Chicago Avenue Pumping Station

TLC 02/5

Pumping Station: The remodeled Chicago Avenue Pumping Station in the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the shopping mecca by Lake Michigan, was also the regular meeting place for the local Order of the Silver Griffins. It had been for well over a hundred years since the station was still functioning in its original capacity as a public utility. Back then, no one gave the building a second glance. There were so many other things to distract, like the World’s Fair and a new invention that debuted there called the Ferris Wheel. The Ferris family were proud members of the Order going back thousands of years and clever engineers. A wizard cousin helped build the pumping station and started the ball rolling to make it a safe haven for witches and wizards passing through Chicago in need of a place to rest. Fortunately, as it changed hands, eventually becoming a theater, it still came under the purview of a friendly witch or wizard family. The thousands of tourists who schlepped past the building every day on their way to the Water Tower and the dancing fountain that spit water up and down several flights in the middle of the escalator, never knew they were so close to so much hidden magic. In the back of the station, one flight down, sat the vault that was built before the station and was even the reason for planting the large stone edifice on top of it. To keep the contents safely hidden away. The vault stretched out underneath the pumping station. In front were different aisles stretching up two stories, full of different boxes. Each one had a different charm to keep an artifact in and an intruder out. The dead Prince Rilom had a small box, holding whatever held the last of his energies. The necklace went into that small box. The vault also held hundreds of artifacts and relics in here by now, maybe thousands, which had been involved in magical events involved with magic. Humans could never explain them, and it was hoped that they would never see what was in the vault to help them. The vault had been built by the gnomes of Oriceran, known for their ability to not only keep secrets but create clever ways to guard them as well. Shipped over to Earth a piece at a time with a few gnomes to put it back together correctly. TLC 02/5