Gary, the New World is the New World cycle, set in Gary, Indiana in 1987, where the Iron God imprisoned under Iron Mountain seeks to fuse his five temporal versions during the eclipse of 14 April. It is the canonical phase of the parallel saga recorded alongside the cycle of Legend.
| Type | Campaign (cycle) |
| Setting | Gary, Indiana, 1987 |
| Era | Age of the New World |
| Antagonist | Graz’zt / the Iron God (Graz’zt) |
| Spanish entry | Gary, el Mundo Nuevo |
Setting
Gary, a former steel capital of the United States, is in decline in 1987: gangs, conspiracies, hidden forces, racial tension, deindustrialization, amateur chemistry. Its furnaces are cold and its parking lots empty. Beneath the city runs a network of caverns connecting to the underground Crystal Tower, interdimensional portals and Iron Mountain, the arachnid epicenter of this world. The underground is home to arachnids, defensive robots, cultists and dimensional entities.
Iron Mountain is a secret kept by the Genesis Foundation. Its core is a spherical chamber with six alcoves, each a portal to another date, anchored to eclipses. Clara Clean is the Foundation’s visible representative, handing futuristic weapons to marginal youths; Colonel Falco operates between the agency and the State, under Cold War commands that never appear in documents.
Companions
The band that goes down to Iron Mountain:
- Pontiac (Danny De Sirio), seventeen, named after the car he drives.
- Gilbert Glover, who went to neither army nor college but can drive anything on wheels.
- Chantal and Sasha, who track, survive and close the march.
- Ray, who knows where the place is.
- Kendall, who goes in human and comes out with circuitry in the blood, lead in the heart taken from a sacrificed man, and implants.
- Jean-Baptiste, the eldest, a Haitian detective. In the Crystal Tower he kills the arachnid guardian, a trap: whoever kills the guardian inherits the role. He takes custody of Scorpio and spends months planning his escape.
Also listed among the companions: Glob, Flor and Florencia Falcón.
The protagonists rise from Neophytes to Lords of Creation, learning between grades to see other dimensions and travel through space and time; the final aim is to become able to create worlds.
Main figures
- the Iron God, the entity imprisoned under Iron Mountain, is Graz’zt in his New World facet: the same Graz’zt active in Rome, in Axum and in the stolen Mechanus. He seeks to escape by fusing five versions of himself from different eras at the eclipse of 14 April 1987. The five bombs of the Lord of Iron are those five versions.
- Iggwilv, the archmage who sealed him with Truenames; she is the Iggwilv who, in the old lore of Greyhawk, gave rise to Graz’zt. The band must travel through time in pairs to use names that work only against old versions of him. The robot HG prints the containment circles.
- Rijel Betta: a black woman with pointed ears and insectoid-arachnid hair; platform guardian (with Clara Kling); holder of a soul-drinking sword; leader of an underground women’s cult. Executed by Jean-Baptiste with an energy saber.
- Aunt Nancy: matriarch of a clandestine faction in the depths; tortures by cutting fingers and ritual marks; performs alchemical rituals (lead to silver to gold).
- Petro Wulf: an ambiguous ally with a black 1970s Cadillac who trades in gems and “the heart”; he leaves for 1494 through a portal.
- Redcap and Wintercap: allied fey entities. Redcap escapes on the Train of the Laughing Vulture.
- Genesis Foundation: biotechnology, transhumanism, modern alchemy; supplies energy grenades, shields, blasters and the robot HG. It is led by Kling (spelling varies; also Klim/Grimm in later records) and Richard Bentham, both platform guardians. Clara falls ill and dies; her charges (possibly nuclear weapons) remain latent.
Key places
- Iron Mountain: epicenter of the portals, guarded by latent or corrupted Guardians; site of the final confrontation with Graz’zt.
- Crystal Tower: a great tower of purple crystal below the caverns, with magnetized metal doors, fluid wells, spiral stairs, balconies and a ritual hall with an obsidian altar and sacrificial bowl. It holds arachnids, robots, culebrinas (cannon traps) and Nínfea, a tentacled creature.
- Train of the Laughing Vulture: an interdimensional train leaving Iron Mountain, crewed by a “novice crew”, that is, Novice Cruz. It goes to an interdimensional inn where “outside the windows the world was roasting like baked apples”. Last stop: the Laughing Vulture.
- Zodiacal Platforms: a cosmic system of opposed guardians, the same Game of Shadows as that of Les Libertateurs (installed in 1784 A.D.A.). Platforms confirmed in the New World: Scorpio (Jean-Baptiste as guardian), Taurus (the earthly, the frontier) and Aries (temple of the Ouroboros, where the Deep Ones fought Mexican mercenaries).
Portal eras
The six portals anchor six eras with eclipses:
- 1987: the present (Gary, Indiana).
- 1494: the era of the Libertateurs and the Invisible Cities; Mr. Wolf escapes there.
- The other four are not settled. Dates given for the portals include 1788, 1887 and 428; probable coverage includes A.D.A. Antiterra (1888–1901), Mediterraneum (270 A.D.A.), the Templars (1100s) and the Primordial Era of Andgara.
Ending
The Train of the Laughing Vulture leaves Iron Mountain with Redcap and his allies. Polchnikov disappears east through the Yeti Portal. Jean-Baptiste holds Scorpio while planning his escape. The portals remain open. The band’s base was a mechanic’s workshop, its Torregrises.
See also
- The Supreme Ones (sister saga)
- Graz’zt
- Iron Mountain
- Iggwilf
- Annunaki (Graz’zt’s cross-saga network)
- Game of Shadows