So, remember how I talked about how an infected London would have a major concern about tunnels, roads etc collapsing to spill out hordes of undead Tube commuters?
This happened today. Oops. Add in 25 years of Tube strikes and crumbling infrastructure and expect that to be happening way more, and with bloodier results.
Oh, here's a fun thing we still have to put up with in England in the modern day:
unexploded German bombs slowly deteriorating under our towns waiting to remember how to explode. So imagine you've managed to shore up your enclave pretty good, the walls are strong and - wait, what's that sudden boom? Oh, the wall's coming down and the noise is drawing the dead.
Smashing.
Also I'm imagining the equivalent of the DHQS would be very similar to The Thick of It.
In my head, you've got The Met (basically The Machine and named because it evolved out of the Metropolitan Police, which is sort of militarised and operates as a kind of domestic intelligence agency) and it operates out of The Shard because
obviously the evil government agency's main base of operations is called The Shard. I like the idea of them running a Black Math style operation as a common job line where they pay bounty for blighter heads as proof of "confirmed kills", and this is the steady job line/score that the players can go on if they don't fancy any of the main jobs there (or are just in a killy mood); just find somewhere full of zombies, kill 'em, get the Latent to collect their heads and bring them back for profit. I also had an idea for a plot line about some Takers who were gaming the system by kidnapping survivors, chaining them up in a drained swimming pool and infecting them to then kill them and collect the heads.
Then you've got The Establishment, which is the legislative arm of the surviving government - former government ministers, Lords, minor royals etc. Maybe they're shored up in Westminster? But yeah it would be pretty Thick of It, a lot of bickering and infighting over petty nonsense, and I like the idea that they've thrown themselves into the pompous formalities and do the whole "if we pretend the apocalypse isn't happening hard enough, maybe it'll go away!" thing pretty much. All frilly robes and ritual, still supping and dining and pointedly not acknowledging the outside world.
How would Homo Secor happen do you think? I know the tories are happy to let the poor and homeless die and do terrible things to the NHS but why would would everyone else let people become non-people.
The Establishment has always been good at protecting its own and voting in its own interest.
That said, if we were going to make it a real social commentary on the British government's slow, venomous hate of the people, we should draw more on the whole JSA and Disability Allowance thing of recent years whereby people have to jump through hoop after hoop after hoop to prove they're definitely NOT a zombie and if they fail even one for whatever reason (including improperly filled out paperwork or the assessor not liking their tone of voice) then their file gets stamped BLIGHT and nothing makes that stamp come off. At that point they're homo sacor, yeah, government seized assets etc but this way it looks more like it's their fault. This could also be a way you get a group of Takers together for a game; they're assembled in the whatever the equivalent of the JobCentre Plus is in the zombie apocalypse (but it's totally called The Dole) and do
workfare contracts. (Maybe this agency's acronym can be IDS, just to hammer the point home by getting a little stab in at Ian Duncan Smith. "Interior Department of Security??)
Since workfare is all about the private sector getting around minimum wage laws (
"we don't have to really pay them if it isn't called a job!") workfare contracts are about Enclavers farming out jobs too stupid or low-paying for REAL Takers to the Dole Takers who are sat outside the Enclave walls hoping to eventually get "a proper job" by "building up their CV" by killing zombies. So, the crushing end of crushing poverty. This could be an introductory job, even, a group of on-the-Dole Takers ("the Skivers"?) being given a job to do for "benefits" (just enough bounty to not starve and the very bare minimum upkeep on their gear) in the hopes of getting into Shard-controlled territory once they have enough "work experience" or completed their "internship". ("Inverted commas")
That's how you get your population to accept turning people into non-people. You look like you're giving the "legitimate survivors" out there a real chance while also maintaining borders and quarantine to keep out the work-shy scroungers who are coming to take YOUR jobs! The ones who get declared homo sacer are the ones who failed the test or were deemed "threats to enclave security" or whatever reason they weren't the right sort of people. Basically fold class warfare rhetoric into anti-immigration rhetoric. "We don't hate refugees, we hate
economic migrants". Maybe toss in some anti-Muslim terrorism concern in there ("what if we let them in and they turn out to be some kind of slow-turning zombie double agent?! What if they turn out to be a Latent jihadist?")
Also, I think given the importance of London real estate in the global economy, a UK campaign could focus on retaking London, block by block and securing it for its foreign clients or reclaiming it for the government - finding deeds and so forth in the abandoned buildings.
I mean, a lot of really dirty money is in the London real estate market so you could have pockets of the city taken over by survivors that used to be, say, Russian oligarchs who are
definitely not connected to the KGB/Russian mob why would you even suggest that would you like a cup of glowing tea. I don't know how much a global market would exist after the crash, though. I mean, the Chunnel is going to choked with casualties even harder than the Tube (probably going both directions), and I don't know how global the spread of the contagion is. As I mentioned earlier, London has a lot of economic inequality that would probably translate to pockets of enclaves in a sea of urban Loss come the Crash, so reclaiming quarters and districts, streets and neighbourhoods definitely fits.
Yeah, one of the jobs I had in mind when I was thinking for Red Markets In London was a raid on
Bishopsgate, which is where a lot of financial institutions and other business have their offices (so, a lot of documents that could be pulled out of that and turned into crypto) and the
Bishopsgate Institute has a special collection kept underground that might be plundered as a job for, say, some Archivist offshoots. Also, Bishopsgate was the site of an IRA bombing in the 90's and it looked like this:
That already looks like a Fallout location. Just add some zombies!
That said, I think the focus shouldn't be too much on London because I think that's part of the spirit of Red Markets, to move the focus away from the economically wealthy areas to the poorer and less explored areas. So that's why I was talking about games set in the North, or the Midlands.
Lots of canals in Birmingham that would serve as great transport routes that are safe from Blighters and enclaves can form around locks. Birmingham is also one of the areas I think would most easily adapt back to gun manufacture (as in, it literally has a district imaginatively named "
The Gun Quarter" which still contains gun manufacturers - Brummie Takers will have no shortage of Enfield rifles and Webley revolvers so long as they keep the Gun Quarter stocked and safe). Birmingham is also home to Ladywood, one of the worst
areas in the country in terms of unemployment (a TV show called Benefit Street was filmed there and was accused of being 'poverty porn') and plans on regenerating the area have raised accusations of being plans for
slums. That said, Ladywood and Edgbaston were where
where J.R.R Tolkein spent childhood so you might have a job delving in there to try and get hold of some Middle Earth memorabilia?
