About Underworld (Tobyverse)
The story of Salvation City is one of paranoia, failure, disaster, and rebirth.
At one point, it was a shining city in a mountainous, unforgiving part of Utah. It grew large out of necessity, out of the need for steel and construction during the second world war. It sprang to life, to glorious prosperity, following the Great Depression, as the steel mills brought employment to the area. However, the man who orchestrated the city's prosperity would also spell its doom.
Michael Hubert was the beating heart of the city. He had built up his company in the twenties, watched it fall to pieces in the thirties, and then built it again in the forties. Eventually, the city prospered, and it had gotten to a point where he owned almost everything in the city. Such power required a person who would handle it with care, who would skillfully manage such a sprawling personal empire. And Hubert was all of these things, and more.
Unfortunately,he did not live forever. And when he passed, he left everything to his son.
It would not be fair to say that Edger Hubert had no idea what he was doing. He was a skilled administrator, and seemed like he could maintain the empire left to him. Sadly, he was also a paranoid and nervous man. He was caught up in the paranoia that swept the nation in the fifties, so much so that he was convinced beyond a doubt that the world was going to end by nuclear holocaust. So, he set about preparing for the 'inevitable.'
He called it the Ark Project. The basic idea was that if the bombs fell, there would be a way that his people could survive. He began construction of a massive bomb shelter system; four towns below the real city, connected through the sewer, subways, and a massive new spiderweb network of tunnels.
Sadly his work was quite unappreciated. The bombs never fell, and he bankrupted the city in his mad crusade. His reckless mission struck the city head on, and with the amount he had spent on private contractors, the city began to spiral toward death. Crime rose. Unemployment rose. And finally, when Edger no longer had the resources to continue, he struck upon a plan B that created pure chaos.
How exactly he did this is unknown, but for two terrible hours, the city was sent to the depths of the Expanse. His motive had been to keep them safe forever, but the death toll at the claws of monsters and the random power of the void was astronomical. Eventually, the Magus Eternal managed to send it back. Edger had committed suicide, and the rest of the city was in shambles.
The city's steady decline over the last few decades, coupled with the transportation and subsequent mystic pollution of Salvation, the Utah state government declared that the city no longer existed. Many of its people left, and those that could not became strange, post-apocalyptic survivors in a world where no apocalypse had occurred.
This, however, was not the end. After the Advent, the bitter, brutal people who still lived in Salvation decided that all Changelings would have to live below ground. Edger's Ark Project, his hidden city, was the home of the worst magical pollution. It was assumed that these people would die in the depths.
And seemingly to spit in the eyes of their persecutors, they flourished.
No one is really sure how they got the message out, in the end. But many changelings began to arrive in the city, following the promises of a strange figure known as 'Razor Jenny.' They sought a place called Underworld, and the human survivors were not organized enough to stop them.
Now, Underworld is a bit of a legend among Changelings. It is seen by some, particularly those who have nowhere to go and no awesome powers to vent their rage, as a sort of Changeling promised land. In either case, it has grown large and powerful enough to be considered a growing threat. At the current time however, Government forces see it as a smaller problem than Crow and his structure, as they mostly keep to themselves.
