Background

Salt Lake City, Utah, has earned its moniker Crossroads of the West thrice over: once with the immigration of the church of Ladder Day Saints, again with construction of the first transcontinental railroad, and now one final time with the Flood of ’89.

Most would’ve told you Salt Lake was experiencing a drought of apocalyptic proportions. Meteorologists, psychics, the faithful, and all sorts of soothsayers and doom-speakers were all of the mind it was the sunny end for SLC. They were right, but not how they thought. See, it wasn’t a drought. Things were just building up. Jordan River began to rise. And it didn’t stop.

Water grew thin and took on a rhodolite hue softer looking and more pleasant scented than any cherry blossom. Nothing broke that it crossed over, but it became submerged. Levees were overtaken, roads hidden under the deluge, and Salt Lake Temple and its Holy of Holies washed away along with 50 city blocks. The largest blocks of any city in the United States, gone.

Thing is, the waters from the Jordan never receded. Never moved either. They formed one massive wall where the blocks used to be. The city was cut into unnatural pieces and surrounded, no way in or out. But it didn’t stop there.

See, as it turned out, the river wasn’t opposed to fording, nor was that pinkish hue for show. Anyone could enter it. And after a few weeks, that option started looking mighty tempting. Those desperate entered the wall of rose-colored water. And that’s where they learned two things: it wasn’t water, and the world wasn’t what they thought.

It was there they met the Spirits. Spirits of another world, another plane, another mind. They lived in the vestigial Stream. That Stream ebbed into the Jordan and overtook Salt Lake. Spirits were bizarrely whimsical, alien, and unfathomably dangerous. And they love to play.

Contractors, humans who had made deals with the Spirits in exchange for their power, filtered back into Salt Lake. With them they brought havoc, chaos, harmony, dance, music, fear, joy, and wildly inconsistent motivations. In a matter of days, the Stream had spread, following in the footsteps of these contractors, consuming 18 more city blocks.

It was here the APCA came to be, executing contractors en masse and staunching the spread of the Stream. For now. But the Spirits sit just inside the Stream, creeping on peoples dreams and the desires of the greedy, hopeful, or bored.

As years passed, the lost parts of Salt Lake were mapped once again. Other factions had made parts of the city their own. A group following a bastardized bushido code calling themselves the Lions claimed Glendale and the West Jordan.

The 50s, the old government, were trying to keep things together in Downtown. Psychic powers became more common as people became sensitive to the forces of the Stream, coming to be called Thoughtswains. Some contractors managed to unchain themselves from their contract, forming vehement hatred for the Spirits.

Fifteen years out, and Salt Lake isn’t what it used to be. The factions constantly war with one another, the Stream advancing. Everyone grabs power where they can find it. Comfort too, if they’re lucky.