Port Bowen is a fictional city in southern Maine with a very large, rather prosperous freehold. Naturally, this is a mask. The freehold has made powerful enemies, internal strife threatens to tear it apart, and a group of potent new changelings keeps making waves.
GM: Paige Andrews
System: Changeling: The Lost
This is the home page for the Port Bowen game being run by Paige Andrews. It started in the summer of 2010 as four changelings escaped from Arcadia and found themselves in the fictional city of Port Bowen, Maine. They were soon joined by a fifth and the lot were swept into a scheme of conspiracy and murder.
Since we play through every day, but only meet once a week, game time progresses very slowly. Keep this in mind when perusing the calendar, as you will have to scroll back quite a few years to find anything.
Individual PCs have their own pages, linked below, along with motley pages, the NPC list, and various rule pages. Outside of those, the Setting Guide and Notes & Misc pages are useful.
Retired after he split from the motley and narrowly avoided suicide. He has disavowed the freehold and now lives as a courtless hermit in the city. Recently he’s begun to reconnect to certain people within the freehold and manages to maintain a professional relationship with the motley.
Retired after his player moved out of the country. Eric is still an active member of the freehold, though he’s been drifting away from the motley as they pursue magicks that are not to his taste.
Retired after his player moved out of the country. Saepi maintains a close relationship with the motley, socializing often and working with them on projects to improve the lives of people within the city.
Retired after her death in Miami. She was killed after a gambling binge went very, very bad.
This game uses everything in the Aug-NWoD Ruleset. The additional rules linked below are specific to the Port Bowen setting.
This long-running game is broken up into many acts, with summaries below. Each act encompasses at least one big event of the plot.
We began in March of 2010 (real world May 2010) with Act 1, wherein the players (here meaning characters: Katie, Birdie, Daniel, and Goban) escaped from Arcadia and began to settle down in Port Bowen. They were quickly joined by a fifth changeling, Eric.
Act 2 was kicked off with the discovery of Tyrell’s mangled – but living – body at a Spring soiree. The players became bound in a scheme of consiracy and murder, eventually seeing their freehold through its third major war: The War of Shadows. In their moment of victory, they were snatched away by unknown means to a Fae demesne of test and punishment, only to return again even stronger and somehow changed.
Act 3 picked up in the aftermath of the war, with the players working to stabilize their home. The newly revealed Shadow court struggled against its own traditions to become part of the freehold and a race began to locate and establish a balancing Radiant court, to ward off the attentions of the Keepers. Meanwhile, personal endeavors vied to derail the players’ progress: an important ally lay in a coma, Goban forever parted ways with his companions, and the wandering monk Saepi happened into the city. Act 3 ended with the crowning of Daniel and Saepi as the Shadow and Radiant Kings, respectively, and the freehold welcoming their courts into its fold.
Act 4 tested the resolve of the new kings and their allies. Three gentry were in contest over the city and its potent “dead zone”, each trying to harness its power for their own ends. Changelings were dying in the streets, killed by insane fetches for the magic in their blood. Beasts from the hedge were ushered into the world and sent to stalk in the night. And the third remained hidden, seemingly powerless to stop the plans of its enemies. Meanwhile, Saepi’s focus on his court led him through dreams and visions to save a number of future courtiers, but it also drew the attention of a mysterious antagonist who seemed determined to destroy his court, and with it the stability of the freehold.
Act 5 began after the freehold’s success against the three gentry. The Lord of Many Faces retired to Arcadia in defeat; The Mighty Huntress of Grubs and Gods was destroyed forever, or so it seemed, as her last gasp of magic vanished a cup of molten iron; and the Princely Suitor was revealed as a banished Other taking refuge in a nearby goblin market. As his rivals were vanquished, he ascended and took the new title: Lord of the Windward Wave. In this aftermath, the players were faced with an organized terror group being directed by the same mysterious antagonist who interfered with Saepi before. Other murderers started appearing as well, their crimes going unnoticed during the assault of the gentry. The players also discovered a last ace in the hole for the Huntress: her pledge with Saepi. Act 5 ended with the terror leader dead, and the Huntress gone for good.
Act 6 shifted away from mortal concerns and back to the freehold’s gentry problem. While the city was recovering from its last bout, a swarm of Others began using it as a playing field for their incomprehensible games. One of them was suspected of using the ruins of Kel, a dead city in the hedge, as its base of power. The players battled through the vicious hedge to reach Kel, where memories old and new blocked their path. Act 6 ended as the players discovered the identity of Order’s Diviner and made a deal to keep him out of their affairs for now, at the cost of all the souls in Miami. Figuratively, they hoped.
Act 7 revolved around another gentry in the Great Game, the Lord High Tumult. The freehold fought to contain the seeping, black-pus poison spread by his agent while the gentry himself sowed division among the changelings. The poison wormed its way into the Port Bowen Police Department and even affected Agent Schall, the freehold’s allied FBI contact. As notes went missing and hideous crimes disappeared, the players began scrubbing the poison and sought out the identity of its creator. Early October brought an all-out assault by Tumult upon the freehold. Assassinations and an invasion of invisible hedge creatures tested the changelings as Prymja confronted Tumult’s poison-spreading champion in a lightning-wreathed battle atop the city’s tallest skyscraper.
Act 14 was full of intrigue surrounding multiple players in the Great Game. It began with a suspicious proposition from the Grand Honorable Knight of Evening Whispers, followed by an attack on the freehold’s Chat Room Hollow by He Who Climbs Below the Grass and then by a creeping mist that infiltrated the area near Summer Court’s stonghold. The mist was a projection of the Temple of the Forgotten, demesne of The Bird and The Boy. From the Temple, the motley learned of their own lost memories and about the lost history of Abtanis, formerly the Princely Suitor.
To find a way to end the Great Game, the motley traveled to Miami in order to treat with Order’s Diviner. He revealed that a willing sacrifice to the pledge itself can end the Game with no winner to claim the city as spoils. As the freehold back home made its preparations, Ruby was killed in a changeling gambling den and two monarchs of Miami were gunned down.
In a fortified nexus-lair deep in the hedge, Abtanis, He Who Climbs Below the Grass, and The Grand Honorable Knight of Evening Whispers met to decide the fate of the city. Abtanis brought the motley with him and invited Witch Olmstead, all as observers. As his own scheme collided with the freehold’s sacrifice and Climber’s machinations, the Great Game thundered to its end.
Act 15 saw the motley return to Port Bowen and learn the consequences of their freehold’s sacrifice. Many were upset and discontent, especially with the lack of transparancy in the monarchs’ decisions. As they recouperated, they did their best to clear the air and heal their freehold. Local gang activity became more pronounced, culminating in a number of vicious attacks in broad daylight.
Ongoing…