Riverperplex
Non-Canon Article
Hello chummers, Riverplex is technically new to the UNL, so we figured we owed the newcomers an explanation on what on earth this megaplex is. And who better to tell this story than our devilish fixer, Moenen, who took his name from the city's fairytale.There are many ways to describe Riverplex, though not many of them are flattering. A patchwork abomination cityscape, it owes its name to the three rivers it contains. Riverplex claims the largest population number of all UNL, though that includes a large amount of SINless. Despite its size, the city refuses to be called a megaplex. This is in part because of its neighbour, the Rhein-Ruhr Megaplex, which dwarves Riverplex in comparison. Riverplex thrives thanks to its location. The EuroRoute 5 goes through the city, allowing it to be reached by both land and water. It connects the north and south by road and rail, serving as the gateway to many an area. And the smaller rivers it connects to allow for the Penose to smuggle contraband across the border.
Its position is useful for the corps, even those that just pass by from Europort to Rhein-Ruhr.
And thanks to that, also useful to us. A target-rich environment with plenty of jobs around.
Riverplex
History
The reason we call Riverplex new, is because it is a merged city. Essentially, two cities kept gobbling up every town near them until they grew together. But these two cities, Nijmegen and Arnhem, were bitter rivals, even before the Black Tide and the Awakening. Then the Black Tide rushes up the rivers and heavily damaged both economies. Thanks to ER5, Nijmegen recovered well and began turning into a Frankensteined abomination.
As for Arnhem, it was less lucky. Due to its poor economy, the city failed to keep the nearby Veluwe under control, causing hordes of wild boars to descend on the city every winter. Not even introducing Fenrir Wolves sufficiently culled the boar population, in part due to a certain comet that causes large amounts of boars to awaken to magic. Despite that, Arnhem kept resisting advances from Nijmegen to merge, until the winter of 2073 when thousands of starving boars caused billions worth of damage to the city.
Merger
With corruption destroying the rebuilding efforts, Arnhem staved off bankruptcy by finally merging with Nijmegen. The resulting Megaplex had over two million residents, if all the SINless were included. But since Rhein-Ruhr has over ten times the population, the city did not want to call itself a Megaplex. Instead, it narrowed the options down to just a few, then held an election.
The election was a smashing success: Out of 1.2m eligible voters, 3.7m actually voted. After eliminating every cheated vote they could find, the election committee was left with a bit over 900k votes for their final results. Riverplex won with slightly under 60% of the votes.
The original city names remained intact, now being used as labels for splitting the plex in four. Arnhem in the north, Nijmegen in the south, Overbetuwe in the west, Lingewaard in the east. Of these, Arnhem and Nijmegen are the only real large cities.
That’s a lot of cheated votes. Still surprised the Software & Hardware Security department of the university didn’t help prevent that, since they are always crowing about the unreliability of existing voting solutions.
Who do you think sold most of the cheating software involved? Unofficially and unproven, of course.
Hardly surprising, and rather amusing
Current Status
Riverplex now stretches from the Maas in the south, past the Waal up to across the Rhine in the north. Thanks to that, Riverplex acts as crossroad for every ship that goes to and from Europort. With all of that in mind, the city government makes sure that nobody gets in the way of the transport industry. Any police officer that gets in the way of cargo too many times, will find their corp shipping them off to Amsterdam once the city begins to ask pointed questions.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody at all, this connectivity also makes Riverplex a hotbed of smuggling activity. The Dutch Penose brings their stuff over from Amsterdam before using the most-suited border crossing. Meanwhile, the Triads and Yakuza smuggle things over from Europort. They try to avoid open conflict with each other, to ensure the plex will not come after them for messing with the shipments. And runners come to buy and use their toys, then get murdered if they leave too big a mess.
There is but one thing that is allowed to bring the plex to a halt, and that is the soccer derby. Twice a year, Arnhem and Nijmegen face each other, and every year that leads to riots. Sometimes they block the roads for merely an hour, other times it lasts all day. The police simply sigh and turn a blind eye, because interfering would only make it worse.
Places of interest
Nijmegen
Specifically the city center, where a lot of buildings remain that are a hundred years old or more. During World War 2, the allies deliberately bombed the city then lied about it for decades, so a lot of older buildings burned. The government bans high buildings, so nothing goes past four floors. It is surrounded by high-rises for people who want to look down on the common people, as the building height limit ends where the old city walls stood. The western border of the center is marked by the railroad line that connects north and south of the UNL.
Part of the center is super-expensive real estate, the rest is near-slumlike. It's where most native Shadowrunners and anarchists live, due to the anonimity its maze-like structure supplies.
Arnhem
The Nijmegen harbor is where most corps do their loading and unloading, because the Waal is cleaned up and the Rhine still suffers from toxic sludge residues. But Arnhem is where criminals and cheap corps have their docks. This is where you go for smuggling across the border and for supplying those still living in the Veluwe,
Smugglers don't pay much in taxes, so Arnhem never stood a chance against Nijmegen. If you go up to the Veluwe, get your stock elsewhere. This close to the Wall, people just scam you.
The Wall & The Veluwe
The Veluwe always had a wild life problem, and VITAS, the Awakening, then later on the Euro Wars economic crisis, meant wild life control fell to the wayside. Decades and many a wild boar invasion later, now a wall stands between the Veluwe and Riverplex.
There are still small fortified communities that live on the Veluwe, so a lot of trade goes past the wall still. Do not expect the police to act on the Veluwe. Their only nearby presence is to allow visitors to update their wills. Nowadays boars, deer, wolves and chickens roam the Veluwe, both in mundane and awakened species. There also are small Dakkaryne and Foulmart populations.
Hold on, awakened chickens?
Yeah, and not Cockatrices, if you're wondering. Just some freak of nature 1m tall chickens. That's over three feet for y'all UCASians. I've seen a drunk pull feathers out of one's tail as a prank, only to be pecked to death by an entire swarm of them.
University Campus
The university is located south of the Nijmegen center and has expanded a lot the past century. Every year it gets about twenty thousand new students, of which about three quarters graduate. The university itself has been actively involved in research, which it managed to greatly profit from during the Matrix crashes and innovation after.
The campus has a lot of small corporation research projects, where they lure in new wage slaves and send their own corp employees to occasionally. There are also a lot of old tunnels below the university, though one should stay out of those to not piss off the residents.
The tunnels served as shelter during the Night of Rage, and some folks never left. It's similar to the Ork Underground, though most original residents were students at the university. Nowadays some students live there so they don't have to pay rent. They say about a quarter of the professors lived in the tunnels at some point.
The Highs
The rich live in penthouses. The filthy rich live in the Highs. Located near the ADL border in hilly terrain, this is where you find villas surrounded by trees. And a lot of private security. Maas-Waker Politie is in charge in Riverplex, but in the Highs you will find Sinjoor Inc. safeguarding their rich clients. And that wealth means they get away with being trigger happy against intruders.
It also means petty neighbour disputes and parties for showing off said wealth, so for the brave and subtle, there is plenty of money to be made here. Just make sure to get into Maas-Waker jurisdiction afterwards, so they ward off your pursuers.
A couple of years ago, there were protests due to, ahem, misbehaviour by some rich kids. The people were unsatisfied with the lack of prosecution. When Sinjoor Inc. opened fire on the crowd, Maas-Waker fired back. And they had come prepared for the occasion. In the end, street justice prevailed.
Patches
Officially they call them suburbs, but they cannot be compared to the historical suburbs from the previous century. What these are, are mass-produced houses and industrial areas, built to expand towns and cities. Until the entire Riverplex area was one massive patchwork blanket of old vs new, with nary a place without buildings remaining within the borders of this abomination of a Megaplex.
It looks gorgeous from the sky, less so if you're driving past, and I would never want to live in these. Not even if you paid me.
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