Quote:
Originally Posted by Sciencezam
I have to admit I'm kind of lacking in knowledge of the universities of the gulf coast, despite living in Texas. It's a big state!
Some quirks of geography/history you may find notable are the texas barrier islands, a long chain of narrow islands that help shield the coast from the full force of any hurricanes - Galveston is one, and Padre Island is a popular tourist location.
There's also the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, when the sea reclaimed the island in what remains the deadliest hurricane in US history; the Gulf of Mexico has a general habit of taking storms and amping their strength up, to the extent that pacific storms can cross mexico, reach the gulf, and regenerate into atlantic storms (Tropical Storm Trudy, 2014). Sure, the bermuda triangle is spooky, but the Gulf throws a city-leveling disaster at us every century or so.
|
In a way, the intended task of the PCs is to function as supernatural storm breakers, shielding the inhabitants of the Gulf Coast (as well as the Caribbean and in a general sense, the Americas) from the projected ill effects of other worlds intruding on this one.
J.R. Kessler, their Patron, has a theory that supernatural beings can only sustain themselves in this world within close proximity to dimensional vortices to their home realities. As a result, nearly all of them, whether instinctively or with malice aforethought, attempt to keep open such connections, widen them and anchor so that they will remain open and release whatever preternatural energies required by ultra-terrestial entities. Left unchecked, therefore, any intrusion of unearthly forces could result in a crack between realities becoming a wide-open gateway that grew with every being that came through.
For different, but apparently fathomable worlds, like the ones humans have dubbed the Spirit World*, Guinee, Sheol, Faerie, Alfheim, Tír na nÓg, Isles of the Blessed or Hy Brasil, this would be bad enough. For truly outlandish realms of madness and vast, cool, unsympathetic intelligences, it would mean the end of human existence as we know it.
J.R. Kessler funds the PCs and others like them to prevent the Bermuda Triangle (and the other Vile Vortices) from giving rise to not only city-leveling disasters, but world-altering ones. At least, that is what he proclaims to believe.
*In many ways, the Spirit World seems to have been the first of the other worlds to impinge upon our mundane world, with confirmed evidence of interaction with it dating back to the early 1980s (knowledgeable occultists like Kessler can find no evidence of true paranormal activity earlier in the 20th century and sources from the 19th century and earlier mostly cannot be authenticated). Whether spirits are the souls of the dead or simply incorporeal beings who, like many supernatural creatures, take forms dictated by local belief and expectation, remains controversial. As does the connection of the Spirit World to other, similar worlds, like Sheol or Guinee.