Halcyon City History

Halcyon City! Shining beacon of heroism and progress! The city of tomorrow!
That’s the tagline, anyway. The truth is always a little more complex.

Halcyon City is a massive, bustling megalopolis. Gleaming silver skyscrapers adorn its business districts, and assorted streets, bridges, and rails crisscross its body. Countless people from countless cultures and walks of life populate this great city. It’s a contradictory and wonderful combination of darkness, crime, corruption, and flaws, built on the errors of the past alongside light, hope, and the promise of change and growth. It’s always been the city of tomorrow and yesterday, and that’s never been more true than today.

Halcyon is the focal point of the super-powered, extra-normal world. Caped figures soar through its skies and break into fights against terrible monsters and gigantic robots. Villains scheme in nefarious lairs hidden in the clouds over the city, while heroes meet and contemplate their next course of action in their golden halls of justice. Paranormal adventurers walk Halcyon City’s streets, looking for distortions and portals to other realms, while time travelers and aliens make this city their home, for better or worse.

The city’s always had more than its share of strange heroes and goings-on, but since the late 1930’s, it’s played home to more superhumans and their kin than any other place on Earth, and the city has evolved to fit its population. Construction crews work at ridiculous speeds to repair the damage done in superhuman brawls. Law enforcement has adapted to the superhuman activity with a unique set of responses and equipment. Halcyon hosts the headquarters of United Metahuman Agency (UMA) as well as A.E.G.I.S., an elite government agency that arose specifically to deal with superhumans, among other weird, secret, and superhuman oriented organizations.

History
Halcyon City has been around for several centuries, but its real history begins in the 1930’s, with the appearance of Maggie MacIntyre, better known as Flying Freedom. Historians know now that there were superhumans before, scattered all throughout history. But Flying Freedom was the first public figure to whom the term “superhero” could reasonably be ascribed. She was cloaked in a pilot’s jacket, cap, and goggles, with the American flag emblazoned on her back, and she could fly. Newsreel footage of the era marveled at how she soared over Halcyon’s tallest towers.

Maggie MacIntyre fought criminals and madmen with flair and heroism. But she wasn’t immortal, and she wasn’t invulnerable. She died saving Halcyon City from her mortal enemy, Captain Coldheart, and his aerial doomcraft, but she’d already inspired new heroes. Champion and the Haunt had taken up her struggle for heroism, and Halcyon City would never be the same.

Superhumans gravitated toward the city, joining its ever-growing community of metahumans. Some immediately sought out criminal activity; others dove headfirst into heroics; still others just lived their lives. But with all of them together in one place, Halcyon became a hotbed of technological progress. Industries moved headquarters into Halcyon to be closer to the biggest developments in their fields. And with ever greater wealth and success came ever more superpowered insanity.

Geography
Halcyon City is situated along the coast at the confluence of the North and South Rivers where they flow into Halcyon Bay, which makes its way through the Century Narrows out into the ocean. The Interstate passes close by the city along the coast, providing easy access to all points of the city by land.

The heart of the city—downtown—lies between the rivers while the entire metropolitan area spans both sides of the rivers. Southside can be found on the far bank of the South River. Northward is Burnsley, a largely college and technical community, home to a number of businesses and youth led start-ups. To the East, coined the Eastern Fringes, are a collection of suburbs, slums, and a national forest with unspoiled natural terrain and opportunities for camping, hiking, and other outdoor activities.

The downtown peninsula’s elevation rises gradually toward Liberty Hill, while the land south of the South River rises toward low hills in Bayview and the areas south of the MacIntyre Airport. Parts of the seaside around the Century Narrows and Halcyon Bay rise a short distance above the water with some seaside cliffs in spots. Along the West are several coastal communities, exclusive estates, and manor houses, some of which date back centuries. Near the seaside is a private island named Oracle Island where the A.E.G.I.S. headquarters is located, accessible via a metal bridge that connects the island to Century Narrows. There is another island, called Black Stone Island miles off the coast that is privately owned by the Fournier family, where the Fournier Penitentiary is located.

The city planners laid out downtown Halcyon City as logically as possible within the constraints of existing roads, land area, and geological features. The central areas of the city are fairly new, heavily reconstructed after the Skraa Invasion, as are the suburban communities to the east. Sandwiched in between those areas are older communities, ranging from the affluent Crystal Villa in the north and the crowded West End to the less fortunate October Hill that exists along the South River.

Downtown Halcyon City generally follows a grid pattern. East-west streets have the names of prominent individuals honored by Halcyon City. Northsouth avenues are numbered, starting from Riverside and heading west to the Valor Expressway. Alleys running between buildings in the downtown area are common, and are generally numbered separately from streets where crime is high.

In outlying areas (like Liberty Hill, Burnsley, and Southside), streets tend to meander. There are also more one-way streets, cul-de-sacs, and multi-street intersections. These streets are older, so they are often narrower, less organized, and in slightly worse condition. Traffic back-ups are becoming increasingly common on both sides of the downtown area, and renovations are ongoing

Halcyon City Today
The city is huge; over 10 million people live in its many neighborhoods and districts. It’s a city of tremendous variety, from the large island of silver and glass skyscrapers to the waterfront neighborhoods of dark alleys to the strange architecture transposed onto our Halcyon from other worlds. People from an endless panoply of cultures fill its streets, bringing their own beliefs, traditions, and practices into the city’s crucible. The city is far from perfect, with plenty of prejudice and bigotry even today, but there’s no other place on Earth quite as diverse as Halcyon.

And that’s not even getting into the superhuman stuff.

Halcyon is the single greatest confluence of superheroic, metahuman, supernatural, and impossible activity in the entire world. For years scientists and historians have tried to determine the causal relationship between the city and the superpowered madness that goes on there. There’s the obvious—new superheroes and supervillains come to Halcyon because it’s where the action is. But why is Halcyon always the target of alien invasions? Of paranormal transdimensional transpositions? Of apocalyptic events and eldritch monstrosities and whatever else you can think of?

No one’s ever found a definitive answer, and most people in the city don’t worry too much about the why. The city just is what it is. Some cities deal with constant cloud cover or terrible weather. Halcyon has superpeople, monsters, time travel, sorcerers, and whatever else. The city’s never ended so far, and the superheroes generally have a pretty good handle on things. Life goes on. __NONEWSECTIONLINK__