United Kingdom

United Kingdom Great Britain

Capital	London
Government	Constitutional monarchy
Leaders	Her Majesty Queen Caroline
Population	58,000,000
Land area
GDP (total)	Unknown
(per capita)
Major Ethnic Groups
Major Languages Spoken	English
Major Religions
Currency	£1.8 Pound Sterling = 1¥ Nuyen

The United Kingdom is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. Since the 2014 Act of Dissolution and Treaty of Galway, which reunified Ireland. United Kingdom and Great Britain are effectively synonymous.

History

2004: A Nuclear meltdown at Dungeness in Kent, England creates a localized irradiated zone.

2005: Conservative government in the United Kingdom establishes regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales.

2009: King Charles III is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

2011: England's Sizewell B nuclear power station suffers critical meltdown, resulting in a total death count of 17,000. A nuclear power plant in Dounreay, Scotland suffers a meltdown, creating the Scottish Irradiated Zone. Ley-lines and standing stones re-emerge all over Britain. First sighting of the Great Welsh Dragon, Celedyr, in Caerleon.

2012: King Charles III abdicates in favor of his only surviving son, George VII.

2014: Following magically enhanced terrorist activity, the governments of the U.K. and Eire sign the Treaty of Galway establishing the United Free Republic of Ireland.

2016: United Kingdom Prime Minister Lena Rodale assassinated. A major oil spill in the North Sea creates the Scottish Fringe Toxic Zone.

2021: England's King George VII is declared dead, rumors persist that he was killed when he began changing into a troll.

2024: After a prolonged succession dispute, George Edward Richard of Windsor-Hanover becomes King George VIII in England.

2025: The United Kingdom Constitution Act is passed in the United Kingdom, creating the Lord Protector's Offices.

2026: Oxford and Edinburgh Universities establish Bachelor of Science degrees in Occult Studies.

2027: The Lord Protector's office (England) drafts the Magical Practitioners Registration Bill, which Parliament passes into law.

2028: Cambridge institutes a Magical Studies program. Britain withdraws from the European Economic Community (EEC).

2032: Eurowar I - Great Britain deploys troops in Netherlands and Flanders.

2036: Regeneration and transformation of regional forests begins in Scotland.

2037: Wolves and bears are restored to the Scottish Wild Lands.

2039: A massive chemical spill kills 70,000 people in Teesside, England.

2041: EuroAir Flight 329 from London to Atlanta destroyed by Sirrurg

2043: Gwynedd elves make major advances in Welsh regional parliament.

2046: Para-VITAS outbreak in Tynesprawl (England) kills 120,000. Believed to be the work of unidentified eco-terrorists. Researchers find a freshwater serpent in Scotland's Loch Ness

Politics

Before 2071

Beginning in 2025 until 2071, the Lord Protector was the most powerful man in England and a powerful druid; for most of that time the title was held by Edward Arthur Charles Gordon-Windsor (born 1994). The Lord Protector's Offices controlled the administration, education, the licensing and registration of Magic Users, Technomancers and Cyberware and the national security. His main rivals for power were the monarch Queen Caroline (young and quite popular), and the growing political power of the People's Party.

After 2071

In 2062, the island of Lyonesse rose in the Channel, and a man calling himself Pendragon was sighted, claiming to have retrieved Excalibur from the island and organizing the political opposition. He was occasionally sighted, and remained the apparent leader, until June 23, 2071, at which time a massive peaceful protest by the People's Party acquired the consent of Queen Caroline to dissolve the Lord Protector's Offices and the position of the Lord Protector. The Lord Protector went into exile and the new government attempted to shut down the Offices entirely, but ultimately found that some of their functions were necessary and had to settle for a restructuring, carried out with the assistance of HKB. Pendragon took no role in the new government and was never sighted thereafter.

Geography

England

47 boroughs, 36 counties, 29 London boroughs, 12 cities and boroughs, 10 districts, 12 cities, 3 royal boroughs

• boroughs: Barnsley, Blackburn with Darwen, Blackpool, Bolton, Bournemouth, Bracknell Forest, Brighton and Hove, Bury, Calderdale, Darlington, Doncaster, Dudley, Gateshead, Halton, Hartlepool, Kirklees, Knowsley, Luton, Medway, Middlesbrough, Milton Keynes, North Tyneside, Oldham, Poole, Reading, Redcar and Cleveland, Rochdale, Rotherham, Sandwell, Sefton, Slough, Solihull, Southend-on-Sea, South Tyneside, St. Helens, Stockport, Stockton-on-Tees, Swindon, Tameside, Thurrock, Torbay, Trafford, Walsall, Warrington, Wigan, Wirral, Wolverhampton
• counties: Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Durham, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Herefordshire, Hertfordshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Sussex, Wiltshire, Worcestershire
• London boroughs: Barking and Dagenham, Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Bromley, Camden, Croydon, Ealing, Enfield, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Islington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Merton, Newham, Redbridge, Richmond upon Thames, Southwark, Sutton, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth
• cities and boroughs: Birmingham, Bradford, Coventry, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle upon Tyne, Salford, Sheffield, Sunderland, Wakefield, Westminster
• districts: Bath and North East Somerset, East Riding of Yorkshire, North East Lincolnshire, North Lincolnshire, North Somerset, Rutland, South Gloucestershire, Telford and Wrekin, West Berkshire, Wokingham
• cities: City of Bristol, Derby, City of Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, City of London, Nottingham, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, York
• royal boroughs: Kensington and Chelsea, Kingston upon Thames, Windsor and Maidenhead

Scotland

• 32 council areas: Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, The Scottish Borders, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee City, East Ayrshire, East Dunbartonshire, East Lothian, East Renfrewshire, City of Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Glasgow City, Highland, Inverclyde, Midlothian, Moray, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Orkney Islands, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Shetland Islands, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, Stirling, West Dunbartonshire, Eilean Siar (Western Isles), West Lothian

Wales

11 county boroughs, 9 counties, 2 cities and counties

• county boroughs: Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Conwy, Gwynedd, Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot, Newport, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Torfaen, Wrexham
• counties: Isle of Anglesey, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Monmouthshire, Pembrokeshire, Powys, The Vale of Glamorgan
• cities and counties: Cardiff, Swansea

Economy

Corporate Presence

• ATT
• Aztechnology
• IWS
• Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal
• Novatech
• Regulus Joint Industries
• Transys Neuronet (HQ: Edinburgh)
• Zeta-ImpChem

Crime

Within the United Kingdom, the dominant organized crime network is that of the Tongs of which the most powerful is the Silent Reeds Tong. In the city of London are the indigenous British crime families, known as the Firms. Other foreign crime syndicates and mobs involved in the rackets or whose smuggling networks extend into the United Kingdom include the Russian Vory, the Yakuza, the Ghost Cartels, the Afro-Caribbean Zobop, and the Indo-Asian crime families. Street gangs are a plague in both the London sprawl and Merseysprawl, especially the Yardies.

References

Primary Source: London Sourcebook, pp 7-50, 121-131.

London: London Sourcebook, pp 52-114.
Aberdeen: Target: Smuggler's Havens, pg 70.
Birmingham: London Sourcebook, pg 116.
Cambridge: London Sourcebook, pp 118-119.
Cardiff/Caerdydd: London Sourcebook, pp 119-120.
Edinburgh: London Sourcebook, pg 120.
Merseysprawl: London Sourcebook, pp 116-117.
Newcastle and Tynesprawl: London Sourcebook, pp 117-118.
Nottingham: London Sourcebook, pg 118.

Relations with Germany: Germany Sourcebook, pg 42.
Relations with Tír na nÓg.: Tír na nÓg., pg 53-54.
Relations with Tir Tairngire: Tir Tairngire, pg 46.

The great dragon Celedyr lairs in Caerleon (sr3.269).
Stonehenge has a background count of 4 (mits.84).
Shadowland node in (at least) Merseysprawl (tm.27).
Manchester Data Haven (tm.45-47).
During Halley's Comet visit, naturally occurring orichalcum discovered in Snowdonia, Wales, as well as in the huge stone circle at Avebury (yotc.85).
The island Lyonesse resurfaced in the English Channel in 2063. (la.77) On the Summer Solstice of 2064 wild and Celtic Druids successfully wakened a new Great Ley Line running from off the northern coast of Tír na nÓg through Scotland to the Shetland Isles. (SoE. 207)

Semi-Official Sources

The novel Choose Your Enemies Carefully is set in London.
The novel Streets of Blood is set in London.
The novel Worlds Without End is partially set in Scotland.

References

This page forked from Wordman's The Sixth World: A geographical index to the world of Shadowrun

Links

• United Kingdom at Wikipedia