Ever wonder what makes those damn Chicagoland Urbanomancers so damn scary?
I got this one friend with the Maks who’s a road geek, studies the history and layout of the American highway system. He’s got a bizarre theory that it’s got something to do with the layout of the Interstate highway system.
Apparently the federal Department of Transportation has this arcane set of rules determining what roads can be turned into Interstate highways and what numbers they can be assigned, right? He says it’s all in the numbering. Dig this — there’s two major rule-breakers in the entire system, one in California and one in Pennsylvania, and they both occur along Interstate 80, which runs from Frisco to New York… and through Chicago.
In and around the city itself, there’s a bunch of inconsistencies with the numbering of the Interstates, including two numbers that are out of order, and another road which shouldn’t even be an Interstate.
Throw in one of the worst examples of highway engineering in the world (the “Hillside Strangler”, where something like eight or nine lanes of traffic get merged down into one lane where three Interstates meet), and you have one very good system for trapping magickal energy.
The way this guy figures it, I-80 was laid down on a ley line. Mojo which should make its way across the country gets bounced against the rule-breaking roads and trapped by the Chicago system. The local Rats gather the energy and use it for their own ends.
He also tells me that it’s impossible to carry a magickal charge outside of the greater Chicago area — once you cross a certain border (he’s not quite sure where those borders are, yet), the energy just dissipates into the ether.
Is the highway rule exception thing actually true? This is a cool idea and if you wouldn’t mind posting a reference that would be awsome (I have really demanding players and I bet a site with info on the highway system could have all sorts of other UA uses).
In fact, it is; http://www.ihoz.com/interstates.html is the source of most of my information. There’s a good condensation of the numbering rules, along with a list of violations and what looks to be a comprehensive list of all the one- and two-digit Interstates with their lengths, what major cities they go through, and so forth. Hope this helps.
For the record, I-238 and I-99 are the rulebreakers; I-90 and I-94 are indeed out of order at one point; I-88 is the one that “shouldn’t exist”, at least according to some roadgeek opinion (there was already another I-88 in New York at the time the Illinois one was commissioned in 1990; the two roads are unconnected).
Are you SURE they’re unconnected? (g)
– The Ferrett
There’s probably a few Odomancers that know the secret ritual to hop between the end of one and the middle of the other.