The Rotten Boroughs

Britain collapsed. The rest of the world recovered but Old Blighty remains quarantined, divided into squabbling little successor states where even the apocalypse stops for tea. Decades after the Morava Pandemic destroyed the British state, London still lives. Markets fill ruined shopping centres. Civil servants in Westminster continue filing memoranda for a government that no longer exists. Cricket grounds, golf clubs, parish councils, pubs, allotments and railway societies have become governments, supply networks and minor political powers, usually with surprisingly firm views about procedure. Beyond the capital, escaped tigers roam the Chilterns. Fortified estates defend old wealth. Brighton’s gangs fight over the seafront. Foreign ships can sometimes be seen beyond a coastline nobody is supposed to cross. Somewhere, inevitably, somebody is arguing about access to a footpath. Britain has fallen but people still work, trade, gossip, fall in love, repair generators, play football, hold village fêtes and complain about the neighbours. A working kettle can be a luxury. A pub can be neutral territory. A clipboard, sufficiently confidently held, may still get you through a door. But the jokes stop when they need to. Food, medicine, fuel and safe roads matter. Violence is real. The strong can become predatory. The wrong checkpoint can ruin considerably more than your afternoon. Play as a trader, scavenger, medic, official, criminal, farmer, traveller, guard, organiser, aristocrat or almost anything else. Join a faction. Resist one. Start a business. Solve a local problem. Cause a considerably larger one. Civilisation survived. More or less.