Gangs
Gangs are ubiquitous. Sometimes this means violent nut-jobs, sometimes it's more like extended family.
Maelstrom
- Allegiance: Independent
- Imagery: Leather, spikes, Mohican haircuts
Maelstrom are a classic 'booster gang', united by their love of cyberwear and chemical enhancement. They can be extremely violent and run all manner of crime endeavours to maintain their lifestyle. Their leader 'WarCrimes' is a particularly scary individual.
Blackbeard’s Boys
- Allegiance: Linked to SovOil
- Imagery: Pirate clobber
The Boys are a 'combat gang' who've fixated on a pop culture version of ancient seagoing privateers for their structure. They can be violent but are more often people you can pay to do a dirty job and they'll do it. Cross them though and there will be hell to pay. Mostly you'll see 'The Bosun' when dealing with them but 'Blackbeard' is in the background issuing orders.
Religions & Cults
The Faceless
- Allegience: Independent
- Imagery: Plain or mesmerising face masks, simple clothing
Cult? Religion? Extreme communist Experiment?. Nobody really know how to classify the Faceless. When you become one of The Faceless you surrender reputation, money, gear, weapons etc. It all goes to most appropriate member. It’s a collective.
The Faceless are expanding their numbers and territory quickly often through acts of transactional assistance. They will help you if you join them. When you're truly desperate it can seem a good offer. Nobody knows what happens if you try to leave.
The Inquisition / Human Fellowship
- Allegiance: Unknown
- Image: white shirts, black trousers and black ties, like stereotypical Mormons. They may have copies of the book "At One With Body And Soul" with them which they consider holy.
The Inquisition are a growing number of people who believe in the sanctity of the human body and soul. They see the addition of technology as a corruption of the body and the cause of a disconnect between body and soul. This quasi-religious self-help work is penned by Master Keaton Chavez, the founder who is rarely seen outside Human Fellowship video casts.
Some of them fear the chance that their body could be taken over through using Cyberware. They are going for a more evangelical model recently and engaging a media campaign to promote their views.
More militant members are suspected of forcibly removing Cyberware from its owner.
Operators and the bulk of Citizens refers to them as "The Inquisition" but they hate this and will always refer to themselves as Human Fellowship. With offices throughout the City and a growing political power more and more people are starting to see them more favourably.
Special Interest groups
Not so much gangs, these groups have shadowy intent not clearly visible to non-members and are usually pulling the strings of the various New London gangs and Operators to do their bidding.
Bullingdon Club
- Allegiance: Self only
- Image: Tailoring and ostentatious formal wear
A club you'll never be admitted to. Made of the less scrupulous membered of the cream of society willing to use any means to further their own ends.
Cybermancers
- Allegiance: Unknown, generally anti-Corporate
- Image: None/Anonymous
A loose alliance of Netrunners of exceptional skill who are reputed to be working towards some 'grand design'. Their antics online mean they are highly targeted by Corporations and are rarely seen in public. A strictly neutral party in many of New London's gang squabbles they can be engaged with transactionally if and only if they also want something from you.
Silver Tongued Devils
- Allegiance: Generally anti-Corporate, but especially Arasaka
- Image: Varied ex-corporate
A loose alliance of former Corporate employees, mostly from Arasaka, who have been extracted or ejected and lived to tell the tale. Sometimes useful as a source of information or backdoor access to the Corporate world as they've generally got a personal axe to grind.
Nomads
The extra-urban and usually less violent response to the collapse are the Nomads. Great sprawling pseudo-families, some more on the move than others. Sometimes looking for work, safety or victims depending on their temperament and the moment.
Notable Nomad groups include
Black Riders
The information brokers and bankers for the broader Nomad community, the Black Riders are dispersed across the country. Their aesthetic is very much "bikers of the apocalyptic wasteland" and most travel by motorcycle.
Usually one or two members take up with some other local group. This is a consensual arrangement: Black Riders form the arteries flowing with information and cash linking the settled groups more occupied with local concerns.
Many Black Riders are leading figures in the New Levellers, feeding information up to 'parliament'.
Goodhearts
Ranging out from a settled 'homestead', many were killed in an missile attack that obliterated it. Now, lacking enough numbers to be a viable group some of the survivors have now joined the Faceless.
Jackknives
If you want things or people moving from place to place and you're not a Corporate you speak to the Knives. Fiercely aggressive defenders of their cargo they travel in truck convoys with heavily armed outriders and usually nobody messes with them. If you meet a Knife in The City then they're probably an exiled wrongun: handle with care.
The Night Market contracts out its transport to the Knives.
The Nails
As in "hard as" this Nomad group can be a problem as just taking things from weaker groups is their way to get by. They often stage raids on more settled groups and occasionally interrupt a Jackknife convoy or make a raid into The City.
New Levellers
More a 'parliament of families' than a cohesive group in its own right this is the closest thing to authority most Nomads will know. They can be slow to respond to events but enforce an old form of justice and enforce fair trade between bickering groups if necessary. If anybody could raise a popular revolutionary army in 2065 it's the New Levellers.
When the New Levellers speak, even Corporations listen. Discreetly, from a distance, but intently.
People of Gwent / Pobl Gwent
Welsh nationalism became resurgent in the 2040s as the Corporate takeover of Government left a long neglected Wales to fully wither. Support networks grew up, initially in Gwent, and spread throughout Wales filling the gaps. Now great areas of formerly colonised Welsh land is effectively surrendered to the people and many no longer speak English even as a second language.
Spitfires
Primarily based north of the border in Scotland, the Spitfires are defined by their members all having red or ginger hair. They're not exclusionary: there's no requirement for this to be natural. The Spitfires roam the empty areas more like a Northern American Nomad group and are in constant friction with the energy companies that dominate the landscape with their huge refining and bioreactor installations.
Particular ire is held for Petrochem.
Stevensons
A small family-oriented group running a patch of turf clinging to the edge of The City. Unlike many groups they claim to legally own the land they occupy despite records showing it to be Biotechnica. Rewilded in some forgotten post-pandemic government scheme, it is a surprisingly lush place.
They are secretive, not wanting to come to Corporate attention but this is becoming harder as the Cybar, operated by Adam Stevenson, has become a meeting place for Operators of all sorts.