Nief Antwerp (A cyberpunk red city)

I had the privilege of being sent a review copy of Cyberpunk Red, which I absolutely enjoyed reading. This is a concept city for a European city in the Cyberpunk Red universe, that was floating in my mind after reading the last pages of the Cyberpunk Red core book and fueled by Monster and ADHD this is what I came up with. Most of it is made up as I go along. It is culminated from my own know facts about Belgium and the Netherlands and some things I made up. It is livened up with real folklore and things we say about each other (Belgians and dutchies).

New Antwerp or Nief Antwerp (as it is known locally) is now what Belgium and the lower part of the Netherlands used to be. Before 2020, those living in Antwerp boasted that Antwerp was the only real city in pre-war Belgium anyway and the rest was parking. After the bombings by America after the presidential civil War in 2020 in America and the covid outbreak levelled most of what used to be Belgium and the Netherlands, Flemish and Dutchies worked together to build up out of the remains to what is now a thriving megacity in the like of Night City.

Because Europe in it’s early days after 1945 looked up to it’s child America (if you read the history books you will see what I mean), they created themselves in the image of Night City at its peak. The latest fashion (although done with European flair) and the latest gadgets, imported out of the ‘Muricas, they are now found everywhere in Nief Antwerp or N’antwerp as it is know worldwide.

N’antwerp is almost a carbon copy of what you would find in Night City at it’s peak. Skyscrapers, high tech low-life, although European, so honor and flair are in high regard here. You don’t kill someone’s family and hope to get away with it (think The godfather, blade runner and Neuromancer, to get the vibe). They don’t drink cocktails here, but live on home-brewed wines and mead, beers are in fashion here too. Cocktails are drunk but are seen as a fad and more like a soda than a real alcoholic beverage. N’antwerp is known for its several hundred kinds of ales and beers, and exports them to the whole world. If you haven’t drunk a N’antwerp Ale you aren’t seen as a connaisseur. N’antwerp cuisine is like it’s pre-war, although resources for those are hard to find french-Belgian kitchen. The former dutchies tried to intervene and introduce their cuisine, but were quickly outvoted and their dishes are seen as garbage or low-life food that you will get for free if you did a job are very cheap in hostels and hotels. Kibble is not a N’antwerp thing but a similar product exists, that has all the necessary ingredients a growing body (or cyberware outfitted person needs).

Although cyberware is a thing, cyber-psychosis is rare as those individuals susceptible to it, are not given access to the things, and if they have access it is most likely in the very dark corners of the fixer markets. N’antwerp has taken over the regulations set out by the German conglomerates to keep the best cyberware out of the paws of those susceptible to cyber-psychosis. Everybody that wants cyberware from legitimate means, needs to be evaluated with the Cyberware Proficiency Test or CPT for short, and if you are not deemed suitable, a chip will be implanted that will detonate if cyberware is outfitted. Fixers in N’antwerp have found a way to scan for these chips and a struggle between the government and organisations and the fixers has been going on for years now.

Life in N’antwerp is the same as everywhere on the planet right now. Fairly pleasant if you have the money or are an exec, almost impossible if you are a lowlife. What used to be the North-sea has been shifted a few kilometers so that what used to be the north-sea is now more of a very wide canal. This gives the nomadic life-style a more valued option. Those living close to the sea have given up their seafaring ways and have become travelling nomads instead. Riding through the barren wastelands that the climate change and the wars have resulted in. They existed of farmers in the olden days and together with the dutchies have cultivated ecofarming while on the move. Large trucs with mobile farms have been created by them. Economads they call themselves and are highly valued for their fresh produce and vegetables by the very, very rich. They use the eurobucks to keep up their vehicles and to keep their ecofarms running. They have to protect themselves from the very same very high society, because these don’t want to keep paying for something they can learn and produce themselves. Some Nomads have been bought out by the big corporations, but were quickly hunted down by other Nomads because you don’t leave the nomad tribes alive. Their secrets are much to valuable.

I will add more in the future, but this is what my brain has concocted now.

Every post is written first in scrivener 3, which you can get a 30 day free trial of here at literature and latte.

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