Setting and Locations: Arkham, MA
Setting and Locations: Arkham, MA
❝...The changeless, legend-haunted city of Arkham, with its clustering gambrel roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the King's men in the dark olden days of the province.❞ - H.P. Lovecraft
Map of Arkham, MA
Click to Enlarge... (8.4 MB)
Though characters may go on missions anywhere around the world, and though some may arrive in distant locations, the primary setting in which the game takes place is the town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
Lovecraft never specified where exactly in Massachusetts Arkham was located, but for our purposes consider it to be in eastern Massachusetts, not far from the Atlantic coast. The town of Newburyport lies about twelve miles to the north and Boston is about twenty-two miles south/south-west. Either can be reached by train, and the town is also accessible by boat, car, or bus from any of the surrounding towns. Arkham straddles the Miskatonic River with the majority of the town, including all the major university buildings, being on the south side.
While it is possible for characters to leave Arkham at any time, please remember that they will need the financial means to travel and to support themselves on their trip. Also please be aware that the mods cannot reasonably provide NPCs for interaction in all the surrounding towns and cities. If your character is planning to travel, please make sure that you plot with another player so that they have someone to interact with! You may not simply handwave whole trips to surrounding cities and towns.
NOTE: There is a lot of information on this page. It is intended as a player reference, not as material that anyone needs to memorize ahead of time. Everyone should read the "Life in Arkham" section. Beyond that, we suggest that you read portions of this page as they become pertinent for your characters.
As much information as there is on this page, it's only the tip of the iceberg. If your character needs to find a business or service in the city, you are always welcome to ask the mods--we may well be able to tell you not just where to find it, but who staffs the place and what their background is.
Life in Arkham
Bordering on a size between small city and large town, Arkham is the sort of place where no one really knows everyone, but most people feel as though they could. Don't expect a great deal of anonymity, but many of the town's secrets still manage to remain shadowy and hidden, objects of speculation and mystery.
In many ways, Arkham is quite traditional in its mores: shops are generally open from 8:00am - 5:00pm Monday-Friday with a handful opening for a few hours on Saturday. Even during the week, banks close at 3:00. Virtually no place is open for business on Sundays. In fact the town's Blue Laws prevent commerce from taking place before noon on Sundays. The majority of residents go to one of the town's church services on Sunday mornings.
The daily newspapers, The Arkham Advertiser and The Arkham Gazette, do print a Sunday editions though. (Characters will find a copy of the Sunday Advertiser delivered outside their doors each week.) Trains do still run on Sundays, and the telephone exchange still operates, as does the Western Union telegraph office.
There are three functioning trolley lines for ease of getting around town, as well as one line that's fallen into disuse.
The traditionalism of the townsfolk is offset by the progressive mindset of Miskatonic University. For more information on M.U., please go here.
Law Enforcement and Crime
Perhaps owing to the university, the police are used to a fair degree of youthful antics as well as subtle snooping around old buildings and cemeteries on the part of more professional types out doing "historical research." The police judge a lot on appearances and apparent social status--a person who's well dressed tends be presumed trustworthy, while transients or anyone "strange looking" will be met with more suspicion and a harder hand.
Alcohol
Please keep in mind that the game is set during the era of Prohibition, which means that alcohol is formally illegal throughout the US. Technically, anyone drinking, possessing, or distributing alcohol is breaking the law, and the bootlegging trade has introduced a new element of criminality into the town. In practice, however, the matter is somewhat less absolute.
Arkham itself never fully "went dry." The local police aren't crusaders for the cause of Prohibition, nor is the town government. They tend to view it as a matter for federal and state officials to deal with, not for them. Discreet drinking in private goes generally unpunished, and the speakeasy on the North side of town goes unharassed, its existence a point of general knowledge. Whether they pay off local law enforcement is anyone's guess--Arkham's police aren't generally regarded as a den of corruption, but the force does have its corrupt elements. The more well-to-do citizens of the town are occasionally helped home by discrete beat officers if they're found to have imbibed too much.
Employment
Characters may apply for jobs at the university (though these are harder to get) or at any of the businesses in the city. Pay rates will, of course, reflect the kind of work one does. A janitor, for example, might make a little over $1/hr; a senior craftsman $3.50/hour. A well-known reporter can expect around $45 a week, while a cub reporter is likely to make only half that.
Your character can apply for a job at any business in town. For more information, see the employment page [coming soon...].
Medical Care and Public Services
There is no social security, no paid vacations, and no health/hospital insurance. However your erstwhile "hosts" at Miskatonic will make provisions for necessary medical care through St. Mary's Hospital.
For psychiatric care, there are various private practitioners as well as the Arkham Sanitarium. Again, treatment is not free, but your hosts will do their best to look after you, especially if you've suffered some trauma as a result of a mission done to aid them and their cause.
Neighborhoods and Districts
Click to Enlarge...
Arkham might be thought of as having nine general neighborhoods. The map above shows their general locations, as well as addresses and trolley routes for the town.
Northside
Sloping up from the river to crest at Derby Street, the residential portion of the Northside of town is one of the more affluent areas. There you'll find many stately Georgian and Victorian homes, often with big walled gardens and stately manicured lawns.
The more southerly portion of the Northside, is the business and financial district where you can find the offices of the town's two newspapers, the Advertiser and the Gazette. It's also the district with the tallest building in town: The Tower Professional Building, which is seven stories tall.
The bus depot can be found between N. West Street and High Lane with services running to Salem/Boston, Kingsport, Dean's Corners/Aylesbury, and Ipswich/Newburyport.
Downtown
Immediately along the river is the railroad yard, an area frequented by vagrants and hobos. Immediately to its north is the commuter rail station with about three northbound and three southbound trains per day. There you'll also find the Western Union office. (Telegrams are delivered around the town by bicycle messengers, mostly young teenage boys.)
Farther to the east, the landscape gets particularly hilly, the town square (which is a huge open green nearly eight acres in size) being the most level area. To the south of the square are most of the government buildings--the police station, court house, and town hall.
Arkham Sanitarium is located at 225 E. Derby Street, at the edge of town, in what was originally a huge Georgian mansion. It is currently headed by Dr. Eric Hardstrom. For more information on the Sanitarium, see the insanity page.
Easttown
Easttown is largely seedy and in disrepair. Its more northerly part is the area where one can find homes built by some of the oldest families in Arkahm, but most of those buildings are now neglected, many of them falling down in whole or in part.
Closer to the river one finds old row houses and narrow streets. This is predominantly an ethnic minority area, and though not all those living there are uniformly poor, racial prejudice is still very much a reality in people's lives, a reality which restricts social mobility and ghettoizes the city's Black community in particular.
Merchant
Just on the south bank of the Miskatonic is this narrow stretch of shops and stores--the biggest shopping area in town. Probably three quarters of the town's shopping is to be found in these few blocks along Church and Main Streets.
Click to Enlarge...
The streets here are cobblestone and there are no few twisting alleys. River Street is lined with old warehouses, and beyond that the docks
To the west of the Merchant district is the Old Wooded Graveyard which hasn't been used for centuries. The most recent tombstone there is dated 1818, but many date back to the 1700s. The graveyard is dominated by a huge ancient willow tree and is surrounded by a wrought iron fence.
Rivertown
On the south bank of the river to the east of the Merchant district, Rivertown is the old trade district of the city where many craftsmen have their shops. Ethnically, it's an enclave of Eastern European, French-Canadian, and Irish communities, and the turf "The 'Finns," one the city's two street gangs, most of whose members are teenage boys.
There is a line of empty abandoned mills along the riverfront.
Campus
Situated on the south bank of the Miskatonic River, the campus sits on what was once the old town common. "Townies" are free to pass through the campus and access to the buildings is generally unrestricted. [More information on the university and campus district will be coming soon...]
French Hill
A residential district, the houses here are generally old and modest, but have been kept up in good repair. True to its name, the hilly terrain here seems to leave some buildings looking like they teeter precariously over the narrow lanes, and steep stone stairways are dotted throughout the winding streets.
Uptown
A more affluent residential district, Uptown is geographically as well as economically "up," commanding views overlooking both the campus and the river. It is in this district that most of the people employed by the university live.
This is the district where the old Dixon Estate is located, the place which has been adapted to house characters when they arrive. For more information on the residence, please go here.
Lower Southside
In a low-lying pocket between French Hill and South Hill, this district is largely comprised of tenement houses. The ground is marshy, the air muggy, and most of the wood buildings show signs of decay. It is one of the poorest areas of the town and is home to many immigrant families. When reformers call for revitalization and renewal, they tend to use Lower Southside as their prime rallying cry. Despite that, however, reforms seem never to come. The area is home to the second of the town's street gangs, "The Rocks." Again mostly teenage ruffians, like their rivals they are mostly strut and swagger.
❝...The changeless, legend-haunted city of Arkham, with its clustering gambrel roofs that sway and sag over attics where witches hid from the King's men in the dark olden days of the province.❞ - H.P. Lovecraft
Map of Arkham, MA
Click to Enlarge... (8.4 MB)
Though characters may go on missions anywhere around the world, and though some may arrive in distant locations, the primary setting in which the game takes place is the town of Arkham, Massachusetts.
Lovecraft never specified where exactly in Massachusetts Arkham was located, but for our purposes consider it to be in eastern Massachusetts, not far from the Atlantic coast. The town of Newburyport lies about twelve miles to the north and Boston is about twenty-two miles south/south-west. Either can be reached by train, and the town is also accessible by boat, car, or bus from any of the surrounding towns. Arkham straddles the Miskatonic River with the majority of the town, including all the major university buildings, being on the south side.
While it is possible for characters to leave Arkham at any time, please remember that they will need the financial means to travel and to support themselves on their trip. Also please be aware that the mods cannot reasonably provide NPCs for interaction in all the surrounding towns and cities. If your character is planning to travel, please make sure that you plot with another player so that they have someone to interact with! You may not simply handwave whole trips to surrounding cities and towns.
NOTE: There is a lot of information on this page. It is intended as a player reference, not as material that anyone needs to memorize ahead of time. Everyone should read the "Life in Arkham" section. Beyond that, we suggest that you read portions of this page as they become pertinent for your characters.
As much information as there is on this page, it's only the tip of the iceberg. If your character needs to find a business or service in the city, you are always welcome to ask the mods--we may well be able to tell you not just where to find it, but who staffs the place and what their background is.
Life in Arkham
Bordering on a size between small city and large town, Arkham is the sort of place where no one really knows everyone, but most people feel as though they could. Don't expect a great deal of anonymity, but many of the town's secrets still manage to remain shadowy and hidden, objects of speculation and mystery.
In many ways, Arkham is quite traditional in its mores: shops are generally open from 8:00am - 5:00pm Monday-Friday with a handful opening for a few hours on Saturday. Even during the week, banks close at 3:00. Virtually no place is open for business on Sundays. In fact the town's Blue Laws prevent commerce from taking place before noon on Sundays. The majority of residents go to one of the town's church services on Sunday mornings.
The daily newspapers, The Arkham Advertiser and The Arkham Gazette, do print a Sunday editions though. (Characters will find a copy of the Sunday Advertiser delivered outside their doors each week.) Trains do still run on Sundays, and the telephone exchange still operates, as does the Western Union telegraph office.
There are three functioning trolley lines for ease of getting around town, as well as one line that's fallen into disuse.
The traditionalism of the townsfolk is offset by the progressive mindset of Miskatonic University. For more information on M.U., please go here.
Law Enforcement and Crime
Perhaps owing to the university, the police are used to a fair degree of youthful antics as well as subtle snooping around old buildings and cemeteries on the part of more professional types out doing "historical research." The police judge a lot on appearances and apparent social status--a person who's well dressed tends be presumed trustworthy, while transients or anyone "strange looking" will be met with more suspicion and a harder hand.
Alcohol
Please keep in mind that the game is set during the era of Prohibition, which means that alcohol is formally illegal throughout the US. Technically, anyone drinking, possessing, or distributing alcohol is breaking the law, and the bootlegging trade has introduced a new element of criminality into the town. In practice, however, the matter is somewhat less absolute.
Arkham itself never fully "went dry." The local police aren't crusaders for the cause of Prohibition, nor is the town government. They tend to view it as a matter for federal and state officials to deal with, not for them. Discreet drinking in private goes generally unpunished, and the speakeasy on the North side of town goes unharassed, its existence a point of general knowledge. Whether they pay off local law enforcement is anyone's guess--Arkham's police aren't generally regarded as a den of corruption, but the force does have its corrupt elements. The more well-to-do citizens of the town are occasionally helped home by discrete beat officers if they're found to have imbibed too much.
Employment
Characters may apply for jobs at the university (though these are harder to get) or at any of the businesses in the city. Pay rates will, of course, reflect the kind of work one does. A janitor, for example, might make a little over $1/hr; a senior craftsman $3.50/hour. A well-known reporter can expect around $45 a week, while a cub reporter is likely to make only half that.
Your character can apply for a job at any business in town. For more information, see the employment page [coming soon...].
Medical Care and Public Services
There is no social security, no paid vacations, and no health/hospital insurance. However your erstwhile "hosts" at Miskatonic will make provisions for necessary medical care through St. Mary's Hospital.
For psychiatric care, there are various private practitioners as well as the Arkham Sanitarium. Again, treatment is not free, but your hosts will do their best to look after you, especially if you've suffered some trauma as a result of a mission done to aid them and their cause.
Neighborhoods and Districts
Click to Enlarge...
Arkham might be thought of as having nine general neighborhoods. The map above shows their general locations, as well as addresses and trolley routes for the town.
Northside
Sloping up from the river to crest at Derby Street, the residential portion of the Northside of town is one of the more affluent areas. There you'll find many stately Georgian and Victorian homes, often with big walled gardens and stately manicured lawns.
The more southerly portion of the Northside, is the business and financial district where you can find the offices of the town's two newspapers, the Advertiser and the Gazette. It's also the district with the tallest building in town: The Tower Professional Building, which is seven stories tall.
The bus depot can be found between N. West Street and High Lane with services running to Salem/Boston, Kingsport, Dean's Corners/Aylesbury, and Ipswich/Newburyport.
Downtown
Immediately along the river is the railroad yard, an area frequented by vagrants and hobos. Immediately to its north is the commuter rail station with about three northbound and three southbound trains per day. There you'll also find the Western Union office. (Telegrams are delivered around the town by bicycle messengers, mostly young teenage boys.)
Farther to the east, the landscape gets particularly hilly, the town square (which is a huge open green nearly eight acres in size) being the most level area. To the south of the square are most of the government buildings--the police station, court house, and town hall.
Arkham Sanitarium is located at 225 E. Derby Street, at the edge of town, in what was originally a huge Georgian mansion. It is currently headed by Dr. Eric Hardstrom. For more information on the Sanitarium, see the insanity page.
Easttown
Easttown is largely seedy and in disrepair. Its more northerly part is the area where one can find homes built by some of the oldest families in Arkahm, but most of those buildings are now neglected, many of them falling down in whole or in part.
Closer to the river one finds old row houses and narrow streets. This is predominantly an ethnic minority area, and though not all those living there are uniformly poor, racial prejudice is still very much a reality in people's lives, a reality which restricts social mobility and ghettoizes the city's Black community in particular.
Merchant
Just on the south bank of the Miskatonic is this narrow stretch of shops and stores--the biggest shopping area in town. Probably three quarters of the town's shopping is to be found in these few blocks along Church and Main Streets.
Click to Enlarge...
The streets here are cobblestone and there are no few twisting alleys. River Street is lined with old warehouses, and beyond that the docks
To the west of the Merchant district is the Old Wooded Graveyard which hasn't been used for centuries. The most recent tombstone there is dated 1818, but many date back to the 1700s. The graveyard is dominated by a huge ancient willow tree and is surrounded by a wrought iron fence.
Rivertown
On the south bank of the river to the east of the Merchant district, Rivertown is the old trade district of the city where many craftsmen have their shops. Ethnically, it's an enclave of Eastern European, French-Canadian, and Irish communities, and the turf "The 'Finns," one the city's two street gangs, most of whose members are teenage boys.
There is a line of empty abandoned mills along the riverfront.
Campus
Situated on the south bank of the Miskatonic River, the campus sits on what was once the old town common. "Townies" are free to pass through the campus and access to the buildings is generally unrestricted. [More information on the university and campus district will be coming soon...]
French Hill
A residential district, the houses here are generally old and modest, but have been kept up in good repair. True to its name, the hilly terrain here seems to leave some buildings looking like they teeter precariously over the narrow lanes, and steep stone stairways are dotted throughout the winding streets.
Uptown
A more affluent residential district, Uptown is geographically as well as economically "up," commanding views overlooking both the campus and the river. It is in this district that most of the people employed by the university live.
This is the district where the old Dixon Estate is located, the place which has been adapted to house characters when they arrive. For more information on the residence, please go here.
Lower Southside
In a low-lying pocket between French Hill and South Hill, this district is largely comprised of tenement houses. The ground is marshy, the air muggy, and most of the wood buildings show signs of decay. It is one of the poorest areas of the town and is home to many immigrant families. When reformers call for revitalization and renewal, they tend to use Lower Southside as their prime rallying cry. Despite that, however, reforms seem never to come. The area is home to the second of the town's street gangs, "The Rocks." Again mostly teenage ruffians, like their rivals they are mostly strut and swagger.