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Toronto is a real city in Canada, and the temporary setting for arcs 4 through 7 of Pact. The Lord of the city is Conquest.

Geography/Description[]

Toronto is the largest city in Canada. It is located in southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario, a couple of hours west of Jacob's Bell.

Residents[]

The Toronto Council are the major practitioners and Others who oversee the city, with the Lord being Conquest.

Blake and his friends also lived in Toronto:

Other notable residents include the Knights of the Basement. Toronto was also home to several Demons and the quasi-demonic Hyena which the locals hadn't bothered to deal with.

Alyssa's family lives in Toronto.[1]

Points of Interest[]

University[]

Full name of the university is not specified in story. Home to Isadora, and often visited by members of the Sisters of the Torch and the Cult of Dionysus.

Hyena's Park[]

A large park where a dangerous Goblin called the Hyena resided. Many of it's victims are forced to roam the woods, in pain and anger. It's original name is unknown.

Sisters of the Torch Demesne[]

The Demesne of the Sisters of the Torch is located in Toronto and serves as the meeting place of their group, with Elder Sister at the head.

In appearance it appears to be simple and restrained modern elegance in design, a "church without religion", of cherry wood with traces of gold, water running along gutters on either side of the hallway glowing with reflected candlelight.[2] The number of candles make it seem like it's daylight inside and the temperature matches.[3]

Astrologer's Abode[]

A squat one-story building on the outskirts of the city.[4] Cramped and musty, filled with old technology and notes.[5]

History[]

Past[]

Toronto was a site of conflict in the past, with the English conquoring the native population; and then struggling with other colonial powers, most notably in the War of 1812 where Toronto was a major site. This conflict birthed and fed the Incarnation of Conquest who came to rule the city as Lord.[6]

Rose Thorburn Senior visited the city a few times, and was well known there. Her bloodline carried with it permissions to be in the city.[7]

As a teenager, Charles Abrams provided a growing teenage gang in Toronto with bloody supernatural assistance, until one of their victims returned as a Revenant and wiped them out.[8][9]

Toronto Arc[]

This major city served as the battleground during the contest between Blake Thorburn and Conquest.

Their combat on the spiritual plane caused chaos and destruction on the real city.

Others started flocking to the city as a result of this chaos.

With Conquest bound the problem didn't go away, and probably got worse with no ruling Lord. So many problems surfaced that the Sisters speculated it might be demonic influence.[10]

Pale[]

At some point Abraham Musser manages to take over the city and declare himself Lord.[11]

References[]

  1. “Oh no,” Alyssa said. “When do we break the news that in exchange for me coming this summer, I’ve negotiated for you to come to Toronto for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and March Break with my family?” Booker laughed. - excerpt from Shaking Hands 9.4
  2. The Sisters had no such delusions, and the architecture seemed like a pointed statement to that end.  Not a homage to the past, whatever their traditions.  Only present and future, here, in a church without religion, cherry wood with traces of gold, water running along gutters on either side of the hallway, almost gold as it reflected candlelight. - excerpt from Void 7.10
  3. I wanted to think that the simple and restrained elegance of it seemed more imposing than Conquest’s alien realm, but that wasn’t quite true. I felt like, if the Elder Sister somehow became Lord, like she’d planned, then it would be. It was hard to breathe in here, and that had nothing to do with the ridiculous number of candles that made it seem almost brighter than daylight. - excerpt from Void 7.10
  4. Our first stop put us outside a little building on the outskirts of Toronto.  Between picking up Maggie and then making the trip, we had a long enough drive that we had to stop for lunch on the way. [...] The building was only one floor, squat, with a sloped roof.  The snow heaped over it had greater dimensions than the building did. I knocked. The Astrologer answered. - Excerpt from Void 7.10
  5. We sat, in chairs or on the edges of desks, where we could find the room.  The room wasn’t much larger than my parents’ one-car garage had been when I’d been growing up, and it was chock full of computer towers, shelves and boxes.  Where those things alone didn’t take up enough space, the place was further littered with errant books and stacks piles of paper, a lot of it from some old fashioned printer where the paper connected as a series of sheets, end to end in one long feed with holes at the side so the machine could manipulate it better.  The printouts themselves were faded, featuring reams of calculations, and many piles had words written on the sides in marker. [...] The computer monitors, even, were old CRTs, some black and green.  The place smelled like tea, ozone and mold.  The whole setup, including the vaguely rounded pile of snow above the building, struck me as being a kind of high tech hobbit hole. [...] “I like it,” I said.  I wasn’t lying. “I do too.  Aesthetically.  In terms of usability, though, a lot of it’s grandfathered in.  My mentor was cutting edge, but cutting edge then is archaic today.  I’m not sure if it’s easier to let go of the sentimental attachment or wizard up some kind of power up to the equipment.” [...] Diana reached backward and grabbed a scrap of paper, scribbling her email down. “Don’t feel offended if I take a few days to reply.  My modem only does twenty-eight kilobits a second, and I only have so much patience.” I don’t think anyone present wasn’t horribly affronted by the idea. “Like I said, grandfathered technology and sentimental attachments,” Diana said. - Excerpt from Void 7.10
  6. “I wouldn’t imagine Conquest is a great fit for Toronto,” I said. “It was, once.  The English presence in North America is young, and Others can be very old.  For some, it wasn’t long ago at all that we wiped out the Aboriginal people and took their land.  It wasn’t long ago that there was war over what European country would claim sovereignty over this land.  Toronto was a site in the war of eighteen-twelve, and Conquest continued to gain power after it was released, with immigrants coming in to reaffirm the invader’s claim to the land.” - excerpt from Collateral 4.1
  7. "Even having you here, I feel like we’re hurting ourselves.” “But?” I asked. “But your grandmother has visited from time to time, and I can’t refuse you and yours an invitation, now that her titles have passed on to you, along with the according rights.” - Excerpt from Void 7.10
  8. “Mine were human,” Charles said.  “Well… technically, it was a revenant.  She came after us, licked with flame like she’d just been set on fire.  This was… I was barely over sixteen, I think.  A gang in Toronto was on the rise, and whenever they got stumped or ran into something strange, they’d come to me.  I’d tell them, hm, you know, I’m thinking of one particular asshole, he’s a real monster.  If you want to leave an indelible mark in their minds and hearts, this would be just the bastard. [...] Revenant came tearing through.  Horror movie stuff, custom endings for each of us, starting with the lowest rank guys, then moving up.  Attacked our business, our alliances, stock, money, revealed secrets.  [...] She got the third, second, and the top guy.  I pulled out all of my tricks.  A few of my monsters, and she still got me.  Decided I wasn’t directly involved enough to die, so she’d leave it up to fate.  Handcuffed me in the electrical room of an abandoned warehouse with a lot of the evidence.  Cops eventually came, and I got my first stint in prison.” - excerpt from Gone Ahead 7.x
  9. I got to my mid-teens, my mother never changed, I got fed up paying for her and me, I left too.  Met some kids who would find isolated houses where the families were going away, break in, and throw big parties with a small entry fee, trash everything, three hundred people who’d steal everything that wasn’t bolted down.  One of the houses had books on practice.  I took as many as I could load into the car.  They stopped throwing the big break-in parties after we had too many burglar alarms in a row, used the money they had to start selling drugs instead.  We amicably parted ways.  Then I started summoning Others to help them out for a cut of profits.  I’d tell them I knew someone scary that’d deal with any problems they had.  That ended badly. [...] Me summoning Others opened the door for a revenant to rise up to get revenge against them, I think.  It hurt their innocence, left them vulnerable.  It was a wake up call for me.  I started trying to do better, be better. - excerpt from False Moves 12.6
  10. “Define ‘greater good.’ Because we’ve had anonymous threats to our families. Others are settling in the city, and you’ve brought nothing but pain and chaos with your arrival in the city. To me, that kind of endemic problem suggests demonic influence.” - Excerpt from Void 7.10
  11. “Yes.  Musser has taken Toronto and the surrounding regions.  Nearly half of the remaining territories capitulated immediately on hearing. - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.10
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