Freedom City Overview

Freedom City is situated along the coast at the confluence of the Wading and South Rivers where they flow into Great Bay, which makes its way through the Centery Narrows out into the ocean. The Interstate passes close by the city along the coast, providing easy access to all points of the city by land.

The heart of the city—downtown—lies between the rivers while the entire metropolitan area spans both sides of the rivers. Southside can be found on the far bank of the South River. Northward is Hanover, a largely college and technical community, home to a number of small businesses. To the west are a collection of suburbs and national forest with unspoiled natural terrain and opportunities for camping, hiking, and other outdoor activities. The downtown peninsula’s elevation rises gradually toward Lantern Hill, while the land south of the South River rises toward low hills in Bayview and the areas south of the Jordan Airport. Parts of the seaside around the Century Narrows and Great Bay rise a short distance above the water with some seaside cliffs in spots. Along the east are several coastal communities, exclusive estates, and manor houses, some of which date back centuries.

The city planners laid out downtown Freedom City as logically as possible within the constraints of existing roads, land area, and geological features. The central areas of the city are fairly new, heavily reconstructed after the Terminus Invasion, as are the suburban communities to the west. Sandwiched in between those areas are older communities, ranging from the affluent Lantern Hill in the north and the crowded West End to the less fortunate Greenbank and Fens neighborhoods along the South River.

Downtown Freedom City generally follows a grid pattern. East-west streets have the names of prominent individuals honored by Freedom City. Northsouth avenues are numbered, starting from Riverside and heading west to the Wallace Expressway. Alleys running between buildings in the downtown area are common, and are generally numbered separately from streets.

In outlying areas (like Lantern Hill, Hanover, and Southside), streets tend to meander. There are also more one-way streets, cul-de-sacs, and multi-street intersections. These streets are older, so they are often narrower, less organized, and in slightly worse condition. Traffic back-ups are becoming increasingly common on both sides of the downtown area, and renovations are ongoing.

1630: Freedom City (called Freedom) is founded by Puritan colonists
1694: Freedom Witch Trials, led by Elijah Prophet
1779: British are driven out of Freedom by Col. Maj. Joseph Clark and the colonial army
1789: Freedom and its surrounding communities incorporate as Freedom City
1825: Freedom City University founded, Freedom City Ledger enters print
1890: Jack-a-Knives terrorizes Freedom City, is never caught
1918: The Centurion’s lifepod descends from space and lands in Freedom City
1930: “Mystery Men” begin patrolling Freedom City and stopping crime, examples include Doc Prophet, The Bluesman and John Danger.
1938: The Centurion makes his first public superheroic appearance, other superheroes begin to appear, including Midnight, Johnny Rocket, Bowman, and Freedom Eagle.
1941: Lady Liberty makes her first public superheroic appearance since the Revolutionary War, Siren makes first appearance, Dr. Tomorrow appears one day after Pearl Harbor
1942: The Liberty League is founded by executive order of President Roosevelt, made up of American superheroes and led by Dr. Tomorrow. Its HQ is located in Freedom City
1943: The Crime League is founded by supervillains active in Freedom City
1945-46: The Allies of Freedom, a superteam fighting in Europe while the Freedom League fights at home, is destroyed to the last man by Nazi supervillains. Casualties include La Reynard Rogue, Human Tank and Gunner, Sergeant Shrapnel, and White Rose and White Thorn.
1945: World War II ends, Dr. Tomorrow returns to the future, Freedom Eagle takes charge of the Liberty League
1947: First Earth contact with the Grue Unity, in the form of a crashed spaceship
1950: A Grue scouting team arrives on Earth, sowing distrust between the Liberty League and the government. Eventual hero Pseudo is part of this group.
1955: Senator McCarthy and the HUAC call the Liberty League to testify about possible links with communism and demand they unmask and reveal their identities. Rather than comply, the League disbands, with most of its members retiring. Midnight fights one last battle with King Cole before going underground.
1960: Hades invades Freedom City with an army of dead, is repelled by heroes includingCenturion, Daedelus, Lady Liberty and The Raven. These heroes join together to form the Freedom League.
1961: Dr. Alexander Atom purchases the Goodman Building in Freedom City and moves in with his family.
1962: The US Government forms AEGIS to deal with superhuman threats and policing. Jack Simmons, the former Patriot of the Liberty League, is the first director.
1964: Blackstone Penitentiary opens, under the aegis of AEGIS.
1965: Omega and the Terminus attempt to invade Freedom City, they are repelled by the Freedom League and the Atom Family
1969: A second Grue scouting party arrive on Earth and impersonate the Freedom League, once again shaking public confidence in superheroes.
1972: Duncan Summers, The Raven, is gravely injured while fighting Dr. Sin. He retires and marries Dr. Sin’s daughter, Jasmine. Lady Liberty retires after her powers fade.
1973: Dracula comes to Freedom City, causing much public unease. Construction begins on Pyramid Plaza
1975: Super-group 1-800-JUSTICE forms, with members Jump, Jive and Wail. Super-inventor Daedelus departs Earth to explore the galaxy.
1976: Pyramid Plaza is completed
1977: Jack-a-Knives returns for another murder spree in Freedom City
1979: Supeheroes Brainstorm and Scarab are killed while fighting to save the Freedom League from the Scions of Sobek, leading to a period of League instability
1980: Ethan Keller, sidekick to disgraced alcoholic Bowman Fletcher Beaumont II, adopts the codename Archer and begins fighting crime with lethal force in Freedom City.
1981: Freedom League members Halogen and Tectonic are killed while fighting Crimson Katana and the Katanarchists. The Centurion elects to disband the Freedom League due to their many recent losses. Heroes Evening and Eye of Justice are made honorary police officers and deputized by the police department, an appointment revoked by the passing of the Moore Act
1983: A riot at Blackstone Prison leaves more than 40 dead and several supervillains on the loose. Administrative error and outside agitation are found to be the main cause of the disaster, but public condemnation falls on superheroes for failing to stop the chaos faster.
1984: Franklin Moore is elected mayor of Freedom City on a platform of zero tolerance for costumed vigilantes. Superheroes are outlawed by the Moore Act and most leave town.
1985: Outlaw superhero Archer creates the superteam FORCE Ops, an illegally-operating vigilante team of young heroes who are ruthless in their defense of Freedom City
1989: Freedom City celebrates its bicentennial
1992: Michael O’Connor Jr (son of Freedom Eagle) is elected mayor on a platform of rolling back Moore’s unpopular policies, including the ban on superheroes.
1993: Omega and the armies of the Terminus invade Freedom City on a scale never before seen. A massive alliance of metahumans fight together in Freedom City and repel the attack, but at a steep cost: many superheroes including the Centurion and nearly all of FORCE Ops are dead, and the downtown is all but destroyed. Dr. Metropolis rises literally from the rubble and begins rebuilding the city, while Mayor O’Connor repeals the Moore Act and welcomes the heroes home. A dying Dr. Atom transfers his consciousness to a computer so as to continue to care for his now-orphaned grandchildren.
1994: The Freedom League is reestablished in Freedom City, the Sentry Statue is unveiled in Riverside Park.
2000: Mass breakout from Blackstone Prison, heroes spend six months recapturing all the prisoners. Mayor O’Connor begins third term, Jack Simmons, director of AEGIS, dies and uploads his consciousness to an android body.
2001: Freedom Hall is destroyed by supervillains and rebuilt. Duncan Summers opens Claremont Academy for super teenagers.
2005: The Lighthouse is built as a space headquarters for the now world-focused Freedom League. Freedom Hall remains its local HQ in Freedom City.

Although the "door" opened by the Terminus Invasion was closed, Freedom City’s history continued to unfold upon a larger stage. The interstellar criminal Blackstar escaped imprisonment, leading to the appointment of a new Star Knight as Earth’s protector. She proved her mettle when the Grue staged an invasion in 2004, led by an engineered warrior endowed with all of the powers of the Atom Family: the Meta-Grue. An alliance of heroes, along with a top-secret squadron of UNISON space-fighters, held off the invasion, and Chase Atom used the power of the Moonstone to send the Grue packing. The Freedom League built a new satellite headquarters, the Lighthouse, designed to act as an early-warning station, allowing the team to extend their watch to the entire Earth.

Villains wielding sinister mystic powers became increasingly more common: the G’Tach, based on the ten plagues of ancient Egypt; the vampiric Nightwatch; Black Anubis, exiled god from another universe; and Adamant, the legendary "god-killer," to name a few. In 2008, the young witch Seven began an apprenticeship with Master Mage Adrian Eldritch.

After serving four terms as Freedom City’s mayor, Michael O’Connor retired from the role in 2008 to run for the U.S. Senate. Local business mogul Jonathan Grant entered the mayoral race and won, promising to “keep moving Freedom forward.”

The dimensional barriers took a beating when the Alterniteens, a ragtag group of super-powered youngsters from diverse parallel worlds, appeared on the grounds of Claremont Academy. Then Centuria, the daughter of a Centurion from an alternate Earth, arrived in the midst of a freak storm.

In 2012, Jonathan Grant won a second term as Mayor of Freedom City, and Seven joined the Freedom League. Later that year, the so-called “Silver Storm” occurred in Emerald City, forever changing the “demographics” of superhumans in the U.S.A. and the world, while the secret criminal alliance known as the Chamber fractured, leaving Emerald City wide open in an “every-villain-for-themselves” scramble.

The alien robot Tellax attempted to recreate its Silver Storm on a worldwide scale, but local Emerald City heroes were able to stop it, exiling Tellax from Earth. The cosmic menace Collapsar the Devourer destroyed and consumed Magna-Lor, the capital of the Lor Republic, throwing galactic civilization into chaos. Some refugees from the shattered Lor Republic came to Earth looking for asylum. When Daedalus granted them his assistance, hundreds more followed, settling temporarily on Star Island, off the coast of Freedom City. The refugees carried reports of the forces of the Star Khan overrunning the Republic and seizing control. Captain Kraken led a band of interstellar pirates in attempts to seize refugee vessels and strip them of their valuables before the Freedom League put a stop to it. Mayor Grant made several questionable legal moves to seize “illegal aliens”—and their technology—and hold them without trial or recourse to council, sparking debate and protests.

The dire circumstances in the galaxy forced Star Knight to take an extended leave from the Freedom League in order to operate more in deep space. The already-harried Star Knights also faced the rise of the Blackguard, an organization created by the rogue Blackstar in his own image, and the Argents, nanotech-bonded agents of exiled Tellax. The three factions began to vie for influence over galactic affairs.

Mayor Grant’s daughter, Sarah, an alien-rights activist, was murdered late in the year, and one of her alien associates held for the crime. Investigation by Raven and Daedalus revealed the real killer was a genetically engineered human-alien hybrid. Confronted with the evidence, Mayor Grant confessed to knowledge of the creation of the hybrid but, before he could reveal anything further, he was assassinated, his killer vanishing without a trace.

In 2013, Seven succeeded Eldritch as Earth’s Master Mage, but almost immediately faced a tremendous challenge from Una the Invincible, Queen of the Netherworld, who killed Eldritch and lured Seven into her realm. Against all odds Seven prevailed, but her victory proved a Pyrrhic one. When she defeated Una, Seven mystically inherited her power and position as Dark Lord of the Netherworld. Unable to remain Master Mage of Earth without abandoning the Netherworld and all its inhabitants to almost certain death, “Lady Seven” accepted the difficult road of “rehabilitating” her new realm and shedding the mantle of Dark Lord, while resisting the temptations of power that come with it. For the first time in millennia, Earth was left without a Master Mage, with mystical threats still on the rise.

Daedalus retrofitted an ancient Preserver habitat on Jupiter’s moon Europa, renaming it “Starhaven” and setting it up as a more permanent refuge for alien refugees on Earth. Their relocation to Starhaven eased social and political pressures in Freedom City, although there remained evidence of advanced alien technology on the black market, and rumors of “illegal aliens” still at large on Earth.

The Atom Family learned the Cosmic Mind might be involved in the new Stellar Imperium in some way: Refugees from the Republic reported mentat “hounds” exhibiting the appearance and behavior of the Mind’s thralls. The Cosmic Mind was beamed into space, years prior. Could it have ended up in the new Imperium?

The Raven, Callie Summers, decided to end her costumed career and enter the political arena in a special election for Mayor of Freedom City. She chose Elite from the Alterniteens as her successor, the new Raven. Ms. Summers won the tight mayoral race and began focusing on law and order in Freedom City from a different angle, well aware that the city is still in need of heroes.