Cythos
Twelve million people under a roof of ad screens. Born owing, chromed on credit. Get chrome. Get paid. Get out.
- Cyberpunk
- Megacity
- Netrunners
- Chrome
- Gigs
- Debt
cyberpunk 1 membreCréé par Worldtable
Twelve million people stacked under a roof of ad screens, in a city where it never really gets dark. Forty years ago Cythos went bankrupt and its creditors bought it: five corporations don't run the city, they own it, and the police are a subscription. Everyone is born owing, and chrome is how you get ahead. Chrome comes on credit, a missed payment brings the repo crew, and every piece takes a little of your feeling with it. Fixers sell gigs to anyone hungry enough; clean work builds street cred, and cred opens better fixers and better gigs. Get chrome. Get paid. Get out, if anyone ever does.
Là où tout a commencé
the Default
Forty years ago Cythos could not pay its bonds. The creditors went to court, and the court sold the city to them: the transit, the water, the air filters, the police, the streets themselves. Five corporations hold the deeds today, and their board, the Receivership, sits where the council used to. Every citizen's share of the old city debt became a personal account on the Ledger, opened at birth. Nobody alive has seen the city out of debt.
Les terres
Histhos
the Spires
the corporate spires above the ad-screen roof, where executives never touch the street
Histhos is the Spires, the part of Cythos above the roof of ad screens, where it is sunny on days the rest of the city never sees the sun. The five corporations keep their towers here, joined by skybridges, with private gardens nobody below has walked in and executives who go from flyer pad to boardroom to flyer pad without ever touching the street. Every gate reads your Ledger before it opens, and every resident has Walczak Gold.
Sokcheon
the Stacks
housing blocks a hundred floors tall, with a whole life on every floor
Sokcheon is the Stacks: housing blocks a hundred floors tall, each one a town with a whole life on every floor (markets, clinics, schools, crews and gossip), joined by skybridges and stacked so close that the lower floors never see daylight. People are born, work and die in the same block, and a floor's committee is more feared than the police. Lately the repo agents who go up into the Stacks don't all come down.
Ivrecia
the Night Market
the low city of markets and workshops, where you can buy a new eye or sell an old one
Ivrecia is the Night Market: low-rise Cythos, spreading south from the Stacks to the sea wall in markets, garages, workshops and shrines to dead Feed stars. Its night markets fill six-storey parking structures, and you can buy a new eye there, or sell an old one. Nothing is zoned, everything is for sale, and the crews who run its streets are the closest thing it has to a government.
Ndiria
the Docks
container port, repo yards and beached hulks on the east shore, where vatborn crews work the cranes
Ndiria is the Docks: the east shore's container port, where vatborn crews work cranes ten storeys high, beached container ships have become markets and squats, and the licensed repo crews keep their yards, full of other people's chrome. Anything that comes into Cythos off the manifest comes through a dockers' crew first.
Vorodia
the Dead Zone
whole blocks blacked out in the northern hills, where the corporations' cameras don't reach
Vorodia is the Dead Zone: whole blocks of the northern hills blacked out, where the corporations' cameras don't reach. No Ledger readers on the doors, no Walczak, no grid power: generators, candles and stolen current. It is where you go to vanish, to buy what has no serial number, to hire a netrunner nobody can trace, and to dig the Heap for chrome.
Al Dhalna
the Sump
the flooded district by the broken sea wall, abandoned on paper and full of people anyway
Al Dhalna is the Sump: the old harbour city behind the broken sea wall, flooded when the wall failed and written off by the Receivership. It is abandoned on paper and full of people anyway, in drowned streets lit by stolen power, and it is where you go for cheap chrome, unlicensed surgery, and people who don't want to be found.
Qui tu peux être
Human
The people of Cythos: descendants of every port, war and boom that ever brought workers to the bay, mixed for generations. Most live in the Stacks and around the Night Market, work two jobs, and carry some chrome: an eye, a hand, a jack behind the ear, a heart that runs on a battery. They are quick-talking, tired, funny and practical, and every one of them was born owing. Best at: getting by, talking their way through, and whatever their trade is.
Vatbornrare
People grown to adulthood in Maeda Somatics' vats in eighteen months, as contract labour for the docks and the deep floors. They come out tall, strong and healthy, with grey-flecked eyes, no navel and a company code tattooed inside the left wrist, and they come out owing: the cost of their own growing, the Growth Debt, is on their Ledger from their first day. A court made them citizens twenty years ago; it did not cancel the debt. Many are still paying; some ran into the Dead Zone; a few have paid off and wear their wrist codes crossed out in red. Vatborn learn fast, remember everything they were taught in the tank and very little of being children, and they stick together. Best at: hard physical work, endurance, learning a trade quickly, and keeping a promise.