The World
North America
Already reeling from the VITAS plague, the Awakening of magic, and the appearance of metahumans, North America splintered August 17, 2017 when—responding to the United States' escalation of its conflict with Sovereign American Indian Movement into a campaign of outright extinction—Howling Coyote initiated the Great Ghost Dance at Native American communities across the continent. Freak weather and uncanny disturbances assaulted the US military effort, with the havoc reaching its height with the eruption of Mount Hood, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Adams. Large portions of the United States and Canada were carved out to form the Native American Nations (NANs).
Already weakened, the United States and Canada were further destabilized with the Crash of '29, when an unprecedented virus swept the world's computer systems, crashing systems, wiping records, and destroying hardware. In need of a lifeline, they joined together into the United Canadian and American States in 2030. The alliance couldn't hold together, however, and the UCAS soon faced a rush of successions.
United Canadian and American States
The United Canadian and American States, also referred to as the UCAS, is a federal republic in eastern North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the beginning of the Rocky Mountains. It is the successor state to both the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. It shares land borders with Quebec, Algonkian-Manitou, Sioux, Pueblo, and the CAS. The state of Seattle on the West Coast of North America is enclaved in the Salish-Shidhe territory.
The country has 31 states, which have a level of local autonomy according to the system of federalism, and a special district, the Federal District of Columbia, encompassing the capital Washington DC. The state of Seattle is sometimes designated as the metroplex of Seattle, though it possesses all the attributes of a Union State. A UCAS citizen may be referred as an American or a Canadian, UCASer, or Canadian-American.
See also the dedicated pages for the Seattle Sprawl and Chicago.
Confederation of American States
The Confederation of American States, abbreviated as the CAS, and sometimes referred to as the Confederated American States, is a republic in eastern North America, stretching from the Atlantic in the east to the beginning of the Sierra Madre. It shares land borders with UCAS, Pueblo, Aztlán, and South Florida.
The country has 13 states, which have a level of local autonomy according to the system of federalism. A CAS citizen may be referred simply as an American, a Confederationist, or a CASer. While much of the country embraces the term Confederate, a minority of it, and many expatriates, consider it an insult, interpreting it as a reference to the moniker used in the American Civil War.
While marginalization of metahuman populations is common, the CAS has a reputation for the extremity of their subjugation, with the non-human portion of its prisoners being vastly higher than the already-common disproportion and prison labor being highly integrated into the national economy.
California Free State
The California Free State is a libertarian republic on the west coast of North America. California borders the Pacific Ocean the length of the Sierra Nevada, featuring a diverse landscape and Mediterranean climate. The CFS comprises only a portion of the former state of California, with the territory from San Diego south claimed by Aztlán, Los Angeles having succeeded, and San Francisco—while still formally part of the CFS—being in practice controlled by a coalition of Japanese megacorporations.
Free City of Los Angeles
Enclosed on land by the California Free State, The Free City of Los Angeles sprawls across what used to be the Los Angeles, Riverside, and Orange counties, and additionally includes the western part of San Bernardino county. The free city is best known for its still-dominant position in the entertainment industry, ranging from film and TriD to simsense recordings and video games.
Republic of Québec
Tír Tairngire
Native American Nations
Denver
Denver was where the agreement establishing the North American Nations was signed, and has been thereafter governed under the joint administration of the signing parties: the UCAS, Aztlán, the Pueblo, the Sioux, and the Ute.
Central America
Aztlán
One of the Native American Nations created in the wake of the Great Ghost Dance, Aztlán covers all of Central America, between Rio Bravo and Nueces River and the Andes, including the former territory of Mexico, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama (excluding the Panama Canal Zone under the direct control of the Corporate Court). It also includes territory that used to belong to Venezuela and Columbia, as well as portions of the former US states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
The country of Aztlán is inextricable from Aztechnology. The AAA megacorporation dominates politics with its Azatlán party, intermingling its corporate governance with the national government, while also being the primary provider of security and military services to the state. The nation and corporation are notorious for their use of blood magic.
Panama Canal Zone
South America
Amazonia
Europe
United Kingdom
Tír na nÓg
Allied German States
The Allied German States (AGS, German: Allianz Deutscher Länder, ADL) is the loosely organized collection of kingdoms, duchies, and republics that were once the Fifth World country of the Federal Republic of Germany. These include: Baden and Palatinate, the Black Forest Troll Kingdom, Brandenburg, Franconia, the Free State of Bavaria, the Free State of Saxony, the Free State of Thuringia, the Free State of Westphalia, the Grand Duchy of West Rhine-Luxembourg, Greater Frankfurt, Hesse-Nassau, the North German League, North Rhine-Ruhr, Wuerttemberg, the Free City of Berlin, the eleven enclave of the Duchy of Pomorya, and the Saar-Lorraine-Luxembourg Special Administrative Zone (established to contain the damage caused by the meltdown of the Cattenom reactors in 2008).
The AGS is notable for having several great dragons and a (relatively) large number of Night Ones and Giants.
Black Forest Troll Republic
The Black Forest Troll Republic is an Allied German State (ADL) and one of the Awakened Lands. After the secession of the Süddeutschen Bund (Southern German Federation) in 2038, an attempted pogrom of orks and trolls led to a resistance movement by King Berthold (suspected to be the dragon Kaltenstein) that established a constitutional monarchy within the Black Forest to shelter metahumans.
Italian Confederation
Russian Republic
Black Sea City States
Middle East
Arabian Caliphate
East Anatolia
East Anatolia or East Turkey (also called the Ottoman Empire) is an insurgent-ruled state situated in the eastern portion of Anatolia and is ruled by Islamist extremists who are remnants of Alliance for Allah.
Secular Republic of Turkey
Israel
Palestine
Asia
Japanese Imperial State
Chinese Splinter States
China is no longer a country, but a region occupied by dozens of splinter states all warring with each other. The four largest states (the Canton Confederation, the People's Republic of Henan, the Kingdom of Shaanxi, and the Sichuan Dominion), which retained the former country's nuclear weapons, vye to reunify China under their respective banners, while the other lesser states serve as political wildcards.
Canton Confederation
Consisting of the former provinces of Guangdong, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Fujian, as well as the city-state of Macao, the Canton Confederation is the most economically powerful of the former Chinese states, but its weak-confederation system prevents its federal government from exerting significant non-economic foreign influence. Bordering the South China Sea, the confederation is the Chinese Splinter most integrated into global commerce.
People's Republic of Henan
The People's Republic of Henan became the home of the remaining hardline communists following the breakup of the PRC. Governed by a neo-Communist regime and hostile to corporations, it has attracted a number of anti-corporate policlubs and is believed to provide anti-corporate terrorists with covert support, rumored to be home to training facilities for GreenWar and the Sons of Sauron.
Kingdom of Shaanxi
The Kingdom of Shaanxi is a monarchy comprising a large portion of north-central China, with a desert in the north and mountains through the central region forming a natural barrier with much of the rest of former China, but with the population concentrated in a subtropical zone to the south. The kingdom puts itself forward as a cultural center of pre-communist China, with Queen Michelle being a dedicated promoter of both traditional and modern Chinese art.
Sichuan Dominion
The Sichuan Dominion is a militaristic and magocratic constitutional dictatorship located in central China. Advised by a democratically-elected parliament, it is ruled by the Mage General Liang Hong, backed by the Eastern Great Dragon Lung. The structure of the Dominion favors the awakened, rewarding them in its extensive civil service program even beyond the utility of awakened abilities, with the unawakened barred from holding high-ranking position in the civilian government and military.
Hong Kong Free Enterprise Zone
Hong Kong Free Enterprise Zone
Indian Union
Islamic Republic of Pakistan
Oceania
Australia
Island Nations
Kingdom of Hawaiʻi
Caribbean League
AAA Megacorporations
http://theshadowrun.proboards.com/thread/346
Ares Macrotechnology
Headquarters: Detroit, UCAS
Core Industries: AresSpace, Ares Global Entertainment, Ares Arms, Knight Errant Security Services, and General Motors
Aztechnology
Headquarters: Tenochtitlan, Aztlán
Core Industries: food, consumer goods, and thaumaturgical products
Cross Applied Technologies
Headquarters: Montreal, Quebec
Core Industries: computers, electronics, multimedia products, biotech
Fuchi Industrial Electronics
Headquarters: Tokyo, Japan
Core Industries: Matrix technology
Mitsuhama Computer Technologies
Headquarters: Kyoto, Japan
Core Industries: computers and robotics
Mitsuhama Computer Technologies
NeoNET
Headquarters: Boston, UCAS
Core Industries: Matrix infrastructure, software, electronics, biotech
Renraku Computer Systems
Headquarters: Chiba, Japan
Core Industries: memory storage and databases
Saeder-Krupp Schwerindustriegesellschaft
Headquarters: Essen, Germany
Core Industries: heavy industry, nuclear energy, oil, chemistry, aerospace and telecommunications.
Saeder-Krupp Schwerindustriegesellschaft
Shiawase Corporation
Headquarters: Osaka, Japan
Core Industries: power systems, biotech, environmental technology, business analysis
Wuxing, Inc.
Headquarters: Hong Kong Free Enterprise Enclave
Core Industries: finance, heavy industry, shipping, automotive, consumer goods and services
Yamatetsu
Headquarters: Kyoto, Japan
Core Industries: Crashcart Medical Services, consumer products, naval technology
Criminal Syndicates
Triads
While the Triads include the world's oldest crime syndicates, dating hundreds of years before the oldest Yakuza or Mafia organizations, they rose to their current dominant position following the collapse and fragmentation of China in the 2010s, selling food, weapons, tech, and whatever else was needed to the warlords and the desperate people who lived under their rule. The profits were used to build up their criminal empires and for some of them, to expand outside of China. Under the direction of the dragon Lung, the Red Dragon Triads became the most ambitious and expanded first throughout the Pacific Rim and then into the greater world.
Often based out of a local Chinatown, in most cities of the world it is the Triads that dominate the smuggling racket. It is the Triads (along with the Ghost Cartels) who are the kingpins of the global drug trade, as they produce, transport, and distribute the lion's share of the illicit drugs (organic, Awakened, and BADs). The Triads are the biggest manufacturers and distributors of brand counterfeit goods and of illegal BTL chips, as well as the leading talisleggers and people smugglers.
Among the world's organized crime groups, the Triads are one of the most enlightened and progressive when it comes to women, ethnicity, and metahumans. At least in comparison to the Mafia, the Vory, and the Yakuza, though being a Chinese organization there is still a hierarchy favoring the Chinese. They are also the criminal organization which is most likely to fight against oppression and help the freedom fighters. While the Triads are primarily secret societies involved in organized crime, for the Awakened they are also magical initiation groups, with the heads of Triads often being Awakened themselves.
Mafia
The Awakening functionally saved the Mafia, not through an embrace of magic and metahumans, but rather by cementing relationships with a variety of ethnic syndicates that also reacted to the Awakening with prejudice and distrust. For the American Mafia, this meant strengthened bonds first with white ethnic mobs (Jewish, Irish, and Polish), then the Latino syndicates (Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican), then finally the Black street gangs, allowing them to join the national syndicate, though with the old Italian La Cosa Nostra largely still dominant. This resulted in a resurgence of the Mafia's power and the restoration of its dominance over the American criminal underworld, helped by a weakening of the Latin American drug cartels following the takeover of Mexico by the ORO Corporation (later renamed Aztechnology) in the 2010s and the temporary refocusing of Triad attention within the former China following its breakup. This power, however, has waned in recent years as the strength of the Triads, Yakuza, and Seoulpa Rings has grown in Europe and North America.
Yakuza
The Yakuza is the second oldest criminal society in the world and is generally considered the richest and most powerful of the international crime syndicates. Tying itself to the Japanese megacorporations, the Yakuza likewise became global as Japan made it's play for dominance, expanding overseas, especially throughout the Pacific Rim and in North America. This expansion initially allowed for the recruitment of non-Japanese members, particular in Korea, though this policy was changed in the 2040s with the Yakuza Purge, resulting in the formation of the Seoulpa Rings.
The Yakuza is shaped by ancient traditions and ideas of honor and duty. These ideals, and the Yakuza's relationship with Japanese megacorporations, have led it to be one of the most technologically savvy criminal syndicates, but also to be one of the most bigoted organizations in the world, with a tendency towards racism, sexism, and anti-human bigotry beyond even that common in other criminal syndicates. While the Yakuza may make use of non-Japanese, non-male, and non-human agents where profitable, they are never allowed into the formal structure of the clans.
Seoulpa Rings
When the Yakuza purged their ranks of Koreans in North America, they did not succeed in killing them all. One of the survivors was a Korean oyabun, Park Jai Kyu. Rumors are that he was half-Japanese, the offspring of a powerful oyabun and his Korean lover. The story goes that he survived due to his having magical talent, specifically precognition and clairvoyance. On the other hand his survival may have been due to effective planning. Whatever the truth may be, he established the Seoulpa Rings.
Less a centrally-organized syndicate than a series of personality cults, the Rings are formed around specific individuals and usually disintegrate if that individual is killed or removed from power. Periodically senior lieutenants will break off from their parent Rings to establish their own independent outfits, often done with the approval of their former leader. While individual Seoulpa Rings are not overseen by a central body like the Mafia, direct conflict between the Rings is rare, with no turf wars, campaigns of assassination, and so on unlike the mob wars between Yakuza clans, Mafia families, or the Triads.
Vory V Zakone
David Cartel
Ghost Cartels
Islamic Crime Cartels
The Kabul Maffiya is a Pashtun criminal network which dominates the criminal underworld in Southwest Asia. Initially based out of Afghanistan, being the central authority thereof, it has expanded across Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and is now looking towards Europe.
Working with them is the paramilitary syndicate, the Grey Wolves, descended from nationalist militias supported by the secular and military regimes of 20th century Turkey. Despite formally being a secular organization that is nominally distinct from religious fundamentalism, they are in practice supporters of Islamo-nationalism and regularly do business with fundamentalists cartels. The Grey Wolves dominate the underworld, particularly in regards to smuggling, in most of the region bordering and otherwise near the Black Sea.
Also often operating in coordination with them is the Al-Akhirab Aswad Mayid, an Arabic syndicate based in Spain with influence extending into North Africa.
Technology
System Identification Numbers (SINs)
People are identified by many identifiers in many systems, but the System Identification Number is the gold standard. Every SIN is tied to at least a name, a picture, and a fingerprint. While every SIN holder has been fingerprinted, many registrations include retinal scans, limited DNA profiles, and voice samples. Maintained by Global Systems Registries, the SIN is used by most governments and corporations to identify citizens and employees.
GSR provides for the vast majority of identification-check services throughout the system. With even a basic scanner, and a service contact, GSR can identify whether a particular subject's biometrics match a provided SIN. Authorized customizers, such as law enforcement agencies, can retrieve a SIN based on provided biometrics.
Many older SIN holders have a UV-reactive barcode tattoo on their wrist of their number, with younger citizens often relying solely on embedded short-range radio transmitters.