Chicago is a city rich in life and wonderful in its cultural diversity. While not the kind of international city that is New York, Chicago is still huge, rich, and a lot of fun. It can also be dangerous. Within my stories it is a place largely free of the Old World supernatural nations, a place where Europe holds little influence and where monsters who originated there evolve into Americans.
Principle to the supernatural political landscape in Chicago are the vampires. In Chicago these monsters are ruled by a handful of powerful masters, though none are much more than a century old, and the organized syndicates of minions under them. As is true in other cities, the supernatural powers are involved in crime, and in a city with a noted history of organized crime activity it is no surprise that the vampires resemble organized crime gangs as well as having their fingers in those of the mortals.
Chicago is too large a city to be ruled entirely by one species of supernatural creature, however. While the vampires do hold a large part of the downtown, the near north, and pretty much all the way up through Evanston, there are other influences within the city that provide some balance.
For one, the organized vampire masters have conflict with the vampire gangs that hunt in the poorest areas of the city. Many of these vampires are minorities and hunt in their old home turf. They keep low profiles because they have to. They know that when things get to bad, the masters may unite their forces and purge the South Side and the West Side of their kind.
There are also some significant demons in the city. These creatures are less often the center of supernatural power webs, instead preferring to play in mortal affairs. That doesn't make them easy prey for the masters, though.
Two groups are noticeably missing. The Covenant and the presence of a werewolf pack. This is for two reasons. First because despite not being a recognized nation among the major powers, the Chicago vampire masters have become a significant enough power to deter the mages. There is a safehouse in the north end of the city, but the practitioners in the area work hard to stay out of the way of the vampires. Werewolves, on the other hand, would thrive in the natural environment of the region as well as the urban environment of Chicago except that the vampire masters have a policy of extermination toward the lycan species. They allow the less organized types of lycanthropes, such as the various cat species, but wolves are expressly forbidden.
Something unique to Chicago is the absence of activity in the Shadow. There is in fact a shadow city, however almost no one goes there. It is a broken and ruined place. Large parts of it are haunted. The land itself is barren. The reasons for this are not fully known, but it is known for sure that a battle between divine and demonic forces went on in the shadow city and it helped tear large areas of it apart.
The absence of the Shadow makes a difference in the saturation of supernatural power on the mortal side of the Border. It means vampires who would largely retreat to the Shadow instead live wholly among humans. Demons, fey and practitioners of all stripes must move among mortals as well. This diversity of supernatural life makes the policing the city all that much more important and makes the streets far more dangerous.
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