places frequented by the Awakened and places with which mages are most likely to be familiar.
- Allston/Brighton
- Brookline
- Fenway
- The Fens
- Mattapan
- Dorchester
- Roxbury
- Back Bay
- South End
- Beacon Hill
- North End
- Downtown
- Chinatown
- South Boston
- Jamaica Plain
- Roslindale
Further Afield
Boston does not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, the city is at the heart of a sprawling megalopolis that extends north almost to New Hampshire and south most of the way to Providence, Rhode Island. Focusing on Boston proper would ignore many of the aspects that make Boston the haven it is for the Awakened. Beyond Boston’s greater metropolitan area are regions and towns that play an important role in the stories that unfold in Boston proper. Below are some of the suburbs and nearby communities that play prominent roles in the daily lives of Boston’s mages.
Western Mass
To the west of Boston, Massachusetts opens up into a dense mass of wilderness and rural areas dotted with small towns. Many Bostonians go west only to attend concerts or cultural events at the outdoor concert venue called Tanglewood, but western Massachusetts has its share of mages, some leading a solitary life amid the trees, others creating Awakened communities in the larger cities.
Mages are clear on one thing: western Massachusetts is dangerous. Those staying on the major roads are likely safe, but the less-traveled paths are surprisingly dangerous. Indian curses on Europeans, ruins of old Hallows, violently haunted sites and, most dangerous of all, werewolf-claimed territory (and the like) are relatively common in the dense wilderness of western Massachusetts. Any mage looking for trouble will likely find it.
East Mass
Boston sits on the ocean, but parts of Massachusetts extend farther into the Atlantic. All of Cape Cod and the two wealthy resort islands, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, lie east of Boston.
The waters off Boston have a longer history of shipping than most of the rest of the country. There are a number of old wrecks off the Massachusetts coast and no shortage of rumors of ghost ships — some quite notorious.
