For a more in depth background, read the following paragraphs starting with A Short History. My game world is not based of the established canon from White Wolf. One players has said my style is more like the book Naked Lunch, or the movie Dark City.
Characters can be from a variety of backgrounds, including other White Wolf games. Please remember that the game is primarily a Mage game.
The Characters created should be exceptional (level 5) in one ability. Hollywood is no place for weak or unskilled - it is the top of food chain for talent. Magi should be Adepts and have at least rudimentary understanding of three other spheres. The Mind sphere is highly recommended. One and only one Master will be allowed. Other supernatural characters face similar expectations.
I would prefer that players planning on participating email me their character - plain text is fine - along with any background notes.
Hollywood, California has always been a strange and magical. Even in it's prehistory, the canyon and hills of Hollywood was the site of great nexus used by the local Chumash Indians. Early european settlers including Jesuit refugees that were also members of the Celestial Chorus and Cabal of Pure Thought. Native Shamans with Garou allies battled against the Choristers and Cabalists for centuries in a brutal stalemate. California's admission as a member of the United States and the magical upheavals waged by the Technocratic Union broke the stalemate in favor of the Cabal of Pure Thought.
In 1886, H. H. Wilcox bought an area of Rancho La Brea that his wife then christened "Hollywood." Within a few years, Wilcox had devised a regular grid plan for his new community, paved Prospect Avenue (now Hollywood Boulevard) for his main street and was selling large residential lots to wealthy Midwesterners looking to build homes so they could "winter in California." Mr. Wilcox was a member of the Technocratic Union and was only looking to control the many nodes and channel their power for the needs of the Union. However, the European oriented Union of the time did not see the potential of the land - only a distant, dusty frontier. The Traditions did see the value. They subverted the original plans and Ley lines and soon controlled some of the nodes while the Union controlled others. Ignored by higher ranking members of both their organizations, an uneasy truce developed. The ambient aura and shallow gauntlet soon changed into the lives of the sleepers there, and a something magic happened. Hollywood was born - a place where dreams can become reality and be captured forever on film. Technocrat Scientists such as D. W. Griffith (Master, NWO) were matched by Tradition Magi such as Cecil B. DeMille (Master, Cult of Ecstasy). With the world tearing apart and soon to be in the clutches of The Great War (WWI), the magi of Hollywood forged a truce called the Hollywood Precepts. It was intended to be a temporary measure during a time of world wide crisis. The Precepts have now guided awakened behavior for 90 years.
The Hollywood Precepts hold that the Awakened will battle for the Ascension through the media - film, radio, theatre, and TV (newspapers are oddly off limits). Other rules are that a Hollywood Awakened will not be directly attacked or magically spied on by other Awakened and that their home and family are sacrosanct. Over the decades, a strange sort of gentile rivalry has prevailed in Hollywood that has earned the suspicion of both the Union and Tradition council. Various purges were tried, but in the end the Precepts endured. Only in Hollywood can a New World Order Man-in-White meet with a Dreamspeaker Sineater for lunch and a discussion of the moral lessons to be learned from the latest B-Movie slasher picture. Outside of the honorary City of Hollywood, all bets are off. These has tended to concentrate an inordinate amount of awakened in a very small area. One high ranking Technomancer, speaking anonymously, said that Hollywood was "a breeder reactor of magic."
The Avatar Storm and current crisis in the Umbra have left the Awakened of Hollywood reeling. Both Traditions and Union had used many custom horizon realms to assist in all aspects of media production and research. These realms are now lost - along with the Masters that lived in them. The tremendous power that once sustained them is now reflected back to a Hollywood that cannot contain it. The Gauntlet is wounded in many places, and THINGS have slipped through. Most are benign - figments of past films come alive. Some are less benign.
A number of Cabals and Constructs called the greater Hollywood area home.
A front for a syndicate Technomancer known as Mr. Century. He is part of the ruling cabal of studio executives that determine the profitability and reality shaping of various movies. Mr. Century is the owner of Centurion Studios. Established in 1911, it is Hollywood’s oldest continuously producing studio. Publicly, Centurion studios is a large corporation with many shareholders. Some investigations will show that over half of the outstanding stock is owned by Edwin Century III, grandson of the founder of Centurion Studios. Few know that Edwin Century III is the third clone of Edwin Century, who still runs his business. He must use agents now to run the business, as paradox has begun to take its toll on him for living far beyond his years. He runs one Syndicate construct directly, the Centurion Studios, and controls three other constructs: BMC Music, Matrix Materials, and Citizens for a Better Tomorrow. He is a powerful master of both Correspondence and Spirit magic, with his other notable spheres in Mind, Time, Prime, and Entropy. He is surprisingly deficient in pattern magic’s (Forces, Life, and Matter) for a Technomancer. His powerful Avatar is known to be Questing. He survived the Avatar Storm.
Originally formed by three famous silent movie stars, it is the oldest continuous studio in Hollywood. Centurion Studios and RKO/Universal are slightly younger studios. Many of it's staff are Tradition Magi, but the actual running of the company is in hands of the unawakened - albeit heavily influenced. In many ways, the mundane management has proven better than direct control by the Awakened. UAE may not have the major hits of Century Studios, but they also do not have mega-flops either.
Founded in 1898, The Talent Trust has mirrored the evolution of the entertainment industry. The agency began by booking vaudeville acts, then continued to supply talent to the ever-changing show biz formats: silent movies, radio, "talkies" and TV. As entertainment become more of a big business, the power of the Talent Trust grew along with it. The Machiavellian tactics employed by the firm's agents against other agencies and against each other to steal clients to advance their own power is legendary. The nominally Tradition Magi that ran the agency did not survive the Avatar Storm. The result is that a host of Awakened have begun battling for control of the agency while others have fled with some clients to form rival talent agencies.
Unlike the high powered talent who come from The Talent Trust, Oddfellows Agency caters to bit players and "unique" characters. If you need contortionists, midgets, or a real live (or un-alive as the case may be) Vampire then the Oddfellows Agency can provide it. Through a web of accounting and corporate statements the true owner of Oddfellows is the genie Hudhayfah. A genie of the Marid tribe, Hudhayfah ("Just call me Howard") Jordan, a Marid whose seeming is that of an elderly gentleman with a tremendous handlebar mustache. He is noted for being a paragon of honor, donating heavily to local charities and needy causes. Hudhayfah functions as a mediator in disputes between the Union and the Traditions. Rumors abound that he accepted the Will of God from the Prophet Muhammad himself.
XSX is a business front for a old virtual adept by the name of DeVient. They are in an on-going war with the technocratic hold on Movie production. This cabal’s tactic is to subvert technocratic movie products with “script editing” and “marketing” advice. The cabal is diverse in magical abilities, but only DeVient qualifies as an Master. Their running joke is “We are more like Virtual Disciples than Virtual Adepts.” Dozens of Virtual Magi have awakened under the tutelage of DeVient.
A humble seeming deli and cafe hides the favorite watering hole of the awakened and other supernatural's of Hollywood. The mute waiters serve all customers needs. The owner, Absolum Lowe, is a Master of the Order of Hermes of House Bonisagus and a noted Cabbalist. When the Avatar Storm hit, his Horizon realm collapsed with nearly five thousand people ceasing to exist including his wife, children and grandchildren.