Finally got around to finishing this. More or less
The Golden Horseshoe League
In the first years after the Serpent Fell, the lands of the Canadians and the Americans were wracked by fire and war and poisoned rain. New nations were forged in the broken-backed forge of the Middle West: Chicago, with its desperados and Aldermen; blood-soaked Iowa, where the very grain itself called out for human gore; haunted Birmingham, grim Bone-lands, home of the Ghost-men, eternally damned yet more afraid of the shadows; and many others. But in the North there was a League of cities: proud Toronto, subtle Buffalo, fierce Hamilton, and clever Rochester. United, the League of the Golden Horseshoe kept peace along the Eerie Lake and the Sea of Shining Ice.
Well… a sort of peace. For the freebooters and privateers of Hamilton and Buffalo would admit to having no masters but themselves, and gloried in the strength of their arms, their ice-ships, and their crews. Their Lucky Skull flag struck fear in the hearts of slavers and pirates from Oswego to New Toledo; and yea, indeed, at times in far-foreign lands of the Green Bay and even dour Chicago itself. Those were great voyages indeed! It was a time for heroes, villains, warriors, and poets; the birth of an Age that would last through the ages.
Or so men hoped.