1996: The Velvet War on Coventry

Cleveland Heights’ Coventry Village was booming in the mid-'90s. It became a cultural hotspot for artists, musicians, skaters, and counterculture types—a hub for local concerts, record stores, occult shops, zine printers, and poetry slams. It was also a known magnet for the Cleveland PD and local suburban moral panic. Several confrontations between young patrons and police led to curfews and heightened patrols.

Coventry was ripe with Glamour. Poetry flowed like wine. A near-constant state of low-grade rebellion fueled the dreams of dozens of Dreamers—and just as many Chrysalis events.

But something else stirred, too.

In late spring of 1996, tensions between a gang of newly Emerged Wilder Changelings and a group of Provisional Concordian Agents (Sidhe loyalists trying to reassert jurisdiction) broke into open magical conflict. The Wilder motley, known locally as the Velvet Underfoot, claimed sovereignty over a patchwork collection of chimera-haunted rooftops and fire escapes they dubbed "the Wild Ladder."

The Sidhe called them anarchists and degenerates. The Wilders called the Sidhe "boring colonizers in cravats."

One night in May, every mural in Coventry Village suddenly and inexplicably changed to depict the Sidhe antagonists of the Wild Ladder being defeated in increasingly cartoonish ways.
No witnesses. No footage. No cleanup crew.

By July, the Sidhe had withdrawn, but the disputes lingered. It’s said that the battle's lingering spiritual signature saturates the sidewalk under Record Revolution—those who stand there long enough hear whispered lyrics about “heroes on power lines.”

Legacy

• One or more of the Velvet Underfoot members (now Grumps or vanished) might still be out there—missing, forgotten, or dreaming somewhere deeper.
• Sidhe nobles today still refer to Coventry with a kind of polite disdain, and most avoid discussing the Velvet War entirely.
• More than one Kithain has offered to pay handsomely should someone locate and sell them a sentient cassette tape related to the event. It is rumored that the tape records your emotional state instead of sound.