Everything

Three-River Rat, Bone Gnawer Ragabash, addresses a common question regarding Pittsburgh’s City Father:

Nobody’s ever found any evidence about whether Joe existed even in the folklore before he popped up in a newspaper article back in ‘31. Some folks think he was either made up by the steelworkers or the reporter that shared the story. It don’t help much that ‘Magarac’ could translate as ‘jackass.’ I only say that because nobody’s quite sure as to whether the City Father took his form because of the stories or whether he appeared as some sorta... oh, what’s the word... archetype and some humans from the ‘old country’ who caught a glimpse started making up stories to explain him.

I will say this, though. When the Magarac stories went around, the workers took it as a badge of pride. Even came up with sort of a ‘donkey ears’ gesture to use with each other. And I think, in part, that it sums up Pittsburgh all too well: A city that finds its strength in places that some would find embarrassing or even dirty. As a Gnawer and a Metis, I’ve got untold amounts of respect for that. Just ask the Glass Walkers at the Tin Tower Caern, I think they understand.

Even from the Umbra I could clearly see the borders between the prosperous parts of town and the run-down areas. Steel and shiny glass stood right up against rusted slums that hadn’t seen the benefits of Pittsburgh’s economic health. No border or buffer more substantial than a line on a map separated these very different parts of the city.

Banes scuttled through the webs, more that I’d expected. Some looked like mutant spiders, belching diesel fumes and smoke. I wondered if these might be corrupted Weaver-spirits, but they gathered in enough numbers that I did not want to get too close I returned to two legs and found a place near my destination to step back across unmolested. As I entered the restaurant I dropped a few dollars into the cup of the panhandler on the front steps, and while waiting for food I left a message for a Child of Gaia Ahroun named ‘Duck and Cover’ at another caern in the city.

He called back as I was on my way out of the restaurant. A different panhandler was out there in the same spot with the same cup and I shared with him what change I had left over. My attempt to get directions from Duck and Cover became awkward acceptance of a ride in his pickup. Hays

Woods, the largest piece of undeveloped land in the area, held its own caern called — appropriately enough — the Hays Woods Caern. My host regaled me of how he had found a believed-lost bomb shelter, originally for the use of a nearby ammunition factory some decades back, which was put to the use of the caern and inspired his deed name.

The 630-something acres, despite having to fend off interest from developers and mining companies, provided a good bit of undisturbed space for a cosmopolitan mix of tribes beyond Glass Walkers and Bone Gnawers. Unsurprisingly, it was a much stronger caern than the ones nestled amongst the steel, glass, and brick of the city and surprisingly traditional given the location. That said, the high Bone Gnawer population and the caern’s dedication to a totem of the American Dream marked it as a ‘city’ caern nonetheless.

While being introduced around I discreetly asked about the impulse sending groups of people up to the roof of the tower. While nobody at the caern had witnessed the phenomenon first-hand, the Bone Gnawers had an extensive network of informants among the homeless population. The information let them put together a map of the spots where these impromptu flocks of people had simultaneously pulled out their cell phones, read a message, and walked towards the U.S. Steel Tower like zombies.

The sept at the Tin Tower Caern, earlier, showed me a map on a touchscreen monitor where I could tap a marker for an incident and see the time and date of the event with links to detailed files. It was extremely efficient. The Bone Gnawers of Hays Woods, conversely, had a road map from a gas station covered in scribbled notes and food stains. The information on both maps was the same, although this one also had assorted glyphs and markers scrawled in places indicating traditional stomping grounds and informal territory claimed by hobos in the city. While less efficient than Works-the-Lines’ map, it indicated the Bone Gnawers’ information network — more chaotic, but just as detailed, as any professional surveillance web.

What caught my attention was not the clumping of incidents along a particular stretch of blocks, running from the U.S. Steel Tower to a spot on Sixth Avenue, but a sketch at the far end of that stretch. It depicted a shirtless, muscular man ladling something from a vat. I asked what the sketch signified. Duck and Cover saw my look of ignorance, and explained.

“Joe Magarac is a local folk hero from the 30’s and the City Father of Pittsburgh,” Clang-Bang, a Bone Gnawer Galliard, explained. “Like a local John Henry.”

“They say he was born in an ore mine to help the Slavic steelworkers,” Duck and Cover chimed in. “And that he was physically made of steel. That spot on the map is an image of him on a building on Sixth Avenue.”

“Where is the City Father normally seen?” I asked. “Has anyone asked what he thinks of this?”

Of course, normally, a pack or even a sept can’t summon a City Father or Mother. They appear when they feel the city

is suffering some sort of crisis. Sometimes one sees a crisis before we do or it is simply having trouble coping with an upheaval. My instincts suggested that, given that the activity was stretched between an image of Magarac and the Tower (which boasts a statue of him in the lobby), he would definitely have an interest.

Works-The-Lines agreed to meet me on the roof of the Tower with a pair of Glass Walker Theurges who worked in the building. The Gnawer Galliard I met earlier was an expert on the lore of the city’s industrial past, so Duck and Cover got him some clean clothes so he could join us at the Tower without drawing too many stares.

Duck and Cover introduced Clang-Bang and me to the Glass Walkers. Both were slightly confused as to what we were doing up on the roof. I asked them all to join me in the Umbra with promises of explanation once we were through the Gauntlet. Stepping across was an ordeal, as thick as the Gauntlet was, but I pushed through. A truth spirit taught me how to reflect upon myself to get by without, but the Walkers all pulled out their smartphones to use the screen as a mirror — remember that trick, by the way.

The broad, triangular roof of the building seemed broader at first, an optical illusion from the webs stretching off the edges of the roof to reach buildings below. The view was breathtaking even in the Umbra, but we had little time to take it in because the hulking form sitting at the edge of the roof immediately drew our attention.

The steel man, wearing a factory worker’s coveralls, was easily the size of one of us in the Crinos form. He heard our approach and stood up to greet us. Though he looked pleased to see us, I thought I noted a hint of repressed sadness in the shine of his metallic skin.

One of the Theurges, Diane, glanced at me before addressing the City Father.

“Is there something we can do for you?” she asked. “I thought they were going to do something with this.” His accent suggested an integrated Slavic immigrant — or an English speaker’s rough approximation of such. He made a sweeping gesture with his arm to indicate the empty rooftop. “They said they were going to build something here, and I think it should be done. This building — my tower — was once something glorious, but the world has forgotten it and must be reminded of what it can be. I want them to see it again.”

The Glass Walkers all looked at each other, confused. Clang-Bang stepped up and cleared his throat for attention.

“Nobody with the money to do anything about it can agree what to do with the roof, Big Joe. But you’re right, more people should see it. That’s why you’ve been bringing them up here, isn’t it?”

“I saw that if you send the messages on their little phones, you can get the people to go places and that will bring the news crews,” he said with a slow nod. “So why isn’t it working?”

“Because the people don’t understand what they should be seeing,” the Bone Gnawer said. “But maybe we can work together to do something about that?”

“If you can, I would be very grateful. We must work together to help make this building — and the city — as great as it can be. To begin, I give you a simple task. Build me something here. Not just a statue or a monument, something with a function, something people can use. If you do that, I would be in your debt.”

Even if he’s having trouble keeping up with what human advances can do, like a number of City Fathers and Mothers these days, the gratitude and benefits of pleasing a City Father can echo for years. Last I heard, they’re still working on that little project for Big Joe Magarac but they’ve got someone working on making a memorial garden and observation deck up there. Works-the-Lines tells me he thinks that Joe’s influence may help them get better business inroads in U.S. Steel Tower. Even if it doesn’t always look like it, Pittsburgh’s influence in the humans’ economic landscape is an important one, and whatever you think of such things, you can’t deny that importance in the bigger picture.

This reminds me, though, of another City Father with identity issues.

They say Stargazers walk in two worlds even more than other Garou. Which is true — we seek balance with our human sides as much as our wolf sides and try to embrace both the West and the East. I understand that a little more than most. The Stargazers adopted me, but I find myself occasionally having to reconcile my more traditional Gaian upbringing with my years spent learning the Middle Way. My late mentor, Lotus-on-the-River, always assured me that I am always what I was meant to be but sometimes the contrast between us made me stand out at those rare Stargazer gatherings.

I explain this to help give you an idea of just how alienated I feel whenever I visit Shanghai. Lotus-on-the-River had family there so I visit at least once a year to pay my respects to his Kinfolk in the area. They cared for him deeply but it still confuses them that he would take a měiguórén — an American — as his pupil, especially one who doesn’t speak the local dialect. Lotus only taught me Beijing Mandarin and while it is more generally useful elsewhere and is enough to get by, in Shanghai it makes me stand out more than I already do. I do have a Gift that could allow me to get around the language barrier but it still doesn’t do anything about my accent and I’d rather not become reliant on it.

But I was telling you about the City Fathers.

These days, what do the Garou call a powerful spiritual entity that watches over a city and helps represent it? Right, a City Father. Well, in older times every Chinese city had a god watching over it, often the spirit of a deceased official or soldier who received a promotion to the celestial bureaucracy. Important cities, prefectural capitals and the like, would have temples for the worship of their city gods and Shanghai was more than important enough that it received one. While this is an aspect of history now relegated to mythology, the Garou know the truth behind it.

While not every city today has a City Father, the cities of China used to each have several gods. Most of the City God Temples were destroyed or repurposed as part of a campaign of ‘casting out the old ways and moving forward as a country,’ but Shanghai’s still stands. Even today it still venerates three historical heroes. Taoist priests care for it.

Shanghai’s City Father appears as a composite of government officials and magistrates from the country’s history. Today he answers to ‘The General,’ as the youngest city god was a general killed in the First Opium War back in 1842. But every now and again, he forgets that the old dynasties have fallen and for a little while one must indulge his anachronistic lapses. He does not lapse often, but twice now he has refused to aid werewolves because they do not know ancient rituals of praise that locals have long forgotten.

Shanghai is a very cosmopolitan and chaotic city, owing in part to its continued importance in international trade. It’s one of the wealthiest cities in the world and one of the largest, balancing communist and capitalist concerns and thriving by that balancing act. France owned a portion of Shanghai until World War II and much of the Western architecture in that district remains, serving as a tourist trap and the home of St. Ignatius Cathedral.

The Beast Courts, a melting pot of different Changing Breeds, are the predominant force in the city. The Boli Zouhisze — the Hong Kong ‘branch’ of the Glass Walkers — maintain a presence there, as do the Stargazers and a single pack of Fianna from Beijing.

Yes, Fianna. They’re descended from Celtic and Dutch traders that intermarried with the locals and brought with them a recessive gene for red hair. The bloodline is known, appropriately enough, as the Firehair Family. They have a single pack in Shanghai.

When I visited in the chilly spring of 2012, Shanghai was adapting as best it could to an ever-changing situation. The Three Gorges Dam, upriver, has been having issues with flooding for some time and it’s been quite the battleground. Garou and other shifters from Shanghai have traveled there to fight the Black Spiral Dancers and their diseased Bane allies, while refugees from the flooding and the destruction of a sept have come to Shanghai to recuperate. I didn’t

learn just how bad it was until later, though.

I first viewed it in the Umbra, called the Mirror Lands by Asian shifters. The Umbra is normally so vibrant there, almost appearing alive from the energy of the humans who work and pray in the area. Even with the Chinese government’s grip on the country helping to layer on the Weaver’s webs, a well-tended shrine is still a holy place and the contrast between the Weaver and Wyld energies produces an effect like an aurora. That’s how it should look, anyhow.

I approached the temple in the Umbra and found the site under siege. Black Spiral Dancers and Pattern-Spiders were both clambering over the building, fighting each other. There was no way I was going to dive into that hornet’s nest alone even if I knew the specifics of the situation.

I dropped into the Lupus form and took off running before they saw me. I hadn’t been there in a while but the Five Constants Court was maybe a couple of minutes away on all fours even with dodging through the streets between the buildings of Shanghai’s Old City. The court operates out of an old Confucian temple that was renovated back in the 90’s. It also hosts a book market today, but they’ve held on to the site too long to give it up.

I stopped outside the front gate and quickly howled for help before returning to the Homid form. It was mere moments before a pair of shark-like monstrous guardians appeared, armored and carrying spears. Were they some Wyrm-creatures? No. You must remember that the Beast Courts have many strange Changing Breeds among their number. In this case I called upon the spirit of speech to make my words clearer. I explained the situation whereupon I was ushered to a ‘waiting room’ of sorts while a sentai — a war party, not unlike a pack — went to investigate my claims.

A few minutes after arriving, one of the Kitsune fox-shifters entered the room with some tea. Under the guise of pleasantries she introduced herself as Luo Wá and politely interrogated me as to where I’d come from, my purpose in town, how long I was staying — it was like going through customs at the airport again, only more polite. I told her the truth and even did so without Gifts so she wouldn’t think I was attempting to deceive her. Fortunately for me the reputation of my mentor still lingered even now and that helped smooth things over.

After the interrogation transitioned into sincere pleasantries I was invited forth to introduce myself to the court. The sentai had returned, more or less intact, with guests. Some time after I left to get help from the Five Constants Court, a pack of Boli Zouhisze from the Suzhou Creek Caern heard the commotion and showed up to help protect the temple. Because of the attack, the two groups were arguing as to who should be the ones to guard the temple and the adjoining garden.