Calcium

Friday Night on Ninsei

The Sprawl

A colloquial name for the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (BAMA), a massive urban environment encompassing most of the eastern seaboard of the United States. It has been enclosed in several geodesic domes, maintaining its own climate with no real day/night cycle, and an artificial sky which is always grey. Although there are well secured regions of wealth within the Sprawl, a vast majority of inhabitants struggle to survive from day to day. However, advanced technology is ubiquitous and available to all, regardless of financial standing.

The Matrix

“The Matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,” says the voice-over, “in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks.” On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war fades behind a forest of mathematically generated ferns, demonstrating the spatial possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and warplanes. “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”

Simstim

If the cyberspace matrix is actually a drastic simplification of the human sensorium, at least in presentation, then Simstim is a gratuitous multiplication of flesh input. Full sensory simulation of another person, total passivity. Simstim programs are broadcasted live through celebrities for the enjoyment of millions of participants daily. The commercial stuff is edited of course, so if Tally Isham gets a headache in the middle of a segment, you won’t feel it.

Black Clinics

The Japanese have already forgotten more neurosurgery than the Chinese have ever known. The black clinics of Chiba are the cutting edge, whole bodies of technique supplanted monthly. The average human lifespan for the top 1% of income earners is one hundred and forty-six; the rich take yearly pilgrimages to Chiba where genetic surgeons reset the code of their DNA. Of course, human cloning is the prefered method of the ultra-rich to secure their hegemony, as long as they have to funds to leave the planet for places where such procedures are not yet outlawed.

Maas Biotech

Hosaka Corporation

Operation Screaming Fist

WWIII

Biochip

Microsofts

Friday Night on Ninsei

Meeting at The Hilton

By normal living standards, the room on the twenty-fifth floor of the Chiba Hilton is enormous. Ten meters by eight, half of a suite. A white Braun coffeemaker steams on a low table by the sliding glass panels that open onto a narrow balcony, and a silk futon rests next to a cyberspace terminal carved into the east wall. The decoration is an uneasy blend of Japanese traditional and sleek modern plastic, but everything seems to wear a subtle sheen in contrast to the backdrop of vast corporate arcologies beyond the windows.

Spoiler

You were all given the code to the door and may arrive in any order. If you want, you can provide a description of your character or even describe what they were doing before they arrived at the Hilton. You can interact with one another but don't go out onto the balcony.

Some of the relevant lore will be in the OOC tab at the top with more to come.

Character Creation

We're using GURPS 4th ed as well as the GURPS Cyberpunk module: mega.nz/#F!yxFxlD4I!CGTYsnTE_8XAmcJxd…

Character creation is complicated so I recommend that you begin soon. You'll be free to make changes to your character within the first week or two of posts.

Everyone starts out at 200 character points. You can spend no more than 100 points on attributes.

Friday Night on Ninsei

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.