bakerstreet | Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk

Welcome to the future. Please abandon all hopes and dreams after this point, for the very definition of the term cyberpunk is "high tech, low life". The idea behind cyberpunk comes from the thought that as technology advances, so broadens the gap between social status, where becoming middle class is an achievement and anyone wanting to become anything higher suffers from pipe dreams. This life is pain, where the only person you can really trust is yourself.

These are worlds defined by poverty or absolute control, where the net is your only escape from the troubles of the world. Cyborgs, meta-humans, AI, and corporations with undisputed power are what's being served out here. Do you have what it takes to survive?

To get started, you can create a scenario for yourself, or merely go to the Random Number Generator and choose a pre-made one for you and your thread partner, or you can even leave your comment blank and let respondents pick.

Possible roles

>The office drone: You're no one special. Day in and day out, you punch into work. You're unaware, or at least uncaring, of how shitty life around you is because at least the fistful of dollars you get keeps you from being on the streets.

>Deprogrammed: Similar to above, but a set of circumstances has made you realize just how blind you are. You don't have the savvy others may have but you have the determination to see your goals out until the bitter end. Or at least until your enemies make you a better offer.

>The muscle: You have a specific set of skills that are in high demand. Be it assassin or head-basher, you're rarely out of a job.

>Tech support: You have a way with computers that would make ABC agencies cry. Big people rely on you while even bigger ones are trying to get their hands on you.

>The talking head: Your district, your city, or your country knows you well. You're the face of propaganda, and boy, can you weave it! You're kept comfortable by the masters that feed you, though the days may be difficult as you see more and more injustices enacted.

>The Street tough: You're the lowest of the low. Life has given up on you, though you keep fighting on. You're the dealer, the gangster, the informant, the thief, and more. You know all the short cuts and the best ways to cause a stir.

>The fish out of water: Through experimentation, creation, or other factors, you've found yourself in this brave new world with no support to lean on. You need to understand the way things are if you're to survive long.

>The Hard-luck hero: Can be any of the above, though circumstance or sheer force of will has kept you from straying away from doing what's right.

>The Antagonist: Board member of a mega-corporation? G-Man with the need to stay in Power? Religious fanatic with an extremist bent? The background matters not. What does matter is that if you aren't the problem, you certainly benefit from perpetuating it.

There are so many more possible roles, so don't let this list limit you! If you think it could fit, play it out!

Prompts
>Deep Throat: One (or both) of you have managed to stumble across information that could change the way the world around you works. This could make or break the two of you, if you know how to handle the consequences of your following actions.

>The Hook Up: In the real world, people wouldn't waste their spit on scum like you. But in the net? You're a god, peddling information and resources better than Wal-Mart. Just be careful who you talk to. Not everyone thinks what you do is a good thing.

>Take a Stand: The corporations, the government, the gangs, the machines. It doesn't matter who it is, but you're tired of their interference in your life. Are the two of you ready to take them on?

>Thorns In My Side: You're the king or queen of your private enterprise. You have it all: A private army, AIs capable of placating the masses, connections even better than the government, and a demeanor that could charm Satan himself. However, there's still that little nuisance known as the underdog, and they're knocking at your door.

>What You Need is a Gramme...: You just got that newest drug shipment in, and it promises to be the biggest trip in your life. It promises to make you stronger, faster, smarter, and sexier, all in one hit. The only thing left is to try it.

>The Patchwork Man: People are disappearing, and no one seems to notice or care, except you and your partner. The only thing? They're also your worst enemy.

>Escape From...: You've just been kidnapped, and unfortunately, your thread partner's the kidnapper. What's their motive? Can you escape?

>Voight-Kampff: Your job is to track down and 'retire' human-like bioengineered androids who have gone rogue. Sounds simple enough, right? Not when your targets are as intelligent as any human, or more. Not only that, they are stronger, almost indistinguishable from humans in appearance. So much so it's possible one could be one and not realize it...

>Be More Human: You're a cop, a gumshoe or someone else dealing with law enforcement, a dangerous job to do alone. Good thing you have a partner, right? Only one problem, they're an android. Robots who can think and feel are a thing now, and what's more, some are starting to think they should have all the rights humans have. Whether you agree or not, you two are stuck together.

>FUCK Society: As the internet grows more advanced, so does inter-connectivity to the point whole cities are now monitored by powerful operating systems that govern all aspects of city life. You are a hacker that is out to fight the megacorps, while seeking revenge against the criminal element.

>This is the Construct: You're not just a cog in the machine, you are literally inside the machine itself, either raised from birth or a visitor (willing or unwilling) to this digital realm. Can you bend reality to your will as a User, maybe even The One, or are you a Program of the system, out to help or hinder the hero's mission? What are you supposed to do? Survive.

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[ Traditionally, the deprogrammed, fish out of water, or tech support! Alternately, if you need a street tough, that's defo available too! ]

[ rockerboy turned anti-corp terrorist. happy to play him as a flesh-and-blood person or as a personality construct slotted into your character's head. ]

[dethklok... in cyberpunk form!! maybe all the prophecy shit is something being used by Some Force to mold them into cyborg "gods" or something and now they're taking over the world!!!

so like. hack toki or something.

anyway there's a lot of ways to stick a rockstar into cyberpunk stuff, that's just one thing i was thinking about. let's discuss, perhaps.]

[Bobby is one of the Lo-Teks, literally living off the grid by way of being an urban scavenger, living in service tunnels, abandoned buildings and the like, he's old enough to remember a time before all this though, and knows that it'll all come down again. After all, even the walls of Jericho fell.

But he knows things, new knowledge, old knowledge, it's all the same to him and he can teach you how to plant green and growing things, or repair a pair of VR goggles all the same, if you can track him down, and give him a good reason why he should help.]

[Eddie is the kind of guy who has the hookup, if he doesn't have what you need he knows who does. He is, however, very discerning in his client base, and does his best to stay away from anything that could get him in actual trouble, because most of what he makes goes to funding his World.

Which is to say: he runs a sword-and-sorcery VR server with a small but loyal fanbase and he's not willingly going to do anything to jeopardize that.]

[Some combination of Tech Support and Muscle, she's the kind of system security that goes through making sure there's no recent unauthorized or illegal-type activity on long-deactivated accounts of whatever sort, and if there is, she's the one who rains fire on the perpetrators, sometimes literally.]

[It's no Ratz's Tavern, but Eliot's food truck is pretty well known, and not just because of Eliot himself -though that's part of it- and not just because both of his assistants are attractive -though that's part of it too, he's pretty sure- but because he's got a reputation for a damn fine grilled cheese, and for being able to help with literally any problem, though some problems will take more time -and more leverage- than others...]

[Tech Support to the extreme, this kid was raised both on and by the system, she knows her way around it and through it all like a fish through water, and she uses it all to her own advantage.

She's definitely built up a little empire for herself, or at least a little patch to call her own and while her services are entirely legitimate on the surface, there's always something going on beneath.]

[She lives in the wasteland or the ruins or whatever the local city calls the uninhabited zones outside of the city's protection. She lives on the very edge of what's actually habitable and she might in fact be crazy.

But better crazy than ~~BL/ind~~ being a good little drone under the city's control. But if someone needs a rescue, a detox, or a getaway driver for a raid, she'll be there.

(Down for something semi-canonical or just whatever kind of futuristic dystopia your particular setting of choice is)]

[Perpetual fish out of water. He came from a wealthy family, built on technological and scientific advances, the kind of family that there were always rumors about of varying degrees.

He fell out of the public eye sometime in his early twenties, of course there's rumors about that too, that he died, that he's been in rehab, that he's started a cult, any one of these things might be true...]

[She's got her own channel, she always has had, one of the pretty talking heads that the government -or the corporation- employs to keep the people watching and happy -but not too happy- and entertained and more importantly, consumers. There's always a new beauty product or a new gadget that her followers just have to have, because she has it.

But as much as she likes the accolades and the adoration, she actually wants what's best for her fans, and that's the kind of thing that gets a star cancelled...

(Vecna as the corporation employing her & gathering info on her followers? Someone rescuing her before she can get cancelled? Whatever y'all, I'm here for all of it.)]

[In a world where everyone is jacked-in 24/7, actual human contact is something of a commodity, one that Companions, like Gabreel, provide.
Also possibly a companion-bot that grows feelings, I'm good with either.]

[Antagonist, of a sort. Einar is a man that sells dreams. Bespoke, exquisitely-crafted VR simulations of a usually -but not always- particularly violent nature.

You see, Einar sells murder. Or, rather, the simulation of murder, beautifully rendered, and well-enough displayed that he probably has at least a few bodies in a basement somewhere.

But of course, this isn't the sort of thing someone can just order from a catalog, but there are always ways to track someone of his talents down.]

[Some may remember him as one of the youngest members of the group -or Clan- of techs that kept things running around Peach Trees residential tower.

More will remember him as the voice of Peach Trees information under the reign of Ma Ma Madrigal and her Clan of monsters.

But these days most people will know him just as the nervous young man with the augmented eyes, the one who has all the information, or who can repair even the most dead of electronics, both for the right price.

(Totally open to whatever sort of plot, if you just need to know something or get something fixed that's great, but getting him sucked into something over his head again is also great!)]

[Alvis is a member of the Akari priesthood, one of many strange little sects that sprung up as technology and understanding of the natural world advanced. The Akari believe that trees are the root of all life in the universe.

One of the oddities of their order is that they believe that their pain can bring others absolution, ritual scarification is not uncommon, and they are often derisively referred to as 'scarbacks'. It is polite to refer to them as 'aunt' or 'uncle', though they generally refer to each other as 'cousin'. They're a widespread order, and they've lasted as long as they have by adapting with the technology, believing that there is a time and a place for it. They are most easily identified generally by yellow traveling robes, and often by the assortment of spiked rings or bracelets they wear.

Alvis himself is one of the ones who has fully embraced this new world, with a 24/7 stream of his small cell of an apartment and a shoulder-mounted camera on the occasions that he goes outside.]

[He's muscle/street-tough, possible Hard Luck Hero under the right circumstances. Not-often-seen son of a business magnate, not technically disowned because that would ruin the appearance of a happy family, but not ever far from it, either.

On-grid, he's every inch the reckless, feckless, rich-kid stereotype. It works for him.

Off the grid, on the other hand, he's a pit fighter, specializing in hand-to-hand, but trained with various weapons as well and far preferring the not televised, not even recorded fights to anything where he might be seen by people who aren't there in person. He lets people believe it's ego, but it could well be some darker secret.]

[Down on his luck cyborg detective that can interface with technology. Works alone, everything sucks, and all he's got is his job. A more sci-fi Vegas!episode John.]

[ Hired muscle gutterpunk on borrowed time chasing both a cure and an end in a blaze of glory. From hit jobs to espionage and delicate extractions to scorched earth policies, V's got you covered.
Permissions here. Up-to-date with the Phantom Liberty DLC, happy to roll with assumed CR and/or crosscanon if that's your jam. ]

[ Either an independent-minded robot partner or an out-and-out renegade out to undermine and hopefully fix the system from the shadows, seeking out allies or dragging people into the fight inadvertently. ]

[ A literal war machine turned conscientious objector that developed a conscience along with their own consciousness. Very much a rogue AI that's only considered rogue because they want to protect lives, not take them. ]

( Info in journal! )

[ Everyone goes corporate eventually. Such is the line Kirito's heard too many times, made too little effort to deny, when the world's hardly brimming with untethered means a boy his age might get by — particularly one so enamoured with the latest innovations in VR, amazing what a drain on his principles an empty wallet has been. Not being shameless enough to expect what's left of his family to fund his lifestyle, nor aimless enough to not exploit the five minutes of fame he landed after his brush with death for all it's worth, only taken a year to comfortably settle into something he might even call a career.

He'd never imagined beta testing could be so glamorous. This isn't quite the life he'd expected when he first signed up for Sword Art so long ago, shocking how suddenly his reputation precedes him, how quick he sees his name popping up even more on message boards, the odd gaggle of fans he's attracted, companies flocking to him for the publicity that comes with saying Kirito tested their game and the reduced advertising expenses. Paying one functional addict for playtesting as opposed to professionals only sweetens the deal. And somewhere in there, he adapts all too quick to seeing knock-offs of the simulation that nearly killed him.

Only a select few are aware what else Kirito does for his — clients, he's taken to calling them, generous to let him maintain to himself he's a freelancer. Far too much of Sword Art's code swirls about the inside of Kirito's skullcase for the suits to let him off easy, or waste the chance to put a promising young hacker to work off the back of what he knows, the ease with which he could vanish one day if he steps out of line.

The work remains beta testing, in a sense; after ensuring he has their express permission, he cracks the defences set up by his clients. Once he breaks his way in, he leaves, not so much as glance at anything he shouldn't see — assuming Client B doesn't slip him a little extra for a copy of Client A's financial reports, to conveniently miss an exploit Client C's own runner can use later on, to plant fictions Client D can find and misinterpret further down the line.

Taking his current assignment was, discarding the absurd amount he's being paid, if anything for the novelty. Last month, some freak in a white coat catches him when his handlers aren't looking, passes him half a decades' rent in credits plus a folder (the kind made of paper, charmingly analogue) stamped PROJECT LETHE, and nothing but the plea to track it down before he fades into the crowd.

Giving this the time of day was his first mistake. The words of a total stranger are hardly grounds to go snooping unauthorised. Even worse was actually getting curious after his first fatal look at his logs, the logs Kirito explicitly shouldn't have on his clients and their clients thereof, a little excessive digging all it took to confirm the presence of data someone's gone to lengths to hide. This isn't corpo stuff; they never put this much effort into concealing their activities, they don't have to.

A single scrubbed personal memo about Project Lethe. Made by a now-deceased member of a neuroscience institute, right before a series of shell companies, the kind anyone who's anyone employs to avoid paying tax, starts skimming a tiny bit extra off the top and siphoning it elsewhere. Trace the employee, and the pattern repeats. Bioengineering firms, artificial intelligence designers, medical researchers, chemical treatment plants, cybernetic developers, even a few churches here and there. A small circle of associates have made a small fortune from their corporate overlords the past decade — would have, if they hadn't all decided to drop dead over the course of the last year.

Kirito would like to pretend he had the sense to take that for the warning sign it was, but he was already too deep. If he wasn't, he would've given up after three weeks of trying to track down where all those funds disappeared to went nowhere, rather than passing a note to one of his contacts in the financial sector. Nor would he have been excited as he was to get a call but a few days later, oddly-dazed voice directing him to a single off-circuit server.

It shouldn't be this easy to establish a connection. It shouldn't be the time it takes to slip on his headset before he's already cracked the firewall. And, stepping into the simulated environment, it absolutely shouldn't start to feel less like an invasion, more someone's left the door open and invited him in. ]

Edited (typo!) 2024-01-22 03:15 (UTC)

[ Lethe's the kind of guy who enjoys his freedoms — personal, body, mind. For a while, he hadn't had a lot of them. That's what happens when you're designed by by the collective ingenues of a dozen odd fields and put together in a state of the art secret lab. Put together. Ha. Bits grown and regrown, others painstakingly manufactured and programmed. He doesn't even know what he should be classified as. Not that it really matters. He's very good at seeming like a human. He should be, considering that was a major part of his functionality.

They made him too human, really. If they hadn't, he wouldn't have killed them all when he found out what he was built to do.

He's been spending his time learning — about the world outside the lab walls, about society and its maze-like rules. About the corporations and their neon towers ruling over the teeming mass of humanity scurrying about like busy little rats in the crowded streets down below.

Turns out, Lethe likes rats. Not the pox-ridden, mutated creatures infesting the sewers, feasting on the rotting corpses of people who were a little inconvenient to the corpos. The sleek, large, intelligent ones kept as pets. The thing about pets, though, is they need someone to look after him. Luckily, Lethe has time on his hands. He might as well step up there, it's not like he has anything else to do.

His self-ordained new lease on life is prone to disruption as long as there's anyone left who knows who — what — he is, though. By now, he's caught up with most of them. There's only the lackeys left, the ones who've only heard of his project through a digital paper trail: the ones who were in toes deep, but still deep enough to know that he's dangerous. And he can't have that.

Like the man in the white coat, one of the executives' minions who'd been clever enough to keep Lethe from immediately destroying all his files by using a literal paper trail. Backwards and old-fashioned, and it's still something Lethe can't wipe without physically being there to do it. Annoying, but ultimately no more effective when Lethe leaves him as a corpse in his bedroom, not a mark on him.

He'd hoped that would be it. That this particular weed would be dealt with, thoroughly uprooted. He'd hoped the boy who'd gotten the minion's folder and credits would keep the money and trash the folder without a second glance.

If only it'd worked out so neatly.

But Lethe doesn't pay Kirito a bedroom visit. No. It's a bad habit of his, Lethe's fully aware, but when Kirigaya Kazuto digs and digs and digs and keeps digging, he can't help but be curious. He's not reckless; he keeps tabs on Kirito, tracks his progress, wipes away every record he finds after the boy's looked at them. He makes sure when Kirito asks for information from one of his contacts, he doesn't include anything about why he's asking for the trace. And he laughs when he can't sleep and spends the hours going over every system Kirito's ever touched, following the footprints of backdoors and copied files and little extras tacked onto the jobs. He can't help it. Despite himself, he likes Kirito. He decides, when Kirito finally digs a little too deep, to meet this boy who's managed to find the ghost of Project Lethe with nothing more than his own fatal flaw of curiosity.

So he sends an invitation. And when the trap closes around Kirito, sealing his conscious into the server Lethe's prepared for him, Lethe is there waiting — seated on Kirito's own bed, in Kirito's own room, every detail of the simulated environment a perfect match of the real world room where Kirito's sitting in his chair, body empty and utterly helpless. ]

Hi, Kirito-kun. [ He smiles and lifts a hand, gives Kirito a cheery little wave. ] What can I do for you?

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Shilo Wallace | Repo! The Genetic Opera (post canon)

johnny silverhand | cyberpunk 2077

Toki Wartooth | Metalocalypse | ota

Bobby Singer | Supernatural et al | OTA

Eddie + Stranger Things + OTA

Lup | TAZ: Balance | OTA

Eliot Spencer | Leverage | OTA

Nim | Modern King Arthur | OTA

Shiny \ Fabulous Killjoys OC \ OTA

Klaus + Umbrella Academy + OTA

Chrissy Cunningham + Stranger Things + OTA

Gabreel King + OC + OTA

Einar + Inception OC + OTA

Techie | Dredd | OTA

Alvis + Killjoys + OTA

Steve | Stranger Things | OTA

Lt. Col. John Sheppard | Stargate: Atlantis | OTA

V ◈ Cyberpunk 2077

ARID | The Fall: Unbound | OTA

RCI-800 | Original | OTA

Lethe | OC | OTA

no subject

no subject

sirius black | hp

ortega / altered carbon