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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Teflon Billy" data-source="post: 559291" data-attributes="member: 264">Lonely Planet: Cascade City...WindMan's Aerie.SETTING RELATED, NON PLOT ENTRY In the heart of the dilapidated Gastown neighbourhood is the abandoned hulk of the long-closed WoodWard's dept. Store.In the neighbourhood's heyday (the 1930's), Woodwards was one of the city's reatil juggernaut, employing hundreds of people on it's 12 floors, and anchoring the area in less tangible ways (their Christmas displays were legendary, and drew crowds from all over the city, for example).Though it wasn't understood at the time, when the Woodward family fell into bankruptcy in the mid 1980's (and their stores shortly thereafter closed city-wide), it signalled the beginning of the steady decline of the Gastown neighbourhood.The steady influx of drugs, largely supplied by crimelord Deacon Dark (and all that is implied by such: higher property crime, more prostituiton, and a sharp increase in the population of super villains) made the lower middle class neighbourhood into slum, with abject poverty and little or no hope for improvement. The extinguishing of the giant rotating "W" on the roof of the Woodwards building was as perfect a symbol as could be imagined.While the homeless sought shelter in the empty expanses of the old store, the main floor served as an impromptu "market", dealing in drugs, stolen goods and other less savory merchandise.One day, the giant, neon "W" re-lit, and began turning once again. No one in Gastown could explain why, but it was considered more of a curiosity than a burning mystery.One morning the "marketplace" was swept clean and out into the street by hurricane force winds. Attempts by the unsavory elements to return to the main floor of the Woodward's building were similarly, inexlicably rebuffed. When a local First Church of the Cosmonaut chapter set up a soup kitchen and first aid station for the locals, it was allowed to remain.When drug dealers attempted to set up in the area and service the crowd drawn by the food and medical treatment; many were said to have been hurled into concrete walls, whisked out to sea and unceremoniously "dropped" or to have met with a variety of other accidents until they moved to more distant locales. Word began to spread of the Woodward's building being haunted.It became known that select members of the community (Rev. Nate Sloane of the FCtotC chief amongst them) were in contact with the forces responsible for the neighbourhood's "purge". Gossip slowly confirmed that the area was now under the protection of WindmanThe escaped SECTOR Weather Control experiment had, following his escape from their compound, taken up residence atop the Woodward's building, and upon seeing the squalor of the neighbourhood, had taken it upon himself to improve the lot of the locals (though, as more than one news report pointed out in the months to come, Windman was fighting the locals as much as protecting them).He had returned power to the rotating "W", although imbuing it with a meaning far different from "Woodwards".Windman created The Aerie on the roof of the building, surrounding the sign tower. It is a square, four room prefab structure filled with such incredible crime fighting equipment as a Mainframe computer (donated), a stockpile of blankets (for distribution to the homelss on particularly cold nights), a communication centre (using the sign as an antenna), a lockup (to which the police have turned a blind eye), flashlites, handcuffs, and assorted other mundane equpment.Shortly before the Hoon invasion, SUPER! Magazine approached Windman about joining their promotional team: The Justice Hurricane. He did so, donating the lion's share of his wage to aid groups in the Gastown area.When the Hoon invaded, Windman, in a battle aboard a space cruiser, was exposed to hard vaccuum and shocked into a coma. He has yet to recover and is under constant treatment at St. Paul's Hospital in Cascade City's West End.In his absence, Gastown has slowly begun returning to it's previous squalor. The Soup Kitchen has been largely besieged by drug dealers and fences, with no aid but prayers to The Cosmonaut for protection.The Aerie remains untouched due to the difficulty of accessing it without being able to fly, coupled with it's not inconsiderable security systems. Though the "W" is still lit...Gastown awaits another protector.</blockquote>

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