Places

Chen Huà Canvas-of-History, Boli Zouhisze Galliard, offers a lesson:

Conventional Glass Walker wisdom suggests that the first known City Father was discovered in London in 1882. Conventional Glass Walker wisdom also has a firm view of how City Fathers may act or appear. There’s evidence to suggest that City Fathers from outside that profile have existed for a long time. For instance, China’s city gods.

It’s possible that there’s some fundamental difference between the City Fathers of earlier eras and the ones we know now. The stories we have tell of city gods that cared for the people who lived there, but modern City Fathers care more for the city itself — the bricks and stones, rather than the population. It’s also possible that as a tribe that doesn’t owe as much to oral tradition, somewhere along the line we’ve lost some vital knowledge. Papers rot. Libraries burn.

City Fathers are likely older than we know and still carry aspects of the cities that predate their emergence. The General is a good example — visually, he appears closest to Chen Huacheng but his clothing carries elements of civil servant uniforms from the Han, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties. Even the pocket watch of London’s City Father carries hints of the city’s Roman origins. A City Father or Mother can be a living relic of that city’s history and they have much to teach us if we can find more of them.

As the one who inadvertently brought them together I suggested that we at least go down to the temple to find out what the Black Spiral Dancers wanted. Both sides glared at me, like this was all part of my plan from the start, but Luo Wá spoke up on my behalf and gave her

honest opinion that I was trustworthy — or at least not dangerous. The pack of Glass Walkers, the sentai that investigated in the first place, and I all stepped sideways to return to the Umbral reflection of the temple.

We were quite the motley crew: An American Stargazer, five Glass Walkers from Hong Kong, a Kitsune, a Tengu, two Nezumi, and a Khan.

To translate for you, that’s a Corax raven-changer, two Ratkin, and a weretiger. The guardians I mentioned

earlier were weresharks — no, I’m not messing with you. The Hengeyokai of the Beast Courts call them Same-Bito but coastal Garou might know them as Rokea. Many of the Garou here at this caern haven’t even met other shifters with the possible exception of the Corax. I’ve traveled widely but even I can’t get over what it was like to work with such a disparate group, all strangers to each other despite sharing such close space.

We arrived to find the Pattern-Spiders working overtime to web up the structure. Not only were they attempting to patch and brace damage to the Umbral side of the temple but the energies that normally kept them at bay were stunted and they took advantage of the opportunity to increase the Weaver’s influence.

The Beast Court changers, much to the Glass Walkers’ frustration, immediately started clearing off the Pattern-Spiders while the rest of us moved inside the temple to find that they had begun wrapping the City Father up in their web. And at that point, the Boli Zouhisze were honor-bound to help free him. He was hurt.

“The river,” he said. “They were after the river and I am its chief protector. They’ve already struck the Dam, and now this end...” He trailed off.

“If something’s not done,” I thought aloud, “Then the river and its spirit could die. Surely that’s a worthy reason to cooperate, regardless of whether you think I planned this or not.”

After a round of grudging agreement, the representatives of the court and caern came to an arrangement. The Suzhou Creek Caern would protect the temple and the river in the physical world, while the Five Constants Court would deal with Umbral threats in the hopes of heading off whatever plans the Black Spiral Dancers have for the Yangtze.

I’ve been keeping an ear on that part of the world, and some time soon I plan on going back to check up on them. I think if there’s any place to look for clues as to how we can fight threats to Gaia, it’s in seeing how different societies of changers can work together.

This reminds me of another city that sometimes struggles with itself.

With the events of the revolution, Egypt is a country that’s changing on an almost weekly basis. During my last trip to Cairo in October 2011, the peoples’ struggle against the corruption over their heads was reaching a fever pitch. The Supreme Council of Armed Forces, which had been put in charge following President Mubarak’s resignation, had yet to follow through on its promises of stabilization and rebuilding and were lashing out at the protestors who called them to task. The country has seen vast improvements

and many successes since then but those are beyond the scope of my experiences there.

Before arriving in Cairo I’d had the very good fortune to share an evening of conversation with a Silent Strider by the name of Samir the Jackal. Judging by the look in your eye, I suspect that even you have heard of the Galliard Who Speaks ‘Til Sunrise. Speaking of which, he certainly does.

Samir and I swapped stories at his sept and it was he who encouraged me to visit Cairo despite the unrest. I’d expressed some interest in getting a first-hand look at the progress of the Arab Spring protests and he told me that even though he had difficulty staying, he felt that the Garou working and fighting there would appreciate my perspective. And I must admit, the idea that I might be able to genuinely do some good in addition to learning valuable lessons to pass on to others sounded too good to pass up.

To help get my foot in the door with the Glass Walkers at the Sept of the Solar Barque, he gave me a padded envelope filled with important data to deliver to a Theurge helping to coordinate the Garou’s interactions with allied protesters. Next time I encounter him I’ll have to thank him, because the delivery soothed a lot of nerves. The Glass Walker in charge of the caern, a woman named Leila Veil-Shredder, owes a lot of her ability to manage Garou and business affairs to a certain amount of paranoia. Being a woman of influence in a traditionally male-dominated region and also taking care of a particularly strong urban caern, it’s understandable.

She wasn’t inhospitable but I could even during our brief meeting that everything going on was demanding too much of her attention. Haytham Eyes-Across-The-World, the aforementioned Theurge and the caern’s Gatekeeper, was doing a lot of work with Arabic Children of Gaia and other Glass Walkers to put spirits of electricity and technology to use in helping to protect the protesters’ message and get it out into the world. I’m no slouch with spirits or technology, but I must admit that the sophistication of their work was definitely over my head.

One of their biggest problems at the time was the Leeches. Cairo is thick with vampires, many of whom worship some sort of Wyrm-creature that takes on the form of the Egyptian god Set. They often clash with Garou in the city but the government upheavals gave them innumerable opportunities to get their fangs into politicians and military figures who were still adjusting to new duties and authority. In the wake of the Maspero demonstrations the vampires stepped up efforts to connect protest activities to us to point police and military forces, eager for targets, at Garou supporters who may only have tangential connections. This only encouraged the efforts of a local Strider, Buries-the-Dead, in combatting them.

I took it upon myself to ask about the situation and see where I might be able to help while I was in town. I was

more than a little disturbed to see just how many incidents the sept blamed on the vampires’ influence until I could

see that a lot of Leila’s information appeared born of paranoia and conjecture. I was particularly disconcerted to learn that the two Bone Gnawer septs in the city did

not talk to the Sept of the Solar Barque, and that one of

which was openly hostile to outsiders. Leila stressed that they had not necessarily rejected the Bone Gnawers but

it was in fact the other way around, and for the sake of diplomacy I did not argue the matter.

Cairo is rather crowded. Vampires — not only the Set cultists, but Leeches of many ‘tribes’ — maintain control over large parts of the city and have profited greatly from unrest

in the country over the decades. The ghosts of the human dead are exceptionally plentiful in the City of the Dead, a necropolis and slum known to the locals as el’arafa and containing one of the aforementioned Gnawer caerns. Many of Africa’s shapeshifters, particularly the catfolk, put the city to use although I did not encounter any of them myself.

Leila invited me to accompany a few of the Garou of the Solar Barque to check in with a group of protestors, some of them Kin, who had been laying low since the

Maspero massacre. They loaned me some clothes that

blended in with local styles, something that would fit

better in the slums. The others didn’t say anything to suggest this would be the case but between the weapons they concealed and their body language I knew to be

ready for trouble.

The sheer density of Cairo’s population — the only part of the world more tightly-packed is India — made itself known once we were out of the Qasr al-Baron office complex. The city smelled of a uniquely human

despair, mixed with an undercurrent of nervous energy. The crowds outside the car windows gave off a pall of fear as though it were a color tinting a photograph. Even in

October, the city felt like an American summer and the heat pounded at us. As we approached the slums where

the Garou-allied activists were hiding I got the distinct

impression that the city was holding its breath, waiting

for something.

The name ‘Dar al-Salam’ roughly translates to ‘residence of peace’ and I couldn’t help but imagine that whomever originally applied that label to the neighborhood would die a little inside to see what it has

become. We parked a distance away, in what we knew to be a safe spot, and the seven of us walked down the tightly packed streets past piles of trash. Aside from curious glances and people keeping their heads down out of habit, pairs of eyes watched us like living cameras.

“Pardon me,” I asked one of the Glass Walkers with us, a young American Philodox by the name of FIGMO. “Are you aware we’re being watched?”