Quote:
Originally Posted by DocRailgun
This is not especially helpful, but in the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina there is a town called Black Mountain that "everyone knows" is the "center of Satanism on the East Coast". This would be the dark Satanism, not the fun Chuch of Satan types.
Black Mountain is near Asheville, NC, which is a very eclectic place. There are a lot (A LOT) of various neo-pagan groups there as well as a lot of evangelical Christians. This makes the city council meetings very interesting. There is also a bohemian university there with a fantastic meterological program. More possible RP weirdness: there is a castle someome moved brick by brick outside the city and a cannon on a hill overlooking the main street, pointed inwards. Biltmore House is also there, the l argest private residence in the US (though parts of it are available for events).
The place is also lousy with breweries now.
The Great Smoky Mountain National Park is full of Cherokee stories and spirits (and pagans running around). It's also full of quartz, if you need an energy sink or giant battery or something.
I may or may not have personal experience with many of these things.
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How is this a thing and no one bothered to tell me?
I would have somehow managed to find an extra day or two and drive down there, last time I was in Virginia. Well, no, I wouldn't, because this looks really far from Manassas, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, requiring
at least three extra days to enjoy travelling this far south before starting the drive up to New York, with frequent stops at battlefields and tourist spots, and I already wanted to visit Richmond, Appomattox, Shenandoah Valley and other places, but there really wasn't time, but I would have
thought about it.
Well, this will certainly be an option for somewhere the unpleasant visitor that the PCs are dealing with now could have come from. After all, he was at UC Berkley some three to five years ago, before leaving for an as yet undetermined location to finish his PhD, where he made new friends and learned new ways.
Places of Power, intersections of ley lines and 'Sacred' (or differently flavoured) Places are very important to be able to work any powerful rituals, so even the most secular occultists need to think about securing access to places with folkloric and historical associations with the proper kind of energy.
So even if our unnamed occultist was away for a PhD in Europe or some East Coast metropolis, he might have moved to Black Mountain once he got his degree, in order to pursue some as yet unspecified occult goal. Doesn't really matter whether
he can really be meaningfully described as any existing flavour of Satanist or neo-pagan from a religious point of view, it's enough that the place be aspected toward working with some nasty spirits, beings or outsiders.