Hakuren City

Hakuren City (Hakuren- White Lotus) is a bustling metropolis just like any other, filled with people, dreams and hopes that keep the lights alive through the night and turn the wheels of industry. It is a sprawling city in the Shizuoka Prefecture that moves over hills and is flanked on the East by the Japanese alps, and on the West by Suruga Bay which extends into the Pacific Ocean. It is said, that in Hakuren, the city of many paths, you can meet anybody you wish to find.

It was founded some centuries ago where many roads and pathways between the fortresses and towns crossed, and it is from that origin that it derives it's name. First it was just the home of merchants and their families, making a living from the passing traffic, but as time went by the small community became first a village and then a bustling town, attracting trade in its own right instead of leeching off those moving to higher places.

Throughout its history Hakuren has been a merchant's city, producing wares, most notably fabrics, for use across the entire prefecture and even farther North towards Tokyo and beyond. By the 1930s it was famous for it's myriad textile mills, and it held that fame for the next thirty years until the advent of computers and more reliable, mechanical, ways to make products. The mills began to decline as the focus of the city moved away from the factories on the Eastern side, the Obuna district, to areas closer to the coast, with towering skyscrapers springing up and business suits entering into the general attire of the city.

Beyond all that, being a city of crossed paths, there has been a great focus on and around Hakuren in that world only a select few can see. Though is subject to manyHollow attacks than any other town or city, it was one of the first places in Japan for the exiled Shinigamis and vizards to establish a chapter and build an abbey, and has always been noted, if you know where to look, for it's odd goings on and extraordinary people.