The Land
Boston stands on a pear-shaped peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow spit of land called The Neck. The peninsula sits in a sheltered harbor, screened from the Atlantic Ocean by a chain of Harbor Islands, including Castle, Governor's, Noddel's, Deer, Spectacle, and many others. Called Shawmut by the local Massasoit people, the peninsula is dominated by a steep-sided sandy hill called the Trimount for its three summits.
The climate is temperate, with hot humid summers, crisp dry autumns, and long, cold winters, with no spring to speak of. The forests around Boston are filled with white pine, oak, and maple. The soil is rocky, acidic, and generally poor for farming, except along the river valleys.

The People
The Puritans arrived here in 1630, about sixty years before the present day. They came in force, in several ships, first settling in Naumkeag to the north, but soon abandoning it after the discovery of witches in their midst. In Boston, they sought to build "a City on a Hill", a theocratic society where government and church were one. Unlike the pilgrims of Plimoth, the Puritans are not separatists seeking to retreat from an evil and corrupt world; they see themselves as soldiers of God, establishing a foothold at the edge of a demon-haunted wilderness filled with godless savages and threatened by heretics. They believe that the wickedness of the world must be confronted and made to conform to God's will, in an endless grim struggle between the righteous and the sinful.

The Law
To this end, the Puritans have established strict moral codes of conduct for all citizens, whether Calvinist, Anglican, or otherwise.These laws include:

• The anti-sumptuary laws, which forbid citizens from wearing brightly colored fabrics or extravances like plumes, wide ruff collars, or flashy jewelery. This is not to say that wealthy Bostonians dress in rags; on the contrary, their costumes are of exquisite stuff, but rather restrained and understated.
• The so-called Blue Laws, which forbid businesses to open on the Sabbath, or even for people to work on that day. (The traditional Boston baked dinner allows a goodwife to make her Sunday dinner on Saturday night and keep it warm in the oven until after Sunday church services).
• Mandatory church services for all members of the Puritan faith.
• Tithes to the church for all Calvinist citizens.
• A trial system presided over by church fathers, rather than one's peers.

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