It’s been 30 years since the bomb destroyed the City. Find out how Chiba Station has changed under the red sky of atomic debris. After the Fourth Corporate War, after the Day the Net was Broken, nothing has been the same. But all this hasn’t changed the desire that burns in each of us: to Live on the Edge again.
In CYBERPUNK LARP, we described a fascinating and terrible future; a dystopia where power and style meant everything. A brutal and merciless world, full of possibilities, that was living its “Roaring Twenties.”
Everything, however, ended with the Fourth Corporate War and the “DNB,” the day the NET was broken, as the Runners call it, leading to the equivalent of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Now, in 2049, under a red sky, the world is beginning to recover the glories of yesteryear.
The great MegaCorps of 2020, with such power as to ignore all law and authority, no longer exist. However, dozens of NeoCorps are already rising to the task and filling the power gap left by the MegaCorps of old.
On the other hand, the City is beginning to get its primary services back on its feet, while various groups aim to take a slice of power in the new City Council.
And amid all this, a project to search the old City Center has been approved.
But the decades-old rubble now hides forgotten secrets that perhaps should not be rediscovered.
(The remainder of this page contains all the information you’ll need to fully enjoy Reloaded! If nevertheless you’d like to know more of the background of the previous chapter, you can head over to https://cyberpunk-eng.prox-ima.it/setting.php)
If you ask around, maybe you’ll find someone that remembers what the world was like in 2020.
Ah, those were the days… I remember a guy calling them “The Roaring Twenties.”
The MegaCorps, with such power as to ignore all law and authority.
The Gangs, in their eternal struggle over the Sprawl, steel and flesh clashing almost every day.
The promise of Technology, pushing further every day, redefining what Man could achieve.
And then? Well, Choom. Then the inevitable happened.
A terrifying clash between the three major MegaCorps of the time:
Nakada, Ambrosia, and Zyodine.
The conflicts were limited at first as simple acts of sabotage – but then began to escalate in intensity, in a spiral of destruction that claimed millions of lives.
Dozens of industrial complexes around the world were annihilated, and whole city blocks were attacked. Without even knowing what’s happening. Just to determine who will get the fucking monopoly of a market.
And it all ended with “The Bomb”.
If you ask three people about the history of the Bomb, you will get five different versions. In essence, no one really knows what really happened. Someone talks about an inside-job, someone says it was a cluster of nukes. Some nutjobs talk about a gigantic tungsten pylon launched with pinpoint accuracy from a secret satellite.
What everyone agrees on, however, is that the explosion ended the Fourth Corporate War.
In the span of seconds, the attack pulverized more than 40 percent of the City’s blocks.
In addition, it caused the liquefaction of the soil substrate on which the City had been built.
Oh, yes, the explosion also additionally generated a tidal wave AND an earthquake, which further brought the city to its knees.
Those Corpo-shits don’t really pull their punches when they want to obliterate something.
Yes, in cyberpunk we don’t miss a thing.
It was a catastrophic event that redefined the very concept of the City.
It has become customary to refer to anything prior to that explosion as the “pre-Bomb” times, an era considered almost mythical. Objects and artifacts built before the Bomb, which survived the War and the raids, are considered to be of the highest value, and believed to be capable of working technological miracles.
In addition, in 2035 (specifically March 20) the DNB, or “Day the Net was Broken,” occurred. A system crash hit the entire global network, leading to the collapse of all forms of communication, the resetting of untold numbers of digital systems, and the permanent erasure of exabytes of data, information and records.
You want to know what happened exactly? Find the closest Runner you know, and ask them this question. After they have stopped hiding under some table at the mere hearing of the DNB, they’ll give you their crazy theory.
Data, information and records burned, further bringing reconstruction efforts to their knees.
Some legends speak that remnants of the DNB still exist, in subsectors of the old NETWORK that remained operational – ready to spread again if they were reopened. Every Runner has learned to live with the specter of the DNB.
It is now 2049. Under a sky still littered with the debris of the atomic bombings from the Corporate War, slowly the City has managed to get back on its feet.
The NETWORK is being slowly reloaded. Its infrastructure has been forever changed; instead of the open and inter-connected system of the past, nowadays the network is fragmented into autonomous sub-sectors. Massive firewalls have been placed to quarantine areas of the old NET, a realm where only madmen with a death wish dare to venture.
The social situation is, to use a kind term, dramatic. The destruction of the city blocks due to the Bomb has created a housing problem that is yet to be solved. Millions of people live in filthy megalopolises on the edge of the City, hoping that those who promised the construction of new housing blocks will keep their promises. You can guess for yourself if they actually did.
The supply of food and basic necessities is still lacking. The giant crop fields in the Nemolands have been left to their own devices; only a few adventurous bands of Nomads manage from time to time to venture there, bringing back decades-old food bars to the City.
As if that were not enough, pollution and destruction of the ecosystem have caused a breeding problem. It has become increasingly rare for humans to be born free of genetic defects. Have you heard rumors of a black market of newborn babies, declared dead at birth only to be sold to new parents in exchange for a little fortune?
Choom, you can imagine for yourself how much truth there is.
In their generosity, Neo-Corps have found a solution to these problems, called “the arcologies.”
To face the impending social crisis, apartment complexes comprising thousands of housing units, were modified in a series of Arcologies: self-sustaining housing complexes with everything humans need to survive and thrive.
Houses, malls, arcade rooms, shops of every kind, medical facilities – even gardens and hydroponic cultures.
Everything inside a single towering structure.
In order to make space for these buildings, the City Council has approved the project to rebuild the old City Center, using the decades-old rubble as raw material.
Neo-Corps promised that Archologies will provide housing for all. Well, this is cyberpunk, you know what to do with corpo-shit promises.
Our story takes place in one of these structures, one built on the outskirts of the old City Center, by a renewned NeoCorp that seems to be the City Council’s favorite: GANOVA. On the exterior, much work is being done to continue to remind us all how this NeoCorp has been among those most toiling to get the city back on track.
And yet, under the surface, another truth may be hiding. Many are already competing for who can get their hands on the secrets hidden below dozens of meters of reinforced concrete and thick firewalls of the Old City Center. For the common folk, Chiba Station is a legendary place, the tales of what happened there too strange and unbelievable to be taken for true. Should we witness what lies beyond them or try to keep them closed, to keep whatever slept behind them imprisoned forever?
Well, Choom. You already know the answer.
THIS IS CYBERPUNK.