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Poolside, Florida. Founded by Dan Poolside in 1925 during the boom. While everyone else was busy inflating real estate bubbles, Poolside bought water rights and built infrastructure, obsessed with his dream of a Mediterranean resort town in the Everglades. It sounded insane, but it’s not that different from how Naples turned out. Today, this city of 3,991 people boasts a “thriving” upstairs/downstairs economy of wealthy retirees and a rotating cast of service workers scraping by at subsistence levels.
Poolside, Florida. Founded by Dan Poolside in 1925 during the boom. While everyone else was busy inflating real estate bubbles, Poolside bought water rights and built infrastructure, obsessed with his dream of a Mediterranean resort town in the Everglades. It sounded insane, but it’s not that different from how Naples turned out. Today, this city of 3,991 people boasts a “thriving” upstairs/downstairs economy of wealthy retirees and a rotating cast of service workers scraping by at subsistence levels.
Poolside is built on an island of rock and concrete fill, piled up around a truly massive boulder. The top of the rock outcropping is the highest point in South Florida outside Miami. The stone mound is crusted with buildings, hanging gardens, and decorative water features. Down to the waterfront, a facsimile of a Neapolitan tourist village.
Surrounding the town are the florida Everglades, a flooded morass of freshwater forests and “wet prairies”. The Everglades were acquired as a National Park in 1934, Poolside was spared eminent domain by smart legal maneuvering on the part of the founder. The entire Poolside incorporated area encompasses a couple square miles of swamp outside the town, which is not fenced but clearly demarcated as the “City Limits” by buoys and signs.
All public lighting in poolside has red lenses, to protect the elderly residents’ night vision and avoid generating light pollution. The town has blackout laws restricting open windows at night.
Gelatomb is a gelato parlor decorated like a crypt. Drape a mosquito net over a deck chair inside a sarcophagus and sip affogato as the sun sets over the bayou. Popular hangout spot for the Sundowners.
Judy Poolside Memorial Hospital specializes in falls, memory issues, cancer and other maladies that affect the elderly. That and vanity treatments for residents who refuse to age gracefully. The hospital’s private rooms are modeled after Venetian row houses, with a colorful exterior facade.
The King’s Road is an elevated causeway over the swamp. It links Poolside to the outside world. It’s got one lane in each direction, and the luminaires have dim red lenses to protect the night vision of swamp creatures flying over or swimming under it. There is no sidewalk, it’s common to see shift workers who couldn’t hitch a ride walking along the shoulder between Poolside and Rustle.
The Marina is full of canoes, kayaks, sailboats and low power airboats, the fastest thing allowed in the waters of the surrounding Everglades. The Paddle Club is the closest thing to a reasonably priced restaurant in the City, which means the dockhands who tend the wealthy boomers’ boats can almost afford to eat there regularly.
The Neptune Society outlet cremates bodies. The exterior decor is domed and columnated, with statues of the Fates. The crematoria workers pilfer pieces of bodies before and after incineration, for resale to magick users in need of ritual components.
The Pool is an elegant complex of marble baths, filled with filtered swamp water and purported to have enormous health benefits. In keeping with Poolside’s vision of his town as a Roman resort, the baths are owned by the City and public, paid for out of exorbitant property tax revenues. The Fountain of Cloacina is a real treat, with the Goddess’ drooling maw dribbling water all over her otherwise perfect body. Atlas Obscura says that it comes to life sometimes, but nobody in town has ever seen it.
The Police Station is a modern glass and metal building. After a storm wrecked the original, Chief Crane forced the remodel past the City zoning committee as a demonstration of his power, over their objections that it fit poorly the town’s aesthetic. The jail looks like it was added as an afterthought, module crudely tacked onto the exterior of the building, hanging out over open space.
The Statue is a 25 feet high sculpture of Athena. Dan Poolside brought it in to place atop the highest point of the boulder. It fell off the barge and broke in the swamp, and was basically impossible to recover with the technology of the day. It’s been there ever since. The statue has a layer of white marble cladding over an iron frame, both of which have degraded over time. The visual effect of the giant stone arm reaching into the air, spear outstretched, with vines growing up around the wrist and birds nesting atop the knuckles, is still striking.
The Gas Station has a taco truck in the parking lot, mounted on cinderblocks. It doesn’t have a name, but the locals call it la lanterna because of the red lights they use to illuminate the picnic tables where all the Poolside staff drink after work. Skirmishes between locals and Poolside police straying outside their jurisdiction are common. The Sheriff’s Department doesn’t intervene because they hate Poolside.
Saint Hildegrim’s is a Catholic Church. It’s a squat structure made of coral limestone megaliths, like a dolmen with stained glass windows. It mostly ministers to the workers of Rustle, few people come from Poolside for services. Inside, the low stone ceiling is plastered with candles, dripping down into bowls of hot wax on the floor. The only other ornament is a glass cross, which Father Memnon claims is a Chihuly original.
The Super8 is where contractors and other visitors who can’t afford the Basilica stay. It’s a popular place for wealthy Poolsiders to score illegal drugs.
Father Memnon (he took the name when he converted) is the priest of Saint Hildegrim’s. He is just corrupt enough to gain the trust of people who would immediately be suspicious of an honest priest. He offers sanctuary to anyone who asks, with the stipulation that they not carry weapons or use magick in his church. He doesn’t have any way of enforcing this, but people who violate the rules tend to meet grisly fates. He likes to imagine this is God punishing them, and not just his angry parishioners arranging accidents for people who disrespect him.
Henrietta Slick is the City Manager. Her exuberant exterior belies a decade of experience dealing with clients who are not used to being told “no”. She has no knowledge of the supernatural because someone has magickally blocked her memory, preventing her from noticing anything that violates the laws of reality. She fears public works employees more than she does the city council, because they are less likely to forget any demands they make of her.
Hydraulic Despotism is a cabal within the City public works department. Poolside was built to last, but it was also built in 1925. Only a few people understand how the water, sewer and electrical systems really work, and they use that knowledge to squeeze the town’s wealthy residents into giving the working stiffs who make Poolside function a better deal. Their leader Montanya is a thuggish but loveable social bandit with a Master Plumber’s license. He knows the sunken pools and flooded caves beneath the city better than anyone alive.
Keep it in the Holster is a cult of fulminaturges in Poolside’s small police department. They believe the use of a service weapon is an admission of failure to establish authority. They use a mix of dirty tricks, magick, and good old fashioned police brutality to keep order without ever firing a shot. Their leader, Chief Crane, enjoys standing around in the Agora at high noon, waiting for people to challenge him to a shootout. So far nobody has had the strength of will to draw on him.
Mendoza is a Knight of the Road, a secret order of homeless gutter mages. His specialty is blending in with the barons, and setting traps that would normally be harmless pranks, but which he enhances with reality bruising magick so that they trigger in the most harmful possible way. He sleeps in the pores, or in the swamp.
Lange Ybarra Josephus, better known as Seminole Joe like his father, owns the town’s Hard Rock Cafe. He’s 5 feet tall on a good day and a veteran scout and sniper, like every member of his family going back 200 years. His mean streak is kept in check by his sincerely devout Catholicism, and both of these combined give him his hatred of wizards, who he views as irresponsible jackasses that pick on people who can’t defend themselves.
The Sundowners are a loose coalition of retired chargers. They dominate both local politics and the local bridge scene, as well as mahjong, cribbage, and other old-person table games with surprisingly rich mechanics.
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Chief Crane wants the Marine Corps to adopt his service pistol design, so he can get a major. Cerloclev can help via Disney’s connection to highly placed Florida Senators. In exchange, he wants some people run out of properties he’s looking to buy.
The mosquitoes of the surrounding swamp have fed on so much mage blood they’ve started manifesting spontaneous magickal abilities.
The town is built on the ruins of an old Seminole War fort, where in 1814 American forces under Jackson slaughtered 300 Indians, Spaniards and runaway slaves. The peaty water of the swamp preserved their weapons, clothing and corpses, such that all three can be dug up from the flooded tunnels beneath the City.
The alligators in the fens and mires outside the City wear suits, smoke cigars and play cards.
Poolside is a honeypot for one of the anti-magick factions that infest the Unknown Armies ‘verse. Either the Order of Saint Cecil, the Sleepers or Blue Line use it to lure mages with knowledge and power, pump them for information, then dispose of them. The magick users in the town are either bait for the trap or in on the con.
The City’s hospital has an emergency room, meaning they’ll take anyone there who gets critically injured if it’s the closest hospital. That would be a great way to get in front of Doctor Park with a critical illness only her 91% Healer channel could cure.
Like much of Florida, Poolside is home to invasive Burmese pythons. One giant snake related killing of an old person is a random tragedy. Two, and local checkers suspect Joshua of orchestrating a hit. It would also be an obvious way to frame him.
Despite all the anti-ageing therapies and spa treatments, rates of dementia in Poolside are actually worse than in comparable retirement destinations. That’s because something is siphoning memories out of the residents.
Mendoza is in Poolside to avenge the police’s fatal beating of some poor old smokehound who wandered into town a year ago, thinking it was the Big Rock Candy Mountain. He hopes to provoke Chief Crane into a fight with a local charger that will get him killed. Hydraulic Despotism isn’t thrilled with this because they anticipate being blamed.
Dan Poolside is dead, sealed in a concrete block to prevent even a single atom of his corpus from escaping during decomposition. He was confident that he could be resurrected if his entire body was kept in one place. How he planned to accomplish this is the great occult secret of Poolside, drawing occultists to the City as the time of his resurrection draws near. And that’s if you can even find where the cube is hidden.
Surrounding the town are the florida Everglades, a flooded morass of freshwater forests and “wet prairies”. The Everglades were acquired as a National Park in 1934, Poolside was spared eminent domain by smart legal maneuvering on the part of the founder. The entire Poolside incorporated area encompasses a couple square miles of swamp outside the town, which is not fenced but clearly demarcated as the “City Limits” by buoys and signs.
All public lighting in poolside has red lenses, to protect the elderly residents’ night vision and avoid generating light pollution. The town has blackout laws restricting open windows at night.
POINTS OF INTEREST
The Agora is a columnated pavilion at the highest point in the city. There was supposed to be a huge statue there, but it looks good with just the open space and pillars. A couple of the roofs have collapsed in big storms, but the ruins look good without them. People hold events and meetings here.
Basilica is the main hotel in Poolside. Opulent and obscenely expensive, it caters to the wealthy tourists who visit for the town’s fine dining, first rate medical care, and other things that attract people with money to burn. Kids and grandkids of residents tend to stay with their parents rather than pay the hotel’s exorbitant rates. The foundations go right down into the pores below the city, the hotel’s otherwise tight security struggles to keep all the entrances to the tunnels sealed.
The Funicular spares elderly residents’ knees climbing up and down Poolside’s sloped streets and decorative staircases. It goes all the way from the Marina to the Agora, with one stop in between.
Basilica is the main hotel in Poolside. Opulent and obscenely expensive, it caters to the wealthy tourists who visit for the town’s fine dining, first rate medical care, and other things that attract people with money to burn. Kids and grandkids of residents tend to stay with their parents rather than pay the hotel’s exorbitant rates. The foundations go right down into the pores below the city, the hotel’s otherwise tight security struggles to keep all the entrances to the tunnels sealed.
The Funicular spares elderly residents’ knees climbing up and down Poolside’s sloped streets and decorative staircases. It goes all the way from the Marina to the Agora, with one stop in between.
Gelatomb is a gelato parlor decorated like a crypt. Drape a mosquito net over a deck chair inside a sarcophagus and sip affogato as the sun sets over the bayou. Popular hangout spot for the Sundowners.
Judy Poolside Memorial Hospital specializes in falls, memory issues, cancer and other maladies that affect the elderly. That and vanity treatments for residents who refuse to age gracefully. The hospital’s private rooms are modeled after Venetian row houses, with a colorful exterior facade.
The King’s Road is an elevated causeway over the swamp. It links Poolside to the outside world. It’s got one lane in each direction, and the luminaires have dim red lenses to protect the night vision of swamp creatures flying over or swimming under it. There is no sidewalk, it’s common to see shift workers who couldn’t hitch a ride walking along the shoulder between Poolside and Rustle.
The Pores are the tunnels under the city. The fill the town is built on is honeycombed with maintenance tunnels for the water, sewer and power systems, along with natural crevasses amid the piled stone. Silt and floods periodically elevate the water level and certain passages admit only experienced cave divers.
Hard Rock Cafe is one of the only franchised locations in the United States. It sits right above the waterfront, by the marina. It’s the only casino in town, courtesy of the corporation’s ownership by the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Besides table games and a collection of Tom Waits’ hats from various tours, the cafe prominently displays the weapons carried by the owner’s family. From Seminole War blowguns and black powder long rifles, all the way to the M2010 the present day Josephus used in Afghanistan.
Hard Rock Cafe is one of the only franchised locations in the United States. It sits right above the waterfront, by the marina. It’s the only casino in town, courtesy of the corporation’s ownership by the Seminole Tribe of Florida. Besides table games and a collection of Tom Waits’ hats from various tours, the cafe prominently displays the weapons carried by the owner’s family. From Seminole War blowguns and black powder long rifles, all the way to the M2010 the present day Josephus used in Afghanistan.
The Neptune Society outlet cremates bodies. The exterior decor is domed and columnated, with statues of the Fates. The crematoria workers pilfer pieces of bodies before and after incineration, for resale to magick users in need of ritual components.
The Pool is an elegant complex of marble baths, filled with filtered swamp water and purported to have enormous health benefits. In keeping with Poolside’s vision of his town as a Roman resort, the baths are owned by the City and public, paid for out of exorbitant property tax revenues. The Fountain of Cloacina is a real treat, with the Goddess’ drooling maw dribbling water all over her otherwise perfect body. Atlas Obscura says that it comes to life sometimes, but nobody in town has ever seen it.
The Police Station is a modern glass and metal building. After a storm wrecked the original, Chief Crane forced the remodel past the City zoning committee as a demonstration of his power, over their objections that it fit poorly the town’s aesthetic. The jail looks like it was added as an afterthought, module crudely tacked onto the exterior of the building, hanging out over open space.
The Statue is a 25 feet high sculpture of Athena. Dan Poolside brought it in to place atop the highest point of the boulder. It fell off the barge and broke in the swamp, and was basically impossible to recover with the technology of the day. It’s been there ever since. The statue has a layer of white marble cladding over an iron frame, both of which have degraded over time. The visual effect of the giant stone arm reaching into the air, spear outstretched, with vines growing up around the wrist and birds nesting atop the knuckles, is still striking.
- In the swamp around the statue are the Monuments. These concrete sculptures cast by the local Neptune Society outlet hold the cremated remains of wealthy Poolsiders. A statue garden slowly sinking into the muck.
RUSTLE, FL
Rustle is a census designated place in unincorporated Collier County, outside Poolside City Limits at the point where the King’s Road intersects the 29. The sign calls it the “Gateway to Poolside” but it’s more accurately called a slum for the service workers who make Poolside function. There are a couple businesses, some houses, and a lot of mobile homes.The Gas Station has a taco truck in the parking lot, mounted on cinderblocks. It doesn’t have a name, but the locals call it la lanterna because of the red lights they use to illuminate the picnic tables where all the Poolside staff drink after work. Skirmishes between locals and Poolside police straying outside their jurisdiction are common. The Sheriff’s Department doesn’t intervene because they hate Poolside.
Saint Hildegrim’s is a Catholic Church. It’s a squat structure made of coral limestone megaliths, like a dolmen with stained glass windows. It mostly ministers to the workers of Rustle, few people come from Poolside for services. Inside, the low stone ceiling is plastered with candles, dripping down into bowls of hot wax on the floor. The only other ornament is a glass cross, which Father Memnon claims is a Chihuly original.
The Super8 is where contractors and other visitors who can’t afford the Basilica stay. It’s a popular place for wealthy Poolsiders to score illegal drugs.
IMPORTANT PEOPLE
Disney property asset specialist and ritual caster Cerloclev is buying up houses left and right, climbing the murderously competitive occult hierarchy within the murderously competitive corporate hierarchy by acquiring the town. Disney’s previous attempts at planned communities all ended in failure, but buying one ready made at least promises profits to skim before it goes belly up.- All parcels in Poolside are under a restrictive covenant to stop them from being acquired by hostile real estate concerns, forcing him to populate the property he acquires with straw buyers under his thumb. The “owners” are low level park and corporate employees who have fallen into Cerloclev’s web of patronage, and rarely have the vacation days necessary to visit their new second homes. He invites these janissaries to visit Poolside whenever he needs dirty work done.
Father Memnon (he took the name when he converted) is the priest of Saint Hildegrim’s. He is just corrupt enough to gain the trust of people who would immediately be suspicious of an honest priest. He offers sanctuary to anyone who asks, with the stipulation that they not carry weapons or use magick in his church. He doesn’t have any way of enforcing this, but people who violate the rules tend to meet grisly fates. He likes to imagine this is God punishing them, and not just his angry parishioners arranging accidents for people who disrespect him.
Henrietta Slick is the City Manager. Her exuberant exterior belies a decade of experience dealing with clients who are not used to being told “no”. She has no knowledge of the supernatural because someone has magickally blocked her memory, preventing her from noticing anything that violates the laws of reality. She fears public works employees more than she does the city council, because they are less likely to forget any demands they make of her.
Hydraulic Despotism is a cabal within the City public works department. Poolside was built to last, but it was also built in 1925. Only a few people understand how the water, sewer and electrical systems really work, and they use that knowledge to squeeze the town’s wealthy residents into giving the working stiffs who make Poolside function a better deal. Their leader Montanya is a thuggish but loveable social bandit with a Master Plumber’s license. He knows the sunken pools and flooded caves beneath the city better than anyone alive.
Keep it in the Holster is a cult of fulminaturges in Poolside’s small police department. They believe the use of a service weapon is an admission of failure to establish authority. They use a mix of dirty tricks, magick, and good old fashioned police brutality to keep order without ever firing a shot. Their leader, Chief Crane, enjoys standing around in the Agora at high noon, waiting for people to challenge him to a shootout. So far nobody has had the strength of will to draw on him.
Mendoza is a Knight of the Road, a secret order of homeless gutter mages. His specialty is blending in with the barons, and setting traps that would normally be harmless pranks, but which he enhances with reality bruising magick so that they trigger in the most harmful possible way. He sleeps in the pores, or in the swamp.
Lange Ybarra Josephus, better known as Seminole Joe like his father, owns the town’s Hard Rock Cafe. He’s 5 feet tall on a good day and a veteran scout and sniper, like every member of his family going back 200 years. His mean streak is kept in check by his sincerely devout Catholicism, and both of these combined give him his hatred of wizards, who he views as irresponsible jackasses that pick on people who can’t defend themselves.
The Sundowners are a loose coalition of retired chargers. They dominate both local politics and the local bridge scene, as well as mahjong, cribbage, and other old-person table games with surprisingly rich mechanics.
- Berg, retired Sleeper. She no longer cares about killing magic users, only keeping them from fucking up her rose bushes. Her secret stash of NFA weapons is entirely legal in Florida, though arthritis has spoiled her aim. It is impossible to tell if she’s lying.
- Fiameta, possessed by a demon with unclear motivations for so long that her passenger can convincingly ape a human being. Desperately wants to be young again, but Savant refuses to sell her years of life, only offering them in games of chance she always loses.
- Joshua can control animals. He made a lot of money illicitly disposing of bodies using alligators, and invested it smartly. He has nightmares about being a burrowing insect, or an eyeless fish. He wishes his children didn’t all hate him.
- Savant, a fresh faced Merchant and centenarian who buys life years off Poolside’s neverending parade of disposable service workers. Loves gambling with unusual stakes, respects people who lay creative wagers.
- Sylvia, the doggedly ancient Cuban entropomancer. She secretly ran most of Lansky’s casino interests right up until the ‘59 revolution. In her advanced age, she’s always on the lookout for thrills that won’t just instantly kill her.
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WHO ARE YOU?
What if the players were…- Unskilled service workers at the absolute bottom of the hospitality industry, unwelcome even in the labor aristocracy of Hydraulic Despotism.
- Retired mages who struck it rich committing the crime of the century, whose checkered past is about to up with them.
- A burger war cabal (Rite, Court, Coterie, Mysteries) crewing a newly opened fast food stop in Poolside, (and living out of a trailer in Rustle).
- Treasure hunters looking for a powerful artifact hidden somewhere in Poolside.
- Mercenary wizards, hired by a rich client for an eccentric purpose that draws them into the town’s ongoing conflicts.
- Friends of someone who disappeared in Poolside.
WHAT YOU HEAR
Poolside’s dark skies law, prohibiting excessive nighttime illumination, is there to protect more than just wildlife and astronomers.Chief Crane wants the Marine Corps to adopt his service pistol design, so he can get a major. Cerloclev can help via Disney’s connection to highly placed Florida Senators. In exchange, he wants some people run out of properties he’s looking to buy.
The mosquitoes of the surrounding swamp have fed on so much mage blood they’ve started manifesting spontaneous magickal abilities.
The town is built on the ruins of an old Seminole War fort, where in 1814 American forces under Jackson slaughtered 300 Indians, Spaniards and runaway slaves. The peaty water of the swamp preserved their weapons, clothing and corpses, such that all three can be dug up from the flooded tunnels beneath the City.
The alligators in the fens and mires outside the City wear suits, smoke cigars and play cards.
Poolside is a honeypot for one of the anti-magick factions that infest the Unknown Armies ‘verse. Either the Order of Saint Cecil, the Sleepers or Blue Line use it to lure mages with knowledge and power, pump them for information, then dispose of them. The magick users in the town are either bait for the trap or in on the con.
The City’s hospital has an emergency room, meaning they’ll take anyone there who gets critically injured if it’s the closest hospital. That would be a great way to get in front of Doctor Park with a critical illness only her 91% Healer channel could cure.
Like much of Florida, Poolside is home to invasive Burmese pythons. One giant snake related killing of an old person is a random tragedy. Two, and local checkers suspect Joshua of orchestrating a hit. It would also be an obvious way to frame him.
Despite all the anti-ageing therapies and spa treatments, rates of dementia in Poolside are actually worse than in comparable retirement destinations. That’s because something is siphoning memories out of the residents.
Mendoza is in Poolside to avenge the police’s fatal beating of some poor old smokehound who wandered into town a year ago, thinking it was the Big Rock Candy Mountain. He hopes to provoke Chief Crane into a fight with a local charger that will get him killed. Hydraulic Despotism isn’t thrilled with this because they anticipate being blamed.
Dan Poolside is dead, sealed in a concrete block to prevent even a single atom of his corpus from escaping during decomposition. He was confident that he could be resurrected if his entire body was kept in one place. How he planned to accomplish this is the great occult secret of Poolside, drawing occultists to the City as the time of his resurrection draws near. And that’s if you can even find where the cube is hidden.
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