Editing Supernatural Law: Main Page (section)

=====Vampires and Werewolves in Boston=====

Boston does not outright ban entry from vampires and werewolves, but it does legislate them heavily. Visiting ones need to apply for a visitor permit beforehand. Becoming a resident also needs a permit. Residents also need to check in with the police regularly. Although with well known long term residents this is largely a routine visit to the station every month or two. Creating new vampires or infected werewolves is outright forbidden as a form of murder.

Boston sees an occasional vampire visitor and has three long term residents.

Siobhan is the oldest vampire in Boston. She claims to have been around when the City was still just a frontier town, although back then she was running a traveling brothel in a wagon train. These days she gets by as a high class call girl and feeds on her customers, most of whom are rich visitors to the City. She regularly changes her surname. At the moment, she is going with Dunn. And has a habit of announcing her arrival for her check up visits to the station with a "Dun Dun Dunn!"

Siobhan is a somewhat short redhead. As tends to be with older vampires, her apparent physical age is difficult to pin down. She looks like she might be anything from mature twentysomething to well preserved fortysomething.

Alfred Bloom, the second eldest, arrived in the 1800s from Europe as an industrialist. He claims to be British, and certainly speaks with such an accent, but the truth is that Bloom's original name, history and country of origin are not known to anyone. He still runs his company, even if it is through a proxy acting as the real owner. The company is known for good pay and benefits to the workers, especially healthcare. The company has its own infirmary. There is just the additional condition that everyone has to donate blood regularly to keep the infirmary stocked with the correct blood types.

Joe is the youngest. He still gets a bit twitchy in presence of holy symbols. As he is fond of telling to anyone who listens, he is the sole survivor of the volunteer unit formed close to the end of World War II when Nazis got desperate and started turning the SS troops into vampires in droves, and the Allied command felt they needed their own bunch to counter that. The final battle was epic, Joe tells, bemoaning that he has been geased not to tell about it. And the post war treaties banned vampires and werewolves from military positions because no one wanted to see that shit again, and Joe was let go.

Joe still looks close to his original age of early thirties. As a veteran he has a small pension and government-arranged living quarters in the campus of a federal research facility where the staff sees to his dietary needs.

Joe is a bit of a problem case. He tends to miss his regular check ins and needs to be reminded, and on occasion he gets reported as missing by his minders. As a rule, he is found drunk somewhere, either hanging out with some winos telling war stories to them, or sitting in a bar telling the same stories to an empty chair. Joe is a peaceful person with a respect for authority though, so he is more of a nuisance than a serious problem.

Boston sees werewolf visitors more rarely. At least announced visitors. Unannounced visits can be a problem, because if a werewolf from the countryside visits the city, gets into trouble and flees back home, then no matter what he did, his clan will protect him. Although they may never allow him to leave home again.

The only residents are the Grunwalds. A family of four. A married couple with a teenage son and daughter. The registered visitors tend to be their visiting relatives. 

Herman Grunwald and his wife Isabella, parents of high school age Mona and Manfred, are cemetery groundskeepers. Like Herman's parents before them. The old couple is now retired and living in the countryside. In fact, for generations the Grunwalds have been groundskeepers for the cemeteries in Boston. All of the cemeteries.

The Boston region has some of America's oldest cemeteries, with a handful stretching back to the early 1600s and a goodly proportion launching well before the 1900s. The cemeteries also contain a huge number of notables: presidents, poets, war heroes, jurists, academics, athletes, musicians, Benjamin Franklin's parents.

And there is one big problem with the cemeteries. They attract ghouls. The ghouls are not native to our world, but something about especially the oldest cemeteries attracts them, and occasionally a pack slips through from the other side. Ghouls are usually not dangerous to living people unless starving or threatened, and prefer to avoid people. But the authorities are not happy about them taking up residence in the graveyards, so periodically they need to be eradicated. And for an ordinary groundskeeper this would be a highly difficult and dangerous job. Ghoul burrows are difficult to find, narrow and filled with traps, and ghouls can be deadly if they attack.

A werewolf, however, makes short work of a pack of ghouls and can literally sniff out their presence. So the Grunwalds make regular circuits of the cemeteries. Often at night when they can work unhindered. This is occasionally a rude surprise for young mages who decide to take advantage of the ambient energies within the old cemeteries for some ritual. The groundskeepers won't allow that either. The smart mages depart peacefully when caught. If they are not smart, the department may get a nightly call to come pick up some very frightened young mages for trespassing.

The Grunwalds rarely cause problems themselves. The family owns a number of artifacts. Collars that prevent transformation. They nicely prevent accidental werewolfing, but are somewhat conspicuous. Although this is not much of a problem for the present day family. They play the part of middle aged metalheads with their like-minded children, which is not far from the actual truth, and dress like a metal band, with lots of leather, chains and spiked studs. The collars do not stand out at all.

There are very likely unannounced vampires and werewolves in Boston. Recently, Charlestown Mob, a largely Irish organized crime group dating from the prohibition era, has been clashing with a group of Hispanic newcomers calling themselves Red 13. Judging by what has been arriving in the Morgue, Charlestown Mob is wielding at least one vampire, and Red 13 appears to include werewolves.