The Greater London Area

• The City of London: St. Paul's, The Tower, The Barbican, The Temple
• Westminster: St. James's, Soho, Green Park, Belgravia, Marylebone
• The West End: Kensington, Chelsea, Shepherd's Bush, Battersea, Wandsworth, St. John's Wood, Kensal Green
• The East End: Whitechapel, Limehouse, The Isle of Dogs, Seven Sisters, Bethnal Green, Bow, Shoreditch
• North London: Bloomsbury, Highgate, Camden Town, Islington, Clerkenwell, Highbury, Primrose Hill
• South London: Southwark, Rotherhithe, Blackheath, Greenwich, Camberwell, Peckham, Brixton, Catford
• London Below: The London Underground, Whisper Court

• Beyond the London Ringway: Quaere

• Major Factions
  • Freehold: Southwark, Blackheath, Peckham, Greenwich, Whitechapel, Green Park, Rotherhithe, Camberwell
  • Invictus: Kensington, Chelsea, Shepherd's Bush, Marylebone, Battersea
  • Ordo Mysterium: Bloomsbury, Highgate, Camden Town, Highbury, Primrose Hill, Quaere
  • Lancea et Sanctum: The Barbican
  • The Ordo Dracul: St. James's
  • The People's Republic: Clerkenwell
  • Harbingers: Islington, St. John's Wood

• Minor Factions
  • Cult of Brass: Kensal Green
  • Atenka Holding Company: Seven Sisters
  • Thunderpaws: Bow
  • Iron Soldiers: Bethnal Green
  • Architects of Steel: Isle of Dogs
  • Duppy Boys: Brixton
  • The Catford Crew: Catford
  • Fei Yu Dang: Limehouse
  • Temple Guard: Temple
  • Order of St. Pilitus: St. Paul's

• Shoreditch (Freehold vs. Ordo Mysterium vs. The People's Republic, with Lancea et Sanctum, Atenka Holding Company, Iron Soldiers, Intelligent Mysteries, and entirely too many ghosts as spoilers)
• Soho (Invictus vs. The People's Republic)
• Belgravia (Invictus vs. Freehold)

• The Tower (Ghosts)
• Wandsworth (Formerly the Crimson Storm, presently no one)

''Modern man lives isolated in his artificial environment, not because the artificial is evil as such, but because of his lack of comprehension of the forces which make it work -- of the principles which relate his gadgets to the forces of nature, to the universal order. It is not central heating which makes his existence 'unnatural,' but his refusal to take an interest in the principles behind it. By being entirely dependent on science, yet closing his mind to it, he leads the life of an urban barbarian.''

-Arthur Koestler

London is a city of patchwork neighborhoods, idiosyncratic districts with their own thousand-year histories as independent townships. Whitechapel, Soho, Southwark, Westminster are all names to conjure with. In Shadow London, this patchwork forms something like supernatural nations, and nations need to have borders and territories.

The format for each domain is as follows:

• Domain Name: What's the place called? Each domain is about 1/3rd of a London Borough, and I name them after the most interest/recognizable district or neighborhood in the domain.
• Controlled by: Which faction (vampire covenant, werewolf pack, fae court, etc) controls the place? Or is it contested terrain? Or is it a no-mans land for some reason?
• Resources: A 0-to-6+ number that determines the socioeconomic class of the domain.
• Special Features: Any supernaturally significant landmarks or features -- keep in mind that this is by no means an exhaustive list of all the interesting places in London, just the ones that are relevant to the supernatural world.

All of these are described in more detail, along with their mechanical effects, further below.

Control

In most, though not all domains, one organization claims to Control the area. Control basically means that the organization is the main supernatural power in the area, and that they expressing this predominance in some fashion (a werewolf pack might simply rely on physical patrols and loyal spirit watchmen, a vampire might have the local cops eating out of his hand). Regardless of the form it takes, Control invariably requires both a degree of physical presence and a certain level of work (absentee landlords tend to find their Control rapidly deteriorating, especially in prized property like London).

Only an Organization can control a domain. It simply requires more hands and more eyes to be able to control and defend a domain than an individual can usually provide. If for some reason an individual does take Control of a domain, then that individual should be given an Organization, since:

• Either they already head up some unofficial organization (a Spirit Incarnae will have vassal spirits and mortal cultists)
• Or they are so immensely powerful that Grasp and Reach are a suitable measure of their influence.

Resources

Resources determines the socioeconomic class of a domain. It goes from 0-to-6+. A low-Resource area is poor, a high-Resource area is rich -- though keep in mind that this is talking more about the general 'class' or 'feel' of an area than every single person's income. The breakdown is as follows:

• A Resources 0 Domain is a hideous, wretched slum. Unemployment hovers up around 50% and crime is rampant. These are the worst of the Council Estates, and the only local businesses are going to be the drug dealers and gangs.

• A Resources 1 Domain is very poor, but the people here are mostly working poor. Unemployment is going to be up in the 20% range, with most work being hourly or part-time, and crime is still omnipresent, though at least slightly more discreet. Most of these places are going to be Council Estates, and local businesses are going to be definitely down-at-the-heel, convenience stores and the like.

• A Resources 2 Domain is solidly working class. The people here are thoroughly blue-collar, or might have service jobs or menial white-collar jobs. This is the point at which life is 'normalized,' crime being hidden and the police presence regular. Local business would be various manufacturing or small-scale commercial stuff.

• A Resources 3 Domain is bourgeois and middle-class. White-collar professionals might live here, or else the upper-tiers of blue-collar people. Most of these places are out in the suburbs, or you have good Victorian rowhouses and the like. Businesses are mostly going to be offices and the like.

• A Resources 4 Domain is upper-middle class and professional. The people who live here are going to be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and so on. It's a nice neighborhood with very good schools, good hospitals, and whatever crime goes on here is going to be discreet and non-violent. You'll find tech-jobs and finance-jobs in this kind of area.

• A Resources 5 Domain is rich. When people talk about the houses in this area, they don't say 'house' they say 'mansion.' People here will still have servants, they'll have valuable things in their homes, and they'll have security systems to match. The police care about this kind of area.

• A Resources 6+ Domain is beyond rich and into ludicrously rich. The median income in such an area will easily crest £1,000,000 annually, and some of the locals will have eight, nine figure incomes. Some of the local property would qualify for the term 'palaces,' and many of the inhabitants will have their own private guards.

Domain Resources are relevant in two ways: it determines who can afford to live there, and the police are much faster to respond in high-Resources areas. More on Lairs can be found Here (this does assume that the character is using normal 'buy a flat' methods for living somewhere. As for police response times:

Special Features are any unique or unusual aspects about a domain.

Each one has a unique effect, listed in the description, which might be mundane (Research rolls in Bloomsbury gain a bonus due to the use of the British Museum, British Library, and University College, London all being there) or supernatural (St. Paul's Cathedral has a severe dampening effect on supernatural powers). Usually, a Special Feature is a specific area in the domain, and doesn't encompass the entire domain -- though it might.

Similarly, Special Features are just those aspects of a domain that impinge on the supernatural world. Guy's Hospital is not the only hospital and morgue in London, but it's the only one under the control of the supernatural -- so Guy's Hospital is a Special Feature but the Croydon University Hospital isn't.

The city of London, within the walls, occupies a space of only 370 acres, and is but the hundred and fortieth part of the extent covered by the whole metropolis.

-Henry Mayhew

Most of “London” lies outside the boundaries of the actual City of London, occupying the old medieval city limits: one square mile between the Tower of London and the London Temple. The Temple (formerly a Knights Templar commandery) now headquarters Britain’s legal establishment. The City is London’s Wall Street; it contains the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, the Lloyd’s of London insurance company, and many other banks and financial concerns. Fleet Street in the City houses London’s great newspapers.

The centre of the City is St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill; other major landmarks of the City include the Guildhall, the Old Bailey criminal court (on the former site of Newgate Prison), St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (England’s oldest), and the 202 ft. tall Monument commemorating the spot where the Great Fire of London stopped in 1666.

St. Paul's

• Controlled by: The Order of St. Pilitus
• Resources: 4
• Special Features:
  • House of God All supernatural abilities in St. Paul's Cathedral are weakened. Rolled abilities lose 4 successes (which can and does reduce most powers to 0 and to failure), while powers that to do not have an associated roll (such as a vampire's Vigor) are treated as being 4 levels lower. (Vigor 5 is treated as Vigor 1, anything lower simply fails to work). Powers which have neither a dice roll nor levels simply fail to function unless the user succeeds at a chance roll.
  • Nightly Abandonment During the day, St. Paul's is swamped with tourists and city dwellers, inflicting a -3 penalty to any roll to avoid being noticed. At night, the reverse is true -- the area is quite nearly abandoned, meaning that anyone here gains a +3 bonus to Stealth rolls.

Background: Designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London, St. Paul's is one of the most famous buildings in London, and one of the most supernaturally significant. For two hundred years it was the tallest building in London, and it remains the seat of the Church of England Diocese of London. It has memorials to dozens of famous Britons -- including Horatio Nelson and the Duke of Wellington -- and contains the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren himself. Located on Ludgate Hill, one of London's three sacred hills, St. Paul's was built atop the site of a Roman temple to Diana, which would mean that worship has been going on at the location for almost two thousand years. Sir Christopher Wren himself was a prominent Freemason and (if rumor is believed) occultist and geomancer, and the building is rumored to be riddled with secret passageways and encoded occult messages. In the time of Edward I workers dug up an ossuary with hundreds of ox skulls in the churchyard.

St. Paul's and the area around it (a small slice of land in the very, very heart of London that includes Old Bailey and the ancient church of St. Bride's) has become something of a no-go zone due to a curious effect wherein all supernatural powers are dampened, if not outright blocked, in St. Paul's. The effect does not extend past the precinct of the Cathedral, but most supernatural creatures feel uncomfortable there all the same -- and the close proximity to hordes of tourists and all the security and surveillance of the City does nothing to encourage their presence.

Temple

• Controlled by: The Temple Guard
• Resources: 4
• ''Special Features: Nightly Abandonment During the day, Temple is swamped with tourists, inflicting a -3 penalty to any roll to avoid being noticed. At night, the reverse is true -- the area is quite nearly abandoned, meaning that anyone here gains a +3 bonus to Stealth rolls.

Background: The western corner of the City, including in itself the rail junction of Charing Cross and the newspapers of Fleet Street, is often named Temple, after it's church. Though heavily rebuilt in the 19th century, the Temple Church has a degree of occult fame. The church is named after the Knights Templar, an order of warrior monks formed in 1118 to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Lands. By 1185 they were based in England and building this unusual round church, said to be modelled after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Following the fall of the Templars in 1312, the Knights Hospitallers took over the church which, in 1608, was given by James I to a group of local lawyers in return for their commitment to maintain the buildings in perpetuity. Even today the Middle Temple and Inner Temple are synonymous with legal practice in London. The church contains a number of tombs of Knights Templar, in surprisingly good repair, and has some interesting stories associated with it. Walter-le-Bacheler, Grand Preceptor of Ireland, starved to death in a small cell in the church for the crime of defying the Master of the Order, while the crypt was the site of the Order’s secret initiation rites. One bishop’s effigy, dating from 1255, stands atop a dragon.

The neighborhood of Temple is tenuously claimed by the Temple Guard, a pack of werewolf information brokers led by Smiley Reid, an archaeologist working on Temple Church. Most of the pack lives elsewhere, as a matter of fact, and their control is mostly due to geographical luck -- to the east, St. Paul's and the Tower are no-mans lands no one wishes to touch, to the south is the Thames, and to the west are the Dragons and ghosts of St. James's, who have are more focused on each other than on Temple. That said, Smiley has been careful to seek out accommodations with Alistair Niall of the Lancea et Sanctum to the north, and when the People's Republic of Clerkenwell rebuffed her, with Magister Kore of the Ordo Mysterium.

The Tower

• Controlled by: No Man's Land
• Resources: 5
• Special Features:
  • Haunted Ghosts and ghost-like creatures (Revenants, Kerberoi, etc) gain a +1 to all rolls while in the precincts of this domain, and gain 1 Essence per night, in addition to any that they gain from other sources.
• Nightly Abandonment: During the day, the Tower is swamped with tourists, inflicting a -3 penalty to any roll to avoid being noticed. At night, the reverse is true -- the area is quite nearly abandoned, meaning that anyone here gains a +3 bonus to Stealth rolls.

Background: The Tower of London, once a fortification, prison, and execution ground, sits where the giant Bran’s head once lay buried. Should the ravens (bran in Welsh) ever leave the Tower, Britain is doomed. The Tower is haunted by everything from the ghosts of its prisoners and victims (Anne Boleyn, Walter Raleigh, many more) to a cylinder of bluish-white fluid that appeared to the Keeper of the Crown Jewels in 1817 to the immense shadow of an axe on the White Tower wall. Also in the area is the London Monument, a 202 ft. tall column marking the furthest edge of the Great Fire of 1666, and the Bank tube station, which is directly underneath the crypt of St. Mary Woolnoth, a Hawksmoor church on the site of a Roman temple to Concordia.

Between the powerful ghosts of the Tower, the disturbed and ancient dead of St. Mary Woolnoth, and the countless victims of the Great Fire, this region of London is rife with ghosts. Safe enough during the day, at night the precincts of the Tower are best avoided, lest one run into more spectral trouble than one can handle.

The Barbican

• Controlled by: The Lancea et Sanctum
• Resources: 2
• Special Features:

Background: The former Knights Hospitaller property at Smithfield was London’s centre for horse trading and cattle slaughter until 1855. Human blood mingled with the animal blood in its soil; here, heretics and traitors received public execution. The famous festival of Misrule, Bartholomew Fair, was held here from 1123 until 1855, and the ancient church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great is still here, the building dating from 1123 and still largely intact. Nowadays most of West Smithfield is taken up by the Barbican Estates, a trio of towering housing estates that loom up over the area and which give it its common name.

St. Bartholomew-the-Great's is the mother-church of the Lancea et Sanctum, given to them by the Lady of London back in the early 1780s, ostensibly as a gift. In truth, it's an excellent and appropriate territory, with the ancient church nestled cheek-by-jowl with rich hunting grounds. Unfortunately, the Barbican abuts the territory of several werewolf packs and the war-zone of Shoreditch, so the Sanctified have had to become increasingly militarized in order to survive in their new home.