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Apr. 2nd, 2019 04:22 pmIn 2019, the London Underground are a guerilla resistance network who live in the place they've named Cyberia: the disused tunnels of the former London tube network - mainly the old Northern and Jubilee lines in the north of the city - and the elaborate network of chambers they've built beneath them. Led by the woman who founded them after the disappearance of her husband and best friends in the London Bridge Riots of 2007, there are a few big things to know about them:
- They're young. Few are over thirty, and their oldest member is the resident Head Medic, the fifty-nine-year-old former army doctor Martha Owens.
- They're left-wing. Well, mostly, anyway: although there are a few moderate conservatives and liberals amongst them, on the whole members' political views range from Socialist to Anarchist to Communist. Politics is generally a subject to be avoided, since about the only thing they all agree on is that nearly anything is better than the Establishment.
- They're multi-national. Although their leaders are all British, members come from all around the world, and the Underground has ties with resistance organisations in almost every country. An ability to speak more the one language is by now practically mandatory, with English, Spanish and Chinese predominating.
- They're a family business. Chief of Staff Chalcedony 'Challie' Jane Harper is seconded by her son and oldest child, Toby, who is the twenty-six-year-old Head of Communications. Adopted daughter Nix Gordon is joint Mission Controller with her best friend Gryffith Jones, who is also Toby's long-term boyfriend, and the Harper family baby, Threnody, is the brilliant seventeen-year-old Chief Mechanic and explosives expert. Head Medic Martha Owens, meanwhile, is an old family friend and survivor of the London Bridge Riots.
- They're violent. Since the imprisonment and torture of her daughter Nix, Chalcedony Harper has abandoned most diplomatic channels and turned to more far less pacifist courses of action. The Underground's casualty rate remains as high as ever.
The world of the London Underground and the New London above them is a weird combination of the high-tech and the historic. Even as Victorian values, morals and dress codes have been implemented above ground, the march of technology has continued: the underground tunnels in which Cyberia has been built became defunct early on in the 2010s with the implementation of the London Overground. Literally 'over ground', considering that it consists of a complex system of tram-like skybuses operating sixty feet up. The general aesthetic is referred to as 'Techno-Victoriana'. The Underground have rejected the newly-imposed eighteenth-century values and moral strait-jacketing but have co-opted some of the world above ground's clothing and general look, giving their world underground a definite steampunk feel.
- They're young. Few are over thirty, and their oldest member is the resident Head Medic, the fifty-nine-year-old former army doctor Martha Owens.
- They're left-wing. Well, mostly, anyway: although there are a few moderate conservatives and liberals amongst them, on the whole members' political views range from Socialist to Anarchist to Communist. Politics is generally a subject to be avoided, since about the only thing they all agree on is that nearly anything is better than the Establishment.
- They're multi-national. Although their leaders are all British, members come from all around the world, and the Underground has ties with resistance organisations in almost every country. An ability to speak more the one language is by now practically mandatory, with English, Spanish and Chinese predominating.
- They're a family business. Chief of Staff Chalcedony 'Challie' Jane Harper is seconded by her son and oldest child, Toby, who is the twenty-six-year-old Head of Communications. Adopted daughter Nix Gordon is joint Mission Controller with her best friend Gryffith Jones, who is also Toby's long-term boyfriend, and the Harper family baby, Threnody, is the brilliant seventeen-year-old Chief Mechanic and explosives expert. Head Medic Martha Owens, meanwhile, is an old family friend and survivor of the London Bridge Riots.
- They're violent. Since the imprisonment and torture of her daughter Nix, Chalcedony Harper has abandoned most diplomatic channels and turned to more far less pacifist courses of action. The Underground's casualty rate remains as high as ever.
The world of the London Underground and the New London above them is a weird combination of the high-tech and the historic. Even as Victorian values, morals and dress codes have been implemented above ground, the march of technology has continued: the underground tunnels in which Cyberia has been built became defunct early on in the 2010s with the implementation of the London Overground. Literally 'over ground', considering that it consists of a complex system of tram-like skybuses operating sixty feet up. The general aesthetic is referred to as 'Techno-Victoriana'. The Underground have rejected the newly-imposed eighteenth-century values and moral strait-jacketing but have co-opted some of the world above ground's clothing and general look, giving their world underground a definite steampunk feel.
