History of Empire City
In 1694 the small steading, that had been founded just ten years ago by an English carpenter and shipwright named George Keeling, became widely known as Keelington. It had grown quickly, a place of trade and industrious labor, and now boasted a population that rivaled many of the other local towns.
What had once been a small cluster of homes, workshops, and two small docks jutting into a deep bay (called the Silver Bar due to its often flat appearance, shape, and a local legend about a sunken ship) was now a thriving village. Within another fifteen years the nearby village of Gracewill was practically a part of the town they were so closely connected, and trade relations between other homesteads or villages with the place that was now called, simply, "Keeling."
By the end of the 18th century, this interconnected network of commercial centers was often called the "Little Empire" or "the Imperial City" with varying degrees of sincerity or scorn depending on the speaker's feelings on the area's primary focus; making things, selling things, and shipping things from what was now known as Bar Bay.
The people of the area spread their wealth around, and those with money began to play one-up-manship with one another in the fields where they specialized. Annual fairs were held with fierce competition, business owners poured large amounts of money into their community in order to lay claim to the most advanced or stately of home towns, and when war came to the colonies (or, later, the United States) each group lay claim to the bravest or most worthy of local heroes.
And you wouldn't even want to get them started on New York or, eventually, Atlantis.
In 1879, a full twenty years before the modern City of New York was officially formed with the inclusion of Brooklyn, the last of the local independent local districts and counties had joined the place known as Empire City.
Things haven't slowed down one bit since then.
