Place-Based Stories: Tuvold

                  Oops, All Witches is a love letter to Oakland and the Bay Area. I have been extremely lucky to have been able to live here for over a decade, at this point. I’ve lived in Oakland longer than I’ve lived anywhere else but my hometown, Chicago. I’ve made the very conscious decision, over and over again, to do whatever I have to to be able to continue living here, because it is hard. But it’s worth it.

                  When I moved to Oakland, I wanted it to be the last time I moved to a new town. I wanted to become, as they say, Rooted in Oakland. I’d been dreaming of making art in California for a long time by then, and when I got here it was just as personally transformative as I’d hoped it would be. I started making film, editing, animating. I learned that I like science, a lot actually. I went from selling cosmetics to working with the world’s biggest companies. I ran for state office and started a political action committee. I launched an actual play podcast that I DM’ed, produced, and sound designed. I launched a production company. It’s been wild. It’s been rough. It’s been thrilling.

                  I’ve been incredibly grateful to be here since the moment I stepped off the train in Emeryville in 2013. I’ve spent the last decade or so observing, stepping in where I see gaps that need filling, and learning how to be here. Oakland is a place where incredible beauty and creativity are the backdrop for a lot of pain and inequity, and they’re hugged up to each other the way the hills hug the flats. Both are always holding each other in constant tension. The Void and the Aether, balanced but precarious.

                  The theme that all binary systems are actually both things, that you can’t have Self without Other, or White without Black, or Priest without Witch, is the core of Oops, All Witches. I fundamentally question the utility of all binary systems, because it creates rigidity and restricts imagination to assume things are categorized as either This or That. When I look at Oakland, I see a whole community, a whole being. I see an amazing, beautiful organism that’s in pain, because part of its system decided it was separate from itself, so now it’s both starving and rotting.

Allow me to welcome you to the City-State of Tuvold, capital of Aelia (Downloadable VTT map here).

A map of the City-State of Tuvold from Oops, All Witches. Created in Inkarnate.

Here, at the point called Speartip, the north-flowing Utian River splits around what used to be a mountain to form the Fierutian River to the east and the Ostutian River to the west. As the seat of the Shrine of Order in Aelia, when the mountain and Shrine were captured by the Order of Taios, the mountain was razed so the Ecclesia de Ordo and their city could be raised. The Ecclesia is mounted at the highest point in Tuvold, with the rest of the city spreading and descending below it.

                  As with all cities that create barriers between rulers and ruled, rich and poor, above and below, something rots in the heart of Tuvold. Even before they came into their powers, even before they came to Tuvold, the Witches were aware that things were deeply wrong. Nia found something in the water. Emmett lost the children. Ofelia glimpsed what the Order was trying to hide.

Part of the fun of tabletop roleplaying games is that I make everything up and my players get to learn it for the very first time at the table. The thing is, everything I used as inspiration is known and highly visible, out in the open around me. It’s a matter of what we choose to see, and then what we choose to do about it. I love the choices my Witches made, and I can’t wait for you to hear their story.