Great Britain in Shadowrun: 2097

 

“United Kingdom?” Mate, that union broke faster than a cheap commlink in a mana storm.

Overview

In 2097, Great Britain is no longer a unified state—just a name used nostalgically by history sims and aging monarchists. What remains is a shattered archipelago of fiefdoms, free cities, corpo baronies, awakened strongholds, and anarcho-zones. Each town, district, or even neighborhood might be governed by a different force—druids, megacorps, gangs, ghost cults, or worse.

Officially, the “Throne-in-Exile” still exists, represented by a semi-AI monarch and a pageantry-simchannel consortium known as Crown Holdings Authority. But everyone knows power flows elsewhere.

Whether you’re shadowrunning, soul-searching, or smuggling, expect the unexpected—and pay your local toll-witch.

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Key Themes

• Fragmented Sovereignty: No central control. Every region operates under its own system—if there is one.

• Magical Bloat: Wild ley lines, old gods returning, and warlocks claiming lordship over real estate.

• Corporate Feudalism: Megacorps don’t want to own Britain—they want to carve it into pieces and sell it back to you.

• Haunted Heritage: Ghosts walk. Spirits talk. The past refuses to stay buried.

• Gilded Decay: The rich live in retrofitted aristocratic splendor. The poor starve beneath rusted monorails.

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London: Sprawl of Crowns and Ashes

“Every tower in London casts two shadows—one for the poor, and one for the past.”

Greater London is a paradox: half-sunken, gang-plagued, and leyline-distorted… yet still the beating heart of a nostalgic empire dreamed up by corporate simsense designers.

• Central London is operated by the Crown Holdings Authority—a syndicate of megacorps, simcrown influencers, and “neo-aristocrats.” The aesthetic is corporate-Victorian cosplay: top hats, tailored coats, and AR scepters that track your compliance score.

• The City (Square Mile) is corporate property. No taxes, no laws, just contracts and clean extractions.

• Outer Boroughs range from gang zones to eco-enclaves. The ley lines here fluctuate with moods and murders.

Weird Shit Around the Thames:

• The water spirits of Docklands don’t like being filmed.

• Tower Bridge sometimes vanishes between realities.

• There’s a kraken. Officially denied. Definitely real.

Notable Factions:

• The Towerbinders – Hermetic elites running Thames-touched skyscrapers.

• The Wigs – AR-crowned nobles who duel over sponsorships and tax havens.

• The Iron Company – Saeder-Krupp’s local “commerce guild” (read: death-dealing logistics).

• The Black Abbey – A whispered theocratic order tied to ghost summoning, tabloid sorcery, and possible necromancy-as-a-service.

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Regional Rundown

Southwest (Cornwall, Devon, Somerset)

• Druidic autonomy. Roads dissolve into mist.

• Magical sites awaken, disrupting both Matrix and mana.

• Corporate prospecting is hazardous to your soul.

Midlands (Birmingham, Leicester, Coventry)

• Cybergangs and old unions now run as armed communes.

• Midlands Steel Pact (Ares-aligned) operates as a paramilitary industry protectorate.

• Rogue AIs occasionally declare sovereignty.

Wales

• A spiritual buffer zone. Ruled by ancient spirits, blood oaths, and the Rhondda Resistance—a technomagical liberation front.

• Dragons are worshipped. Sometimes fed.

• Foreign corps avoid the interior. Local ones vanish trying to expand.

North (Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle)

• Politically aggressive ork and troll autonomy movements.

• Crime syndicates openly hold mayoral seats.

• The Lake District is waking up... and it remembers the Fey.

Scotland

• Part of the Gaelic Compact, but really a Faerie frontier.

• The astral and physical blend in the Highlands.

• Edinburgh acts as a neutral zone for magical colleges, rogue scholars, and illegal spell traders.

• Highland access? Invite only.

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Ireland (Éire) – See Separate Entry

Ireland operates as a separate elven-dominated state with its own problems, including:

• Seelie vs. Unseelie politics.

• Strict technomancer oversight (as ritual musicians, naturally).

• A running list of ex-British mages seeking asylum.

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Travel, Trade, and Trouble

• Heathrow International is Zurich-Orbital-run. Expensive, invasive, clean. Not for smugglers.

• Thamesport (offshore floating arcology) is the preferred entrance for corps, diplomats, and those who don’t want their shoes wet.

• Eurotunnel is an open-air black market and cult recruitment corridor.

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Shadowrun Hooks

• Neo-Victorian Extraction: Steal a peerage document from the House of Lords-Simsense Studio.

• Haunted Heist: Infiltrate a manor whose guests have been dead 200 years but won’t stop gossiping.

• Smuggler’s Rite: Transport awakened contraband across ley-warped Welsh hills while being hunted by druidic surveillance owls.

• Dual Reality War: Break a stalemate between a rogue AI ruling Coventry and a blood-mage baroness backed by Evo.

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Final Word

Great Britain is not one place. It's a thousand stories, stitched together by fog, greed, and ghostlight. There is no master key—only local permissions, shifting truths, and whispers of royalty that never really left.

If you're brave, brilliant, or just desperate enough, there's always a crown to steal and a curse to earn.

Matrix Pulse // ThreadCluster: #CommieHalo #HaloShill #Jeanne2.0 #DigitalGhostTour #RedHaloRising #CorporateSaint #HaloRatingsSpike #HaloWasBetterIn2095

 

🔥 Trending Now: #HaloTour #CorporateAngel #CommieHalo #IsSheForSaleOrSalvation

💬 THREAD: What's going on with Halo?

👤 @ShatterGlassNeko

Remember when Halo stood for resistance and spiritual liberation? Now she’s praising French monarchs, hugging Scandinavian technocrats, and singing about "strong leaders guiding the masses." Y’all, this ain’t the Halo who hacked GOD’s firewall in 2093. This is Holo-Halo. A product.

👤 @RadicalLotus13

I KNEW it. First Quebec, then Indonesia, then the SU?? She's not just a shill—she's globalist-approved flavor paste. Halo's Communist Corpo Tour continues! What’s next? A duet with a Horizon brand manager?

👤 @SimsenseSlasher

How does she go from digital reincarnation in India to praising Saeder-Krupp’s “industrious spirit”? Like, girl, you good? Blink twice if Lofwyr has your soul on a USB stick.

👤 @Echo_Arcade (verified)

Look, I was skeptical too. But the Berlin concerts? Stunning. You don’t have to like the message to see the artistry. She's adapting, not selling out. Just because she’s not burning corporate offices on-stage anymore doesn’t mean she forgot who she is.

👤 @KateChronicles (Starway-affiliated)

Maybe she's grown up. Maybe you haven't. Also maybe don’t critique a simsense artist unless you've experienced the show in full bandwidth. FYI, 98.6% viewer satisfaction in Berlin, and that’s not bots, babes.

👤 @OrcAtTheDisco

You all whine about “selling out,” but do you know how many lives Halo saved by showing up in Cairo? Or the hope she gave in Paris? If that’s corpo propaganda, tattoo it on my tusks.

👤 @GhostOfMayaTorres

She died on stage as Jeanne d’Arc and came back as a digital ghost just to warn about bad governance. That’s not selling out—that’s myth-making. That’s new-age legend crafting.

👤 @SimGnostic

Conspiracy theory time: She's not the same Halo. Not metaphorically. I mean LITERALLY. They digitized her in India, replaced her with a fully corporate-coded ghost, and now we’re watching her puppet self do the talking. The real Halo’s in a crystal somewhere beneath Mt. Rainier.

👤 @HardWiredHalo

OK but she is prettier when she’s controlled. The whole “untouchable messiah” era was cool, but this Stepford-Halo thing really works for me. Call me shallow, I’ll call her angelic.

👤 @RatingsMatterToo

She's shilling for the left, the right, and the megacorps—but the numbers don’t lie. 3.2 billion active simsense views this month. You can’t cancel that.

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📈 Trending Hashtags:
#CommieHalo #HaloShill #Jeanne2.0 #DigitalGhostTour #RedHaloRising #CorporateSaint #HaloRatingsSpike #HaloWasBetterIn2095

JOURNAL ENTRY – PHILIP HARROWFIELD // AUG 9-14, 2097

 

Berlin

August 9
We land in Berlin early, but I’m not two steps off the plane before a sleek black S-K executive sedan pulls up—sent specifically for me, courtesy of Herr Krieg. No mistaking the intent. The interior is armored and silent, the kind of quiet that comes with very expensive promises. And a most excellent mini-bar. I'm not offered a route or asked my preference. We both know where I'm going.

The vehicle descends into the subterranean depths of Saeder-Krupp’s Berlin headquarters. Security performs the usual ritual—scanners, etiquette, a little menace to spice the air—then I’m shown to a private elevator. One long ride later, I step out into halls that seem sized for beings larger than men. Because, of course, they are.

I arrive at the boardroom.

There’s only one occupant.

Lofwyr.

It’s not my first Great Dragon—Vivek still holds that honor—but this one is… magnificent. Pure gold, an empire made flesh. The kind of being whose presence physically alters the air in a room.

We exchange polite words, as is customary before being eaten or promoted. But no—Lofwyr has a different agenda. He’s agreed to appear in one of Kate’s projects: Five Minutes with Philip. It’s a short, punchy streaming series cooked up by Starway Elite where I “interview” dragons. Apparently, both Kate and Lofwyr find this very entertaining. I suspect I’m the only one not laughing.

Still, I play along. We do the segment. I ask him about his youth, his hoard, whether he’s really recovered every single coin from his first treasure pile. That gets a growl that might’ve been a laugh. Or a warning. I’ll take it as both.

Then the cameras go dark.

What follows is not for public consumption. We speak of Velaxas—the dragon I encountered beneath the earth, the one whose claw I claimed, whose eye calls to me in dreams. Lofwyr warns me: Velaxas was the doom of the First Age, the architect of entropy, corruption incarnate. Sealed, imprisoned, forgotten by time and myth. “He cannot escape,” Lofwyr says.

But I’ve spoken to him.

And I’m not convinced.

Still, I say nothing. Some secrets aren’t ready to be shared, even with golden kings.

August 10
Berlin, as always, thrums with a kind of violent harmony—tech, power, culture, chaos all smashed into megablocks of brutalism and industry. Halo dives into it headfirst, gathering inspiration from everything and everyone. In true Halo fashion, she runs the team ragged trying to keep up.

August 11–12
Double concerts. Massive venues. Big crowds. Bigger numbers. Halo goes hard on German virtues—resilience, discipline, creation through labor. There’s something refreshingly unromantic about it. She even ditches the wings for the first night. Critics light up the Matrix like it’s December 24th.

Some fans are getting edgy. “Corporate-controlled Halo.” “The Halo Megacorp World Tour.” You’d think they’d be used to it by now. She’s been doing this since Cairo. But the shows are good. Really good. Ratings remain sky-high. And the money, of course, is flowing.

August 13
Private concert, by invitation only. The usual suspects: execs, dynasts, state actors. Fewer silver spoons, more platinum implants. Halo dials in the mythology of greatness. Leaders rising to uplift the masses. It’s subtle, but not too subtle. The Matrix will chew it to pieces tomorrow. “She’s not just a shill—she’s a monarchist shill now!”

Let them talk. The tickets were a small fortune each, and every seat was filled. And the streaming rights are a sprinkling of gold on top. A thick layer of gold.

August 14
The wrap-up day. Rest for some, logistics for others. Halo flies out to London, her final European stop before we return to the States.

Houston looms large at the end of the month, but that’s another war.

For now, I sip cold espresso on a high-rise balcony overlooking the Spree and think about dragons.

JOURNAL ENTRY – PHILIP HARROWFIELD // AUG 4-9, 2097

 

August 5–6:
Preparations for the Copenhagen concert are underway, though it’s difficult to call it “preparation” in any spirited sense. The city is quiet—too quiet. A smooth, slow, gray place, where even the birds fly in formation. Everything and everyone feels sedated. Not chemically, just… culturally. The surveillance is so thick you could bottle it, and I’m fairly sure you can get on a government watchlist here for smiling at the wrong statue. Though honestly, that’s redundant—everyone’s already on at least one list. Or twelve.

Halo, of course, insists on her usual cultural immersion routine. Sightseeing, handshakes, interviews with local artists. Vanya is losing her mind trying to schedule magical protection for it all. If I didn't know better, I'd say she's taken a mild interest in the Principal's well-being. I’ve taken to sipping corporate-grade espresso and pretending I’m on vacation. The perks of being the man with the plan.

August 7:
Concert day. The stadium is full, but not with fans in the usual sense—mostly bureaucrats, affiliated families, and a handful of approved influencers. The kind who know better than to go off-message. Halo had insisted on full simsense transmission rights and total artistic freedom. The SSU agreed, somewhat reluctantly, because the alternative was no show at all.

To her credit, Halo chose not to provoke. She could have critiqued the suffocating surveillance state, or the absolute homogeneity of public life. Instead, she turned the spotlight on older ideals: shared pride, historical continuity, collective achievement. She managed to find the heart inside the machine and sing to it.

Naturally, this means the Matrix is now flooded with accusations that Halo is shilling for communism. Again.

August 8:
Short hop across Skagerrak to Oslo, where the so-called “private concert” is set to take place in Bygdøy—the neo-Nordic purity district. Picture a high-budget LARP village where less than 2,000 citizens live out a curated fantasy of Norse tradition, untouched by modernity or foreign influence. The place is all longhouses, runestones, and suspiciously well-groomed wolves.

We spend the day acclimating. Halo will be performing for a tight crowd of SU dignitaries. It’s equal parts political theater and cultural display. But the content? Entirely hers. She leans hard into the mythic and magical—the stuff people whisper about but don’t say out loud in the Union. Spirits in the fjords. Old gods that never left. Blood oaths and wyrd fates. The audience, to their credit, listens.

After the afterparty, Halo and I bid Astrid Nygård farewell. She’s in high spirits. So are we. We'd like to stay longer, but Berlin is just around the corner, and we must be off. Also, it'll be nice for the Grey Suits to spend some quality time together without everything being streamed. Let their hair down, so to speak.

August 9:
Just as we prepare to depart, the Matrix glitches. Not just a hiccup—widespread blackouts, scrambling, and outages across the Union. No one knows what’s going on. The Matrix fills with theories, as it always does. But for now, we board our flight, leaving the cold whispers of the North behind.

Touchdown in Berlin—early morning. Time to reboot.