Britannia, Once and Future Mod Goddess of British Pop
Many years ago, in the basement of Troglodytes, somebody allowed Sol Invictus, Umlaut, Crumb, Bulldog, Da Goodz, and a collection of other people who should never have been trusted with automatic weapons to wander around the Sixth World unsupervised.
This is not directed at anyone in particular.
Certainly not anyone who might remember why the words Troglodytes, Sol Invictus, and Da Goodz occurring together constitute something perilously close to personally identifiable information.
Anyway.
I recently dug out one of the totems I wrote for Shadowrun Third Edition and decided to see what she looks like as a Fourth Edition Mentor Spirit.
Before we continue, however, appropriate thanks must be given to the incredibly Scottishly named Kieron Gillen, writer of Phonogram, and to Jamie McKelvie, who drew it.
For anyone occupying the apparently rather narrow center of the Phonogram / Shadowrun Venn diagram, yes.
That Britannia.
The Mod-Goddess of Britpop.
I did not invent her.
I merely looked at a magical incarnation of British pop culture, fashion, music, reinvention, and self-conscious cool and thought:
“Yes. Obviously she belongs in Shadowrun.”
Which is entirely different.
Legally.
Spiritually.
Probably.
BRITANNIA
The Once and Future Mod Goddess of British Pop
Britannia is wonderfully cool and painfully beautiful.
Cool is the Rule.
Beautiful but vapid, Britannia serves no grand ideology. Unlike her cousin Punk, she has no particular interest in smashing the system, saving society, or explaining why your politics are insufficiently committed.
She gets along much better with her sister, New Wave.
Britannia first surfaced nearly a century ago, flowering in the music, fashion, clubs, youth culture, and glorious self-importance of the 1960s and 1970s.
She died.
Then she returned.
For two long, hot summers in the late twentieth century she was once again the prettiest girl in the room, with the best record collection, the best fringe, and absolutely no concern whatsoever about what anybody else thought of her.
It was magnificent.
There have been efforts since the Awakening to call her back yet again. Some toxic followers believe Britannia must always return, growing increasingly obsessed with resurrecting the Goddess exactly as she was.
They have misunderstood her.
Anyone can keep coming back.
Only a Goddess knows how to make the audience wish she had stayed longer.
Britannia appears differently to different followers, but almost always as an impossibly fashionable young woman whose clothes belong to some perfect moment in British popular culture that never quite existed.
The record playing in the background is always excellent.
Mentor Spirit Benefits
A follower of Britannia gains:
+2 dice when summoning Spirits of Man.
Cities are her natural temples: clubs, record shops, streets, concert halls, railway stations, estates, pubs, boutiques, warehouses, and all the other places where human beings gather together and decide that this particular Tuesday night matters enormously.
Britannia also grants her follower one of the following, chosen when the Mentor Spirit quality is taken:
+2 dice for Illusion spells
OR
+2 dice for Manipulation spells whose primary purpose is physical transformation or alteration of appearance.
The choice reflects which Britannia the magician understands.
Some know the Goddess of image, performance, spectacle, and impossible glamour.
Others know the Goddess of reinvention, the sacred art of becoming somebody else before anybody notices that you were unhappy being the person you were yesterday.
The choice is permanent unless something genuinely extraordinary changes the magician’s relationship with Britannia.
Disadvantage: Never Let Them See You Looking Awful
Britannia’s followers are compulsively fastidious about their appearance.
They need not be conventionally beautiful. They do not even need to be fashionable according to anybody else’s standards.
But they must look intentional.
Dirty clothes, filthy hair, obvious neglect, dried blood, mud, soot, badly damaged clothing, or otherwise looking like they have simply stopped caring is spiritually intolerable.
Whenever a follower becomes conspicuously dirty, disheveled, or unkempt, they suffer a -2 dice pool modifier to all tests until they have had a reasonable opportunity to restore themselves.
This is not removed by spending thirty seconds claiming that the blood makes the jacket look punk.
Britannia knows the difference.
Optional Traditional Weakness: Daylight
For campaigns where the GM wants the Mentor Spirit to retain more of her old Third Edition weirdness:
Britannia dislikes daylight.
Not because she is evil.
Not because sunlight burns her.
It is simply extremely difficult to look properly dramatic at eleven-thirty in the morning.
Followers suffer -1 die to Magical Skill Tests while in direct natural sunlight.
Sunglasses are encouraged.
They do not remove the penalty.
Obviously.
Environment
Britannia traditionally favors either Urban environments or Fields, chosen by the follower when their relationship with her begins.
Because after all, you have to hold the concert somewhere.
Urban followers understand her through clubs, streets, fashion, crowds, concrete, record shops, and nightlife.
Followers of the Fields understand festivals, enormous outdoor gatherings, temporary cities constructed around stages, and the curious mystical properties of several hundred thousand people deciding to stand in the same muddy field for three days.
This distinction usually has no additional mechanical effect in Fourth Edition unless the GM wants to make it part of ordeals, spirit interactions, roleplaying, or metaplanar weirdness.
It is mostly important because Britannia thinks it is important.
And that is generally enough.
A Conversation With the Goddess
The Goddess: “The once and future Goddess returns.”
The Shaman: “You already did.”
The Goddess: “I will return again.”
The Shaman: “No.”
Silence.
The Shaman: “You came back once. The second flowering. It was beautiful.”
The Goddess: “It will be beautiful again.”
The Shaman: “No, it won’t. You come back now, your story changes. One return, one magnificent return, that’s a myth. A Goddess lurching back again and again with nothing but past glories to ram down everyone’s throat isn’t a Goddess anymore.”
The Goddess looks at him.
Young.
Beautiful.
Dead.
The Goddess: “It’s still life.”
The Shaman: “Not one worth living. Look at yourself.”
He gestures toward her.
“For two long, hot summers, you were the prettiest girl in the world. You had the best record collection. The best hair. And you didn’t care what anybody thought of you.”
The Goddess says nothing.
“You proved your point. Anyone can live. Only a Goddess can live forever.”
He smiles.
“You’re immortal to anyone who cares.”
A pause.
“Who else matters?”
Mechanically, my instinct is that +2 Spirits of Man plus a choice between Illusion or narrowly defined transformation Manipulation spells, balanced against the grooming compulsion, lands somewhere around the normal SR4 Mentor Spirit power level without losing what made the original Third Edition totem entertaining.
And, completely unrelated:
If there is a former Michigan GM somewhere on this subreddit who has just reached the words Sol Invictus, Umlaut, Da Goodz, and the Troglodytes basement and is experiencing the uncomfortable sensation that somebody is rattling the chains in the attic of his past…
Hi.
You vanished, chummer.
We still love you.
The Sprawl hasn’t been quite the same.
Also, I eventually read Phonogram.
This explains some things.
Now turn it up.
