In 2013, the Trojan-Satsop nuclear power plant in southeast Redmond suffered a partial meltdown, contaminating Beaver Lake and the surrounding land for kilometers around. In 2028, Shiawase Atomics built a new plant next to the rusting hulk of its predecessor. That plant’s been providing power to the metroplex ever since. After the Crash of ’29, squatters and refugees began building hovels on the contaminated land, despite attempts by the metroplex government to remove them. Unwilling to continue to waste money protecting a segment of the population that didn’t even pay taxes, the government eventually gave up and the squatters remained. Since then, the transient population has more than tripled, despite the high death rate from cancer and radiation sickness, to say nothing of the infant mortality rate and some hideous radiation-induced mutations.
> Glow City is a fragging community of mutants. Some are so twisted by the radiation they seem like a hideous new metahuman race. Some magicians among the squatters have tried to treat the illnesses and mutations, but the few shamans living there have trouble coaxing any power from the polluted and irradiated land, and it seems unlikely any mages live there (most Glow City residents can’t even read).
> Yahoo
> This place is a terrible blight. The Great Mother cries out in pain, and the sound of her weeping often drowns out our songs. The only power to be found here is pollution and slow death.
> She Who Knows the Night
> Not all shamans have trouble with Glow City. I’ve heard of a shaman living practically on top of the remains of the failed nuclear plant who goes by the name Burning Bones. They say he’s so irradiated that his skeleton glows in the dark through his flesh, but he’s not dead of cancer or radiation poisoning because he’s in touch with “spirits of the invisible fire” that aid and protect him and his followers.
He can raise spirits in Glow City, something no other shaman can do.
> Winger