the Dresden Files in a Government Town

[Ancalagon]

The low rate of violent death in Ottawa makes it unlikely we have any numbers of Black court vampires or ghouls around, but that leaves a lot of options.  There is a fair amount of variation in the styles of various Red court vampires; Bianca left a trail of bodies, while Ortega was very controlled in the matter of feeding.  He kept deaths to a minimum and kept a captive community for his vassals to feed on.  If the city does have Reds they probably act in a similar way, confining their feeding to poorer areas of the city (Vanier? Hintonburg?) and using cash and threats to buy the silence of their blood supply.  Or if you prefer a darker route, and don't mind borrowing from White Wolf, they may have simply grabbed people no one would miss and keep them caged like battery hens someplace secret; maybe someplace outside of town off a side-road.  The Raith don't have to go to those lengths, their feeding is usually non-lethal and when they do kill it probably doesn't look like murder.

One thing I can say is that if this city had a supernatural presence, they would not be sloppy.  Ortega or Lara could survive here, Mavra or Bianca would likely cause too much disruption and draw too much notice.  Subtler actors and manipulators would find it easier to move about here, provided they were careful enough in cleaning up after themselves.

Agreed.

As far as a element of conflict goes, Ottawa weather suggests we may be a battleground for the Winter and Summer courts.  I doubt either of them is responsible for hushing up the fallout of those battles, besides weird and unseasonal heat waves and cold snaps, but that still leaves plenty of options for string-pullers.  A government organization could be a potential candidate there, but given powers of the vampires and the sidhe I find it unlikely that such a group could remain [1] hidden, and [2] uncorrupted.  

I hadn't thought of that, but that's an excellent angle.  Winters here can go from very harsh to kind of... wussy (like last one).   I am still toying with the idea of having The Governor's General's office have some contacts with the fae, following up on the idea that the British Crown has contacts with the two Courts.

[Douglas]

There are a few problems I can think of with regards to the aboriginal pact idea:

Firstly, it's a little too much "Ottawa as the Capital" and not enough "Ottawa as a city", and you might want to think of this city in terms of all the stuff that goes on away from the direct business of government.  Instead of focusing on the plight of the Inuit and First nations as a whole focus on those that live in this particular area.  There's the Akwesasne reservation near Cornwall, and there are natives living in Ottawa, many below the poverty line.  I'd say that as a rule supernatural predators are going to strike against the most vulnerable prey, which might apply to those in the city but probably wouldn't apply to Akwesasne (too many guns).  The problems at Akwesasne tend to revolve around drug-related crime and violence, or at least that's what the RCMP's publicly available information on organized crime in the area seems to say.

Ok, but you have this national organization that tried to make a deal with supernatural entities, only problem is that non-supernatural human organizations (pre-Marcone) have no status under the accords, and little capacity to enforce the pact except by force.  Given that the only way to strike such a bargain would be in a negative way, by not providing protection, then possibly your national agency simply doesn't apply any force to protect reservations, maybe making a claim about lacking the mandate to enforce on Native land to justify non-interference.

I've tried looking at the role of natives in the history of Ottawa, but it gets a little confusing; the land Ottawa was built on was handed over by treaty in 1822, though there were already settlers here before that, but the group who were negotiated with, the Mississauga, never actually hunted around here.  There were Algonquin here, but they were either forced out or mixed in with white squatters when development got organized.