Humans are no longer alone—they are just one of the five major subspecies of Homo sapiens. Known collectively as metahumanity, each of the five metatypes — dwarf, elf, human, ork, and troll—are more or less evenly distributed ethnically, though populations tend to congregate geographically across the globe for various reasons. Though humans retain the majority, each of the others comprises a significant percentage of the worldwide population.

The first metatypes to appear were dwarfs and elves born during the first wave of UGE (Unexpected Genetic Expression) in 2011. Orks and trolls appeared ten years later, during the period of “Goblinization,” when many humans suddenly transformed. Now a half century past the Awakening, goblinization is exceedingly rare, occurring only to humans, usually during puberty.

In 2075, most metahumans are born to parents of the same metatype. In the case of mixed parents, the child has a roughly even chance of being born as the metatype of either the father or themother. There are no “half-breeds” in the Sixth World — no elf-orks or dwarf-trolls, no matter how amusing the concept may be.

Many first and second generation orks and trolls—especially those who goblinized—died young, indicating the relatively low lifespan of these metatypes. The early dwarfs and elves are still around, however, many of them showing little sign of aging. Lifespans for all metatypes are on the rise, which scientists partially ascribe to gene therapy and leonization (anti-aging treatments) and partially to improvements in social acceptance—leading to better medical treatment, living situations, and other quality of life measures. Few countries, however, factor the SINless into their average lifespan statistics — after all, how could they? — and thus official figures may be especially misleading, as orks and trolls are statistically more likely to be SINless than the other metatypes.

The SIN, or System Identification Number, can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Without one, it’s very difficult to do otherwise simple things like rent an apartment, buy a car, or check into a hotel. With one, however, the system can track almost every move you make—what you buy, where you go, what you connect to on the Matrix.

Technically, everybody is supposed to have a SIN (it’s illegal not to), but in reality, many people don’t. Some had them erased; some lost them when the Matrix went down in ’64 and getting a new one was too much of a hassle; some never had one at all because their births were never recorded. The SINless, as they’re called, tend to operate outside the system and have a hard time doing anything legitimately, since not having a SIN marks you as either an alien or a person subject to lesser rights.

Of course, the best of both worlds for shadowrunners is to have one—but not their own. Underground services for setting up fake SINs are in high demand, and there’s no shortage of customers. Some runners even maintain more than one fake SIN, corresponding to one or more false identities based in different cities and even different countries. If one is discovered, the runner simply dumps it and picks up another.

Be careful, though—if the cops arrest you and you don’t have a SIN (or you have one that doesn’t match up), they’ll assign you a “criminal SIN,” which has significantly fewer rights and privileges than a regular one.

In 2075, the new wireless Matrix has replaced the old wired variation going from virtual reality to augmented reality in the processes. That’s not to say that you can’t still go for the full-immersion experience, but AR has proven itself to be more practical in most situations. Most people by now have embraced the new technology, to the point where even the poorest sprawl denizens are likely to have commlinks that connect them to the Matrix on a constant basis. What this means is that everybody’s wired (or, rather, wireless) and everybody’s connected. In the world of a shadowrunner things are a little different. Corps controlling the development and the secuirty measure therefore within the new wireless Matrix, are very keen about not letting in intruders. So to actually break into most system you still to get a decker into the mainframe and plug himself in to really get the dirty work done.

Magic ain't something you learn, but something you are born with. In the wonderful world of 2075 it comes in four distinctive flavors: mages, adepts, shamans, and technomages. Mages are your standard wizard type to control their mojo they learn spells and read shit from books, part flying by the seat of your pants and part a deliberate and calculated science. Adepts are kinda like mages but more like the folks you grew up watching in your cartoons. They hone not just the mind but the body learning to channel mojo that must of them call ki to augmented their physical abilities. If you ever wanted to see some bloke roundhouse kick another man's jaw clean off well you are in for a show. Shamans mix up the old faiths and mysticism rather than running on knowledge, they run on instinct. Shamans draw most of their power from pacts they form with spirts, demons and the like channeling their power through them typically in the way of fetishes, small totem-like objects connected to said spirits and used to channel their power. Technomages are the newest of the bunch. These fellas are strange they have something of a deep-set connection to the Matrix and are able to 'enter' it without the need of any equipment, instead they just sorta make their souls into 1s and 0s. Deckers either end up hating them or loving them for their added skilset some seeing them as a threat to their business market and others a useful collaborator to take on bigger jobs.

tl;dr version: A rather dangerous and large megacorp controlled by the great dragon Lofwyr. If you take a job against them you better well cover your tracks or the wrath of the gods will fall upon you soon enough.

Saeder-Krupp's history, like most megacorporations, begins long before it's current incarnation. In this case, it all begins in Germany during World War II.

After World War II, the Quandt family practically resurrected BMW and turned it into one of the largest transnational corporations in the world. In 2010, shortly after Michel Beloit wrested control from the Quandt family, BMW underwent a massive campaign of diversification.

Beloit was able to gain control of BMW thanks to the corporate warring between themselves and Keruba International. It's rumoured that Keruba International even went so far as to hire a mercenary team to assassinate several member of the Quandt family during a private wedding in Munich. This break down of the chain of command allowed Beloit to swoop in, undercut the Quandts, and seize control of the company.

Under Beloit's firm hand BMW was able to acquire and merge with Fatima Petrochemicals, Saeder Munitionis, and the German industrial conglomerate Thyssen-Krupp which had more than 600 subsidiary companies. This extended BMW's reach well into the Asian, Middle Eastern, and Africa. It also allowed BMW to join the Inter-Corporate Court (ICC) in 2012, with which came the right to extraterritoriality.

BMW kept up it's conflict with Keruba International for the next twenty years. Though nothing like the initial fighting that spurred on the formation of the ICC. This war allowed them to develop a light armored transport vehicle that they then sold several times over to the European Union, netting them a mint in the process and driving their stock price higher.

In 2032, Michel Beloit died under unknown circumstances. Many believe that the Great Western Dragon Lofwyr was behind Beloit's death, but it has never been proven. Regardless, Beloit's dutiful wife Willhelmina Graff-Beloit, assumed control of BMW after her husband's death and proved quite adept at the running of the company. Despite the opposition her fiver year reign as CEO was quite successful. During her tenure, Lofwyr was working behind the scenes through shell companies and proxies to continue purchasing up all the available stock he could lay his claws on.

According to eyewitnesses, on that fateful day in 2037 Lofwyr entered into the boardroom in his metahuman form, announced that he owned 63% of S-K. Then promptly shifted into dragon form and asked the board if anyone had any questions. He then proceeded to vote himself President and CEO, and kicked Graff-Beloit off of the board.
Graff-Beloit tried to fight back through the Corporate Court. And when that failed, she tried to find justice in her own way, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Her team of mercenaries sent to assassinate Lofwyr were returned to her. And as the story goes, the great dragon was so impressed with her nerve and resolve he let that one attempt slide. Though he did warn her personally that if she tried again she would pay with her life. Beloit-Graff fell into obscurity after that, only making blips on the radar when she moved to the Zurich-Orbital Habitat (Z-O) in 2050, and with her death from a stroke on January 25th, 2063.

Lofwyr restructured BMW to form Saeder‑Krupp, a private megacorporation fully owned by himself, and relocated the corporate headquarters to Essen in the Rhine-Ruhr Megaplex. This corporate HQ became the major division listed above: Saeder-Krupp Primer. Also known as the lair of the Great Dragon himself.

Once the restructuring was completed, Lofwyr went to work and over the next decades he brought large sections of European, Middle Eastern, and Russian businesses under the S-K umbrella by leveraging S-K's profits in steel production and arms manufacturing from the EuroWars. His main targets were the heavy industry market, oil production facilities, mining operations, automotive and aerospace companies, computer electronics producers, software manufacturing, robotics, and information technology oriented companies.

Before long with these acquisitions, S-K had set itself up as one of the leading Matrix Service Provider for Europe. Lofwyr took advantage of it's ubiquitous presence to obtain contracts to build and maintain the Matrix infrastructure throughout Europe, parts of Asia Minor, and the Middle East.

Lofwyr also invested heavily into the energy, banking, and high-finance sectors. This was a brilliant play to supply S-K an unlimited amount of credit to draw upon in the future. It pretty much bankrolled S-K's expansion policies and helped in the sabotage of companies they were interested in acquiring. Throughout the '50s S-K climbed slowly to the top of the pile until they became the single largest corporation in the world in 2054.

It's not like S-K wasn't without enemies though. During their dominance in the '50s several banking institutions tried their best to fight back against the corporation. But to no avail. Even when other companies were reeling and trying to hold on with the demise of Fuchi in 2059, S-K was able to remain strong. Lofwyr advanced a plan involving "satellite companies" with no known ties to S-K and swallowed up some of the banks that were trying to bring S-K down just years before, most prominently a multinaational conglomerate of Swiss banks call Schweizer Bankenverein.

In the 2060s S-K lobbyists helped push an economic initiative involving co-operation from both European governments and the corporations of Europe. This initiative called the New European Economic Community (NEEC) was publicly pushed by Zeta-ImpChem, the Frankfurt Bank Association, Hildebrandt-Kleinfort-Bernal, and Erika. But as history has shown it was really a vehicle for S-K to expand.

S-K even managed to come out of the Crash 2.0 relatively unscathed. Apparently from word go when building the Matrix infrastructure, Lofwyr had installed failsafes to protect corporate nodss and computer systems. These failsafes were put to good use, and allows S-K to keep a majority of their data safe. Without the loss of data, they were able to get back up and running as if nothing had ever happened in almost no time.

The European governments weren't too thrilled with Lofwyr's plan, but considering he had saved the economy of Europe from certain disaster they had to admit it wasn't the worst thing that could've happened. Many even went a step further and showed their thanks in the form of economic concessions to S-K.

Many economists believed that S-K would use the Crash 2.0 to dramatically expand their economic empire. But so far this has not been the case. They have instead been quietly selling off their least profitable companies, and buying up this and that with little to no fanfare.

Their largest expansion has been into the Native American Nations market. To date their largest success stories have been those in the Sioux and Salish-Shidhe Council lands. But it hasn't all been good. The Tir's new government seems to be distrustful of the former Tir Prince.