Shawmut
The Glittering City
Vihtori Friis, often misnamed "Victor Freeze" or "Mister Freeze", is the master of
a city once called "Boston". It is now officially called "Shawmut", after the name of the peninsula on which the original city was settled. Less formally, the same citizens and outsiders who mispronounce a Finnish name as "Victor Freeze" also tend to call this glittering metropolis "New Boston".
Defences
Shawmut is a glittering city because Friis has gotten so much of Old Boston's iron and steel replaced with futuristic synthetic crystal. (Some of this crystal technology is probably kryptonian/atlantean!) The border around "New Boston" is made of giant Frozen-style ice walls in the winter, formed over a Pacific Rim -style seawall (mostly brick, with outer spikes) wrapped around the territory that less pleasingly defines the turf for the rest of the year. The wall is still not complete but it is far enough along to be useful.
Industry & Trade
Approaching travellers find entry to Shawmut fairly easy, depending on their arrival method. Ocean-based ships (specifically wind-powered vessels devoid of metal) must enter through the same towering seawall that constricts fishing trawlers. They undergo a thorough, perhaps even paranoid inspection shortly after they pass Deer Island or Georges Island.
Any ship found to contain any metal, even as much as a handful of nails, is promptly frozen solid. It will be blown or towed out to sea, then filled with cement. Those who had been aboard the ship will be forced to do the hands-on portions of this work. They will then be transported in a closed container to Moose Hill in Sharon, dumped out, and warned to make better life choices for themselves.
Ships that approach Shawmut via the Charles, Neponset, or Mystic Rivers are assumed to be smuggling raiders until repeatedly proven otherwise. However, they typically have been through this route before, and know how to proceed through the checkpoints of various territories along the route so that violence does not ensue on either side.
Once any traveler, by ship or land-based vehicle or personal movement, passes through an opening in the outermost concentric wall, they may be surprised at the mildness of the resistance. The response may not feel like an open welcome, but neither is it hostile. Travelers are directed to a nearby rest stop within the shelter of the wall. Simple, bland food awaits, and wash facilities, and possibly a conglomeration of single-occupancy bunkrooms for those in urgent need of sleep.
Once given a short time to recover, the traveler then is required to pass a series of tests for disease and/or inability to problem solve, in order to be allowed passage beyond the holding area. Upon establishing his reign, Herra Friis declared low capacity for critical thinking to be a felony offense. He feels that the ongoing crisis does not afford the resilience for one person in a society to endanger all of society through lack of fluid intelligence … and he has a "three strikes" rule. On the first offense, he has the miscreant expelled from Shawmut territory. If they attempt to return, that itself counts as a "second offense": failure to comprehend that they are no longer a suitable fit for the survival of Shawmut. They will be expelled again, deposited further away, with a vehement warning against any further attempt to return.
If a "third offense" does occur, alone or in combination with the previous offenses, the offender is converted to fertilizer.
Geography
Although some parts of Old Boston continue to decay from Aether Contamination, this small semi-independent nation contains all of the original ten thousand square miles of the sprawling city as it existed in the early 20th century. Its most impressive walls overlap in valleys and hills, creating concentric arcs that prevent any would-be invader from gaining much momentum as they aim for the heart of the population.
The Shawmut territory domain extends westward into the more rural areas of former Massachusets, where a lot of container-based farming is the major employment for citizens between the ages of 15 and 25; one has to be 26 years old or older to pursue some other career, like making the plastic or crystalline parts that are steadily replacing all former metal objects in the city.
The character of Vihtori Friis, a leader who bases hard decisions in cold survival-based calculations regarding the group and who creates superscience constructs by generating ice in various shapes, was inspired by "Victor Fries" a.k.a. "Mr. Freeze" as originally portrayed in the 1990s cartoon series Batman: The Animated Series, a property of DC Comics. He is used in homage, along with the brief mentions of Kryptonian and Atlantean technology.
Alternative Name(s)
New Boston
Type
Large city
Location under
Owner/Ruler
Ruling/Owning Rank
Related Reports (Secondary)
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