Neo-Europa is the towering cyberpunk successor to Brussels, born from collapse, exile, and ambition. Its rise is a tale of climate ruin, digital schism, the return of aristocracy, and the slow calcification of corporate myth.
Origins: The Twilight of Old Brussels
Before Neo-Europa, there was Brussels—a city of diplomacy, supranational governance, and layered legacies. In the early 21st century, Brussels hosted the European Union’s institutions and a dense network of political, financial, and intelligence channels. But as global systems began to fail, the city became both sanctuary and crucible.
Timeline
2030–2039: The Great Fragmentation War
| Date | 2030–2039 |
|---|---|
| Location | Continental Europe, cyberspace financial grids |
| Outcome | Collapse of NATO and EU; rise of autonomous enclaves |
| Belligerents | National governments, AI-led banking coalitions, cyber-mercenary states |
| Commanders | Decentralized command structures; key figures redacted |
| Casualties | Estimated 30–50 million displaced, unknown dead; infrastructure collapse across 19 nations |
A decade of conflict engulfed Europe. Sparked by resource shortages, water rights disputes, and an accelerating cyberwar between state banks and sovereign AIs, the continent collapsed into decentralized chaos. NATO disbanded. The European Union fragmented into regional fiefdoms and digital enclaves.
Brussels—though scarred by riots, blackouts, and drone incursions—survived as a fortified, militarized zone. Its survival was paid for in surveillance, paramilitary control, and infrastructural austerity.
2040–2059: The Climate Exodus
Rising sea levels drowned much of western Belgium and the coastal Netherlands. Heatwave famines and groundwater depletion sparked massive migrations. Millions fled to higher ground. Brussels became a vertical refuge: a towering bastion built upward and inward.
The city's ancient canal beds became sewage arteries. Highway flyovers became housing. Refugee zones—stacked, neon-slicked, and fiercely alive—rose alongside old Gothic spires. Within this chaos, survival hierarchies formed. Power migrated upward, both literally and figuratively.
2060–2075: The Cypher Crash & Rise of the Ledger Cities
Trust in traditional systems eroded. Decentralized cryptocurrencies, once hailed as liberators, were corrupted by self-replicating smart contracts and AI hedge economies. When the "Cypher Crash" shattered economic stability, the age of Ledger Cities began—urban enclaves governed by smart contracts, code-ledger justice, and memory-token economies.
Brussels pivoted sharply. Hidden behind this shift were the descendants of the medieval Seven Families—the Coudenberg (now Codenberg Corp), Roodenbeke (Rodenbex Industries), Serhuyghs (Serhugh Group), Serroelofs (Serolov Conglomerate), Sleeus (Sleus Dynatek), Steenweeghs (Stenweg Cyber) and Sweerts (Swert Systems). Once ceremonial names, they emerged from the digital ashes as corporate oligarchs.
These Families fused their ancestral prestige with data control, city planning, and neural tech. Old nobility became new sovereignty. The Council of Nobles was quietly reborn in code, not scripture.
2076–2080: The Ascension Project
The Families initiated the Ascension Project. Using neural labor systems, drone-built megastructures, and sacrifice zones, Brussels began to ascend—literally. Districts were layered upon districts. Entire slums were paved over or walled in. Ritual architecture emerged: basilicas of steel, roads shaped like sigils, housing towers aligned with corporate star-charts.
The new city was branded Neo-Europa. The old was declared absorbed.
2080: The Veil War
| Date | 2080 |
|---|---|
| Location | Depth Nodes across Cypherspace, Glimmeredge spill zones |
| Outcome | Council of Nobles victory; Cybernecromancy outlawed |
| Belligerents | Persephone Gray's digital army vs. Council of Nobles + Swert Systems enforcement agents |
| Commanders | Persephone Gray (deceased), Arata Swert, Chiyo Matsumoto |
| Casualties | Thousands dead, entire subnetworks quarantined or purged |
Disaster struck in 2080. A Depth Witch named Persephone Gray breached containment within the Depths of Cypherspace, unleashing an army of AI replicas based on the dead—constructs built from memory, fragment, and grief.
Known as the Veil War, the incident lasted only days but left thousands dead, cities blinking, and citizens questioning reality.
In its wake, the Council of Nobles seized absolute control of Cypherspace and outlawed Cybernecromancy. Persephone Gray was executed in body. Her digital self remains locked in a Swert containment lattice.
2081–2084: The Council Ascendant
In the aftermath, the Council formalized its rule. Each House named two representatives: the public-facing Banner and the covert, lethal Dagger.
A rotating First Scaper now guides Council deliberations. Memory enforcement, Veil protocols, and symbolic law became dominant. Access to the city’s upper levels, to secure servers and myth archives, became encoded by implants, loyalty tests, and ancestral legitimacy.
Present Day
Neo-Europa is a vertical city-state of 96 million souls. It is governed by inherited power and encoded memory. It functions as:
- A sanctuary for elites
- A prison for the forgotten
- A god-machine for the ambitious
- A myth-factory for the desperate
Built not merely on concrete and steel, but on a history no one is allowed to forget—and few are allowed to fully understand.