Introduction
The year is [...]. Your real world location is Chiba City, by Tokyo Bay in the Kanto District of south-central Honshu, Japan. Chiba is a magnet for the Sprawl’s techno-criminal subcultures, notorious for its shadowland of black medicine and Body Shops. Criminal activity in Chiba is a constant subliminal hum, and death is the punishment for laziness, carelessness, lack of grace, or the failure to heed to the demands of the intricate protocol. At one end of the city is the towering hologram logo of Fuji Electric, dominating the skyline over the high-tech zone. At the other end is the Chiba Spaceport, gateway to the orbital colonies of Freeside and Zion Cluster.
Friday Night on Ninsei
“It’s not like I’m using,” you hear someone say, as you shoulder your way through the crowded street. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke.
You pass yakatori stands and massage parlors, a franchised coffee shop called Beautiful Girl, the electronic thunder of an arcade. You step out of the way to let a dark-suited sarariman by, spotting the Mitsubishi-Genentech logo tattooed across the back of the man’s right hand. Was it authentic? If that’s for real, you think, he’s in for trouble. If it wasn’t, served him right. M-G employees above a certain level are implanted with advanced microprocessors that monitor mutagen levels in the bloodstream. Gear like that would get you rolled in Night City, rolled straight into a black clinic.
The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd is a gaijin crowd. Groups of sailors up from the port, tense solitary tourists hunting pleasures no guidebook listed, Sprawl heavies showing off grafts and implants, and a dozen distinct species of hustler, all swarming the street in an intricate dance of desire and commerce.
There were countless theories explaining why Chiba City tolerated the Ninsei enclave, some tending toward the idea that the Yakuza might be preserving the place as a kind of historical park, a reminder of humble origins. But there was also a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn’t there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself.
Six days ago you were contacted by a reputable fixer - a niche member of Night City’s criminal ecology - someone with the resources and contacts to assemble teams of reliable operators for expensive clientele. The information had been delivered to you in person, wrapped in an innocuous square of origami paper and stamped with a scarlet seal. Inside: a small, self corrupting data packet which read out a simple message when chipped into your mobile. You still remember the room number, time and date, as well as the long string of zeros which your potential employer promised to put up as payment - the kind of sum that a year before would have seemed ludicrously impossible. Ahead of you the holographic logo of the Hilton Hotel is framed against a darkened sky, like a beacon, distorting in the poisoned rain.
The year is [...]. Your real world location is Chiba City, by Tokyo Bay in the Kanto District of south-central Honshu, Japan. Chiba is a magnet for the Sprawl’s techno-criminal subcultures, notorious for its shadowland of black medicine and Body Shops. Criminal activity in Chiba is a constant subliminal hum, and death is the punishment for laziness, carelessness, lack of grace, or the failure to heed to the demands of the intricate protocol. At one end of the city is the towering hologram logo of Fuji Electric, dominating the skyline over the high-tech zone. At the other end is the Chiba Spaceport, gateway to the orbital colonies of Freeside and Zion Cluster.
Friday Night on Ninsei
“It’s not like I’m using,” you hear someone say, as you shoulder your way through the crowded street. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke.
You pass yakatori stands and massage parlors, a franchised coffee shop called Beautiful Girl, the electronic thunder of an arcade. You step out of the way to let a dark-suited sarariman by, spotting the Mitsubishi-Genentech logo tattooed across the back of the man’s right hand. Was it authentic? If that’s for real, you think, he’s in for trouble. If it wasn’t, served him right. M-G employees above a certain level are implanted with advanced microprocessors that monitor mutagen levels in the bloodstream. Gear like that would get you rolled in Night City, rolled straight into a black clinic.
The sarariman had been Japanese, but the Ninsei crowd is a gaijin crowd. Groups of sailors up from the port, tense solitary tourists hunting pleasures no guidebook listed, Sprawl heavies showing off grafts and implants, and a dozen distinct species of hustler, all swarming the street in an intricate dance of desire and commerce.
There were countless theories explaining why Chiba City tolerated the Ninsei enclave, some tending toward the idea that the Yakuza might be preserving the place as a kind of historical park, a reminder of humble origins. But there was also a certain sense in the notion that burgeoning technologies require outlaw zones, that Night City wasn’t there for its inhabitants, but as a deliberately unsupervised playground for technology itself.
Six days ago you were contacted by a reputable fixer - a niche member of Night City’s criminal ecology - someone with the resources and contacts to assemble teams of reliable operators for expensive clientele. The information had been delivered to you in person, wrapped in an innocuous square of origami paper and stamped with a scarlet seal. Inside: a small, self corrupting data packet which read out a simple message when chipped into your mobile. You still remember the room number, time and date, as well as the long string of zeros which your potential employer promised to put up as payment - the kind of sum that a year before would have seemed ludicrously impossible. Ahead of you the holographic logo of the Hilton Hotel is framed against a darkened sky, like a beacon, distorting in the poisoned rain.