I addressed a little bit about the cities in the Shadow, henceforth to be called the 'shadow city of...', but wanted to devote an entire post to them because they are almost like a totally different beast than the Shadow and spirit world as a whole.
Each major settlement, towns included, have a twin in the Shadow. Some smaller hamlets or individual farmhouses that are old enough may be represented in the Shadow also, though these are often derelict and uninhabited. They do follow the overall rule of what's in the shadow, though, which is to say that all buildings and settlements in the Shadow seem frozen in the state they were in during the late Industrial period, which was roughly the early part of the twentieth century. If I were to set a date, I would say either Edwardian period, just before World War I in Europe, and just a little later, the year 1923 sticks out in my head, for the States, the Americas and the rest of the world.
Basically, they are stuck at the point where a few people had telephones but before anyone really had radios, and before buildings began to climb above a dozen stories high. Now, in New York there are a few tall buildings, as well as in a few other places, but by and large just picture the first two decades of the twentieth century.
Buildings in the Shadow can and do change, though, along with their owner's/occupier's whim. While the cities overall reflect their mortal world counterparts, some have been knocked down and replaced with similarly dated style buildings by owners. The datedness of new construction is mostly due to the building machinery being limited to those of that same time period and because of inability for electricity to function in almost all of the Shadow.
Technology is consistently somewhat prehistoric compared to that in mortal reality. In some places, locations particularly close to the mortal world, telephones actual work, and what's more they even connect to those in the mortal world. This is a rare quirk and sometimes makes those locations valuable property. The same things that make that location able to have a working phone, however, also makes it hard for spiritual entities to subsist there. In general that area isn't as dark, sometimes even seems to have more sunlight, and has a lot more of the properties of the mortal world than the areas around it. These patches can be as small as a corner in an alley or as large as a small neighborhood, but they never take up a large chunk of a city, and the larger of such an area a city has the fewer of those areas it has overall. Few cities have more than five or six even when the areas are all small.
Just as technology is a problem, so then are cars a problem. There are cars in the shadow cities, but they are infrequent. Mostly they are owned by people wealthy or powerful enough to be able to afford the fuel usable throughout the city, since gasoline is an almost completely worthless source of fuel. Almost all cars in the Shadow are pre-1960 models. A few models from the 60's and even the 70's are on the streets, but for a lot of reasons people prefer the more solidly build and heavier older car models.
Money in the shadow cities is very important. Wealth is power just like it is in the mortal world, only in the Shadow there are a lot fewer laws and a lot less enforcement of them. Because resources are scarce, though, a lot of stuff is imported, such as food, so crime is high and for most people money is tight. Those supernaturally powerful enough can make a fortune for themselves, but doing so eventually runs afoul of one of the big powers in the area, and doing that without the power to win means they will end up dead.
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