Setting - Freistatt, Minnesota
Freistatt is a thriving, bustling metropolitan community in Minnesota, was originally founded in the late 1800's on the southwest side of a three-river convergence. Over the centuries the town and grown and spread to all side of the convergence and currently has a population 3.5 million. Despite this large population, the city is quite compact. An easy one-half to one hour drive will have you in more rural environments. As is typical of a lot of large cities, it is made of various suburbs that have been incorporated over time.
*DISCLAIMER: Geographic note, this city is loosely based on the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, and surrounding suburbs. Some geographical features of the area may be different in-game from real life.
Area History
The history of these United States follows the same timeline as real life history, for the most part. The timeline starts to diverge at the appearance of the red star, Talos (to those that could see it), at the end of President Clinton's term.
It took almost two decades for the timelines to diverge (Real life vs in-game). The first major change was that the second term of our first black president, President Obama, was followed by the election of the first female president, Dayna Chastain, in 2016, along with her vice president Jeni Betancourt.
The voting was contentious and resulted in debates over the use of "Rank Choice Voting" in Minnesota and Michigan, which eventually landed before the Supreme Court. The votes were recounted and verified, and Dayna won with less than a one-percent margin in both states.
This began a split between Democrats and Republicans, and their bases especially. As a result several liberal states moved to enact ranked choice voting, and conservative state legislatures banning it outright.
Then in 2017, Covid-19 hit. The 19th variant of a coronavirus was discovered, it ran wild within months through the world population. It wasn’t massively fatal, but those stricken with it were affected for months afterwards. President Chastain fell ill for over 14 months, and the vice president passed away one month into the president’s convalescence. Unfortunately, this led to the Speaker of the House, Hester Shore, of the opposing party, to take charge. During Hester's tenure as acting president, several changes occurred.
First, the death of two Supreme Court justices and their subsequent replacement by the temporary president angered many on both sides of the aisle with how quickly they were rammed through. The disease imbalanced Congress, changing on a week by week basis. State legislatures, already upset over the electoral vote, began several distinct new rulings, dividing further along ideological lines. Several lawsuits were pushed through the new Supreme Court, including attacks on civil liberties. Propaganda began attacks on liberal versus conservative states, with rhetoric high and state borders becoming semi-militarized to counteract influence.
The final straw came when Roe v. Wade was overturned - the newly conservative Supreme Court enacting this shortly before the return of the President Chastain in 2019. Liberal states revolted, passing laws protecting as many rights as possible, enshrining them into state law with trigger conditions that would hold no matter what federal rulings came about. This included medicines, religion, and civil rights. Conversely, emboldened by their surprise power party, conservative states passed new laws forbidding certain treatments, restrictions on gays, muslims, and immigrants, and empowering faith leaders and law enforcement to act with impunity.
President Chastain returned to a country on edge with itself. Upon her resumption of power she began laying groundwork for restoration of rights at federal levels, which had a popular push, but legislative restrictions. It was a stalemate until, as part of the investigation into sterility and health impacts of Covid-19 that a male contraceptive was found as a derivative of the vaccines for the virus. A simple implant, it promised to be a counteraction to the conservative bans on female birth control, abortion, and other rights. The president signed legislation making it a federal right and rammed it through with a single vote majority during a week when enough liberal lawmakers were in power. This led to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, free birth control from federal facilities, establishment of federal implant sites with subsidized implanting for those that wished it, and advertising everywhere it could be bought from billboards on the road to ads on the radio and pop ups on popular internet websites.
Conservative states were angry. The combined anger towards the loss of power, the new male birth control implant and its support, and the virus vaccines led to an even tighter race in 2020. As the virus began to wind down, the President found herself barely winning again, and working to bring the states together.
Unfortunately the damage was done. Economies were a mess due to state by state variant laws. Conservative states, fighting vaccines and immigration policies, formed checkpoints on major roads in and out of their lands and enacted travel bans. Medical facilities were often picketed and uniformed police would ‘check’ those who came to get service. Liberal lands became haven areas, promising work and support, and setting up ‘underground railroad’ services for those wishing to move, or to provide access to medicine, abortion, birth control, and travel. This worked well on the coasts where states banded together, in a few cases isolating conservative states, but in the midwest, the reverse happened. States like Illinois became internal battlegrounds between large cities and rural countrysides. Others, like Minnesota, became blue islands in a sea of red, and thus sanctuary states.
Minnesota in particular became highly isolated from the rest of the country. Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas enacted strict travel bans, especially Wisconsin with its proximity to the very liberal city of Freistatt and its surrounding suburbs. Highways such as I94 and I35 became checkpoint controls, and several bridges were shut down entirely across the Mississippi, St. Croix, and Red Rivers. The airport was taken over by national guard to ensure safe passage and travel of planes under federal order, which raised internal tensions. With the new borders, food and manufacturing materials had difficulty flowing into the state. It was only due to the export of medical devices from manufacturers in Minnesota such as Medtronic and 3M, and raw resources from the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, that kept them afloat.
While the President worked on reuniting the nation, states like Minnesota were left to fend on their own. The governor, acting with a fully liberal state legislature, enacted safe haven policies. This also meant trade equality. Coordinating with the Canadians, an unofficial pipeline of supplies from Thunder Bay formed down through Duluth and to the Twin Cities, where a new rail project began in 2021 to ferry supplies from the northern border down to the city. Additionally, towns on the rivers such as Lakeside, Winona, Waterton, and Taylor’s Falls with Wisconsin became major smuggling routes at night across the river - of people coming in, of medications and other items out. Fargo-Moorehead enacted a full wall to prevent traversal and the bridge was blown up in a terrorist incident, with North Dakota and Minnesota blaming each other. And conservatives living in further reaches of the state sometimes harass shipments and delay their arrival, causing anger in the liberal cities at the lack of resources.
It is now 2023. Supplies are scarce in the city - rationing hasn’t been implemented, but shelves are often bare of foodstuffs or processed goods like toilet paper, but electronics abound. Medical care is provided, but beds are still heavily impacted by waves of Covid 19. And now, a new election is beginning, and the rhetoric is high and tempers on a knife point. It’s not an easy time to live in a blue island isolated from your support networks…
Supernatural Point of View
All the changes happened too fast for it to have all been in the hand of mortals. What or who was influencing Hester Shore, remains unknown.
The Technocracy holds a fraction of the mages they use to, the ones that still live are divided into managerial positions directing their division of "enlightened citizens".
The Traditions have had to be a little more careful in their dealings. Within the last few months there have been whispers that scrying into the conservative states has led to days of nightmares where the mage is forced to watch their avatar be tortured.
While President Chastain is handling the mortal side in Washington, it is going hard fight on the ground to change ideas, and have a fulfilling life as mortal or mage.
Bygones have found the earth even more restrictive of their presence, forcing them to flee conservative areas as disbelief in those area became tighter. Already scarce on earth, this change in belief caused the loss of many bygones. Bygone familiars, feeling this shift earlier than mages could, often urged their mages to pickup and move to safer places. Those familiar not able to convince their mage to move, or too weak to do so, find themselves confined to sanctums or private gardens; the bubbles in reality that accept them. In liberal states, like Minnesota, bygones still must pass themselves off as humans in cities, but they don't suffer the same level of disbelief as bygones elsewhere. The forests of the state have become a refuge for bygones as well.
Laws
All laws players are use to in the RL United States apply to this segment of the game. Where laws would differ between States, differ to Minnesota state laws.
Law enforcement consists of city police for the city proper, and Sheriffs for the more rural areas. If it not unusual to see Sheriffs in the city, especially around the government centers.
Government
Freistat is the state capital, as such is houses both the state and city government systems.
State government consists the following:
- Legislative Branch - Responsibilities: Enact and revise laws at the state level
- House of Representatives - 134 members (two from each district)
- Senate - 67 members (1 from each district)
- Legislative Commissions
- Executive Branch
- State Auditor
- Attorney General
- Governor
- State Departments and Agencies
- Lieutenant Governor
- Secretary of State (also answers to Governor)
- State Auditor
- Judicial Branch
- Supreme Court
- Court of Appeals
- District Court
Freistatt City Governement
- Board of Estimate and Taxation
- Mayor
- Office of Community Safety
- Office of Public Service
- Office of City Attorney
- City Council
- Office of City Attorney
- Office of City Clerk
- Office of City Auditor
- Park & Recreation Board
- Office of City Auditor
| Valerie Barber | Traci Padilla | Jackie Adams | Ida Austin | |||
| Bethany Anderson | Celia Wallace | Rickey Caldwell | Theresa Norris | |||
| Lynda Castro | Amelia Walker | Maggie Meyer | Maxine Bryan | |||
| Cheryl Roy | ||||||
Maps
--- More to be written.
