Pre-Contact Traditions
Magic in the Americas before European contact was regional, varied, and in most cases lacked the centralizing scholarly institutions that characterized the Western tradition. There was no equivalent to the Scholomance or the Hermetic School. Magical knowledge was held within priestly lineages, shamanic apprenticeship systems, and oral traditions that differed considerably across the continent.
The best-documented pre-contact traditions from a modern occult-scholarly standpoint are the Mesoamerican ones. Maya and Aztec priest-mathematicians maintained calendrical and astronomical systems that functioned as scaffolding for magical practice — timing was considered essential to the efficacy of major rites. These traditions were priestly and institutional rather than shamanic, more analogous in structure to the Hermetic schools than to Circean lineages, though the cosmological content bore no relation to either.
In the Andes, Incan ritual practice involved working with the landscape at significant scale. Modern occult scholars have documented evidence of large-area spatial effects associated with Incan sacred geography, though the mechanisms remain poorly understood within Western analytical frameworks.
Across the Amazon basin and among most North American tribal peoples, the prevailing form of magical practice was shamanic — individual practitioners with inherited or apprenticed access to spirit relationships, outside any centralized institution. These traditions varied enormously. Attempts by Western scholars to characterize them as a single tradition are a category error.
Most of these traditions had no concept of Delirium as a systematic social hazard. Magic was practiced openly within communities that had developed their own accommodations with its effects over generations. Whether this reflects genuine difference in how Delirium operates within these traditions, or simply long communal adaptation, is an open question among modern scholars.
Magical Colonization
The occidental history notes that Cambridge Circle and Scholomance figures participated in the Age of Discovery alongside European merchants and colonizers, acquiring foreign occult knowledge in the process. In the Americas, this played out over roughly two centuries before the Franklonian system existed as any kind of governing framework.
Spanish and Portuguese expeditions included Church-authorized exorcists and independent practitioners associated with the Scholomance. English and French explorers brought Cambridge Circle associates. None of these had unified policy for dealing with indigenous magic. In practice, they did what served immediate purposes: appropriated useful techniques, suppressed practices that threatened colonial authority, and destroyed institutional knowledge they could not use or feared. There was no containment logic to this — it was extraction and suppression without the Franklonian rationale that came later.
The most consequential destruction occurred in Mesoamerica. The burning of Maya codices and the systematic dismantling of Aztec priestly colleges eliminated bodies of magical knowledge without Western parallel. What survives of pre-contact Mesoamerican magical scholarship survives in fragments — in practices preserved by hiding them inside Catholic forms, in oral transmission, in objects whose function was not recognized as significant by those who failed to destroy them.
By the late 17th century, the Scholomance had extended a degree of influence into Spanish colonial administration in the Americas. When the Scholomance was destroyed in 1699, that organizational thread was cut. The Cambridge Circle maintained agents in the English colonies, but these were few and operated without enforcement infrastructure.
The Franklonian Era
The Franklonian system, developed in the 1750s, arrived in the Americas already partially built — Franklin was himself American, and his methodology was applied to the colonies within years of its development. After American independence, the Authority emerged from Franklonian-aligned groups within the new federal government.
The Authority's original jurisdiction was the United States. Its influence in Latin America extended through diplomatic pressure and covert operations rather than direct field presence, particularly across the 19th century. Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean became a zone of overlapping Authority interest and contested local practice, not territory under clean containment.
Latin American states developed their own relationships with magical governance. Some attempted Franklonian-style containment agencies; others relied on ecclesiastical structures that predated Franklin and operated under Church authority. None has achieved the institutional stability of the Authority or the Royal Geometric Society. In 2026, the Franklonian system is the dominant but not exclusive framework across the continent, and genuine gaps in containment are numerous.
African Diaspora Traditions
The transatlantic slave trade brought practitioners from West and Central African magical traditions into a hemisphere where indigenous traditions had been partially suppressed or driven underground. The synthesis of African practice with indigenous remnants and Catholic surface forms produced the major Afro-diasporic magical traditions that persist today.
These traditions — Vodou in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora, Candomblé in Brazil, Santería (also called Lucumí) in Cuba and the Cuban diaspora, Curanderismo in Mexico and the Mexican-American Southwest, and others — share a structural resemblance to Circean-lineage traditions: they are practitioner lineages, not scholarly institutions. Transmission is through initiation and apprenticeship rather than written scholarship. They are effective. Their cosmological frameworks do not map onto Hermetic categories, which has historically made them difficult for Authority analysts trained in Franklonian methodology to assess accurately.
Modern Authority classification of these traditions has tended toward two errors: over-pathologizing them (treating ordinary ritual practice as a Delirium risk requiring intervention) or ignoring them as beneath systematic notice. Neither posture has been corrected in any sustained institutional way, and both have produced operational problems.
Current Conditions
The Authority operates across the United States with the same general mandate described in the occidental history: neutralize Delirium outbreaks, surveil magical communities, manage relics. In practice, its operations in the South and Southwest — where African-diaspora and Mexican curanderismo traditions are densest — have been characterized by more aggressive intervention and less negotiated accommodation than its operations in New England or the Pacific Northwest. This reflects institutional history more than any principled difference in threat assessment.
The border zone between the United States and Mexico is a known operational gap. People, magical knowledge, and active practitioners move through it in ways the Authority cannot fully track, and no bilateral agreement has produced a workable enforcement arrangement.
In the Caribbean, the Authority treats Haiti as a special case. Vodou's formal structure — initiated priesthoods, established temple hierarchies, recognized grades of practice — makes it tractable to Franklonian-style assessment in ways that more diffuse traditions are not. Formal arrangements exist between the Authority and certain Vodou institutional representatives, though their terms are not public. Cuba's magical communities have been largely inaccessible to direct Authority contact since 1959; what the Authority knows about Cuban Santería comes primarily from the diaspora.
Brazil presents a different problem. Candomblé in Bahia has enough institutional structure to negotiate with, and has done so. In the Amazon basin, no comparable institutional structure exists, and the Authority's remote-area capacity in South America is limited. Containment there is uneven by any honest assessment.
Canada's official position is full cooperation with the Authority. Indigenous communities in northern Canada maintain magical traditions that predate the Franklonian system and largely exist outside it. The Authority has treated these as low priority based on population density and limited documented Delirium risk; the communities involved have generally preferred it that way.
South Florida — the game's setting — is notable within this picture. The Haitian diaspora concentrated in Miami's Little Haiti, and the Cuban exile community spread across Miami-Dade, represent the largest concentrations of Vodou and Santería practice in the continental United States. These communities maintain active traditions with deep roots. The Authority's Miami field operations have a documented history of poor working relationships with both, rooted in enforcement decisions going back decades.
South Florida is also a major transit and laundering point for lachryms, the single-denomination currency of supernatural trade. Miami's ports, diaspora networks, tourist economy, and criminal infrastructure make provenance difficult to verify and easy to falsify. The Authority monitors lachrym movement through Miami as supernatural trafficking, but its own sanctioned pressing of supernatural criminals gives local operators reason to doubt any clean division between official and illicit supply.
NextGroup is a newer pressure on this same regional picture. Samson Day lives elsewhere in Florida, in the Cape Canaveral area, and his companies are deeply tied to the Space Coast, state procurement, logistics, social media, gig labor, and AI infrastructure. A major NextDay distribution center operates in Pluto Beach, making NextGroup a local employer, surveillance surface, labor market, and logistics hub. NextLife is the likely default social platform for public posts, groups, events, rumors, local disputes, and in-character online life in Shadow Beach.
Key Concepts and Terms
Pre-contact traditions — The magical practices of indigenous peoples of the Americas before European contact. These were not a unified system; they ranged from priestly-institutional (Mesoamerica, the Andes) to shamanic (North America, Amazonia) and varied enormously by region. Most lacked any concept of Delirium as a systematic social hazard. The priestly and institutional traditions of Mesoamerica were largely destroyed during Spanish colonization.
Afro-diasporic traditions — The magical traditions produced by the synthesis of West and Central African practices with indigenous remnants and Catholic surface forms during and after the transatlantic slave trade. The major examples are Vodou, Candomblé, Santería/Lucumí, and Curanderismo. These are practitioner lineages, Circean-adjacent in structure, not scholarly institutions. They are effective magical traditions. Their cosmological frameworks do not reduce to Hermetic categories.
Vodou — The Afro-diasporic tradition practiced in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora, including the substantial Haitian community in South Florida. Vodou has formal priestly structure — initiated priests and priestesses (hougan and manbo) — and established temple hierarchies. This institutional structure makes it more tractable to Franklonian-style assessment than more diffuse traditions. Formal arrangements between the Authority and Vodou institutional representatives exist; their terms are not public.
Santería / Lucumí — The Afro-diasporic tradition practiced in Cuba and the Cuban diaspora, including in South Florida. Derived primarily from Yoruba traditions brought by enslaved West Africans and syncretized with Catholic forms. The Cuban diaspora in Miami represents the largest concentration of Santería practice in the United States. Direct Authority oversight of Cuban-origin Santería has historically been limited by lack of institutional access to Cuba itself.
Curanderismo — A broad term for Mexican and Mexican-American healing and magical practice. Draws on indigenous Mesoamerican and Mexican traditions, Spanish colonial folk practice, and Catholic elements. Less institutionalized than Vodou; primarily a practitioner lineage transmitted through families and individual apprenticeship. Heavy presence in the US Southwest and in South Florida's Mexican-immigrant communities.
Lachryms — Crystallized units of suffering used as supernatural currency. In South Florida they circulate through Syndicate brokerage, informal occult markets, and Authority seizures or sanctioned supply. Provenance is socially important and frequently falsified.
NextGroup — The corporate empire of Samson Day, an Aware billionaire based
near Cape Canaveral. In South Florida it matters through NextDay logistics,
NextDash gig labor, NextLife social infrastructure, NextLabs/DeepNext analytics,
and NextSky's Space Coast contracts. See docs/theme/nextgroup.md.