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Saith Rob:

"Your characters' individual stories ... are sort of coming to mirror the seven 'quests' in The Wizard of Oz [FrankBaum]- ask Marlon [MarlonSpells] for more info on those..."

Gold -- America's Center, somewhere in Kansas?
- Guardian: the Buffalo.
- See also Coronado.
Silver -- LunaVista
- Guardian: ?
- "But now something's got to go on LosAngeles, or near it at least, to balance the other end of Route66. The dirt? The balloon? No. The silver dollar. It's cold in Reese's hands as he lays it down on top of Los Angeles. (It is not, alas, an 1804 Silver Dollar, aka 'the king of coins.') The dream factory. Where Waylon [WaylanBeulay] followed his girl Mary into hell and came back all twisted up inside. That seems right.
- "Except... Reese pushes the big coin a little to the right, over the state line into Nevada. That empty space on the map between Reno and LasVegas. Where miners hit the Mother Lode of silver in the last century, and where they say Uncle Sam keeps his UFOs. That seems right, too.
- Or... Reese moves the coin back to L.A. The silver screen. Dorothy's slippers. There's something funny going on between L.A. and Nevada. But the silver dollar definitely goes in that general vicinity."
Orichalka (TheHammer)
- Guardian: ?
Water -- Florida (FountainofYouth)
- Guardian: Leviathan
Air -- MountShasta
- Guardian: the Thunderbird
- "The balloon of air goes in northern California, off I-5, near a little mountain town called Weed. Don't know why, but it looks right there." [MountShasta?]
Fire -- Chicago.
- Guardian: the Fire-Bull
- "Reese starts to trace the roads with a pencil, then stops. Something isn't right. He looks at the items he's laid out, then moves the lit candle from L.A. to Chicago, the other end of the Mother Road. Chicago. Fire. That seems right. He remembers brother Waylan talking about the Chicago plutomancers. 'They captured the fire-ka and built a city of industry.' He remembers one of the tarot cards the witch woman in NewOrleans pulled for Ben, too. The Ace of Wands. That had something to do with fire and industry, too. It wasn't a very lucky card, if Reese remembers right. Come to think of it, the burning candle, leaning a little now, looks a little like one of the other cards the old woman pulled. TheTower. That wasn't a very lucky card either."
Earth -- Wisconsin, due west of Madison
- Guardian: ?
- "The clod of earth goes near the top of the map, in Wisconsin. Just seems to fit. Due west of Madison, roughly halfway between I-90 and Highway 61 (which tracks the Mother Road of the 19th Century, the Mississippi River, from NewOrleans all to the way to the pine forests of Minnesota)."

WaylanBeulay knows that the seven "cities" of Cibola are really seven wells of elemental ka scattered across the country. The FountainofYouth in the Florida Everglades is one of the seven "cities"-a node of water-ka once guarded by the great beast Leviathan. Now, of course, a great corporate empire has claimed the Fountain, building Walt Disney World atop it, leaching its youth-giving magic and power. Another, the node of fire-ka, made Chicago into a great city of industry. There are five more, one for each element. These seven Mystery Spots are key sites in the struggle for America's true soul.

The seven elements also correspond with seven "vulgar" American elements, also with seven celestial bodies, with the seven chakras, the seven days of the week, the seven letters in the alchemist formula VITRIOL, and the seven quests encoded in FrankBaum's theosophical master work, The Wizard of Oz.

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