Looking for ideas for a campaign set in Toledo, Ohio

[Katarn]

When talking with a friend about common expressions, the phrase "Holy Toledo" came up, and it gave me a loose idea to set a DFRPG game in Toledo, focused less on mortal practitioners and more on faith based magic/characters of all stripes.  A bit of research right away gave me a few ideas:

• Most major religions have multiple presences in the area- aside from Christianity's general monopoly on worship, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism all have 2 or more houses of worship in the greater metro area
• Human trafficking is a relatively major problem in Toledo (4th highest in the country), due to it being an intersection of interstates near several major airports and the border with Canada only 40 minutes away.  I was considering having both mortal cops as well as supernatural opposition to this akin to The Paranet Papers' Cult of Ishtar, only with Native American trappings.
• A major city for almost 200 years, and Native American presence centuries before that, there's a lot of history to draw from in the area.  There was a mostly bloodless conflict called the Toledo War that I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate.  It was a relatively boring conflict, so to use it there would have to be cloak-and-dagger elements to the conflict.  Perhaps a conflict between the 2 of the Vampire courts (or maybe the Sidhe), each backing one of the states?
• The town's nicknames include Glass City (the country's leading glass producer) and Frog Town (due to the former Great Black Swamp that used to cover the area), both of which could be tied in with demons or other supernatural folks.

I want to stay away from Denarians and Knights of the Cross, at least initially, and instead focus on other fallen angels, demons, or creatures/monsters from other faiths.  Current themes I'm looking at are in this vein:

• A literal holy war (demons or some such verus another faction, humanity, etc.)
• Human trafficking, both from a mortal perspective and the supernatural facets
• ?Possibly something involving 2 Vampire courts and the Toledo War
• ?Inter-faith unity or conflict on how to address issues (either mortal or supernatural)

I'm hesitant to commit some of the heavier concepts to a game, such as human trafficking.  Any suggestions are heartily welcomed.

[g33k]

In my (still in planning phases) DF game, there are a multiplicity of figures on the same general level as the "Knights of the Cross."  The Church has only the loosest notion of the scope of this, or what IoP's and/or other mechanisms are involved.  Mostly, they are part of the Ineffable Plan, and pass through life without ever attracting organized/official Church support or even cognizance.
 

[Quantus]

for what it's worth, a "Saint" is a presumably powerful but as yet undefined Mortal Champion.  It could offer a lot of interesting possibilities on the judeochristian side of things. 

One detail of Faith that Ive seen done well before was to utilize all the less common types of "Holy object" out there.  So Holy Water is a good thing, but so are blessed shinto charms, or holy wood from the right region, that sort of thing. 

[g33k]

One detail of Faith that Ive seen done well before was to utilize all the less common types of "Holy object" out there.  So Holy Water is a good thing, but so are blessed shinto charms, or holy wood from the right region, that sort of thing.

Indeed!  And do not forget other religions -- not merely the "People of the Book" aka "Abrahamic" religions, or even the big/notable Asian ones such as Buddhism & Hinduism.  There are tens of millions of Sikhs, for example.  Zoroastrianism is still around (practiced by a couple of million people) and fire is central to their worship -- and don't forget we get "mage" from latin "magus" who got it from Zoroastrian "magoi"!   The Yazidi people (recently in the news because they were so violently attacked & suppressed by Daesh/ISIS) are Kurds who practice ancient ways that seem to be largely a form of pre-Roman Mithraism.  O-sensei Morihei Ueshiba was a profoundly spiritual man, with links to both Buddhism and Shinto.  There are many smaller religions native to Africa, to southeast Asia, etc.  There is no unifying authority or organization behind "Chinese Folk Religion" but -- with innumerable local variants -- it has adherents in the hundreds of millions.

Any large city in the US these days can probably be assumed (at least for game-play purposes) to have at least a few members of any given religion, however distantly-sourced or obscure it might seem to mainstream-USAian perspective.
 

[Quantus]

Indeed!  And do not forget other religions -- not merely the "People of the Book" aka "Abrahamic" religions, or even the big/notable Asian ones such as Buddhism & Hinduism.  There are tens of millions of Sikhs, for example.  Zoroastrianism is still around (practiced by a couple of million people) and fire is central to their worship -- and don't forget we get "mage" from latin "magus" who got it from Zoroastrian "magoi"!   The Yazidi people (recently in the news because they were so violently attacked & suppressed by Daesh/ISIS) are Kurds who practice ancient ways that seem to be largely a form of pre-Roman Mithraism.  O-sensei Morihei Ueshiba was a profoundly spiritual man, with links to both Buddhism and Shinto.  There are many smaller religions native to Africa, to southeast Asia, etc.  There is no unifying authority or organization behind "Chinese Folk Religion" but -- with innumerable local variants -- it has adherents in the hundreds of millions.

Any large city in the US these days can probably be assumed (at least for game-play purposes) to have at least a few members of any given religion, however distantly-sourced or obscure it might seem to mainstream-USAian perspective.

It is worth noting that in the DV you have to actually believe in the brand of Faith in question, at least to some extent.  There seems to be two distinct levels of "Holy Object".  One the one has is a normal cross or other symbol of Faith that can be empowered by a believer in a temporary way, like a cross.  The other is Blessed by a holy man, like Holy Water.  The former is a temporary effect and requires some amount of real Faith.  The other is a process where Energy is imparted on the object/substance independent of the person's faith (even surviving their death as in WN).

So a blessed shinto charm should work just as well as a barrel of holy water.  Fire that was taken from a Zoroastrian temple or otherwise used in a ceremony would be empowered but I dont think all Fire would be (unless wielded by a true Believer like a cross, I think).  I dont really know if there is a blessing Process behind the commercially available Ganges holy water.