National Mall Monuments, Smithsonian Institute and Federal Government Buildings

National Mall Monuments, Smithsonian Institute and Federal Government Buildings
Threat: Peace is enforced while strife spreads
Face: Keeper Phaeton

The National Mall is the very center of the City of Washington. The Mall is a wide lawn lined with trees several blocks long, dominated by the towering obelisk of the Washington monument atop a gently sloping hill at it's center, the Capitol building on top of Capitol hill at the east end of the Mall and the Lincoln Memorial at the west. Lining the mall are numerous important federal government buildings including the offices of the congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Reserve. In addition to these are the important cultural showrooms of the Smithsonian Institut: the Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the National Art Museum, and more. A whole other world of tunnels and secret storage facilities lies beneath the Mall, from the passages of major highways and the metro to top secret escape routes, communication corridors and archives of major government buildings. The Smithsonian also maintains its own labyrinth of tunnels and a storage facility for it's most arcane and secretive collections buried beneath the green.

The Mall has been at the center of national politics and cultural movements for almost two centuries, history has been made here by lawmakers within the halls of congress, presidents sitting the oval office, and justices on the bench of the Supreme Court as well as ordinary citizens storming the green to protest or promote the causes that are most near to their hearts. The Mall is a place of power any way you slice it, but it conceals power beyond even that which the mortal world is aware of. The Masonic Brotherhood which oversaw the layout of Washington D.C. was aware of the importance of ley lines, and the spiritual energy which flows from them, and so they laid the city out to correspond to a number of ley lines which converged at this location, which had been a hot bed of supernatural activity since prehistoric times. There very place where these currents of magical energy converge is the location of the National Monument, which was designed to be a supernatural lightning rod, focusing these energies and directing their power behind the ventures of the United States.

The Masons, however, did not truly know how to control or use the immense amounts of power they had directed into this place, but many powerful supernatural entities drawn to this region were all too eager to make use of this power source. The Winter Court fae claimed that these ley lines lay within their domion, and continue to move freely about the Mall as they wish, however they allowed the Mall and the buildings of the federal government and the Smithsonian Institution within it's immediate vicinity to be declared neutral ground under the Unseelie Accords meaning that all supernatural entities may move freely about the area, but none may attempt to exercise control over it or use magic or engage in acts of aggression there. Supernatural entities have also been forbidden from directly tampering with any mortal government leaders working in this area. For nearly two hundred years now the keeper of these neutral grounds has been the mysterious sorcerer, Phaeton. Though some supernatural entities within the city question the keeper's motives in all his time as keeper he has never given any evidence of wrongdoing and on the contrary has proved a capable watchman over the neutral grounds.