Downtown

Minimum Resources for Haven: 4

Cape Glory’s Downtown is the nerve center of the city. It’s not simply a “concrete jungle” – Downtown is more an urban canyon, an imposing metropolis of innumerous skyscrapers, built of cold, black steel and reflective glass, that tower as high as the eye can see, casting the world below into eternal shadow. The streets run like cement arteries through the district, narrow and claustrophobic, but the traffic is always systematic, always orderly. Crime is all but unheard of in Downtown.

Closed circuit cameras are everywhere – rigged to every streetlight, every corner, and every storefront. The people of Cape Glory don’t seem to notice them, accepting the black eyes of the thousands of cameras as a natural part of the city, the security and supervision of a distant Big Brother.

Finance is the city’s most prominent business, and the sector is dominated by two conglomerates who operate directly out of Cape Glory’s Downtown – the competitive companies of First Providence Financial and People’s Trust Bank. The offices of the city’s newspaper, Cape Glory Gazette, are also located in the district. Downtown is also home to the Cape Glory Rapid Transport Authority.

Red Hook Harbor

Red Hook Harbor was once the prosperous heart of Cape Glory’s economy and the pulse of the city’s fishing and trade. Originally stretching the entire length of Cape Glory’s rocky, infamously perilous coast, the late 1990s brought with it substantial changes to Red Hook Harbor. As companies moved away from the need of intense shipping, hundreds of dockworkers were laid off and honest manpower became replaced by the well-oiled efficiency of automations. The harbor was halved in the interests of the shifting economy and the port minimized to make room for the commercial wharf, Bay Place.

The harbor is the site of numerous missing person cases. While fishing nets occasionally drag in more than their intended product, most of those that fall into the water are often never seen again, pulled below the dark abyss that waits off the craggy shore.

Bay Place

Minimum Resources for Haven: 4

Since the conversion of the location from shipping port to commercial wharf, Bay Place has taken root, becoming a hive of economic activity. Gorgeously scenic, Bay Place gazes out over Cape Glory’s Mather Bay and is dominated by a prosaic mix of cultural and recreational retreats, including the city’s prestigious five-star waterfront hotel, The Argyle, and Cape Glory Aquarium, as well as numerous shopping malls, restaurants and offices, and expensive townhouses.

Beneath the fashionable bustle of Bay Place, however, lurks an almost disturbing sense of mundanity. Nothing here is too creative, nothing here is too exciting. There’s overpriced, processed and uninspired food and bland, vaguely 90s alt-rock live performances every night. Only tourists and the comfortably well off visit here, seeking comfort and sterility.

By early morning, Bay Place is closing and quiet, emptying out quickly after the shops have closed, and becoming inhabited by waves of homeless, starving for the scraps left behind, and still other darker presences that haunt the sleeping streets, spoken of through rumor and overlooked by most, except for the sorry souls of the homeless who are preyed upon and then, too, forgotten.

Little Italy

Minimum Resources for Haven: 2

The birthplace of the La Cosa Nostra interests in the city, Little Italy is, as its name suggests, authentically Italian, predominately working class, and ethnic, with small Jewish sections, and a collective distrust of outsiders. Spurred by the community’s religious ancestry – and by a long-running competitiveness with the Irish of the city – the district has a Catholic church which constantly battles to become home of the diocese. The area is doomed to endless cycles of violence, with mob wars constantly erupting and causing as much destruction to innocent bystanders as to the mobsters they target. Even after the smoke clears, the winner often brutally extracts money as his prize from the community via “protection” rackets and illegal dens for gambling and prostitution. Still, they keep out the blacks and the homeless, as well as other undesirables.

New Shannon

Minimum Resources for Haven: 2

New Shannon, originally developed in order to provide cheap, convenient housing for the immigrants that worked both the factories and the harbor of the city, serves the very same purpose in the present day, but has managed through the years to adopt its own cultural identity.

Densely Irish in population, the residents of New Shannon make up the majority of union workers, and thereby command much of the power in the industrial sector of Cape Glory. New Shannon is also the hub of the Irish mob and, to the chagrin of their Italian rivals, claims the seat of the diocese, the Catholic Cathedral of St. Matthew’s.

West End

Minimum Resources for Haven: 2

West End is the tenement quarter of the city, with low-rise apartments and co-ops packed like sardines together over a hundred years to fit in Cape Glory’s working class, who live in tightly cramped, overcrowded apartment buildings and from paycheck to paycheck, never quite slipping into complete poverty, but never managing to rise above it either.

Missing person posters are tacked everywhere and street gangs attempting to control the poorer sections of the city terrorize the district, peddling drugs and falling into constant, bloody turf wars. In spite of – or possibly helped provoked by – the occasional, explosive bursts of violence, West End is mostly quiet, and suffers from a cloying sense of despair, as if behind closed doors, men and women are on edge and lurking in silent tension, always prepared to erupt into the sort of terrible, unthinkable atrocities that most seem to only hear about from the front page of a newspaper.

University District

The “U” District is a clean, utilitarian campus, housing the city’s university, student dormitories and educational facilities, although the sprawling site also famously hosts the global headquarters of the General Kinetics Corporation. Campus security is renowned for being particularly strict, and while on-site, students are expected to obey the university’s curfew, dress, and behavior code or risk expulsion.

Freshmen and sophomores are required to live on-campus and aren’t permitted their own vehicles. Due to the authoritative rules of the university, a few of the upper classman – if they can afford the luxury – live off-campus, but a great many students prefer to stay on in the security of campus life. Still, in spite of the university’s sternly policed curfew, a massive percent of those party-goers that keep the violent pulse of the Club District beating happen to be none other than CGU students.

Gilman Park

The centerpiece of some of the city’s most popular districts, Gilman Park is comprised of hundreds of acres of beautifully landscaped and thickly wooded park land. Built up around a massive natural lake that provides swimming and swan pedal boats in the summer and ice-skating in the winter, the park boasts a variety of recreational attractions, including miles of hiking trails, children’s playgrounds, arboretums, as well as the Gilman Park Zoo and the prestigious Winthrop Botanical Garden.

While in the day, Gilman Park is inviting and safe, very few “respectable” citizens linger after-hours. Colonies of homeless people congregate there at night, and even they keep to certain areas – avoiding the darkened lake and the wooded areas, from which arise the superstitious tales of rabid dog packs attacking lone joggers and the rare child or two wandering away to never be seen again.

Club District

Minimum Resources for Haven: 2

Some say Cape Glory will take your soul if you’re not careful. Working 40 hours in a cubicle can drive a man insane and with such high levels of stress, a city that works hard will also play hard. The Club District is the main outlet for the people’s frustration, a black-lit and neon-bleached metropolis where one can exorcise their demons of despair and rage, and – as such – is electrically charged, full of energy and powerful emotion, a barely controllable hotbed of drinking and drugs, sex and violence. The multiple streets that cut through the Club District are packed with every sort of club and bar, including more than one especially violent punk musical venue, as well as the city's paramount club, Death in Glory.

Warehouse District

Minimum Resources for Haven: 1

Rows upon rows of factory buildings line the streets of the Warehouse District, another area of the city that – like Red Hook Harbor – has seen and suffered through the shifting demands of America’s economy through the ages, and has determinedly adapted.

Many of the manufactories are silenced, long abandoned and forgotten, though some have been converted into affordable apartment buildings in Cape Glory’s attempt to revive the inefficient corners of the Warehouse District by encouraging new communities.

Many other factories, however, remain active and ceaselessly productive. The General Kinetics Corporation is a major employer in the sector, and utilizes a majority of the plants in the construction of cruise missiles and weapons manufacturing. Other factories process the locally caught fish and other food, garments and chemicals.

Cultural District

Minimum Resources for Haven: 3

Developed in the 1920s and heavily funded by the old money of Cape Glory’s then – and now – most distinguished families in a desire to build for themselves a cultural legacy, the Cultural District has become the most prolific cradle of the city’s art and cultural scene, although some question its true authenticity. Monuments dedicated to the “great achievements and contributions” of the Wayland, Winthrop, or the Torrance family, as well as others, are simply a natural part of the landscaped scenery. The district houses several museums, art galleries, and chic shops and cafes. Staunton Hall, Cape Glory’s opera house, also resides there and often hosts the city’s symphony-orchestra.

East Haven

Minimum Resources for Haven: 1

Designed as a literal “haven” against the high-priced and “artificial” sophistication of the Cultural District’s art scene, the East Haven sprung into existence in the 1960s, as men and women driven by the free-spirited revolution of the time period moved in, eager to return to their bohemian roots.

While not necessarily poor, the district is far from prosperous. Referred to as the city’s “true art district” by the same residents who defend that East Haven is about “the spirit, not the spending,” the area is a Mecca of local artists and authors, a bohemian hideaway of cheap studio apartments, avant-garde galleries, and quaint coffee shops, boasting nightly performances from the most talented of the city’s beat poets.

Langston District (Old Black Town)

Minimum Resources for Haven: 1

Historically known as Black Town, the area of present day Langston was originally established pre-Civil War in order to provide succor to free blacks and ex-slaves. Through its time, Black Town has been characterized by a series of boom-and-bust cycles. Although the original inhabitants realistically found equality only with the poor whites of the city, the 20s brought prosperity to the district. With the arrival of the Depression, Black Town began its downslide, but managed to regain some of its former stature once the war had finally passed. In the 60s, Black Town was officially rechristened the Langston District, but – by then – the area was once more suffering, collapsing into disrepair, poverty, and crime as those that could afford to moved out of the area and left it to those that had no other option.

Today, Langston is a ghetto, an impoverished, predominately black community of public housing and high crime. Those that don’t live in Langston – especially if they’re white, or wealthy, or both – tend to avoid the area even during the day and those that visit at night do so at their own risk.

Wentworth Heights

Minimum Resources for Haven: 5

Home to some of the city’s most affluent – and often, likewise, most influential – residents, Wentworth Heights is a virtual paradise, situated high on the rising east cliffs of the city to gaze out imperiously over the rest of Cape Glory, like royals surveying their domain. Safety and comfort are found in high, finely wrought security gates and surveillance cameras. Stately mansions stretch leisurely out across acres of pristinely landscaped property, glorious homes whose architecture ranges from medieval to modern, but always share one thing in common – million dollar price-tags.

City Square

City Square is Cape Glory’s predominately governmental sector, the bureaucratic heart of the city. City Hall is the keystone of the district, and endless branches of municipal buildings stretch outward and across the district, overwhelmingly indistinctive in their gray-stone monotony. Even the sporadically included office plazas are colorless cubes with wired glass windows that stare out soullessly.

Chinatown

Chinatown is predictably cute, chintzy and tourist-friendly. Sometimes to the point of being almost overly predictable, as if the exaggerated stereotypes of the insular neighborhood were merely a façade, a colorfully distracting but perilously thin membrane pulled over the real, and perhaps less inviting face of Chinatown and its exotic residents. Casual visitors and naïve tourists aren’t privy to the rumors of the uglier facets of Chinatown – especially those things that exist in shadow. Chinatown keeps its own secrets, holds its own confidence. Outsiders need not apply, especially of the supernatural sort.

Allendale

Minimum Resources for Haven: 2

Riding the outskirts of the city and tucked almost inconspicuously into the corner of the University District and East Haven, Allendale is a remarkably unremarkable residential hamlet, mostly catering to those unusual few that don’t wish to live in the heart of Cape Glory, including the rare upper classman of Cape Glory University that aren’t content in the careful security on campus. The area, with its small, charmingly Victorian-styled homes, many of which have been converted into affordable shared apartment spaces, is an almost curiously overlooked portion of the city.