Riverside

Overview
Riverside is a town situated along the banks of the Aurora River. To the south is the aptly named South Riverside, to the west is Blackbog. To the east is Pinegroove. To the north is Awesome City and Shanty. It should also be noted that Riverside is where the dream is currently located.

[For a list of businesses in Riverside, click here. For current events involving Riverside, read the Pinegroove Paper.]

Pre-Virus History
Riverside was a struggling city. It was located a bit too far from Grand Capital to act as a commuter city, but its past reliance on industry which was being sapped away by larger cities, foreign countries and tax havens meant that it was hit hard.

The city tried to bounce back, turning its local rail station into a shopping center and casino run off of 'renewable energy' to attract an enviromentally minded crowd. It managed to attract some moderate business, but the pull of other places, such as the Pinegrove Ski Resort, Summerland and Owensburg meant that most of its business were prey races looking for a place of their own to relax and unwind.

This lead to some complications between the local predator populous, predator business owners and the prey species. The business owners were fine with the arrangment, for the most part, but tried to create incentives that would bring in more predator traffic. Other predators weren't so keen. Some of them demanded the entire place be segregated or organize hours that would be predators only. Prey species scoffed both ideas and threatened to make this an issue.

It is unknown what the result might have been if the issue had been pressed, had it not been for the Virus.

The Bloody, Bloody Years
The results the Virus had on Riverside were interesting, to say the least. The results of the Virus killed off only fifty percent of the people, leaving mostly prey tourists and localized predators around.

Fighting quickly ensued between the two factions. Racial tensions spurred on violently for many decades with either side not willing to budge or concede to the other. The body count rose and many people consider Riverside an unsafe place, long after other cities made peace or simply became too war weary to continue

It was because of this a religious group known as the Uniters formed.

The Uniters' Years
The Uniters were a religious organization, formed under the alliance of a brilliant woman known as the Great Mother, who's real name has since been lost to history. Her thoughtful, calm tone managed to ease even the most tender of nerves, leading some historians to speculate that the Great Mother may have had a magical prowess involving pacifying.

Her message of tolerance, understanding and forgiveness spoke to the war-weary combantance and soon the violence subsided. The western half of shopping center was turned into a government hall and a city-state was formed. Riverside started to experience trade for the first time since the Pre-Virus years and people started to become generally content with their lives and their new found breathren. The Great Mother had stablized the Riverside and ultimately seemed flawless.

The Great Mother soon left the city of Riverside only ten years after it came in control. She took some of her dedicated flock and head to west, proclaiming that she was going to bring peace to Discordia as well. There is rumor of a small abandoned church in the center of Discordia where an elderly woman preaches, but most consider this unfounded.

She left all religous duties to a social worker and Sunday school teacher who would come to be known as the Great Father. This was her only known mistake.

The Great Father Years
Little is known about the Great Father period. Cities trading with Riverside stopped only a month after the Great Father was left in charge.

What can be gathered is that in addition to the Great Mother's Beyond Survivial, the Great Father taught from book of his own creation, ''The Book of Innocence. ''He had a strange, almost maddening obsession with children that went well beyond the erotic, which was reflected in some of his sermons, believing them to be purer and holier than nearly all adults.

No one knows what happened next, but hymns song in Awesome City spoke of a "Great Cleansing of the Unpure and Sinful". The lack of adults in Riverside by the time of Austin, Lehanna and Hassana's arrival suggest that the Unpure and Sinful was anyone over the age of 16 and might have included skeptical adolencents.

The "Three Demons" Arrival
A male, saltwater crocodile by the name of Austin Leslie Hendrix happened to meander in the city one day, seeing it off in the distance and growing curious. There, he was knocked out by one of children and drugged onto the stage to be publicly hanged.

Austin was saved in the nick of time by Hassana and Lehanna Kilian from death. They managed to kill the Great Father and some children, with most running for the hills after the his death. They children, under the leadership of Lesser Father Theodore William Gramm, would establish Awesome City, and the founders of Riverside would become known as the "Three Demons" in Awesome City lore.

Contemporary
Within two years since Riverside's refounding, the town bounced back. A combination of its trains converted into hotels, the casino and centralized area it was in made it a perfect place for people looking to rest or set up shop