A cyberpunk text adventure where the job goes wrong properly
You lift memories out of the recently dead for people who pay not to be asked why. This time the mind you pulled belonged to somebody the city is still looking for, and now so are you.
No account, no card, nothing to install. The world's lore is already built, so it starts in seconds.
The city has to be able to say no
Corporations, fixers and the people who owe you are part of the world before your first turn, so leaning on a contact is measured against who that contact actually is. Burning a bridge burns it — the next scene does not quietly rebuild one because the story needed it.
The world
In the vertical sprawl of Kestrel City, freelance memory-runner Jin lifts a dead executive's neural backup—and finds a buried memory three megacorps will burn the district to erase.
Kestrel City is a hundred-story arcology of neon rain, black-market clinics, and corporate arcologies that own the air you breathe. Minds are data; data is power; and the line between human and hardware blurred decades ago.
Who is in it
- Mihara-Vance
- a biotech megacorp that monopolizes neural implants.
- The Wireless
- a decentralized crew of hackers and memory-runners.
- Sable Division
- corporate enforcers who handle problems that can't reach court.
Where you go
- The Undercity
- the sunless lower decks where the unaugmented poor scrape by.
- Spire Mihara
- the megacorp's mirrored arcology piercing the smog ceiling.
- Glitch Market
- a rotating black bazaar for stolen tech and stolen memories.
What already happened
- The Vance Erasure
- the executive's death and the memory that should not exist.
- The Blackout Riots
- the night Sable Division shut off power to the Undercity.
Who you can play
-
Jin Halversen Memory-runner
A jittery, brilliant data-thief who keeps his own past locked even from himself.
At the start: a freelancer holding data worth killing for.
-
Mara Okonkwo Ex-Sable fixer
A coldly efficient ex-enforcer trying to outrun the company that made her.
At the start: a hunted defector selling her skills to survive.
Or write your own character — the setup form takes a name, a background and what you are good at, and the game master works from that instead.
How a turn works
- You say what your character does, in your own words.
- What you attempted is weighed against your character sheet and the state of the scene — and the outcome is settled before the scene is written, so the part telling the story does not get to decide that you succeeded.
- The game master narrates what happened, grounded in the world's own characters, factions and places, and remembers it for the rest of the run.