Paco Station

Departures Old Paco Station, Manila

Paco Station has long haunted the stretch of Quirino Highway. What's mostly left of the original building is its weather-beaten neoclassical facade harking back to Pennsylvania Station. Doric columns guard the entrance, while perched above are eagle sculptures and a giant clock. Yet its skeletal frame is a constant reminder of a painful past.

During the 1930s it was envisioned to be the heart of the Commonwealth's new railway system. The war put an end to those plans, and the station served the Japanese Imperial Army as a military post. When the Americans crossed the Pasig River with the intention of reclaiming Manila, Paco Station became the first of many bloody battlegrounds. After the war it struggled until was partially demolished in the '90s to make way for a shopping center. Construction mysteriously stopped, and the half-built mall looms next to the station.

North of the site is the narrow waterway of the Estero de Pandancan, and the working class barangays of Kahilum I and II. A few residents claim to hear the sound of locomotives arriving and departing from Paco at odd hours of the night. Others spot the faint glow of ethereal lights. Mages will hear and see these phenomena more vividly especially with Death Sight. Some Moros describe the noxious smell of smoke and charcoal, and the ground shuddering with the arrival and departure of spectral trains.

The 'true' Paco station remains in Twilight: An endless series of adjoining rooms, luxurious arcades, and byzantine hallways leading to various platforms. It is inhabited by generations of the dead, mostly from World War II - skeletal entities dressed in the attire of their era, their bones sheathed in translucent human features. They go about repeating the daily routines of their former lives either as civilians or soldiers. Very seldom, when one of the ghosts finds that it has resolved what binds it, it is able to ride the train to the underworld.

Necromancers among the Awakened theorize that Paco is, or sits on top of, a Stygian Verge. The how and why are still unclear. Perhaps it was the catastrophe of war, or the slow decline of the station into disuse and disrepair. Furthermore, the structure itself - part physical and part ephemeral - might possibly be a dysfunctional Avernian Gate. The Pentacle remains undecided on what to do with the station, and has kept its rehabilitation mired in red tape. The Seers care even less, but that may soon change. A gateway to the underworld is nothing to take lightly. While the ghosts of Paco remain bound to the site, no proof has been found regarding the impossibility of denizens from the Lower Depths to enter the Fallen World through it.

The Living and the Dead

Mages might visit Paco station out of curiosity or a desire to interact with its otherworldly nature. Some might seek out the dead for insights to the past, while others might perform rituals of the Death Arcana, using Paco as an environmental yantra. Awakened will encounter the living and the dead among its ruins:
 * Punyal is a Moros with a particular interest in Paco. As an Adamantine Arrow, he sees the station as something of a war shrine. After all, Arrows fought for both the Japanese and American sides. Punyal seeks a way to complete the cycle of death by releasing Paco's inhabitants. Despite his standoffish nature, he could use some allies.
 * Even in undeath, Lieutenant Suguru Shimoda carries out the final orders of the imperial high command. Invested by General Onda himself with the defense of Paco, Shimoda was killed quite early in the American assault, but not before executing several Filipinos. He seeks to reclaim his honor even in the afterlife.
 * Reverend Macario Mactal wants to know peace. Once an ordained pastor in the Methodist Church, Rev. Mactal joined the guerilla movement after his flock was massacred by the Japanese. He was captured and executed in the grounds of Paco, which he still haunts, tormented by his own failure.