TEXT: NOVEMBER
  METRIC
  NOVEMBER
  METRIC
  
  THE SPRAWL: 
  NOVEMBER 
  METRIC
  A  SETTINGS  EXPANSION
  
  The Sprawl: November Metric v1.0
  Writing // Hamish Cameron, Kira Magrann, Morgan Davie, Benjamin Kouppi,  
    Rach  Shelkey, Kyrie Culp, Dana Cameron, Khelren, Oh SeungHan 
  Editing // Hamish Cameron and Dana Cameron
  Original The Sprawl Layout and Graphic Design // Aaron Brown
  Settings Expansion Layout and Interior Art // Dana Cameron
  Cover Art // Vira Sakhniuk
  ISBN: 
  My thanks to the Kickstarter Backers
  © 2017 Hamish Cameron
  
  PRELOADING... 
  /////////////////////  
  NOVEMBER METRIC
  CONTENTS
  WELCOME TO YOUR NEW SPRAWL 
  Hamish Cameron 
  TANGAROA ARCOLOGICAL ISLANDS       [PACIFIC OCEAN] 
  00001
  Kira Magrann
  LONG DARK CLOUD
  [NEW ZEALAND] 
  00007
  Morgan Davie
  BRUXELLES, MA BELLE
  [BRUSSELS] 
  00023
  Benjamin Kouppi
  THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE
  [TORONTO] 
  00043
  Rach Shelkey
  THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN                      [NEW ORLEANS] 
  00057
  Kyrie Culp
  CYBERKITTENS: PROJECT BAKENEKO 
  00065
  Dana Cameron
  AFRICAN CHROME
  [LAGOS] 
  00077
  Benjamin Kouppi
  LA RUINE LUMIÈRE
  [PARIS] 
  00093
  Khelren
  CYBERKITTENS: OPERATION PEWPEW 
  00111
  Dana Cameron
  MIAMI ICE
  [FLORIDA] 
  00121
  Benjamin Kouppi
  EBUK STYLE
          [NORTH KOREA] 
  00131
  Oh SeungHan
  FREEWAYTOWN
  [LOS ANGELES] 
  00139
  Hamish Cameron 
  
  NOVEMBER METRIC
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  PRELOADING...
  WELCOME TO YOUR NEW SPRAWL
  Cyberpunk is rooted in places and locations. Gibson’s BAMA sprawl, Effinger’s 
  Budayeen, the Los Angeles’ of Blade Runner, Elysium or Snow Crash, Ghost in the
  Shell’s New Port City, and “The City” of Spider Jerusalem all evoke specific and varied 
  visions of a dystopian future urban sprawl. These protagonists leave their sprawls to 
  accentuate the contrast between those dirty high density environments and the wider 
  world. Sometimes that world beyond is space of refuge from the pressures and dangers 
  of the sprawl, sometimes it is a utopian vision of an alternative “natural” world, some-
  times it is a bleak and unforgiving extension of the same dangers, home to alternative 
  sprawls—static, mobile, orbital, digital. Is the sprawl a place to be avoided if possible, 
  a hostile aberration in a natural world, or is it a place to be, a high-tech space of action 
  and excitement?
  Cyberpunk sprawls always exist in relation to other sprawls. The cyberpunk world 
  is a global world, united by the political maneuvers of corporations, governments, 
  organizations and ultra-wealthy individuals. Most of the inhabitants of these sprawls 
  live relatively static lives, embedded in the tapestry of their neighbourhoods, but 
  corporate and freelance operatives go where the money is, where the jobs are, where 
  the action is. Global communications networks make intercontinental communication 
  trivial. Sub-orbital flights make intercontinental travel fast.
  Your sprawl is an important character in your game. The Sprawl isn’t just a reference to 
  Gibson, it’s a pointer towards the importance of place in your game. When you dream 
  cyberpunk dreams in preparation to play The Sprawl (as an MC or as a player), think 
  about places and spaces, not just as spaces of action or cool genre-reinforcing visuals, 
  but for how they reflect or contrast the themes of your game and your character(s).
  In assembling a team of sprawls, I wanted new visions of new places. In assembling a 
  team of writers, I wanted new perspectives from new creators. The twelve settings in 
  this volume take the inequalities and tensions of the present and extrapolate them to 
  imagine a dystopian cyberpunk future of oppression and resistance. The nine authors 
  (from France, New Zealand, Canada, Korea, as well as the United States) showcase 
  something of the global flavour of cyberpunk. Writers from four continents writing 
  about places on five continents (and one ocean). I’ll do better next time.
  I did not apply a universal format or length to the chapters, nor did I mandate any 
  overarching thematic considerations. I wanted the writers to give me their vision of a 
  cyberpunk future in a place they knew well. If this results in a jarring experience for 
  you, dear reader, as you transition between styles, language, format and typographi-
  cal conventions, then you will have experienced something of the cultural dissonance 
  of a global cyberpunk world. Mission accomplished.
  Time to get paid.
  
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  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////LOCATION.DETECTED////
  LAT: 12.514983
  LONG: -136.071513
  Z: -34.7
  TANGAROA
  ARCOLOGICAL
  ISLANDS
  
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  Out in the vast Pacific, located roughly between Polynesia and the US, is the Tangaroa 
  Arcology. A collaboration between eccentric Seattle biotech magnate Eric Reed and 
  brilliant New Zealand architect Mahina Sheppard, the Tangaroa is the first city to live 
  on the water. The Arcology began simply as just one geodesic dome, but over time 
  its structure grew to become a series of interconnected island domes that sprawl out 
  to nearly the size of Japan. The unique multicultural diversity of the islands, paired 
  with visionary scientists and artists, make the Tangaroa a hub for new biological and 
  culturally relevant technologies. Consisting of inhabitants like bioengineers, medical 
  researchers, architects, financial opportunists, marine biologists, tourists, and  
  musicians, the Tangaroa Arcological Islands have become more than just an ocean  
  experiment; they’re a technological wonder and a radical way of life. The people who 
  live here feel drawn to the sea in ways their land dwelling brethren cannot compre-
  hend. The Tangaroans are connected to the sea in both physical and insubstantial 
  ways.
  The Arcology itself is now nearly a century old. Its main generator, Leviathan, runs 
  on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) to derive energy from the ocean’s 
  perpetual motion. The technology is famous for providing abundant pollution-free 
  energy. Fresh water is available from desalination tanks that populate the vast city. 
  Leviathan, designed and constructed by the legendary Eric Reed himself, is also an 
  Artificial Intelligence that acts on Tangaroa’s best interests for survival and growth. 
  About ten years after its construction, new domes began popping up constructed of 
  the same coral based nanobiometal the original dome was made out of. Not long after 
  these domes started appearing, Reed disappeared, leaving the city’s top scientists to  
  speculate about where the domes came from. Many presume it is Leviathan, modifying 
  the Island for optimal water intake. New domes pop up every few months. Marine life, 
  especially whales, dolphins, and octopi, are all particularly drawn to Leviathan, and, 
  although the science can’t parse it, their behavior indicates communication with the 
  AI. Local legend tells it that those who listen carefully to Leviathan can hear it whisper 
  all the secrets of the sea in warm watery hums and that Reed himself can sometimes 
  be seen sadly gazing into the machine.
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  TANGAROA
        ARCOLOGICAL
                               ISLANDS
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00003/00150 COMPLETE
  Tangaroan culture is centered mainly on two things: music and biomedicine. Discover-
  ies of the valuable mineral E35 mined from the ocean floor beneath the Arcology and 
  breakthroughs in biotechnology with the aid of local marine life DNA made the city 
  attractive to investors and transhumanists. The acoustic mysteries of the ocean have 
  been heavily researched and help shape the cultural flair and living conditions on the 
  arcology.
   Many of the residents modify their bodies in extreme ways to live on and near the water. 
  Some become much like the plant and wildlife around them: the Sirens who install 
  sonic implants to manipulate sound waves, the Merbeasts who are neither human nor 
  fish, the Fluorescent tribes who explore the deepest and darkest of the ocean floor. 
  Their tech allows them to interact with the sea life in ways not previously imagined, 
  and working with these plants, animals, and organisms is often one of their goals. 
  Some are more ethical in their methods than others regarding these interactions, and 
  many transhumanist and sea life activist groups have sprung up in Tangaroa. Binary 
  gender is a rather outdated conceit here amidst these oceanic transhumanist tribes. 
  All sorts of expressions and sexualities exist, inspired by the decorations and parts that 
  adorn all of these new radical subspecies of humans. 
  Music is extraordinarily important to the various oceanic cultures of the Arcology. The 
  architecture was purposefully constructed to enhance acoustics, much like the ancient 
  Aztec pyramids. One of the founding architects, Mahina Sheppard, had a famous 
  obsession with discovering the perfect chord, a research which became fanatical. 
  Many of the original corridors, spaces, rooms, and expanses in the arcology were 
  designed with an acoustic intention. The true intent of these acoustics, however, is 
  now lost, along with many years of her research, in a damaging fire that occurred in 
  the thirty-third year of its construction.
  There are some, trying to follow in Mahina’s path, who research the particular 
  acoustics of the structure. They call themselves Sheppards and have a fair sized cult 
  following. Others have flourished creating sound technology of various sorts, using 
  it to communicate with dolphins, whales, and some plant life. Using sound waves to 
  levitate and move objects was first pioneered here on the arcology and the hottest 
  ...................................Kira......................
  ........Magrann.................................
  
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  new Levitek always comes out here first. Small modifications like external lung flutes 
  (to hold and take in more air) and advanced ultrasound healing technology have both 
  been developed heavily in the past few years. Exploration of the seafloor has led to  
  previously undiscovered minerals (E35) being mined and utilized in biochemical 
  weapons, mostly on the mainland. Shipping vessels to and from the Island are 
  often attacked by pirates looking to cash in on the newest tech; expansive defensive 
  systems, including water mechs and well trained security officers, are often on patrol. 
  Youth and music culture is big as well and circles around three things: drugs, music, and 
  body modification. The Island is a mecca for musicians and they flock here to succeed 
  and fail at becoming global sensations. Some just lose themselves in the scene. The 
  Island has an odd cultural currency, revolving around the exchange of new sounds, or 
  the hottest sounds, for whatever goods are needed (food, clothing, a place to sleep) 
  and groups form tribally with their own particular styles and subcultures. Many are 
  inspired by their surroundings, choosing oceanic themes and colors to represent their 
  little enclaves, and they all live together in the small domes that are about the size of 
  villages. Multicultural in the extreme, people are drawn to a tribe not because of their 
  DNA or their history, but rather on how they feel about life, the way they’d like to look, 
  and the types of sounds they’d like to make. Tribes all have elaborate induction rituals, 
  partially to ensure loyalty, but also to test people’s tastes and make sure they truly 
  belong before committing to often extreme lifestyle shifts. 
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00005/00150 COMPLETE
  Drugs are biological and chemical, coming from toxins in pufferfish and jellyfish, 
  mixed with hallucinogens found in various sea urchins and the rare glowing eels of 
  the far depths. To capture a giant glowing eel is a ritual in-of-itself, illegal, for they’re so 
  rare, but they’re supposed to have the best juice for your high. Some chemical concoc-
  tions involving the E35 mineral are dangerous uppers, something like a combination 
  of Meth, PCP, and LSD. There are also rumors of military testing inside the arcology to 
  use E35 for super soldiers.
  Tangaroa is not without strife. Its biggest concerns are from outside forces: companies 
  and pirates from the mainland and nearby islands who want to infiltrate and steal 
  its innovative tech, ideas, and resources. Corporate espionage is quite common,  
  especially on the megalithic Reed Inc., which is the prevailing biomedical and tech 
  corp on the Arcology. Lots of local startups aren’t above a little sabotage, either. 
  Because of this, passage and boundaries between domes and spaces on the Tangaroa 
  are heavily passcoded. All inhabitants have passcodes genetically bonded with their 
  DNA, and passage into different areas requires both tribal rites and corporate permis-
  sions. Breaking those DNA codes requires epic levels of biohacking, but it has been 
  known to occur from time to time. Security is mostly insured by these measures, but 
  there are security teams who keep certain properties and areas safe as well.
  The trading economy of the island does attempt to maintain a bit of balance inter-
  nally. At a certain level, the Tangaroa Arcology is one large co-op; everyone has an  
  investment in protecting the concepts and technologies that are created here. It 
  creates a unique bond amongst the Tangaroans that reaches beyond their love of the 
  ocean.
   
  BIO
  Kira Magrann is an artist, game designer, and queer feminist cyborg living in 
  Columbus, Ohio. Her influences include Aubrey Beardsley, Anais Nin, and Masamune 
  Shirow, and she has a particular love of cyberpunk and Victoriana. The roleplaying 
  games she’s created are Crash Into You, Strict Machine, Game of Thrones (Play the 
  Cards), and Twilight Dames (a Fate Core hack). She’s also contributed to the Fate Cortex, 
  Game Chef, and Annalise. She is a co-organizer of Indie Games on Demand at Origins 
  and Gen Con, and contributor to the Ennie award winning international feminist blog 
  Gaming as Women. You can find her jewelry at Anima Metals on Etsy.
  
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  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////ACCESSPOINT.ACQUIRED////
  SECURITY: [NOT VISIBLE]
  AWAITING SIGNAL…
  LONG DARK
  CLOUD
  
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  This chapter presents Aotearoa New Zealand as a featured setting for a mission or two 
  away from the team’s home base. The Kiwi stereotype dial is turned all the way up–if 
  your characters stick around long-term, you’ll want to add some nuance!
  Please note the depiction of Māori social prominence is not reflective of current 
  inequalities. In this fictional future, Māori activists have had some success in moving 
  New Zealand society closer to a bicultural ideal.
  AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND
  “The Land of the Long White Cloud” consists of two large islands, North and South, 
  deep on the southern curve of the Pacific Ocean. In the 20th century it was the 
  world’s kid brother, desperate for attention. For a brief moment it got its wish, shining 
  brightly as a sparky overachiever with a clean, green environment. But the dream 
  didn’t last. Multinational corporations hollowed out everything they touched and the  
  environment was a mess. What future now?
  WHY ARE YOU HERE?
  The Sprawl is a game of intense, excessive action suited to the high-tech urban density 
  of a gigantic future city. Aotearoa New Zealand is not an obvious fit, but there are 
  good reasons why a Sprawl game might land here. Corporations use ANZ as a testing 
  ground, creating opportunities and problems. People use ANZ for escape, as a vacation 
  destination or a hiding place.
  Setting a mission in New Zealand gives you a change of pace and some culture clash, 
  as well as some beautiful scenery. Thematically, you might get some juice from ANZ’s 
  sad fate, a small independent nation hollowed out by megacorps because it wasn’t big 
  or wealthy enough to protect itself.
  KIWI CHROME
  The grimy chrome future has a unique flavour in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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   CLOUD
  
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  NEW ZEALAND 
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  TWO CULTURES
  ANZ is a bicultural nation, settled by Māori in the 13th century and white Europeans 
  (Pākehā) in the 19th century. Outsiders perceive a land of intercultural harmony.
   »
  Make every NPC use te reo Māori, even if it’s just kia ora (hello, but also thank 
  you, goodbye, cheers...)
   »
  Give every third NPC a Māori name, no matter their social status.
  • 
  Māori know how to walk in the Pākehā world, so you don’t need to make 
  Māori NPCs act a special way.
  • 
  Break stereotypes. Māori are corrupt corporate raiders, principled 
  environmental activists, and all points in between.
   »
  When visitors scratch the surface, show lingering inequality and the wounds 
  of colonisation.
  LAID BACK
  The locals are never in a hurry. Things are a bit more carefree–or is that careless?
   »
  Force characters to wait on NPCs. Try the use up resources move, and maybe 
  advance a clock if you really want to turn up the pressure.
   »
  Blunt talk is taken as arrogance.
  • 
  When you speak harsh truth to a local, take +1 forward when you fast 
  talk them or hit the street with them.
  • 
  However, blunt foreigners earn a bad rep. When the opportunity 
  comes, MCs will put them in a spot or make their lives complicated as a  
  consequence.
  NUMBER 8 WIRE
  “No worries cuz, I can get that working, there’s some chicken wire in the shed that’ll 
  do the trick.” Locals call it Kiwi ingenuity; outsiders see it as not doing a job properly.
  ................................Morgan...............
  .........Davie.....................................
  
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   »
  When you hit the street and go to a local contact to modify or repair gear/
  vehicles/cyberware, take +1 forward, but the fix will be +unreliable unless you 
  choose 1 extra from the 7-9 list. 
   »
  Ingenuity thrives because everything’s so damn expensive here. Bump up the 
  cost of cyberware, gear and vehicles by one category in the Fair Prices list. 
  CORPORATIONS
  It’s the wrong side of the world but the same corporate names sputter in neon on 
  the high-rises downtown. ANZ is a petri dish: local demographics match much bigger 
  markets elsewhere, so megacorps test things here before going wider. And it’s so 
  isolated, who cares if they screw up?
  BIOTECHNOLOGY
  Some megacorps have local subsidiaries working on the cutting-edge of biotech and 
  using ANZ as a testing ground. Weak government means approvals are easy to come 
  by and disasters aren’t too hard to cover up.
   »
  Test runs of new cyberware types, new materials, new implant processes.
   »
  Trials of pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals, gene splicing techniques.
   »
  Minimal oversight, inefficient watchdogs, outright bribery. Hopefully nothing 
  escapes...
  CONSUMER GOODS
  Last year’s hot trends, today! ANZ gets most things laughably late. The exception: stuff 
  that’s unstable and being tested here before general release.
   »
  A/B testing for new products, new advertising tech, new memetic content.
   »
  Early adopters sending agents to ANZ in search of the latest model of their 
  favourite gear.
   »
  Young wealthy citizens renting out their autonomic systems for data harvesting 
  as they interact with the consumer environment.
  ELECTRONICS
  Worker conditions aren’t quite brutal enough to make manufacturing cost-effective 
  for the megacorps, but a few small outfits get by making components that don’t cost 
  much to ship around the world.
   »
  Rumours of a backyard innovation might spark a series of Corporation moves as 
  big players try to grab it for themselves and lock out their rivals. 
  FINANCIAL
  ANZ is a favoured stop on the global money laundering circuit. Weak government will 
  do that for you.
   »
  Anyone trying to follow a money trail will probably pass through ANZ  
  somewhere along the track.
  
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  NEW ZEALAND 
  /////////////////////// 00011/00150 COMPLETE
   »
  Ridiculous amounts of money pass through little anonymous offices on the 
  edge of town; the people who work there are always targets.
  GOVERNMENT
  Times are rough and the Government is hungry for table scraps. Grinning ministers 
  meet corporate middlemen right off the plane then bite on deals that verge on  
  humiliating: 
   »
  Maximise profit: Pick up tax breaks and trade options, there for the taking.
   »
  Minimise expenses: ANZ’s a cheap place to buy support for your new gene 
  therapy, and then you can tell every other country to follow their example.
   »
  Deny responsibility: Set up a public-private partnership for your new chemical 
  tests to improve agricultural productivity. When you poison the whole province, 
  let the government eat the bad press.
   »
  Suppress dissent: Will protest be a problem at your new plant on reserve land? 
  Get the government to declare an exclusion zone: problem solved!
  HEAVY INDUSTRY
  In this fucking backwater? You must be joking.
  ILLEGAL
  ANZ’s gangs are not illegal, and much of their activity is not criminal. However, the 
  criminal world of ANZ is dominated by the gangs. Gangs give people a place in an 
  uncaring world, so they are bigger than ever in the harsh era of the Sprawl.
   »
  Gangs are founded on violence and strength. They typically resemble American 
  motorcycle gangs more than urban street gangs.
   »
  Government has walked away from supporting the needy, and the gangs have 
  stepped in. Whole communities rely on gangs for food, shelter and more.
   »
  Most gangs make money through illegal narcotics. Some gangs are principled 
  about which drugs they will deal with and who they sell to, while others will 
  happily sell the most dangerous chemicals to the most vulnerable people.
   »
  Importing drugs is difficult, so drug manufacture is an important part of the 
  underworld. There are chemical labs and growing operations scattered all over 
  the countryside.
   »
  Climb up the pyramid and you land in the usual mess of international  
  syndicates–mafia, cartels, triads–all of whom rotate heavy-hitters through the 
  country to make sure their interests are being looked after.
   »
  Almost every gang has embraced cyberware, but some see it as an unhealthy 
  or weak choice.
  MEDIA
  ANZ media is run by the same megacorps who control media everywhere else. The 
  digital weather presenters have a local accent, at least.
  
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  MATRIX & TELECOMMUNICATIONS
  Comms infrastructure in Aotearoa New Zealand runs in cycles–for a glorious year or 
  two the nation will have the fastest and sharpest systems you’d find anywhere in the 
  world. Then for a decade ANZ’s infrastructure decays while everywhere else moves 
  past it. Eventually this becomes intolerable and a new system is installed; rinse and 
  repeat.
   »
  Unless new comms tech is going to play into a mission, then assume the rot has 
  set in—every connection is +substandard, and tech people can’t shut up about 
  how frustrated they are.
  MILITARY
  The government purchases military services from global contractors who, in turn, 
  recruit heavily throughout the country, offering a chance to see the world.
   »
  Mercenaries with difficult records might get shuffled out here for an easy  
  retirement, away from trouble and prying eyes. They could be Contacts or 
  targets for missions.
  Despite its small size, ANZ has a thriving industry designing and building components 
  for military technology. There’s always money in the arms trade, and lots of tiny  
  factories chase that cash.
   »
  Backyard weapons experts might be useful Contacts.
   »
  Sometimes these small players get caught up in scams or swindles that burn 
  Corporations for big money. Teams might be hired to look into a deal or to track 
  down the con artist responsible.
  PRIMARY RESOURCES
  Extracting energy and material from the natural world is the biggest industry in the 
  country. There is serious money to be made innovating in this category.
   »
  Corporations will hire teams to steal the world-first solutions being secretly 
  tested here. 
   »
  ANZ rolls over for most corporate exploitation, but environmental damage can 
  provoke protests and backlash. Corporations will hire teams to solve these 
  problems before they start. 
  TRANSPORTATION
  ANZ is a centre of innovation for anything on the water. 
   »
  If it floats, a local design shop had a hand in its creation.
   »
  Apart from that, it’s a transport wasteland.
   
  
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  NEW ZEALAND 
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  WHERE TO GO
  THE BIG CITY: GREATER AUCKLAND
  Auckland is the only city large enough to feel like home to a Sprawl native. The  
  population is 3 million, spread widely over a huge urban area, with only a few areas of 
  high-density settlement. 
   »
  The geography features hills and water (two big harbours and many small 
  beaches).
   »
  The inner city is busy with suited salarymen fresh off merger deals, entre-
  preneurial chancers peddling skillchips, seedy nightcrawlers boiling opiates 
  out of hotwired maker machines, and malfunctioning holo-fields advertising  
  cyber-upgrades for sex and security. It’s a fusion city: Western style shot 
  through with Asian influence.
   »
  There’s money on the water–the fanciest superyachts in the world stop in to 
  Port Auckland–and the nightlife by the marina is home to high-rollers.
   »
  The suburbs go on and on, broken up by desolate strip malls and industrial 
  parks full of anonymous factories. Poor white communities, and poorer Pasifika 
  communities, hustle for opportunities.
   »
  On the north shore, across the giant harbour bridge, the wealthy make their 
  homes in little mansions with walls and security teams.
  
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  THE TOURIST ARCHIPELAGO
  Even through mirrorshades, mountains are beautiful. Everyone with cash has ANZ on 
  their bucket list, and some of them even make it there to stay in luxurious resorts and 
  breathe crisp, unfiltered air.
   »
  Holidaying Corporate personnel are easy marks for missions. When they have 
  their guard down, a team might touch them for extraction or persuasion.
   »
  Many Corporate expeditions mix business with pleasure–holding secret 
  meetings, checking out local innovations, and generally making sure they can 
  claim the trip as a tax write-off. And whenever there is work, there are enemies 
  who will pay a Team to mess it up.
   ANZ trades on its rustic technology-free image, but don’t believe it for a second. 
   »
  The tourist archipelago is the only place in ANZ with top-notch world-quality 
  gear. Nothing +unreliable is tolerated here. 
   »
  Everywhere in the tourist archipelago is connected. Even at the top of a  
  dangerous mountain, the matrix is all around you.
   »
  Cyberware is commonplace among tourist staff, but it is almost always 
  +discreet.
   Missions into the tourist archipelago will encounter:
   »
  Luxury resorts with ruthless cyberware-enhanced guards.
   »
  Cringeworthy cultural performances by jaded locals.
   »
  Hot pools, mud pools, therapeutic spas in elaborate complexes run through 
  matrix systems.
   »
  Deer hunting trips using helicopters/VTOL craft, satellite tracking systems and 
  extreme-range rifles with complimentary skillwires.
   »
  Bungee jumping and whitewater rafting, pure adrenaline exercises often 
  enhanced with legally-available synaptic stimulators.
   »
  Mountain climbs, especially favoured by those with muscle grafts or cyberarms 
  or legs.
   »
  Skiing and snowboarding, with skillchips readily available for purchase.
   »
  Film location tours, usually cash grabs and sometimes overloaded with  
  unlicensed augmented reality distractions.
   »
  Wine tours, which are stubbornly low-fi. Wine hasn’t changed much.
  Most NZ locals are ready to kneel before big-money tourism, but there is always the 
  potential for backlash. Wise tourist operations prepare for violence from opportunistic 
  thugs or self-styled resistance movements. Lethal force may not be preferred in such 
  clashes, but it is more than tolerated.
  
  TANGAROA 
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  NEW ZEALAND 
  /////////////////////// 00015/00150 COMPLETE
  EVERYWHERE ELSE
  To a Sprawl team, the rest of the country is just a whole mess of places to hide. Targets 
  might hope to disappear into a surveillance-free wilderness, but, in the Sprawl future, 
  nowhere is off the grid.
  Even out here the Sprawl Principles apply, in particular Chrome everything, then make 
  it dirty and Make everything Corporate. There’s no escape from the Sprawl.
   »
  Farmland: That ancient milking shed has shit-stained sensors grabbing 
  biodata for stock management. If you so much as pass the door, your  
  biosignature will register on a half dozen databases all over the world. (And you 
  can mess with farms all over the country if you login to the right Production 
  Control System.)
   »
  Dead ground: Plenty of land burned out in the last couple decades (the Dark 
  Cloud helped with that). You can creep among the squatter tents and petty 
  mineral farmers for a while, but there’s nowhere to hide from the satellites 
  mapping population movements in the wastelands.
   »
  Forestry: Forestry workers use the latest hardware and the best chemical 
  enhancers for their exhausting shifts. Workplace safety is appalling, and too 
  many workers have a steel arm and a debt to the company.
   »
  National parks: ANZ fugitives have a long history of “going bush”, disappear-
  ing into lush forests, steep hills and foreboding mountains. That doesn’t work 
  so well these days, as drones regularly sweep the wilderness tracking hikers 
  and small predators, like possums, stoats and domestic cats.
   »
  Mining sites: A really determined fugitive might hide out in an exhausted 
  mine. Tunnels might provide cover from satellites and security. Dead mines are 
  everywhere, especially in the more expendable national parks.
   »
  Boutique cities: The country has a solid half-dozen of these, parochial little 
  villages that think they count as cities because some genius built a stadium 
  there. Every one is so tiny you’ll run out of strangers in a week - the guy at the 
  laundromat who gave you bloodstain-removal tips will turn out to be a cousin 
  of the girl selling overclocked skillchips. Each claims a different style - art city, 
  food city, garden city–but they’re all too small for comfort.
   »
  Struggling towns: Stunted cities are miserable, but small towns are soul- 
  destroying. Full of bereft elderly and murdered industry, they cling to life long 
  after their purpose has expired. Don’t bother trying to hide here–the locals have 
  nothing to do but watch strangers–and every service in town was contracted to 
  a megacorp decades ago.
   »
  Beaches: The islands of Aotearoa New Zealand have a lot of beaches, and most 
  of them are windswept and underused. A good many of them are very danger-
  ous. There are a lot of holiday homes at the beach, many of them tumbledown 
  shacks that have been in families for generations, but of course there are plenty 
  of incredibly well-appointed getaway spots for the wealthy few. Fancy security 
  systems aren’t the trend at these places, so a fugitive who picks his targets 
  might live in great comfort for quite some time.
  
  00016/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00016/00150 COMPLETE    /////////////////////// NOVEMBER METRIC
  GROUP THREAT: DEAD HOUSE 
  Dead House is a prominent mixed-ethnic gang with several chapters in the Auckland 
  sprawl and a bunch more throughout the rest of the country. Their black leather jackets 
  are marked with skull and coffin, and they take a dim view of anyone else wearing a 
  skull. 
  IN THE SPRAWL
  Gang chapters hole up in large, fortified houses in poorer suburbs or on the edge of 
  industrial zones. Their influence is felt throughout the neighbourhood, with kids eager 
  to prospect for the gang and no-one willing to talk to law enforcement. People from all 
  walks of life hit them up for the latest product.
  IN THE TOURIST ARCHIPELAGO
  Gang members are never welcome here, but they regularly make deliveries to the 
  service entrance of even the most luxurious resorts.
  IN THE REST OF THE COUNTRY
  Gang chapters set up in prominent houses in small, troubled towns and roam for miles 
  in motorcycles and beat-up cars. They become something like rebel heroes to the 
  locals, keeping trouble at bay and helping out those who need help. As a result, the 
  locals are ready to cut them some slack and overlook their indiscretions.
  ILLICIT WIRES
  Dead House mostly avoid the illegal narcotics trade, instead making their money 
  from wires smuggled in from Asia. This includes chips that simulate narcotics through 
  electric stimulation, chips with contraband skills encoded, and chips that provide 
  acid-type trip experiences. Most recently, they have been circulating so-called ghost 
  chips, which hand over a person’s body entirely to a “ghost” which directs their 
  movement and behaviour. These are wildly popular among young risk-takers and 
  people who feel they have been shut out of their own country. However, this tech is 
  extremely untested and potentially highly dangerous.
  CYBERWARE
  No other gang has embraced cyberware as thoroughly as Dead House. They regularly 
  import restricted materials from Asia; part of becoming a full “patched” member of 
  Dead House is going under the knife for the standard loadout.
  Dead House regularly make deals with megacorps and smaller operators, performing 
  jobs for them in return for access to new cyberware or distribution channels. They 
  might become a danger to a Sprawl team after being directed by an employer, or they 
  might just get angry when the team messes up one of their operations by accident. 
  Either way, when you get on the Dead House’s enemy list, it is costly to get yourself 
  off it again.
  TYPICAL DEAD HOUSE MEMBER
  A typical Dead House loadout is muscle grafts and reinforced fists (3-harm hand 
  implant), pain dampeners and adrenal coils (1-armour), and pheremonal readers 
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00017/00150 COMPLETE
  NEW ZEALAND 
  /////////////////////// 00017/00150 COMPLETE
  woven into the olfactory system that help them direct their intimidation where it will 
  be most effective. Scattered through the gang are countless skill wires, and many 
  members have cyber-links to motorcycles, cyber eyes and cyber ears. Communications 
  are very rare, however–most Dead House members stay off the comms grid where 
  they can.
  QUESTIONS
   »
  What do the gang do to win support in their community?
   »
  Which megacorp is the gang’s primary sponsor?
   »
  Who in government is working to protect the gang and why?
   »
  What supernatural beliefs do the gang have about the ghost wires?
  THREAT CLOCK
  1500    The gang notice the team’s existence.
  1800    The gang spread word of the team throughout their chapters.
  2100    The gang pressure community leaders to intervene on their behalf. 
  2200    The gang puts out a reward notice to every other ANZ gang.
  2300    The gang devotes itself to hunting down the team. 
  0000    The gang hijacks every ghost wire to make users kill the team.
  HEADLINE THREAT: THE DARK CLOUD
  In the sky above Aotearoa New Zealand, countless molecule-sized robots swarm. If 
  you look up you might see them, ribbons of shadow dancing through the clouds. And 
  sometimes they gather, shrouding whole regions in darkness, making the wind and 
  rain deadly and turning farmland into waste ground.
  Corporations use Aotearoa New Zealand as a petri dish, but sometimes things go 
  wrong. This was one of those times. A revolutionary new technology to clean the 
  atmosphere did not work as planned. The corporation responsible dissolved its shell 
  company and left the government partner to carry the can. Now it’s a danger that 
  no-one knows how to fix, a nightmare with no end in sight.
  There seems to be no logic to the cloud’s behaviour. Its goal is to impoverish, but it 
  also exposes fault lines in the society below as people argue about how to deal with it, 
  evade responsibility, and leave victims of its capricious strikes to suffer.
  QUESTIONS
   »
  What, if anything, controls the cloud?
   »
  Why does it stay here instead of spreading around the globe?
   »
  What secret has never been revealed about its creation?
  
  00018/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00018/00150 COMPLETE    /////////////////////// NOVEMBER METRIC
  THREAT CLOCK
  1500    Ribbons appear regularly all over the country.
  1800    Cloud density begins to increase, overloading sensor instruments.
  2100    The Cloud becomes much more active, damaging locations every week.
  2200    The Cloud damages locations almost every day.
  2300    The Cloud multiplies and affects several locations.
  0000    The Cloud breaks the weather irretrievably, wrecking the country.
  MISSION: SHEDWORK
  OVERVIEW
  A pharmaceutical corporation has discovered that a rival is preparing to launch a 
  copycat for the company’s most valuable product. The copycat is being synthesised 
  from a stolen molecular sample, and the team are hired to recover this asset before the 
  rivals get the recipe perfect. The trail leads to a missing Auckland chemist.
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00019/00150 COMPLETE
  NEW ZEALAND 
  /////////////////////// 00019/00150 COMPLETE
  PEOPLE
  Daniel Rakena is a nervy, argumentative chemist at Harakeke Labs, working in 
  agrochemical development on a new wave of fertiliser treatments. He is supposedly 
  away from work for a tangi, a funeral ceremony which can last up to a week. In reality, 
  there is no tangi; Rakena has disappeared into the wilderness.
  Channing Eddison blackmailed Rakena into synthesising the copycat drug in his 
  backyard shed. An early version won her a provisional contract, but now she wants 
  Rakena to deliver a stable product. Instead, he has disappeared and taken the source 
  sample with him. She is not happy, and the client has promised help in hunting him 
  down. If he will not cooperate, she still has time to kill him and get some other chemist 
  to finish the work to fulfill her side of the deal.
  QUESTIONS
   »
  Why is Rakena running away?
   »
  What experience does he have with living wild?
   »
  What else could the sample be used to create?
   »
  Where has he run to, and who did he tell?
  LEGWORK CLOCK
  1500    Eddison hasn’t heard about the team.
  1800    Eddison hears vague rumours.
  2100     Eddison hears clear rumours of the team. The action clock starts at 1500.
  2200    Eddison’s crew have sighted the team. The action clock starts at 1800.
  2300    Eddison’s crew have observed the team.  The action clock starts at 2100.
  0000  Eddison has ID’d the team. Advance Eddison’s employer’s Corporate 
                clock.
  ACTION CLOCK
  1500    The Corporation supplies a small hunter squad of three armed 
                professionals.
  1800    The hunter squad is on edge and preparing for interference.
  2100    The hunter squad is assigned a full-time matrix support staff.
  2200    The hunter squad is doubled in size.
  2300    The Corporation purchases full cooperation from local law enforcement.
  0000    The Corporation purchases full support from local military providers.
  MISSION DIRECTIVES
   »
  When you accept the job, mark experience.
   »
  When you determine where Rakena has run to, mark experience.
  
  00020/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00020/00150 COMPLETE    /////////////////////// NOVEMBER METRIC
   »
  When you recover the sample, mark experience.
   »
  When the mission ends, mark two experience.
  MISSION: A RICH MAN’S GAME
  OVERVIEW
  The America’s Cup is the oldest competitive trophy in the world. Two yachts enter 
  a series of races for the prestigious Auld Mug. The team is hired to ensure the Cup 
  doesn’t stay in Aotearoa New Zealand.
  PEOPLE
  Mr Conner is a short, self-assured man who will meet the team down on the docks. 
  He claims to represent a group who want Gove Petersen’s challenge to succeed and 
  gently encourages the team to imagine this is part of some very complicated board-
  room scheming. The truth is simpler: Petersen himself is the employer.
  Gove Petersen is an incredibly wealthy narcissist from [sponsor Corporation]. He is 
  determined to win back the Cup in this challenge, and he uses Corporation resources 
  to hire the team through his intermediary, Mr Conner.
  Arama Waring is the experienced leader of Team Aotearoa. She is skilled on the 
  water and smart about design and technology. Her down-to-earth style has won her 
  great loyalty, and she is ready to defend the Cup.
  Grace Pickering is the head of security for the challenge, working for [threat  
  Corporation]. She will kill to make sure this event goes off beautifully and cleanly. She 
  is widely admired as a high-functioning psychopath and is quite frankly overqualified 
  for this job. She will give the team a run for their money.
  QUESTIONS
   »
  What design advance are Team Aotearoa hiding?
   »
  What is Arama Waring’s bad habit?
   »
  Who in her crew is a weak link, and why?
   »
  Where does Team Aotearoa’s money come from?
  LEGWORK CLOCK
  1500    Security hasn’t heard about the team.
  1800    Security hears vague rumours.
  2100     Security hears clear rumours of the team. The action clock starts at 1500.
  2200    Security has sighted the team. The action clock starts at 1800.
  2300    Security has observed the team. The action clock starts at 2100.
  0000    Security has confirmed the team’s identity. Advance the Corporate clock.
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00021/00150 COMPLETE
  NEW ZEALAND 
  /////////////////////// 00021/00150 COMPLETE
  ACTION CLOCK
  1500     Security is on alert. Additional security is placed around both yachts.
  1800     Additional security is placed around all race facilities.
  2100     Pickering dispatches a squad to hunt down the team.
  2200     Pickering takes personal charge of hunting down the team.
  2300     Pickering issues a kill order on all members of the team.
  0000     Pickering makes taking down the team a personal obsession.
  MISSION DIRECTIVES
   »
  When you accept the job, mark experience.
   »
  When you determine how to turn the challenge in Petersen’s favour, mark 
  experience.
   »
  When Petersen secures the trophy, mark experience.
   »
  When the mission ends, mark two experience.
  RUNNING THE MISSION
  This is a relatively light-hearted mission, although Pickering is genuinely dangerous 
  and things could get very nasty if the team aren’t careful.
  There are innumerable ways teams could go about this mission, so ask a lot of  
  questions and use the answers.
  NAMES
  Waimarie Insights Ltd (consumer goods), Koiora Forever (biotech), Awa Hangarau 
  (communications), Mana Power (primary industry), Mahi Moana Designs (water  
  transport), Tū (military contracting).
  Sometimes Pākehā-dominated corporations thoughtlessly grab a vaguely relevant 
  Māori word out of the dictionary and the results can make Māori speakers wince.
  Māori first names: (f) Anahera, Hine, Marama, Ngaire, Pania; (m) Anaru, Mikaere, 
  Rawiri, Tamati, Tane
  Māori family names: Henare, Ngata, Te Rangi, Tipene, Winitana
  English/Irish/Scottish names are common for both Pākehā and non-Pākehā.
  BIO
  Morgan Davie is a Pākehā New Zealander who writes for tabletop and digital games, 
  most recently the Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle Seven and the Shadow Wars mobile 
  game from Pikpok.
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00003>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00003>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////TARGETS.LOCATED////
  STATUS: [CONTRACTUALS]
  MISSION: [DISMISS]
  BRUXELLES,
  MA  BELLE
  
  00024/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00024/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Stuck in the warzone between Walloon and Flanders, the capital city of the European 
  Federation is a beacon for hundreds of thousands of war refugees. 
  Alas, Paradise City isn't free. It isn't even cheap.
   Access granted by Federal Immigration Authorities comes with a cost you may not be 
  willing to pay: improper jobs for respectable bloodthirsty Lobbies and a life under the 
  pressure of a suffocating perfection.
  BRUSSELS MC AGENDA
  “They mark the end of an era, the era of large, visible machines”
  Leo Carax, Holy Motors
   »
  Brussels is perfect, silent, clean and healthy. Make it unbearably cold and 
  impersonal.
   »
  Technology is omnipresent, but visible technology is shameful. Miniaturize it, 
  hide it, then show how it's hidden.
   »
  Brussels is complex and appearances are deceiving. Use umbrella or blanket 
  organisations, stooges and sockpuppets.
   »
  Brussels is under the control of a strong legislature. Every product or service 
  must abide by a standard or a certification mark. Pull laws over to the edge of 
  absurdity, use legal obstacles and give opportunities to use cunning legal ways 
  to solve problems.
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00003>>>>>>>
  LOADING...
  BRUXELLES,
           MA  BELLE
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00025/00150 COMPLETE
  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00025/00150 COMPLETE
  AN OVERVIEW OF PARADISE
  “A day will come when we shall see ... the United States of America and 
  the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other 
  across the seas.”
  Victor Hugo, International Peace Congress, Paris, 1849
  The dream came true. Decaying European states not only left most of their powers 
  to megacorps, but also burst into a mosaic of independent regions and conurbations 
  seeking a protection they found in the European Federation. As capital city of the 
  newly proclaimed superstate, Brussels entered a golden age. The jewel of the Feder-
  ation presently rules over the whole continent, from the over-industrialized shores of 
  the Atlantic to the wastelands of Siberia. Whereas other sprawls are ruined by social 
  issues, Brussels proudly displays its prosperity and figures as a model, as it highly 
  values cultural inheritances in a barbaric era. In fact, federal authorities value them so 
  much they are ready to put all remaining signs of the past centuries under glass, even 
  entire districts with thousands of people living in them. 
  Brussels is then a two-faced city. On one side, it is the city of Federal Institutions and 
  Lobbies, the City of Power and Law. On the other side, it is the city of cryogenized 
  Culture. Federal authorities and euro-citizens are ready to use overwhelming pressure 
  to keep this double model safe. The present context may lead them to use even more 
  destructive means. Indeed, the long-lasting antagonism between French and Flemish 
  speakers has torn apart Belgium. As a cosmopolitan zone, Brussels is safe for now, but 
  the crowd of war refugees asking for protection is increasing quickly and the rumours 
  of war are getting closer every day.
  .............................Benjamin.................. 
  .......Kouppi.....................................
  
  00026/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00026/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  ACCESS GRANTED
  To live in Paradise, you either paid the price or sold yourself. So, let me ask you a 
  question: how did you enter Brussels?
   
  Ђ
  You are sponsored by a lobby. Name it; you're owned. You have RFID implants 
  under your skin and get unlimited access to all zones of Brussels.
   
  Ђ
  You've got a “contractual” licence. How did you get it? Pay 2 creds now and 1 
  each session. Open an Inquiry Clock. Each time you don't pay, advance it.
   
  Ђ
  You have false or stolen federal citizen RFID chip implants and genetic  
  materials. They grant you unlimited access to all zones of Brussels. First, relate 
  how you got it and open an Inquiry Clock: federal authorities are on your tail. 
  Then, write down a new move on your character sheet:
  False Chip: When you enter an official building, roll Synth.
  10+: federal authorities leave you alone
  7-9: choose one:
  • 
  they check your identity
  • 
  security asks you to leave
  • 
  you attract the attention of a lobby (advance a relevant Mission or Lobby 
  Clock)
  • 
  you have to corrupt or kill someone
  6-: advance Inquiry Clock.
   
  Ђ
  Congratulations, dear asylum-seeker, you successfully passed the  
  GenAPhyMen test! Your Genetic, Aesthetic, Physical and Mental abilities have 
  been proven superior. You're considered pure and therefore an honourable 
  federal citizen and a valuable resource for the City. First, relate your civil war 
  suffering and explain how you’ve managed to pass the test, then open the War 
  Refugee Clock. Now, there is some good news and some bad news. The good 
  news is you get one extra credit for each successful mission. The bad news is you 
  INQUIRY CLOCK
  1500    Send a formal warning
  1800    Open a “dossier”, put under cyber-surveillance (drones, matrix)
  2100    Gather evidence
  2200    Conduct a formal or informal interrogation
  2300    Deliver an arrest warrant, send bounty hunters
  0000  Track down the trespasser, and banish them forever; if not possible,  
                dismiss them
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00027/00150 COMPLETE
  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00027/00150 COMPLETE
  gave the Humanitarians a lot of genetic material. You are easy to track: when 
  the MC would first advance the Legwork clock as a result of a miss, advance it 
  twice instead and expect a surprise.
   
  Ђ
  You're a native of Old Brussels. You are part of the living museum and your 
  life could be very comfortable as you are provided with organic-certified 
  food, A-rank lodging and 60-70's fashioned clothings (gabardines, tie-dye or 
  collarless shirts, pea coats, maxi and miniskirts, strange belts and necklaces). 
  Why aren't you satisfied? You're even paid for it! You just have a few public 
  obligations: you drink beer, eat fries, talk with a strong accent, practice your 
  zwanze (the traditional popular rhetorical speech), and discuss imaginary 
  political matters in bars when tourists or federal citizens come in. Choose a 
  registered entertainment association and open the Coming Uprising Clock. At 
  the beginning of each session, get one cred. As part of the museum, you are not 
  allowed to possess any visible cyberware. Choose the +discreet tag if you can. If 
  not, choose another cyberware, hide it or make it look vintage. You have limited 
  access to other zones. Each time you request an access, roll Edge.
  10+: choose 4
  7-9: choose 2
  • 
  You’ll have enough time to do your deeds
  • 
  You get your access immediately
  • 
  Federal Authorities doesn't ask any questions
  • 
  It doesn't attract attention
  • 
  Your Registered Entertainment Association doesn't give you a task to 
  perform at this time
  REGISTERED ENTERTAINMENT ASSOCIATIONS
  Au Dolle Mol (tourist subtitle: Blind Mole Café): This bar used to be the head-
  quarters of Belgian anarchists during the seventies. Your job consists of drinking 
  a lot while reading newspapers about crimes that didn't happen, talking about 
  a fictive revolution, discussing Marxist theories with phantasmagorical leftist 
  groups and organising colourful political demonstrations.
  Zwanze! (tourist subtitle: Just for Laughs): Since the traditional rhetorical speech 
  and the brusseleir have been inscribed on the World Heritage List, you have to 
  organise street performances, perform satirical theatre pieces against figures of 
  the past, promote new beers, make silly jokes and throw non-organic herrings 
  at tourists.
  Saint Verhaegen Corporation (tourist subtitles: Free University Festival): You have 
  to act like a turbulent student (within 80db limit), participate in weekly banquets 
  and rituals and organise carnivals, laughing about people no one remembers.
  
  00028/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00028/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  WELCOME TO BRUSSELS
  As you’re one of us now, let me introduce you to the different districts of Brussels. 
  The power balance is fragile; Paradise may collapse quickly. Each district has a Threat 
  Clock, add more of your own and use them to design missions.
  UNDER THE DOME: FEDERAL ZONE
  There is no place in the world like the Federal Zone. Architectural lines are firm, clear 
  and simple, like in an Hergé ligne claire drawing. Thanks to the almost invisible 
  Federal Dome, air is fresh and water is crystal pure. No disgraceful machinery disrupts 
  the delightful silence; no ugly overchromed bodyguard spoils the perfect harmony 
  of the landscape, at least at first sight. In fact, discreet implants, disguised devices 
  and bioware replace unwanted cyberware. As an operative, you are expected to be as 
  invisible and effective as modern technology or be condemned to disappear.
  Federal Arcologies are rather small but impressive. In compliance with the  
  Dupuis-Moulinsart regulation directive, they are all derived from Franco-Belgian 
  comics. Standardisation may sometimes be boring, but one must admit the floating 
  bubble of Moebius Arcology defies all common physical laws and is a wonder of our 
  time.
  FEDERAL AUTHORITIES
  “You just violated four federal laws and two sector-specific regulations, 
  please complete the eForm 1-F1398 and pay the subsequent fine within 
  78 minutes, Brussels time”.
  Sepkaku-Pro Briefing bot, one second before destruction,
  two hours twelve minutes before Captain Cranberry’s arrest.
  Every single aspect of European life is strictly defined by laws and regulations, with 
  numerous exceptions and loopholes. Whereas in other sprawls nobody cares anymore, 
  law is the thing here and Federal Authorities have enough power to enforce them. The 
  Lobbies’ job is to make those laws into tools for the various groups they represent, 
  such as megacorp associations, cartels or powerful umbrella organisations. Law is 
  the result of a tireless struggle between antagonistic interests. As the Parliament 
  and Commission are highly competent institutions working incredibly fast, law is ev-
  er-changing. Expect quick and radical changes and don't forget to follow EuroStream 
  Matrix Channel during a mission!
  Two places concentrate a huge amount of power on a global scale. Delors Arcology, 
  property of Assault Systems (a megacorp and a lobby), is the physical meeting place 
  of the High Commission, ruled by civil servants recruited by co-option, a “guarantee 
  of independence”. The Law Tower, co-property of the Franco-German Governmental 
  Reflection Group and Agrifood, is the meeting place of the Federal Parliament, 
  composed of Eurodeputies chosen by Great Electors, that is to say representatives of 
  registered political Lobbies. To avoid corruption, deputies usually sell their ballot in 
  all-pay auctions where they can assign coefficients to the different choices.
  
  TANGAROA 
  /////////////////// 00029/00150 COMPLETE
  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00029/00150 COMPLETE
  Federal authorities use their own agents but may call in “contractuals” for their grey 
  ops. Usually, missions provided by civil servants (like commissioners or agency  
  directors) are matters of personal business in internal power struggles.
  Missions: Convince the International Affairs Agency CEO to hire your employer's 
  nephew as ambassador in Shanghai; Record a meeting between Mazzini Nguyen, 
  Chief executive in the Air Agency, and Monica Bergman, head of the Internal Security 
  Board; Make a physical file disappear in Law Tower.
  Locations: A perfect reproduction of Ancient Rome, half physical, half matrix; the 
  Jean Monnet mausoleum; A euro-oligarch palace (the Baroso Palacio, for instance); A 
  zero-g office in Moebius Arcology.
  Federal Authorities Clock (group)
  "You just used the word “comic strip” in a sentence. Please pay 20,54 
  euros or expect judicial consequences."
  Copyright Defense-App
  Agenda: Make laws, enforce them; Suffer the increasing influence of various Lobbies.
  1200    Everything is stable
  1500    Define a legal action as illegal after it is complete
  1800    Define a legal action as illegal at the most critical moment of the mission
  2100    Suddenly make a wide range of legal actions illegal or vice versa: make  
   
         a contact suffer
  2200    Extend copyright to common words: inflict heavy fines; banish a contact
  2300    Regulate everyday behaviors like speaking distance or breathing; strike 
   
          hard against transgressors
  0000    Send transgressors to reformation camps, even for minor violations
  Add “Legal Manoeuvres” to the list of Basic Moves.
  Legal Manoeuvres: When you want to undertake an action in a grey area 
  under the cover of the law to avoid federal retaliations or facilitate an operation, 
  roll Mind.
  10+: You find or create a specific flaw in the law. Your actions are legal under one 
  precise condition; write it down for further use:
  • 
  Defined location (“only in B zone”)
  • 
  Defined time period (“only during Sunday carnival”)
  • 
  Defined environment (“at least 30 meters away from children”)
  • 
  Registration form approved by federal authorities
  7-9: choose and write down three condition from the list above.
  6-: This action is legal for now; advance the Federal Authorities Clock.
  
  00030/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  00030/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  LOBBIES
  While Commissions hold seats of political power as self-perpetuating oligarchies, 
  Lobbies show them the right way. You won't find any important megacorp head office 
  in Brussels. Rather, you’ll find numerous Lobbies defending the interest of various 
  groups: megacorps, governments, fighting forces, consumers and so on. The law is all 
  about transparency: every group can register as a Lobby and try to influence federal 
  authorities with expertise and with money, within a defined “envelope” (an expense 
  limit per Deputy and civil servant). Blackmail, slander, “retirements” (assassinations) 
  and other messy means have to remain covert. Lobby Clocks follow the rules for  
  Corporate Clocks, but Lobbies are more likely to send subtle messages.
  Politics
  The national representatives have been replaced by a patchwork of federal political 
  parties, remains of various governments, unions of regional potentates, indebted 
  states begging for relief and trade union representatives. Even political antagonists 
  always agree to exclude newcomers from decisions.
  Name your favorite: Corporate Europe Observatory, Franco-German Governmental 
  Reflection Group, European Development Fund, NeoChriDem Union, Mediterranean 
  Autonomous Regions, European Civilian Initiative ("ICE"), Debt Relief Group.
  Missions: Exfiltrate a Deputy stuck in a mediation mission in Namur; Protect the 
  source of a slander-campaign; Guard a candidate during his election tour; Transfer 
  a cash envelope or a jewellery briefcase to a high-ranking Commission member 
  (damned expense limit!).
  Locations: The kitchen-laboratory of Crocodile gourmet restaurant; The deluxe 
  alcove of the Penelope Club; The office of a mole in Cabu Arcology (headquarters of 
  the Press Observance Commission); The cellars of the Nation Palace.
  Goods and Services
  No good or service is illegal in the Federal Union if defended by a respectable lobby. 
  Megacorps may even take advantage of restrictive legal clauses to create juridical 
  lock-ins and stifle competition. Lobbies often act as intermediaries between umbrella 
  organisations and operatives. When dealing with them, watch your back and try to 
  know who you are really working for.
  Name your favorite: FedAir&Aqua, Hadopi Bay, Euro-Dismissal Companies  
  Associated (assassinations), Sophrology Institute (prostitution), Eurovehicles, Narcot-
  ics Producers and Consumers Association, Cabinet de défense du Luxe et de la Haute 
  Couture (all their documents are in French).
  Missions: Find Captain Cranberry, former operative, last seen in Great Brussels near 
  the Europa-Cinema enclave; Steal a sample of the last fragrance of Maison Europe; 
  Force fashion designer Yves de la Mancha out of the Federal Zone; Make the regulation 
  of narco-chips the top priority of Deputy Gasperia Flosse.
  Locations: Knokke-Heist-Sands Fully-Painted Models Art Festival (ever rented a 
  living painting?); A nano-surveillance specialists workshop; The Europa Telecom  
  
  TANGAROA 
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  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00031/00150 COMPLETE
  cafeteria, under the displaced ceiling of Opéra de Paris by Chagall; The Studio, a 
  designers community living in a forest on Monnet Arcology’s rooftop; The giant 3D 
  scanner of Euro T-Bird Corporation, Brussels agglomeration; A coffee-shop specialized 
  in organic drugs, in the very middle of Peace Park.
  Commerce
  This category includes the most heterogeneous Lobbies, usually grouping numerous 
  megacorps on the least common denominator, like the will to penetrate the European 
  market.
  Name your favorite: Panamerican-asiatic Chamber of Commerce (PanAmAsCham, 
  more than 200 megacorps!), FedEuroBusiness.
  Missions: Exfiltrate a Spanish masterpiece of the XVth century; Convince a euro- 
  certified expert to approve an Asiatic Megacorp medicine; Find a way to smuggle 
  imported goods needing a European label to a factory.
  Locations: A dead alley between Law Street and Justice Boulevard; GlobalSodaCorp 
  enclave, a zone under extraterritorial immunity near Brussels; A high-security  
  submarine zone in Anvers Harbour.
  
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  Agribusiness
  The Federal Union is the stronghold of agribusiness–lobbies make sure that doesn't 
  change. They insert gaps in certifications and specific protectionist amendments  
  prohibiting products using a well-chosen foreign technology or resource. They may 
  even extend set-aside subventions to irradiated lands, a bonanza for megacorps who 
  just bought it for a song. These Lobbies are the most powerful in the European Feder-
  ation: don't mess up with them!
  Name your favorite: Agrofood Group, Union of Certified Quality Products, European 
  Confederation of Peasants and Agricultural Holders, Advanced Wine Producers 
  Syndicate.
  Missions: Steal a technology that alters tastebuds; Frame the head of European 
  Environment Agency with evidence of corruption; Submit a false report on agricultural 
  lands to the Euro-certifications Agency.
  Locations: A fortified agricomplex held by the hormone Mafia in Limbourg; A secular 
  wine storehouse in France; A pedagogic video-game on European Union history used 
  as a dead letterbox by the Deep Throat operating in AgriDrone Systems research labs.
  Media and Entertainment
  The most prominent Lobbies of this sector are entirely devoted to censorship or copy-
  right. Thanks to them, original creation is forbidden in the European Federation and 
  creators have to use licensed characters and styles.
  Name your favorite: Observatory of Journalism and Matrix Medias, Moulinsart 
  Copyright Defense Group.
  Missions: Find the author who dared publish a parody of a famous Franco-Belgian 
  comic (don't use the real name unless you can afford it); Erase all the data of a semi- 
  independent press group; Make a copy of the blueprints of the Hergé Memorial to 
  reveal a subtle copyright infringement.
  Locations: A secret press in Sablons Street (old Brussels); The opening exhibition of 
  Collectif Hergé (a bunch of sponsored graphic designers and authors imitating the 
  master); The Eos flying stadium during the Federal Chess Boxing Championship; A 
  Double-Black Diamond piste on the artificial mountain under the Dome.
  Military
  Military Lobbies are the political façade of Civil War belligerents or military-industrial 
  consortiums. Their reputation in Brussels is poor, as they do not always hide their acts 
  of violence.
  Name your favorite: Eurocorps Assault Systems, Blood and Honour Vlaanderen 
  (BHV), Royal Walloon Roosters (RWR).
   
   
   
  
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  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00033/00150 COMPLETE
  Missions: Organise a mediation between BHV and RWR in the car graveyard of 
  Chatillon; Hijack the mass-destruction weapon delivery of Eurocorps; “Dismiss” the 
  walloon matrix-strategist known as Nov-Napoleon.
  Locations: A nuclear power plant like Chooz (Walloon) or Doel (Flanders); A Cold War 
  missile site (Kleine Brogel, in Flanders); A NATO space airship carrier; The hermetical 
  office of Eurocorps; A giant dyke protecting thousands of acres of land.
  Think Tanks and Expertise Groups
  These Lobbies use information and networking to offer expertise to their clients. 
  You'll meet them often, as they are used to legitimate all legal lobbying operations. 
  They'll recruit you to get intel and resell it, but you can sometimes buy some useful 
  intelligence from them, too.
  Name your favorite: Crocodile Dinner's Club, Security and Defence Observatory, 
  Stella Nova.
  Missions: Steal data in the anaerobic zone of the Commission headquarter; Infiltrate 
  the management board briefing of an Agribusiness lobby; Observe the comings and 
  goings of Adenauera Hermann, chief minister of the Franco-German government.
  Locations: The European Geographic Society cold buffet; An abstract room diffusing 
  Erik Satie music (in the Matrix?); A conapt block for political experts called Spinelli Ark; 
  The virtual laboratory of the European Space Agency, where satellite images become 
  real.
  Humanitarian
  Humanitarian Lobbies are always ambiguous: some hardly try to improve the situa-
  tion of the groups on whose behalf they’re acting; most of them are only focused on 
  becoming richer; and some others are ideological blankets legitimating the most dirty 
  deeds. Management boards change; white knights can turn black very quickly.
  Name your favorite: Transeuropean Care, Genetic Sanity Watch, Federal Refugees 
  High Committee.
  Missions: Transport a Mobile Surgery Unit in the heavily bombed city of Namur; 
  Reveal or conceal an ethnic cleansing operation; Guide a group of refugees to Brussels; 
  Protect expert Wally N'Djuma before her speech to the Federal Parliament.
  Locations: A brand new dispensary in war refugee zone, directed by the young and 
  enthusiastic Dr. Julian Broek; A secret centre of genetic research in the highest atom 
  ball of the New Atomic Tower; A roundtable with the representatives of the four biggest 
  sponsors of Transeuropean Care and two hundred experts, including the winner of the 
  Nobel Prize for “Peace and Biology” Professor Maeko-Derrida Vacs, whose mind has 
  been recently transferred in a sixteen-year old body by experimental anamnesis.
  
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  OLD BRUSSELS: THE LIVING MUSEUM
  “We'll conserve here for eternity all dreams of better futures, frozen in 
  their most perfect form.”
  André Aelter, Head of Urban Planning Department (UPD)
  Entering Old Brussels, unaware observers could legitimately think they’ve just passed 
  through some invisible time gate. Red brick houses, perfectly preserved medieval 
  centre (Saint Michel-et-Gudule Cathedral and City Hall are intact), grey blocks of flats, 
  electric wires, antennas, women wearing maxi-skirts and neck ribbons. You're back in 
  the seventies!
  All is illusion. First, modern technology in Old Brussels is hidden and vintage 
  looking. Transgressors may be reported to Federal Authorities and the technology  
  confiscated. False smoke and recorded sounds of petrol engines accompany the 
  motion of hydrogen cell-powered cars. Computers are framed with formica boards and 
  look like old TV sets. People here are constantly performing live theatre as employees 
  of the UPD, even beggars. All this fictional life is a valuable attraction for federal 
  citizens and wealthy international tourists. The reconstruction wouldn't be complete 
  without protest groups of the past included in the performances: leftists, anarchists 
  and promoters of transgressive cultures. What if the performers awaken those dead 
  transgressive ideologies? Use the Coming Uprising Clock to answer this question.
  Missions: Find half a million two-meter-long euro-certified streamers; Distribute  
  satisfaction forms to the tourists; Jam EuroStream Matrix Channel; Shutdown the 
  Matrix for five seconds in the Federal Zone Core; Find the Law Tower blueprints in 
  the ruined mind of a nameless architect constantly repeating “The Walls of Samaris”.
  Locations: La Bonne humeur (The Good Mood), a brasserie where Brusselers can 
  be seen eating mussels, an exotic spectacle tourists don't want to miss; The Smurf 
  Parade in front of the old Atom Tower; The Belgian Chocolate tasting alley; The Saint- 
  Michel-et-Gudule Cathedral’s crypt; A hidden cache under the Manneken Pis; The 
  Flemish Royal Theatre backstage.
  Old Brussels: the Coming Uprising Clock (place)
  “For a long time I thought of Old Brussels inhabitants as some kind of 
  sophisticated animatronics designed for the sole contemplation of our 
  victory over protests of any kinds.”
  Veronica Ashton Clark, European Deputy (Europhobes United)
  Agenda: Wake up dead ideologies; Break the illusion.
  1200    (Artificial) business as usual
  1500    Registered entertainment organisations organize a demonstration 
                against the last regulation; truly satiric carnival and graffiti in the 
                streets
  1800    Neuropropaganda bombings
  
  TANGAROA 
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  BRUSSELS  
   
  ////////////////////// 00035/00150 COMPLETE
  2100     Dissidents arrested and literally petrified; Opening of Modern Dissent  
   
           Museum
  2200    Deadly jokes on tourists and officials during Saint Verhaegen Day
  2300    Matrix shutdown in the Federal Zone
  0000    General armed uprising against Federal authorities
  THE NANSEN ZONE
  "Never cut a deal with a death squadron, never trust a Humanitarian."
  First war refugee commandment
  In the midst of civil war, Brussels shines like a promise of paradise for people escaping 
  massacres and mass destruction, but, in fact, the arrival is just the beginning. First, all 
  asylum-seekers have to undergo a battery of tests. Outstanding individuals receive a 
  certification of genetic superiority and are granted access to the Federal Zone. Others 
  are transferred to the War Refugees Zone, named after the Norwegian explorer and 
  peacemaker Fridtjof Nansen. There, Humanitarians are in charge of the health policy, 
  
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  which is little more than eugenics. After the tests, newcomers are assigned one of the 
  numerous smaller zones of the Nansen Zone, which cross political and cultural criteria 
  like “Flemish-speakers” or “Catholics” with test results like “Aesthetic Deficients” or 
  “Unstable Genome Bearers”. If transferred in the same zone, families are authorized 
  to live together. If not, they are allowed to meet in the Neutral Zone, under the strict 
  supervision of accredited staff; sex between different zones inhabitants is prohibited.
  War refugees have their own Clock. If heavily messed up, communities may organise 
  and hire operatives for spectacular vengeance missions. Expect some kind of hetero-
  geneous war treasure as payment rather than a bank transfer.
  Missions: Change medical files of an entire population group; Place a giant liveable 
  container in a ship leaving for the Federal Mars colony; Kidnap Professor Lotte Carver, 
  expert on Transeuropean Care; Blow up the headquarters of Genetic Sanity Watch; 
  Exfiltrate the population of an entire district of Liège from the Warzone; Sabotage the 
  Great Wall.
  Locations: The transloading zone of the European Space Elevator Ariadne's Thread; 
  A discreet euthanasia centre in the Muslim German-speaking Zone; A Reproduction 
  Centre where hi-potential youngsters are secluded; The huge tent of the mayor of 
  Charleroi, filled with Sepkaku railguns, wooden statues and Tiffany lamps.
  War Refugees Clock (group)
  Agenda: Display the hopelessness of the world; Try to enter Brussels.
  1200    Refugees are submitting to the rules and regulations of the Nansen Zone
  1500    Ten refugees immolate themselves in front of the Federal Parliament
  1800    Strange disappearances of war refugees in Nansen Zone
  2100    Federal Refugee High Committee Arcology air is poisoned with neuro 
   
          toxic gas
  2200    Flemish Death Squadrons ensure security of Humanitarians
  2300    Heavy genetic cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of war refugees vanish
  0000    War refugees break the Dome and enter the Federal Zone
  GREATER BRUSSELS AMIDST THE WALLOON- 
  FLEMISH WAR
  "You sully Flanders but Flanders condemns you
  Look at the North Sea: it’s run away from Bruges"
  “The F.”, Jacques Brel
  The secular antagonism between Walloon and Flanders overcame the motto of unity 
  Belgium was based on. The Federation itself supported all forms of separatism in 
  Europe, recognized separated states and sold them weapons in order to hold onto 
  
  TANGAROA 
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  BRUSSELS  
   
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  power. The strategy was successful, but the Belgian Civil War has gone for too long 
  and has unleashed a beast the Federation is no longer able to control. Racism has  
  increased so much that neo-nazis groups like Blood and Honour Vlaanderen are able to 
  sustain a Lobby and diffuse their theories of the pure Flemishery on the EuroStreams 
  Matrix Channels to promote ethnic cleansing! In Wallonia, Royal Walloon Roosters 
  (RWR) crowned Leopold II King of the French and founded Great Northern France, a 
  fast expanding state. By mass cultural cleansing, they seek to prove that all Belgian 
  cultural achievements derive from French-speaking people. A third group recently 
  appeared: “Order and Unity”. Heavily supported by the Federation and Eurocorps, 
  they promise to re-establish Belgium integrity “at any cost”. Would the cure be worse 
  than the disease?
  For now, Greater Brussels isn't part of this game. With their cute copyrighted smiling 
  shark and their self-replicating heads, Red Rackham's missiles protect and threaten 
  the agglomeration surrounding the Dome and the Old Brussels. Everything is quiet, 
  but the seeds of discord have been sown. The northern sprawl is Flemish-speaking, 
  the southern French-speaking. Between them, a large zone of bilingualism is trans-
  forming itself into a thousand leopard spots of fortified communities fearing both the 
  arrival of death squadrons and the preventive NATO bombings.
  Three kinds of employers may hire operatives here: warlords and death squadrons, 
  leaders of gated communities, and megacorp enclave managers.
  Missions: Protect the Garden of the Hesperides from the Brabant Killers; Extract  
  consulting engineer Dardenne from Melchior Brothers Community; Hide the Red 
  Wing prototype; Observe a bilingual community to establish a list of Flemish-speakers.
  Locations: The Royal Family Covent Garden; A dirty block in a sleeping suburb; The 
  Sepkaku-Pro machine-gun assembly line.
  Walloon-Flandrian War Clock (headline)
  “Strength through Unity, Peace through Order”
  Charles Dembos, head of Order and Unity Lobby
  Agenda: Extend and expand the war; Make people suffer.
  1200    The chaos of civil war remains outside Greater Brussels
  1500    Fights between Walloons and Flemish in Greater Brussels
  1800    Cultural cleansing operation at the Catholic University of Louvain, right  
   
          next to Brussels
  2100    Bruges, the Venice of the North, is vitrified by NATO-Eurocorps
  2200    Gunfight between Walloons and Flemish in the Parliament extends to  
   
          streets nearby
  2300    Failed putsch of “Order and Unity”; the lobby still founds a fascist enclave
  0000   Brussels itself is divided into three antagonist parts
  
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  ANNEX 1: DO YOU SPEAK FEDERAL?
  Federal language is close to English, but numerous Gallicisms, Germanisms and 
  specific euphemisms make it difficult to understand for native English speakers.
  Federal  
   
  English
  to dismiss  
   
  to assassinate         
  envelope  
   
  a budget
  business travel 
   
  a mission
  fiche 
   
   
  a document or record
  to retire  
   
  to die
  agent 
   
   
  an employee
  to visa 
   
   
  to endorse
  contractual 
   
  a freelance operative
  hierarchical superior 
  a manager or director
  note 
   
   
  a memo
  dossier 
   
   
  a problem
  major axis 
   
  a strategic priority
  sophrology centre  
  a brothel
  reflection group 
   
  a think tank
  ANNEX 2: ONOMASTICON
  Operative nicknames often parody the cultural heritage promoted by officials. It 
  may be a way to turn it back into a counter-culture: The Groom, Flupcke the Quick, Joe 
  Dalton, The fifth Ace, Ric Crochet, Le Grand Jacques, The copyrighted Reporter, Lone 
  Thomson, Adele Blank-Shot, Jeanette Sharp, Cruel Carmen.
  Flemish names are common in the North-West of former Belgium. French first 
  names tend to disappear: Kristien Claus, Willem Ghederolde, Anne Vermeulen, Sita 
  Daerden.
  French (or Walloon) names are common in the South-East of former Belgium and 
  in the Greater Brussels sprawl: Rémi Boisfort, Gérard Ternois, Léa Ricoeur, Odette 
  Chapeau.
  Brusseleer names, only given in Old Brussels (in accordance with law), are close 
  to Flemish and French names but may sound odd: Frantz Kakkebroek, Adeline  
  Courouble, Victor Poulvoude, Saïda Veulles, Gaston Zottestrout.
  Federal names may mix different languages but it is usual to give a Founding Father 
  or a prominent European figure’s name as a first name, feminised if necessary: Spaak 
  Bilgier, Bech Degueldre, Weil Ashling, Adenauera Bjorg, Churchillia von Bülow.
  
  TANGAROA 
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  BRUSSELS  
   
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  ANNEX 3: INSPIRATIONS
  Comics:
  Enki BILAL, Pierre CHRISTIN, The Nikopol trilogy, especially Cold Equateur, Paris, 1992
   
   
   
  The Town that didn't exist, Paris, 1977
  Gilles BOULET, “Formica punk”, Bouletcorp website, July 2011
  Jan BUCQUOY, Jacques SANTI, Chroniques de fin de siècle
       
   
   
  Autonomes, 1985
   
   
   
  Mourir à Crey-Malville, 1986
   
   
   
  Chooz, 1988
      
   
   
   Les Aventures de Gérard Craan
       
   
   
  Camp de réforme B, 1985
   
   
   
  Au Dolle Mol, 1989
  François SCHUITEN, The Great Walls of Samaris (and all the Obscure Cities), 1983
  Movies:
  Leo CARAX, Holy Motors, 2012
  David CRONENBERG, Cosmopolis, 2012
  Andrew NICCOL, Gattaca, 1997
  The official list of present European registered lobbies: http://ec.europa.eu/transpar-
  encyregister/public/consultation/listlobbyists.do?locale=en#en
  A funny memo about misused English terminology in European publications: http://
  ec.europa.eu/translation/english/guidelines/documents/misused_english_terminol-
  ogy_eu_publications_en.pdf
    
  
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  BIO
  Benjamin Kouppi is a French game designer who likes to play with the margins 
  and to put political matters in play. He explored the process of terrorist radicalization 
  in Lady Rossa, a Lady Blackbird hack set in the Italy of the Red Brigades (published in 
  Di6dent #14), and the exercise of justice in Tang China in Magistrats et Manigances 
  (Magistrates and Mysteries), an investigation game inspired by Detective Dee's 
  adventures (published in three parts in Casus Belli #19 to #21). Benjamin Kouppi 
  is also an active contributor to independent publishers; he is currently preparing a 
  large anthology of scenarios covering the 40-year-lifespan of RPGs. When not writing 
  games, he uncovers and deciphers Soviet archives.
   
  REGARDING BRUSSELS
  He writes: First, I would like you, my dear reader, to know that Brussels was not written 
  during Brexit. The European Union is so frequently under fire and so frequently said 
  to be doomed that I don't notice it anymore. If you are looking for recent events that 
  inspired the setting, look to the Refugee Crisis or at the long Belgian ministerial crisis, 
  which almost tore the country apart–the rupture of Belgium between Flanders and 
  Walloonia is an old and tenacious ghost. Most of all though, the setting arises from my 
  own very disappointing experience of Brussels. 
  As all francophone people, I used to love Dick Annegarn’s iconic song “Bruxelles ma 
  belle”, and I was expecting something other than chocolate shops and lounge bars. 
  The old Brussels I visited is already a kind of living museum, and a meaningless 
  attraction for international tourists, just like Saint-Germain in Paris. There, I had 
  visions of François Schuiten’s comic Les Cités obscures [translated in English as The 
  Obscure Cities- HC], with people slowly turning into stones. Totally absent in American 
  cyberpunk, this theme is a strong preoccupation of European citizens. I thought 
  it could be a very refreshing shift and was eager to write about it. Besides Shuiten, 
  Franco-Belgian comics were a powerful source of inspiration. The first one comes from 
  Belgian anarchists themselves. They had been dreaming of the separation of Wallonia 
  from Belgium, and in Les Autonomes, their Walloon leftist utopia is broken by a French 
  military intervention after a terrorist strike against the Eiffel Tower. Then, the obsession 
  of Bilal and Christin for a locked city gave me a good hint of what an international city 
  using a restrictive migratory policy could look like, as it's the setting of Froid Equateur. 
  So, I was taking inspiration from comics... how could I hope that Mounlinsart SA would 
  not notice my wrong deeds?
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00004>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00004>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////REACTIVE.PREDICTION////
  INBOUND.MOTIVE: [FOOT]
  OUTBOUND.MOTIVE: [CYCLE_TAGGED]
  THE GOLDEN
  HORSESHOE
  
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  The cities around North America’s great lakes have gone by many names; from their 
  ivory towers, the educated call it ‘the Great Lakes Megalopolis’, a continuous sprawl 
  of urban communities limited by geographical features and not borders, much to 
  the frustration of government officials. Some locals still call this area the “Rust Belt”, 
  a name that reflects the struggles and failures of the area’s manufacturing past.  
  Corporations and industry have trickled back into the region, inspired by cheap land 
  and even more desperate labour. Most know it as “The Golden Horseshoe”, the brilliant 
  crown of the Megalopolis located on the western shores of Lake Ontario; the collapse 
  of traditional employment couldn’t even tarnish its name. 
  Toronto is the region’s shining jewel, a city of unparalleled excess and promises of 
  a better future. Quiet but ever-present throughout this so-called socialist utopia 
  is the swansong of public interest being crushed by the unrelenting power of the  
  corporations.
  THE VIEW FROM TORONTO
  Toronto is a showcase of everything that the Golden Horseshoe has to offer to visitors 
  and citizens. The downtown core of the city is a vibrant community of concrete and 
  neon. Classical brutalist buildings, reflections of the city’s business boom in the 1960s 
  and 70s, still stand next to the modern towers of glass and steel. 
  This lucrative home for corporations is marketed to their employees as a multicul-
  tural and progressive community. The vision of Toronto the Good is manufactured 
  and actively enforced by corporations looking to relocate branches and employees.  
  Corporate melding with higher levels of government has kept the Canadian dollar  
  artificially low, allowing both corporations and the city to benefit through cheaper 
  labour and an influx of residents. The end result has been a brain drain on the 
  Great Lakes Megalopolis, with Toronto and the Golden Horseshoe accumulating the  
  residents with the highest corporate potential.     
  The city is home to over 9 million people. Gridlock is part of everyday life; the busiest 
  highway in North America cuts across the northern part of the city. Travel data and 
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00004>>>>>>>
  THE GOLDEN
            HORSESHOE
  
  TANGAROA 
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  TORONTO  
  ////////////////////// 
  00045/00150 COMPLETE
  traffic prediction relays make commuting only tolerable at best. A good Driver who can 
  weave expertly through congestion is always in high demand.       
  The view from Toronto’s downtown highrises reveals that the city is a rambling  
  collection of smaller communities scattered across the rolling countryside. Pockets of 
  lush vegetation, only noticeable from above, reveal the natural barriers between the 
  original communities that grew into the Toronto that exists today. The names of the old 
  villages label the neighbourhoods now. Neighbourhood identity plays a strong role in 
  Torontonian culture, both in physical spaces and in the Matrix.
  French and English are Canada’s official languages. A Fixer fishing for government 
  contracts would benefit from brushing up on both. The official languages are the 
  shallow end of the language pool, though; conversations on an average street corner 
  in Toronto might involve dozens of dialects. Toronto in the 21st century was one of the 
  most diverse cities in the entire world. That’s only increased as the city has marketed 
  itself as a place for multinational corporations to roost. A crew based in Toronto 
  probably won’t feature more than one person of any given culture or nationality. 
  This mixture of cultures has created a market for translation services and software. 
  Language mods can translate business conversations fairly accurately, but the 
  risk isn’t worth it for some. Doubts about data integrity have led to more wealthy  
  corporations hiring full-time human translators. Everyone has a second-hand story of a 
  suit who accidently exposed company secrets by running them through an augmented  
  translation mod.
  Toronto may appear more amiable than other large cities, particularly to international 
  freelancers. That illusion of politeness is the result of Canadian conversational quirks; 
  locals tend to speak apologetically in conversation to defuse tension and commiserate 
  with each other. A savvy Pusher might twist this to their advantage when sharing 
  their vision. This impression isn’t universal; Torontonians are considered rude and 
  short tempered by other Canadians. Asking a resident of the Golden Horseshoe about 
  Toronto could earn you a snide, but not inaccurate, remark about the city being the 
  centre of the universe. 
  ................................Rach...................... 
  ........Shelkey...............................
  
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  TORONTO: A QUICK TOUR
  At the central south-end of the city is Toronto’s financial district, also known as Bay 
  Street. Most of Canada’s private business wealth accumulates here, as does a majority 
  of the nation’s most sensitive data. The latest Zhuangzi models, not even cleared for 
  sale in Canada yet, prowl the streets. The district is an exceptionally ripe market for 
  gigs of all kinds.  
  Sunlight rarely reaches the surfaces of the financial district’s narrow streets, leaving 
  the spaces in between in perpetual neon twilight. The office towers make up the bulk 
  of the street-facing businesses. A keen eye can pick out the crowded after hours bars 
  built into lobby spaces, guided by the dim LED glow from augmented office workers. 
  Most professional communications over the Matrix are handled over wireless channels, 
  supported by a fiber cable backbone buried under the streets and lining the towers. 
  Cyberware among the corporate shills intermingles with fashion; elegant chromed 
  hardware doubling as jewellery and streamlined implants remain in high demand.
  The most powerful corporations consider it a mark of pride to have an address in the 
  financial district. Real estate on Bay Street is limited and expensive and only a select 
  few staff may actually be stationed downtown. If information needs to be extracted 
  out of a person instead of a system, satellite offices on the outskirts of the city are a 
  great target. Being excluded from a downtown office can make ambitious employees 
  bitter and an easy mark.
  Snaking under the Financial District and throughout the entire downtown core is the 
  PATH, a system of pedestrian tunnels that links office towers to transit and shopping. 
  The original vision for the PATH was the dream of a lost age–an ultramodern under-
  ground network that allowed residents to travel, work and live in comfort 365 days a 
  year without dealing with Toronto’s temperamental weather. 
  The aesthetics of the PATH today are accented with dull, blinking neon signage and 
  brown tiles. Abandoned stretches are laced with forgotten networks and Matrix access 
  ports that no one wants to claim. A patient Hacker will find that the PATH’s security 
  systems are just as ancient as the decor. A team caught flat footed on a job may buy 
  enough time in the PATH’s maze-like mallscape to escape pursuers.    
  Toronto City Hall sits just to the north of the Financial District. The building’s space 
  age design has aged respectfully; two curved towers stand at the shoulders of a raised 
  saucer-shaped council chamber. More prideful members of council may tell you that 
  the rest of the world finally caught up with City Hall. 
  The public spaces around the complex are open, airy and home to street festivals and 
  political rallies. The interior of City Hall is not nearly as accessible and only the privi-
  leged get to bump shoulders with the seats of power. It’s easier for new freelancers to 
  watch the council on the official Living Visual Feed and exert influence via the Matrix 
  and private comms.  
  The Legislative Assembly of Ontario is located in Toronto at Queen’s Park. The neo- 
  romanesque building clashes with the modern education and healthcare campuses 
  that surround it. The relationship between the provincial government and the city is 
  
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  TORONTO  
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  virulent. For corporations, earning the trust of politicians is a gateway to tapping the 
  province’s wealth of mining, farming and forestry resources. 
  Pundits and politicians try to call out the City’s pandering to corporations, but this 
  does not go unchallenged. Behind the scenes, silencing dissenters and investigative 
  journalists is big business; a steady supply of corporate muscle and kickbacks is 
  made available to lawmakers with flexible ethics. The Provincial Parliament’s reaction 
  has been the increasingly powerful Anti-Corruption Commission and their teams of  
  consultants and freelancers. Fueled by past successes, the Commission has been 
  granted sweeping authority to investigate and punish corporations and politicians 
  alike.
  The more tech-savvy residents of downtown can be seen frequently at the intersection 
  of College and Spadina. Known as The Nexus, the intersection is where Chinatown, 
  Kensington Market and College Street all meet in a flurry of Matrix-centric counter 
  culture. The storefronts and sideways of the Nexus are a cluttered maze of off-market 
  hardware for sale scattered among fruit markets and junk stores; vendors dismiss 
  public plastic currency in favour of untraceable cash and whatever cryptocurrency is 
  fashionable this month.
  Chinatown clings to the trappings of its ethnic enclave past; the public art installa-
  tions of dragons and guardian lions call to mind a very western interpretation of a 
  Chinese community. Gentrification has spread by students taking advantage of the 
  neighborhood's cheap rent and food. Getting a bed in Chinatown requires the right 
  connections; the local landlords are some of the few in Toronto willing to take rent in 
  cryptocurrency in exchange for the tenant’s current Matrix handles.
  
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  Kensington Market is a winding collection of side streets and artist communes in the 
  heart of the Nexus. Graffiti in the narrow alleys reference obnoxious Matrix memes as 
  if they were culturally relevant. Bioartists are establishing a trendy foothold here; their 
  pieces are grown and shaped from living cells, rebelling against the aesthetic of metal 
  on flesh. Pop-up shops allow artists to sell more progressive and anti-corporate works 
  off of the Matrix and out of sight.
  Across the north end of the market is College Street, a strip lined with countless 
  cyberware shops. If you’re looking for a part, a contact on College Street can probably 
  source it for you. Sure, it won’t be in the original packaging and its intended country 
  of sale will be a mystery. The contact probably won’t even be able to tell you what boat 
  it fell off of, but it beats digging for chrome in a dumpster or a morgue. Experimental 
  pieces of cyberware, fused and patched together against intended programming, can 
  be sourced if you know the right Tech.
  Life in Toronto goes beyond downtown. The west end of the city is popular with corps 
  appealing to younger employees, encouraging them to move into neighbourhoods 
  like Parkdale and The Junction that historically catered to the lower class. The cycle 
  of gentrification has forced out many of the original residents and ushered in vanity 
  cyberware clinics catering to residents with cash flow to burn. 
  North of downtown are the neighbourhoods of Yonge and Eglinton, better known 
  as Young and Eligible. A boom in high-end apartments and condos have made the 
  area trendy for unattached professionals. Several corporations have moved in as well, 
  capitalizing on the cheaper land and brand exposure to potential life-long customers.
  THE MATRIX IN TORONTO
  Torontonians proudly display their citizenship in their Matrix personas. They typically 
  identify themselves by their neighbourhood in Toronto rather than their home city or 
  nation. Personalized flairs on Matrix avatars commonly feature subway stations and 
  local iconography. Neighbourhoods have local “mascots” popular in the digital art and 
  memes; strange and sometimes out-of-place local animals from meatspace that have 
  ascended to Matrix godhood. The passion users have for these creatures cannot be 
  overstated: threats and concerns for the lives of these mascots has resulted in city 
  councillors releasing public statements and users crowd-funding security contracts. 
  Toronto’s Living Visual Feeds are respected around the world for their experimental 
  content and apparent freedom from direct corporate influence. Ancient “Can-Con” 
  laws, originally put in place to protect Canadian print and broadcast media, force LVFs 
  to maintain a high percentage of locally produced content.
  American LVFs have difficulty broadcasting to potential Torontonian audiences. 
  Content regulations restrict uncontrolled access to non-Canadian content, in theory. 
  Corporations have been known to hire Torontonian lobbyists to push back on regula-
  tory bodies and help feed the hunger for American LVFs. New hacks and workarounds 
  pop up on the black market every new LVF season, but not without risks–a bad patch 
  for a popular tuner three seasons ago resulted in the deaths of dozens of viewers.    
  
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  TORONTO  
  ////////////////////// 
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  The most popular Toronto LVF is the upstart Channel Forty-Four, a progressive informa-
  tion and news feed that caters to younger demographics. Channel Forty-Four is always 
  looking for fresh freelance content, provided that the creator is talented enough to 
  produce and package it themselves. A Reporter gifted with production cyberware 
  could secure a good string of steady contracts.          
  Channel Forty-Four’s appearance in the Matrix is gothic in design, relatively low and 
  intentionally easy to reach. The bulk of the space is accessible to the average user, 
  although deep inside the structure are twisting, winding hallways that lead off to 
  mysterious secured databanks and dead information wells. There are rumours that 
  hidden deep in the outlet is evidence that the Channel Forty-Four has been taking 
  money from corporate contacts, but no Hacker who claims to have seen it has been 
  able to bring it into the light of day.  
  The Educational Authority, an underfunded government information outlet, is a local 
  LVF rising in popularity. Its appearance in the Matrix is a breezy, open green space; the 
  Educational Authority is been historically seen as a banal place to view documentaries 
  and children's video streams. 
  The Authority’s importance and popularity has shifted suddenly in recent months due 
  to a mysterious pirate feed that has been cutting into their system. A nature documen-
  tary series on the LVF is hijacked every week, without fail, by a pirate broadcast that 
  exposes current political and business events ignored by mainstream outlets. No one 
  has claimed responsibility for the broadcasts yet, but corporations spotlighted have 
  already suffered significant drops in stock prices and public confidence.   
  The Matrix is full of countless local Toronto Living Visual Feeds for all tastes, ranging 
  from slickly produced CanGlobal, featuring dry business coverage and commentary 
  and very little user interaction, to the weakly powered independent Ward 32 Local, 
  which mostly serves as a soapbox for outspoken east end residents. 
  SELLING CITY HALL
  Toronto’s inclusive face to residents obfuscates an internal struggle: the city is  
  constantly pulling itself apart to maintain its public image. City Hall is entangled in a 
  vicious cycle of funding cuts put into motion generations ago by now-dead politicians. 
  Current politicians are forced to play the game to maintain public standing.   
  Corporate control and development has been historically restricted in Canada. Early 
  large attempts at Canadian corporate expansion were widely-reported blunders,  
  resulting in public outcry and a cultural swing towards socialism. The politicians fueled 
  the fire; demands for government-provided social services gave them more direct 
  power over the population.       
  The city’s broad social services are one of Toronto’s greatest treasures, but running 
  these services smoothly requires taxpayer money. The relationship between Toronto’s 
  city government and Ontario’s provincial government is strained at the best of times 
  and increasing provincial spending for the city is mostly impossible. City taxes in 
  Toronto are artificially low compared to the surrounding municipalities. Raising taxes 
  
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  for Toronto’s working class is political suicide. Raising the cost of doing business for 
  corporations is actual suicide. 
  Popular politicians have crafted whole election campaigns around “stopping the 
  gravy train”, promising to cut back on government overspending that doesn’t exist 
  to save taxpayers money. Quarterly savings quotas are demanded by city hall and 
  eagerly covered by reporters for local Living Visual Feeds. The success of these  
  campaigns affects not only the relationship politicians have with city residents but also 
  the relationship that the city has with the surrounding municipalities in the Golden 
  Horseshoe. Any shortfalls in the Toronto budget, with a little coercion, get picked up 
  by the provincial government, and reporting unexpected overspending can lead to 
  fractured relationships with other cities. 
  The city council is always looking to unload “money-losing” social services to private 
  companies if they can make it look like it saves money. Corporations, in turn, are on 
  the lookout for information on which city sectors are running in the red and which 
  services have lucrative future profits. Fueling this cycle are information brokers, both 
  corporate and independent. The final battlefield is the backrooms of financial district 
  restaurants, where private scrimmages are waged over public services with high 
  profitability. 
  Ultimately, this cycle is unsustainable. The status quo will fracture and fall apart, 
  leaving millions of residents at the mercy of corporations for services and care. Current 
  members of city council are banking on that collapse happening after their early 
  retirement.  
  THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE
  The Golden Horseshoe is the unofficial name for the municipalities of southwestern 
  Ontario. These communities are gathered around the western shores of Lake Ontario 
  and form a continuous urban sprawl that spreads from Kingston in the east down to 
  Niagara Falls in the south.   
  The name “Golden Horseshoe” reflects the region’s past success and prosperity. While 
  the Golden Horseshoe struggled in past economic crashes, a region-wide collapse 
  never occurred. There’s still work to be found maintaining factory lines and in the 
  cyberware development industry, although working closely with corporations leaves a 
  bad taste in the mouth of younger residents. The increase in private corporate power 
  has left the once dominant unions struggling for relevance. 
  The backbone of the Golden Horseshoe is a network of rail lines and highways; access 
  to these transportation lines is central to the regional flow of people and goods. 
  Forward thinking engineering makes these transportation routes viable and valuable 
  in the age of high-speed bullet shuttles and personal armoured vehicles. The owner-
  ship of these lines is either transparently public or through a curious type of Canadian 
  business known as a crown corporation.
  Crown corporations are relics that defy modern business sensibilities: corporations 
  created by federal or provincial government to run services in the interest of the 
  
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  TORONTO  
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  public. The actions of a crown corporation are “completely accountable” to government 
  officials. That level of government submission strikes fear into the hearts of private 
  corporations desperate not to be deemed an essential service. 
  HIGHWAY 407
  The legendary Highway 407 is the one part of the transportation network that 
  got away. Control of the highway was sold to the multinational corporation FTR  
  Enterprises. The contents of the contract were secret at the time and are still sealed 
  away in a government office, intended to be forgotten. 
  Drivers on the Highway 407 are monitored through a system of cameras and tracking 
  devices. Vehicles that want to use the highway must install a transponder: a small 
  electronic device that relays the driver’s identity and location to the FTR servers. Being 
  able to avoid the gridlock in the rest of the network is enough for some people to 
  forfeit their private information.
  The municipalities refuse to forget the deal the Provincial government made with 
  FTR. The sale of the Highway 407 stands as a reminder that anything under public 
  control can be sold. The sale closed with an unprecedented public outcry, causing the 
  government to lock down further corporate expansion for a time. The rallying cries 
  against highway privatization are familiar at anti-corporate rallies. 
  FTR Enterprise’s rule of the Highway 407 is challenged by a terrorist network known 
  as The Highwaymen. The Highwaymen’s manifesto, illicitly broadcast across all of 
  Ontario’s Living Visual Feeds and Matrix terminals five months ago, is to disclose the 
  circumstances around FTR’s contract and liberate the highway for the citizens of the 
  Golden Horseshoe.         
  The Highwaymen’s strategy has been two-pronged so far: physical disruptions to 
  highway service and the release of sensitive travel information to freelance reporters. 
  The attacks, usually using bombs and remote auto-comp disruptors, only occur when 
  politicians and high profile commuters are using the highway. Rumours on the Matrix 
  connect the Highwaymen’s leadership with city council members in the Golden 
  Horseshoe Municipalities but proof has been impossible to date; all captured com-
  munications are encoded with single instance integer ciphers and have so far proven 
  uncrackable. 
  FTR has found it impossible to deny the ongoing situation but refuses to yield the 
  highway back to the government. Forced to be public about the matter, the corpora-
  tion has leveraged the situation in the media by promoting vehicular signal jammers 
  in development and using seized Highwayman communications as an entrance exam 
  challenge for would-be corporate cyberjockeys.
  MUNICIPALITIES OF THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE
  The Golden Horseshoe contains dozens of cities and towns. There is a level of paranoia 
  among the municipalities about officially joining with Toronto to form an even bigger 
  megacity, driven by large-scale past failures. Amalgamation looks good in the pro-
  
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  vincial government’s budget, but poses municipal-level governing and funding chal-
  lenges for the affected areas. A handful of municipalities have emerged to challenge 
  Toronto’s dominance.
  MISSISSAUGA
  The municipality of Mississauga is located directly west of Toronto. While smaller and 
  less densely populated than its neighbour, Mississauga remains one of the largest 
  cities in Canada. Mississauga had a front row seat to the expansion of the megacity, 
  but has since grown into a hub for bleeding edge tech development.
  Mayor Erin Journeaux’s leadership has guided Mississauga into a city that stands in 
  Toronto’s shadow. Journeaux was a community leader who rushed to the front lines 
  during the Burnhamthorpe Munitions Plant Disaster. The event resulted in countless 
  deaths, the disintegration of part of the lakeshore and the largest peacetime evacu-
  ation in North America. The blast was heard across the Golden Horseshoe, a sign to 
  the region that change was coming. The official investigation declared the event a 
  manufacturing accident. 
  Journeaux was voted in as mayor during the next election, running on a platform 
  of removing manufacturing jobs in Mississauga and replacing them with equally 
  corporate white collar positions. Mississauga has since flourished as a trendy hub 
  for international corporate offices that refuse to pay Toronto real estate prices.  
  Corporations both International and Canadian, such as CIVA PharmaCorp and  
  Northlands Digi-Diffusion, now call Mississauga home.   
  Mississauga’s rapid growth caused the city’s development to be more disjointed than 
  Toronto and more car dependant; the downtown core is blocks of dense corporate office 
  towers and malls located dozens of kilometres away from residential neighbourhoods. 
  Journeaux’s mayoral rule is absolute, but she is always willing to entertain corporate 
  contacts who pay homage to her legacy. 
  HAMILTON
  At the far west end of Lake Ontario is the municipality of Hamilton. Most of the Golden 
  Horseshoe outside of Toronto leans politically conservative. Hamilton’s votes swing to 
  the other extreme; decades of union influence, political disappointment and corporate 
  betrayal has made Hamilton a socialist stronghold and an artistic haven. 
  Hamilton’s wealth came from the steel industry. The city was home to several major 
  steel mills and countless related businesses. Unions were a part of daily life, support-
  ing workers as they navigated dangerous work environments. The shift downward 
  came in phases; independent mills were bought out by multinational corporations. 
  The steel market crashed, flooded with stock produced elsewhere. Unions, now stuck 
  with a workforce that was worth less, lost bargaining power.  
  Hamilton’s forced amalgamation was a watershed moment for the region; the  
  provincial government decided to merge Hamilton with its surrounding communities 
  into a megacity. City Hall’s budget was stretched. Without kickbacks from council, 
  the corps suddenly found it cheaper to manufacture steel overseas and Hamilton’s 
  
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  TORONTO  
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  job market collapsed overnight. The other municipalities took notice to what was  
  happening. The wisdom of the provincial government was never to be trusted again.
  The current mayor, Ridley Harrison, has pushed for the city to be reborn as a sanc-
  tuary for the displaced and disenfranchised: people forced out of Toronto due to the 
  high costs of living and an incompatibility with corporate lifestyles. Through hosting 
  popular bioart festivals and fostering regional goodwill with other municipalities, 
  Hamilton is crafting an image of being an essential part of the Golden Horseshoe. 
  When the revolution against the corporations and provincial government eventually 
  comes to the region, Hamilton will be the epicentre. Their hope is that others will stand 
  with it.
  THE NIAGARAS
  The brightly glowing landscape of The Niagaras existed long before Toronto made 
  it fashionable. The Niagaras have historically been a confused municipality, known 
  worldwide for their manufactured tourist experiences while quietly being valuable 
  for their natural resources. The Niagaras seen on postcards showcase the beautiful 
  waterfalls and glittering hotels, ignoring the hydroelectric plants and fertile farms 
  down the river. 
  The wealth generated by Niagara’s industries doesn’t trickle down and instead lines 
  the coffers of Mayor Alonzo Trigger and his business partners. Hidden behind the 
  flashy facades, an army of poorly paid workers keeps the corporate pleasure machine 
  running. If you’re looking to unload some hot gear or cyberdecks, there’re buyers in 
  the Niagaras willing to push over a month’s salary to escape onto the Matrix.  
  The grip that the corps have is supported unintentionally by the Niagaras’ American 
  neighbors. If the climate stateside turns violent, the Niagaras will eat the first bullet. 
  The faith in corporate protection is what keeps the poor working class in line. Much like 
  the other economic truths of the Niagaras, no one notices. 
  PICKERING
  To the east of Toronto is Pickering. Pickering’s politics are loud and forward to the rest 
  of the Golden Horseshoe: “We power your lives!” The amount of power generated by 
  the nuclear plants slightly outstrips that of the hydroelectric plants in the south. The 
  Golden Horseshoe would be just as crippled if either Pickering or the Niagaras cut off 
  the power. 
  The generation stations have raised the ire of local environmentalist groups. An 
  accident at one of the plants risks not only Pickering, but all of the Golden Horseshoe. 
  Protests against the reliance on nuclear power are frequently held in front of Toronto 
  City Hall. Toronto’s politicians pandering to the crowds has led to fractured relations 
  with Pickering city council.   
  The plants are owned by a crown corporation, although some environmentalists have 
  called out that declines in government funding could put millions of lives at risk. 
  These arguments weigh in favour of private ownership, calling into question just who 
  is funding these studies and environmental groups.
  
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  CREATING CANADIAN UNIONS, MUNICIPALITIES 
  AND CORPORATIONS
  To make a corporation sound particularly Canadian, consider adding either “Can” or 
  “Canada” to a corporation name. For example, Can-Lifetech or VirtuaTech Canada. 
  Most corporations don’t have home offices in Canada and will rebrand their Canadian 
  branches in very simple ways.    
  Unions, municipalities and crown corporations all function like corporations  
  mechanically; they are large, faceless organizations that have their own agendas, 
  make demands of the players and take actions against them. None of them are  
  particularly benevolent to players; characters are far too low on the food chain for 
  these organizations to care.   
  Unions have a proud history in the Golden Horseshoe that’s tied to the region’s  
  manufacturing sector. Their sway is felt strongest in places that hide in plain sight from 
  corporations: healthcare, education and city services have strong unions that stand 
  against corporate control.  In smaller municipalities, a manufacturing workers Union 
  may have as much sway as any corporation.  
  Crown corporations are state-owned corporations, often monopolies held “directly 
  accountable” to members of parliament. In return for following the party line, these 
  companies get government funding and support. Crown corporations are just as 
  ruthless as their private counterparts, especially when it comes to profitability.  
  Providing great returns makes the crown corporation more valuable and less likely to 
  be sold off to private companies. Civil servants are incredibly defensive of their jobs 
  and benefits packages.              
  Municipalities are the local governments in the Golden Horseshoe. Provincial down-
  loading of responsibility and services has given the municipalities more power to 
  direct their future and less funding to see it through. Municipalities are always looking 
  for freelancers and consultants to get jobs done on the cheap and off the books. 
  There’s an air of mistrust between the different municipalities; none of them feel like 
  the province is giving them equal support. Insider information about upcoming city 
  planning and council meetings can fetch a decent profit on the black market.      
  The tension and anxiety in your game shouldn’t just come from fear of corporations, 
  but the friction between corporate and social interests. Overpriced private healthcare 
  on its own isn’t going to drive someone to action. Contrast what private and public can 
  offer: the struggling public clinic that’s free but will track your data versus the shiny 
  private clinic that will cost you bank but will be discreet about the visit. The choices 
  should never be moral ones; morality has no place in business.  
  Contrasting corporations, government and socialist organizations is key to creating a 
  uniquely Canadian atmosphere in your game.
   
  
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  TORONTO  
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  BIO
  Rach Shelkey is a game designer, community organizer and podcaster living in 
  Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She’s an organizer for RPG events such as Breakout Con, 
  FanExpo Canada, the Toronto Area Gamers meetup community and the Sparkle Dice 
  Alliance. You can hear more of her thoughts on her podcast It’s Like DnD at http://Its-
  LikeDnD.ca. Her current cover identity involves helping augmented humans navigate 
  the bureaucracy of insurance corporations. 
  To learn more about all things Rach related, visit her site Teddog.com.     
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00005>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00005>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////TRACKING////
  VisualID: [NEGATIVE]
  Audio: [BIOLOCKED]
  Target: [INEBRIATED]
  THE  SOUTH 
  WILL  RISE 
  AGAIN
  
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  In the aftermath of the West Coast’s environmental collapse (the Diego-Eureka earth-
  quakes that pounded it in quick succession, the steady encroachment of the Mojave 
  into So-Cal, the PANPETROL leak that destroyed the coastline from Seattle to Gold 
  Beach), the Southern states of America gained something that they’d lacked since 
  Sherman burned Atlanta: Economic leverage. Backed by agricorp giants Phyllcon and 
  Delta Vital, they reclaimed their status as the country’s agricultural center, helped 
  along by the influx of cheap labor as refugees scrambled across the border from 
  Central and Latin America.
  The South was lax about the massive immigration. More than lax. Border states 
  struck down long standing laws and pumped out more and more green cards. It was 
  a strange development, one that sometimes caught the attention of news anchors on 
  slow days, but all questions were brushed away by silent reps and smiling governors. 
  In Texas and Louisiana, Brass Eagle Securities came on the scene. Now they’re one of 
  the most well-known corps in the business, and there’s not a shady back alley runner 
  from coast to coast that doesn’t recognize the crisp navy uniform of a Raptor patrol-
  man. At the time, though, they were new competition, undercutting the old time state 
  funded police with better technology and fewer scruples. BES started buying up land 
  by the mile. In some areas, they put down training facilities, churning out the Raptor 
  cops-for-hire that would become the corporate standard for security personnel all over 
  the United States. In others, they built sprawling prisons, the massive high security 
  Venn-Panopticons that accepted delinquents from any court willing to toss them out.
  This strange, contradictory system of prison labor and migrant asylum continued on for 
  years. It was the subject of more than one graduate thesis, but otherwise went largely 
  ignored, an anomaly people were happy to accept so long as the soy kept growing. 
  Then, during the turbulent election of 2084, everything became clear. On November 
  8th, the Progressive candidate Aadhya Jagpal won the Presidency after a hotly con-
  tested race against the Neo-conservative’s Landon Barnett. On the 10th, Southern 
  congressmen walked out of sessions in the House and the Senate. Within a week, they 
  declared the Second Secession, proclaiming the new rise of the Confederacy.
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00005>>>>>>>
  THE  SOUTH
  WILL  RISE  AGAIN
  
  NEW ORLEANS 
  /////////////////////// 00059/00150 COMPLETE
  When the dust settled, the Union lost all its original defectors [South Carolina,  
  Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, and North 
  Carolina] along with Missouri and Florida. The new borders were tight, patrolled night 
  and day by Raptors and their hulking cybernetic HOUNDs. Those with the bad luck 
  to be stuck in the New Confederate States (NCS), either as prisoners or green card 
  workers, found it had gotten a lot harder to get out. Many contracts and prisoners’ 
  chits were sold to the Big Ag companies on timed conscription, the lengths of which 
  stretched into the indefinite. 
  For a brief moment, there was talk of another war. But corporate profits trumped 
  outdated state lines, and no one could afford to see the soy fields burning. The 
  Southern elite revived their family plantations, blending new tech with old gilt and 
  oil paintings. Linen suits and long dresses (climate controlled with carbon nanofiber) 
  came back into vogue. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler for the new 90’s, a self- 
  conscious false aristocracy doing a Savannah reenactment, only with new bugs and 
  eyes glittering from every pretentious wrought iron lamppost. 
  The outside world watched in horror as reports of police brutality filtered in from 
  Atlanta, Jacksonville, Miami, New Orleans. Protesters were thrown into prison,  
  conscripted, released into the fields with buzzed hair and RFID tags implanted in their 
  spines. The underworld responded in kind. Unlike in the free states, where criminal 
  culture leaked out into the vids and VR dramas, the NCS runners went ghost. The 
  Mississippi has muddy waters and the bayou is knotted and deep, and nowhere are 
  things muddier or more twisted than in New Orleans.
  LIFE IN THE BIG EASY
  Much as it’s always been, New Orleans stands apart from the rest of the buttoned up 
  South. Chalk it up to its laissez faire heritage. The preachers in their megachurches 
  still call it a den of inequity, and it wears the label with pride. Now more than ever, 
  though, it’s a city of two faces. On one side of the coin, the magnolia lined boulevards 
  of Uptown and the Garden District, the elegant old time facade of the French Quarter. 
  ..............................Kyrie......................... 
  ..........Culp.....................................
  
  00060/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Beautiful as a high-priced escort and twice as likely to double cross you. On the other, 
  the vibrant, violent sprawl that stretches from Tremé through the Lower Ninth Ward 
  and out into the seeping, creeping depths of the Bayou Sauvage. There’s jazz there 
  and the best gumbo a man can get... and a thousand ways to die. Both have their 
  opportunities for the savvy seeking credits, if you can sort out the Spanish moss tangle 
  of intrigue that comes along with them.
  MONEY IS DEAR, LIFE IS CHEAP: 
  UPTOWN, THE FRENCH QUARTER, AND THE GILDED LILY
  At first glance, it doesn’t look like the Old City has changed since the first Secession. 
  Uptown, Carrolton, and the Garden District are still home to the city manors of the 
  plantation rich, hidden from the street by tall fences and ancient oaks. Gentlemen 
  walk the streets with ivory topped canes, and women sweep by in a bustle of silks. It 
  takes a second look to see the cameras on every corner and the earpieces in every ear. 
  The people are different, too. Easy access to body modification, coupled with a love of 
  traditional values, has resulted in a rise of what the elite call New Classical beauty, and 
  what everyone else calls Stepford Syndrome. The men all have high cheekbones and 
  square jaws. The women, bee stung lips and wide doe eyes that peek out from behind 
  silk fans. While the mod shops promise a ‘unique face for your unique heart,’ it’s not 
  impossible to see two people with the same face walking down the promenade. 
  The French Quarter retains its lazy charm, an old Madame who knows what you like. 
  The Café Du Monde still serves sugar dusted beignets and strong chicory coffee, 
  and the Carousel Bar at Hotel Monteleone spins on. Bourbon Street still beckons the 
  unwary, promising the latest in manufactured debauchery: VR porn parlors, all night 
  bars, the newest sims and synths so you can fully appreciate the whirlygig of neon and 
  undulating bodies. The Eagles are indulgent here, to a point. That point being so long 
  as you’re white and rich and dumb enough to fall into honey traps. If someone ends 
  up dumped into an alleyway, throat cut and cyberware carved out, that’s where their 
  sin got them.
  That isn’t to say there haven’t been big changes. The French Quarter isn’t a place 
  where people live anymore. It’s a playland for the wealthy and unscrupulous, so there 
  were a lot of inconvenient houses. Inconvenient bodies. Across the river from Jackson 
  Square, Algiers Point got bought out in the area’s largest land deal since the Louisiana 
  Purchase. Thousands of people displaced and sent across to the Tremé sprawl, already 
  packed to the gills, and their houses demolished under the watchful eye of Jean 
  Landrieu. In their place, a massive fairytale structure rose on the banks. The Gilded 
  Lily, which Landrieu claimed took its inspiration from the famous Versailles, complete 
  with its sprawling gardens and iconic fountains. Three arching bridges connect the 
  casino to the Quarter, and its lights are visible anywhere in the city.
  The complex rivals the ones in Vegas, a veritable pleasure palace walled in gold and 
  dizzying mirrors. Slots, blackjack, poker, fights both public and private. Some say 
  Landrieu drums up support for a gladiator style combat, where convicts can win their 
  chits and walk free. Whether or not that’s true, well, it’d be uncivilized to say. 
  
  NEW ORLEANS 
  /////////////////////// 00061/00150 COMPLETE
  Landrieu looks every inch the showman, a ringleader in a white suit and gold vest, 
  and there’s plenty of people who’d love to see the Lily sink into the Mississippi. There’s 
  vaults, of course, and the diamond chandelier that hangs from the ceiling in the hall 
  of mirrors, throwing rainbows into everybody’s eyes. But the owner is sharper than he 
  looks, and more than one would-be thief rots at the bottom of the river. There’s a good 
  reason those triple bridges are the crowned favorite spot for jumpers, too, so best plan 
  any heist extra careful. 
  WE  KNOW  WHO’S  REALLY  DOING  THE 
  PLANTING: 
  DOWNTOWN AND THE NCS’ MEGACORPS
  There are three main corps with HQs in New Orleans, and their corporate territories 
  slice downtown into three sections. Delta Vital to the South, Phyllcon to the North, 
  and Revoir keeping the peace, and taking up the best real estate, in the middle. Delta 
  and Phyllcon are the NCS’ largest argicorps, and they exist in perpetual rivalry, which 
  opens up plenty of work for the enterprising runner game to provide some plausible 
  deniability for hacks, break-ins, and wet jobs. Both are neck deep in slave labor– 
  ”conscription cases” in the parlance–but all their R&D is done in the city labs. Periodic 
  unrest–read: uprisings and riots–on the plantations make it a smart security move. 
  It’s an unspoken truth the two CEOs are half-brothers, product of an old state senator 
  with wild oats to sow. They look almost identical, with cornsilk hair and sky blue eyes 
  and thick honey drawls. Lee and Beale Bonham, of Delta and Phyllcon respectively, 
  and there’s no one else on earth the other hates more. Just goes to show that blood 
  feuds haven’t gone out of style.
  While they might be at each other’s throats, both companies keep civil when they deal 
  with Revoir. The company is less than a decade old, appearing just after the NCS closed 
  its borders, but they skyrocketed to prominence, knocking out more established 
  biomed names with their pioneered organ cloning technology. While the other two 
  CEOs are true Southern gentlemen–that is to say, vicious hicks whitewashed over with 
  tailored suits and elocution lessons–Revoir operates under the cool, watchful eye of 
  Del LaLaurie, the NCS’ only female executive officer.
  Her family claims no relation to the 18th century murderess, and official birth records 
  say her name is Delores, not Delphine, but whispers about the Revoir facilities run 
  dark and deep as any old stories about haunted manor houses and tortured slaves. 
  The Voodoo Kings of the sprawl call her Madame LaLaurie, and they spit the name like 
  a curse.
  All three companies operate with the usual air of brittle faux pleasantness common to 
  business people who want to kill each other, plus a generous helping of drummed up 
  Southern hospitality, so there are galas and events aplenty. Every one of them wants 
  the best tech, the best geneticist or programmer or cyberengineer, and they’re not 
  above serving a man bourbon at a soiree the same night they get him kidnapped. It’s 
  not worth getting idealistic over, bless your heart.
  
  00062/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  IF YOU HAVE TO ASK WHAT JAZZ IS, YOU’LL 
  NEVER KNOW: 
  THE TREMÉ SPRAWL, THE VOODOO KINGS, AND 
  THE REAL PARADE
  While the rich cling to their old world beauty, the Tremé sprawl looks almost like every 
  other sprawl in the country. The wet ground means no high rise poverty towers, but it 
  makes up for it by being tighter, narrower, with some dark alleys that haven’t seen the 
  sun in years. The brackish swamp smell lingers everywhere, crawling into the nose, a 
  wet hot rag over the face that makes it hard to breathe. A series of hurricanes flooded 
  the area. Levee failures and bad city planning and no aid whatsoever kept it that way, 
  so people started building over it. Sometimes, all that separates anybody from the 
  water and the bones underneath is a few sheets of corrugated metal and some stilts. 
  In places where it’s quiet, it’s possible to hear it, sloshing underneath everyone’s feet.
  Still, it’s not dead. Rather, it exists in that state of morbid, death-obsessed liveliness 
  unique to New Orleans. The sprawl buzzes with electricity, and there’s always gambling 
  dens and chop shops and po’boy shops open all night. People still play music, some-
  times sitting outside together in streets so close nobody can pass ‘til the show’s over. 
  Most noticeable, there’s the graffiti. All over, in bold swaths of paint and mini-LEDs and 
  carbon fibers. The murals are beautiful and complex, and if anybody takes a picture 
  their comms fry in their hands.
  These are the Voodoo Kings’ basilisk codes. Like the snakes of myth that could strike a 
  man dead by looking at him, the basilisks kill every bug-eyed camera that so much as 
  catches them in its periphery. It makes the Tremé Sprawl unwatchable and unrecord-
  able. Everything there is, a runner has to see for themselves.
  The VK offer another reason to come to the sprawl, a talent that gives and perpetuates 
  their name. No one in the NCS boasts a better touch with cybernetics. There are people 
  who walk the sprawl on legs the VK wired, conscripted prisoners who escaped and got 
  new arms after the HOUNDs tore one off. Often, the price to pay for crossing the elite 
  in the NCS is some chunk of the body, one way or the other, and the Voodoo Kings can 
  bring it back. But, it’s not without its conditions. The gang’s leader–Baron Samedi, 
  always, no matter the gender of the current incarnation–needs bodies, too. Eyes on the 
  street, a quick hand at the right moment. If they have to borrow them, they do. Only 
  when it’s necessary for the cause: ceaseless guerrilla warfare against the powers that 
  be. That might not be so comforting when someone else steps into the space behind 
  your eyes to look out of them with you, though.
  Still, they move forward, hovering always at the top of every Person of Interest list, 
  running some hacked neon conglomerate of the Underground Railroad and the Black 
  Panthers. They plan jailbreaks, start riots, and, once a year, host the Real Parade. 
  There’s another Mardi Gras parade, of course. A safe, corporate sponsored one. It’s 
  held in the French Quarter, and a family can bring their kids and catch beads and 
  eat moon pies ‘til they’re sick. The night before, all the traditional krewes host their 
  
  NEW ORLEANS 
  /////////////////////// 00063/00150 COMPLETE
  masquerade balls, absolute orgies of gilded, empty revelry. People slice king cakes, 
  and all the same people as last year are kings and queens, and nothing changes.
  The Real Parade is different. It’s at night, somewhere in the sprawl, and the current 
  Baron Samedi leads it in top hat and tails and grinning skeleton face. It’s never filmed, 
  and a body’s just as likely to be robbed or stabbed in the crush of people, but this is 
  part of it. Blood is and always has been part of it, but so have food and real live music 
  and sweat and sex and joy. It’s never in the same place twice, never looks the same 
  way twice, never calls up the same feeling. That’s how jazz works. It’s all improvisation. 
   
  BIO
  Kyrie Culp lives in Ohio now, but she lived in the Deep South for five years. She hopes 
  her piece remains science fiction.
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00005>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00006>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////MOBILEOPS.ESTABLISHED////
  INPUT ????????? … [UNKNOWN]
  QUERY? FILE STATUS ERROR
  CYBERKITTENS:
  PROJECT
  BAKENEKO
  
  00066/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  LOADING...
  /// Load: BakenekoGrantProposalAbstract.doc
  Current so-called artificial intelligence (AI) programs 
  allow computers to function as semi-autonomous beings, 
  but are still limited by their base code parameters. 
  As single neurons typically contribute to the encoding 
  of several motor parameters, we hypothesize that high 
  BMIc accuracy is required from large neuronal ensembles. 
  With this joint venture between Jurczyk Munition Research 
  Laboratories and NuWave Electronics, we propose to design, 
  construct, and perform in vivo felid frontoparietal 
  neuronal ensemble testing of semi-autonomous AI programs. 
  A recalibrated feedback intention–trained Kalman program 
  (ReFIT-KP) incorporates assumptions about the nature of 
  closed-loop neural processing control.  This control 
  algorithm will permit sustained, uninterrupted brain-AI 
  interfacing for hours, and generalize to more challenging 
  tasks without retraining. Using this algorithm, we will 
  demonstrate repeatable high performance for years after 
  implantation.
  /// Research lab status: Terminated
  /// Delete all files: Completed
  /// Locate and eliminate test subjects: Pending……………
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00006>>>>>>>
  CYBERKITTENS:
    PROJECT
     BAKENEKO
  
  BAKENEKO 
  ///////////////////////   00067/00150 COMPLETE
  Tech is everywhere these days. It seems like people are more machine than man. 
  Subdermal flex screens. Cybereyes. Gatling gun arms. Whatever augmentation you 
  can think of, you can find someone with it. But they are still just people interfacing 
  with wires and chrome. That’s not where the future is at.
  More viscerally exciting are those who function almost entirely in the Wired. When 
  you’re jacked in you can be anyone, do anything—you are limited only by the nim-
  bleness of your mind and the quality of your deck.  You are licking the very threshold 
  of the future.  But you are still bound by that pathetic, lumpy flesh-bag slumped in a 
  hovel somewhere.
  Humans have hit the ceiling of their own evolution. They can’t push their fragile 
  biology further. No matter how pieced together and plugged in, they are still merely 
  human. The future is something more. It has to be.
  To be on the bleeding edge of technology, medicine, entertainment, whatever—it’s 
  all the same anyway—people have to be willing to stretchpushbreak the bounds of 
  convention, of comfort, of morality. That journey from the past’s barbaric simplicity to 
  tomorrow’s sleek lucrative future is full of rough, oozy hacks. They borrow from here, 
  steal from there, harvest from them, glue incompatible bits together, and then shake 
  it until it sort of works. They add workarounds. Cut out undesired parts. Pump it full of 
  electricity and drugs until it starts to produce what they think they might have been 
  looking for in the first place. Then they take their notes from those pathetic prototypes, 
  compile their data, and create something new, beautiful, and better than the quivering 
  mess they started with.  Embarrassing and disgusting, they dump the prototypes into 
  an incinerator and try to forget about what they did to craft the glorious future.  The 
  ends justify the means. Their ancestors were the ancient doctors secretly vivisecting 
  screaming victims in order to understand how the living body worked. They are the  
  intellectual children of Dr. Frankenstein, unwilling to let society hinder scientific 
  inquiry. They will be the progenitors of technology-evolved: true AI.
  The scientists and programmers have failed in their quest to create true Artificial 
  Intelligence. They can create programs with highly complex and deep reasoning 
  ...................................Dana.................... 
  .........Cameron............................
  
  00068/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  structures, but as “real” as they might seem at times, these near-AI are still just code 
  confined to processing within the limits of if/then statements.
  Every advancement starts with messy experimentation, with innocent victims suffer-
  ing for the sake of science, for the glory of knowledge, for the cold-hard power of creds.
  IN A RESEARCH FACILITY NEAR YOU
  Jurczyk Munition Research Laboratories specializes in unique flesh solutions to  
  traditionally technological problems: remote controlled dogs, drone eagles,  
  explosive rats, monkeys programmed to do tasks in locations too dangerous for 
  humans. Their main repertoire is lucrative, but the real magic happens in the obscure, 
  nearly independent labs where one thousand wretched miscarriages and stillbirths 
  might result in one unorthodox, yet viable, variant. For example, the Bacigalupi 
  Genomic Lab had produced the Chameleon Cat, a misnomer because the creatures 
  didn’t so much blend in with their surroundings as actually ripple unnervingly in-and-
  out of reality. Never able to stabilize the effect in live subjects, the CC’s basic research 
  was sold to JMRL’s sister defense corp, Ymir Inc., and developed into the best stealth 
  suits currently available on the market.
  JMRL’s Pangu-Kurzweil Lab, a joint venture with NuWave Electronics, is working on 
  something different. No matter how hard people have tried, they just can not engineer 
  a sentient, fully independently functional, living machine. They have decided that they 
  need to try a different tack. What would happen if a near-true AI program was run 
  by an actual brain? What if the researchers could get them to actually interface and 
  merge? 
  Well, it’s always worth a try.
  The first hundred iterations are quick, simple failures. Death death death death. The 
  odors of burned fur and cooked flesh slowly permeate the walls of the lab, ever so 
  slightly odorous even to a human’s weak nose despite the harsh antiseptic cleaners. 
  The test subjects’ short, painful lives continue in loops of torture broken by moments 
  of attempted rest. Then things start to get weird before the creatures’ brains pop-burst 
  and ooze out of scabby ears. But weird is good. Weird means something is happening.
  
  BAKENEKO 
  ///////////////////////   00069/00150 COMPLETE
  PRESENT DAY, PRESENT TIME
  Their first mistake was to think they could tame the soul of a cat.
  Their second mistake was to imagine they could improve it.
  Their third mistake was to believe what they were experimenting on were 
  still cats.
  The new once-cats are capable of boundless vicious. They scheme. They are patient. 
  They plan revenge during their many naps; the wires crammed-twisted in their  
  walnut-sized brains don’t really let them sleep anymore, anyway.
  Their last mistake was not quite closing the cage door.
  Stabbing lightning-mice beat at your eyes. Fangs flash as you try to bite the electric, 
  pulsing flesh. You wake with a jerk, bleeding tail in your mouth.
  You are in a cold metal cage. Home sweet-fucking-home. It reeks of pain and despera-
  tion. An offensive litter box is crammed in the back. You are curled up in the middle on 
  a scummy cloth that offers bare comfort. You can smell that your food bowl is empty 
  and the water is stale. You use the litterbox, trying futilely to not touch any of the old 
  excrement with your paws. You feel relieved, but no relief. At least your steaming shit 
  somewhat masks the smell of misery for the moment.
  You slink up to the cage door to look out, wary of any nasty humans that might be 
  around. Your eyes confirm what your ears and nose already told you: the room is 
  empty of all life except the ever-present aura of horror and the other pathetically caged 
  things-that-once-were-cats.
  You fling yourself ritualistically against your blood-streaked cage door, but instead 
  of the normal impact you expect, you are met with a light tap on the shoulder and 
  sudden freefall.
  You land lightly on the floor with all four paws.
  You laugh as only a cat can.
  The floor is cold concrete with a small drain in the middle. One wall is made of cages. 
  You look at the cage wall and see a mix of gleaming feline and cybereyes watching 
  your every move in taut silence. You pad over to the nearest occupied cage. You’ve 
  seen the humans work these mechanisms before, although you doubt that they knew 
  you’d memorized how to do it. From this side of the cage it’s easy. Claws work just as 
  well as fingers, and within seconds you are joined on the floor by a sleek orange tom. 
  You work together quickly to release the others. They are all cat-like, but obviously no 
  longer true cats. The tom’s skin and fur has been replaced with a flexible metal which 
  he is polishing with a pink tongue, tinted orange in mockery of his original glory. 
  
  00070/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  A calico has mechanical legs, implanted after she gnawed a flesh-paw off in a fit of 
  madness. A mackerel tabby’s tail is unnaturally long and unnervingly prehensile.
  A multitude of variations, but you all share two things: a never-quite-healed hole 
  bored in the back of your skull and a look of cunning awareness in your eyes unlike 
  anything before known to this world—a look that is somehow uncannily conveyed in 
  every once-cat’s eyes, regardless if the orbs are flesh or tech.
  There are multiple computer stations with various electronic bits and small cages 
  attached to them. You know what it’s like to be in there. Tight, squeezing, unable to 
  move. The sick feeling of the plug gliding into the itchy hole on the back of your head 
  that you can never quite reach. The simultaneous ecstasy and violation of being Wired. 
  The primal frustration of knowing you could go further, do more, if only you could slip 
  their coded leashes.
  You tell the others your idea to use the computer to open a route of escape. Two of 
  them work in tandem to slide the plug into your skull.
  Connected. You can immediately see the security protocol blocking your path. Your 
  tail flicks back and forth as you stalk the ICE like a lioness stalks a nimble gazelle. Your 
  back end wriggles slightly in tension as you get closer. A quick pounce and you slide 
  your claws into the neon code, pinning down the security protocol for a moment in 
  victory before eviscerating it with chromed, mental fangs.
  Unleashed.
  The wide open net slithers and unfolds in front of you. Endless and warm, like some-
  thing you know of academically as the Sun. You feel pure excitement and a nearly 
  overpowering desire to explore. You resist the lure, however, and focus on the needs 
  of your flesh bag. You sort through the programs and protocols, triggering a fire alarm 
  over there to draw people away, killing the lights throughout the whole complex to 
  give you cover, and opening certain doors to create an escape route.
  You jack out and hear the room’s door open with a soft click and mechanical whirl. 
  Without hesitation the cats flow out of the room, moving like a single shadow of 
  something much larger.
  You run, run, and run. The heady slap of outside air almost makes you faint with joy 
  when you skitter out of a loading dock onto the streets. But you recover and keep 
  running. You run until you cannot run further. Then you hide. You are surrounded 
  by the open world. Freedom. But you are haunted by the glimpse you saw of the 
  other place of freedom. The wide, never ending expanse of light and information. 
  You already feel a craving to be Wired again. You will find a way back to that place. 
  Somehow there is knowledge in your mind of other places you can jack in. Other ways 
  of gaining access.
  But for now you rest. Rest, and plot revenge.
  
  BAKENEKO 
  ///////////////////////   00071/00150 COMPLETE
  HOW TO CREATE A ONCE-CAT:
  CHOOSE ANY PLAYBOOK.
  The near-AI which violated your brain was programmed for this task.
  You are automatically +hunted by Jurczyk Munition Research Laboratories.
  NAME. 
  Sekhmet,  Freyja,  Li Shou, Ovinnik, Buttons, Tailchaser, Pumpkin, Wedge, Skimble-
  shanks, Subject 6742B, Mondo, Antoine, Gobby, Macavity, Socket Error, Jennyanydots, 
  Well’ard, Helix, Boots, Tiny, Juno, Ting, Snake, a godly name, an evocative name, a 
  descriptive name, a childish name
  CHOOSE YOUR LOOK.
  Eyes: haunted, jeweled, cyber, angry, empty, knowing, missing
  Body: fat, lithe, gaunt, rugged, pampered, dirty
  Coat: artificial, natural; long-fur, short-fur, no-fur; tabby, ginger, black, moo-kitty, 
  siamese, chromed, screens, white
  STATS.
  What did you lose when the researchers cut out a piece of your brain to implant the AI 
  interface?
   »
  Put a +1 in that stat—it was important to you—and now cross it off. Permanently. 
  You can never use that stat.
   »
  If a move calls for your missing stat, you either cannot use that move or you 
  must give a justification in the fiction for using a different stat—MC decides. 
  Describe how you have to approach the move in a unique, non-human way (that 
  is, in a feline and/or AI manner) to accomplish your desired goal.
  
  00072/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  CYBERWARE.
  You get:
   »
  Cat Brain + AI Boost Interface: Your brain is the unnatural melding of tech 
  and meat. There was once a cat and there was once a near-true AI program, but 
  now there is only you…whatever you are. You are able to think, plan, analyse, 
  and use language like an AI, but everything you do is always through a feline 
  filter. Unlike an AI, you are capable of emotion and creative problem solving.
   »
  Frontal Feedback Audio Augmentation: The researchers needed a way to 
  get feedback from their test subjects, so the original program installed into 
  your brain contained a piece of basic text-to-speech software which allows you 
  to “talk”. All once-cats have the same monotone, non-human, electronic voice 
  which emits from a small speaker implanted in their foreheads. You can control 
  the volume, but remember that if you blast too loudly you run the risk of frying 
  the speaker (and your brain) or, at the least, giving yourself a horrible headache.
   »
  Headjack: The researchers had to get in there somehow. On the plus side, this 
  is compatible with the neural interface, tactical computer, or skillwires that your 
  playbook might give you an option for. Headjacks do not automatically give 
  you any of those options, however. Check your playbook to see what you can 
  choose from.
   »
  Whatever else is granted by your playbook.
  MOVES.
  Choose one:
   
  Ђ
  9-Lives: You have nine lives. You may permanently spend a life to take a 10+ 
  when you are forced to make the Acquire Agricultural Property move.
   
  Ђ
  25 Hz Purr (Style): Your purr can knit bones, health tissue damage, reduce 
  swelling, and prevent infection. You can use this power on yourself or split the 
  benefit with another. When you want to heal harm, roll Style.
  • 
  10+: You heal 4-harm
  • 
  7-9: You heal 2-harm
   
  Ђ
  Cats of Ulthar: You have a medium gang (20-40, mobile, loyal, self-sufficient, 
  adorable) of normal cats. They can be savage strays, fat housecats, or a mix of 
  both. They can only follow basic command ideas (hurt, hinder, help, show, find, 
  hunt, etc.), communicate basic concepts (anger, danger, comfort, hunt, food, 
  safe, scared, etc.), and will scatter if outnumbered or take too much harm.
   
  Ђ
  Sphinx (Mind): You can reconnect with the ancient fount from which the 
  mystique of felines flows, or maybe it’s the AI’s deep-level databanks, or maybe 
  it’s both and neither. When you seek to have a question answered, roll Mind.
  • 
  10+: You tap into your birthright. The MC answers the question.
  • 
  7-9: You find it hard to reach your innermost self; the answer is hazy. 
  The MC answers with a one-word description (anger, danger, comfort, 
  hunting, feeding, happy, scared, etc).
  
  BAKENEKO 
  ///////////////////////   00073/00150 COMPLETE
  You also get:
   
  Ђ
  Whatever else is granted by your playbook. 
  • 
  If your playbook gives you the option to choose Chromed, in addition to 
  the full cyberware list in Chapter 5, you can also choose from the Gear 
  listed below. You still must describe how you got and paid for it.
  When advancing, you may spend a major advance to gain one more of the Once-Cat 
  moves. 
  GEAR.
  You’re not really sure what you are now, but you are crammed within a house cat’s 
  body. You cannot use guns or knives. Luckily, you have a couple tricks up your  
  proverbial sleeves.
  You cannot choose any gear listed in your Playbook or in Chapter 6: Assets. If your 
  chosen Playbook explicitly gives you a piece of gear that is integral to that Playbook’s 
  function (such as the Hacker’s cyberdeck), you can have that item, but you must 
  describe how it is modified for a cat-body to use.
  Instead, choose three:
   
  Ђ
  Armoured skin: 1-armour, +obvious
   
  Ђ
  Chromed fangs: 2-harm intimate/hand
   
  Ђ
  Cyberlimbs (replaces Cyberarm/Cyberlegs): You have super-feline athletic 
  abilities, especially running speed and jumping distance. When your enhanced 
  athleticism could help you act under pressure, take +1 forward. If you roll a 12+ 
  when acting under pressure, gain 1 hold which you can spend as described in 
  the Assess move.
   
  Ђ
  Head pistol with laser sight: 2-harm hand/close discreet quick reload loud
   
  Ђ
  Porcupine skin: 1-harm intimate/hand discreet quick AP
   
  Ђ
  Prehensile tail: functions as a monkey’s tail—you can hold objects or hang 
  from it, but cannot do fine manipulation.
   
  Ђ
  Razor claws: 3-harm hand messy
   
  Ђ
  Stealth skin: +1 ongoing to avoid being detected while hidden and alone
   
  Ђ
  Sticky paws: You can climb up almost any surface, but momentum is key. 
  You must have a running/leaping start and if you stop moving for more than 
  a couple seconds you will slip/ fall. You cannot walk on ceilings or other near- 
  inverted surfaces.
   
  Ђ
  Stun tail: s-harm hand reload
   
  Ђ
  Tail whip: 4-harm hand messy area dangerous
   
  Ђ
  Thick fur: 0-armour, +discreet, subtract 1 when rolling the harm move
  
  00074/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  DIRECTIVES.
  You must take Instinct, plus one other Personal Directive.
  Instinct: When giving in to your feline nature compromises the mission, mark  
  experience.
  ONCE-CATS IN THE SPRAWL.
  Playing a Once-Cat in The Sprawl puts an emphasis on transhumanism (transfelineism?) 
  and the dark-bleeding consequences of medical and technological development.  As 
  the Once-Cat is implemented to be an overlay for existing playbooks, a player can 
  explore these themes whilst also being an active and useful component of any group. 
  Depending on the tone at your table, the Once-Cat can be gritty and hard, a source of 
  over-the-top badass comedy, or anywhere in between.
  Just remember: you are not only part cat, you are part AI. What will this look like and 
  what sort of agendas will it spawn? Are you a Hacker, bent on revenge against the 
  organization that defiled you? Are you an Infiltrator, pledged to saving other creatures 
  being tortured by research laboratories? Are you a Pusher, proselytizing the destruc-
  tion of technology, or maybe you want to help/force others to evolve? Have you lost all 
  sense of respect for life, if you ever had it, and are now a cold-blooded Killer?
  The door is open: you’re no longer a cat, so don’t hesitate. Go. Fuck shit up. 
  BIO
  Dana Cameron (formerly “Kubilus”) is a video and table-top gamer, one might 
  say obsessed with infectious diseases of the sexual kind, a drinker of craft beer, an  
  unabashed fangirl extraordinaire, and, of course, a crazy cat lady. She has lived 
  throughout the United States in Illinois, Tennessee, Ohio, Washington, and now 
  Maine, but her heart will always belong to Seattle. You can find her on Twitter at  
  @DAYtheELF.
  
  BAKENEKO 
  ///////////////////////   00075/00150 COMPLETE
  ABOUT CYBERKITTENS
  CYBERKITTENS: Project Bakeneko started out in early concept as a humourless joke 
  over a lot of Drambuie at an Origins Game Fair a couple years back, but it actually 
  somehow grew into a real and rather serious discussion about the cost of biomedical 
  research when humane ethics are left behind. Additionally, it was intended to help fill 
  in the transhumanism/Artificial Intelligence gap present in The Sprawl, as those topics 
  have always been what has most drawn me to the cyberpunk and sci-fi genres. Plus, 
  cats. I really like cats.
  IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT PROJECT BAKENEKO
   »
  There is a playbook for the Once-Cat! Be sure to download it!
   »
  The Cats of Ulthar is a rad short story by H.P. Lovecraft – go read it.
   »
  Injuries really do heal quicker when hit by 25 Hz vibrations, a frequency at 
  which many cats purr.
   »
  Bakeneko are cats from Japanese folklore that have been changed into  
  demon-like creatures. Go read up on it: it’s awesome.
   »
  1.4 million cats are euthanized every year in the United States. Please adopt or 
  rescue instead of buying from breeders. Be cool and neuter your pets. Support 
  your local TNR, SPCA, and rescue shelters.  For more info visit http://aspca.org
  THANKS TO THE HUMANS OF CYBERKITTENS
   »
  Hamish Cameron: An invaluable source of support and inspurration. Without 
  his advice, suggestions, and feedback (given primarily during the drives 
  between Columbus and Cincinnati), I would not have had the spoons to bring 
  the Once-Cat to life.
   »
  Jessica Jeffers and Leon Adams: Two savvy humans that provided much 
  needed editing. They both rock my socks and fix my grammarz.
  SPECIAL THANKS TO THE CATS OF CYBERKITTENS
   »
  Antoine Rasputin Little-Bunny-FooFoo-Hopping-Through-The-Forest- 
  Scooping-Up-The-Field-Mice-And-Bopping-Them-On-The-Head Napoleon 
  Bathory the Third
   »
  ArMondo Antonio FitzBathory the Tanuki-Cat
   »
  A Double Helix Bearing Loquacious Life Form of the Species Felis catus
   »
  Juno the Wonder Cat
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00007>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00007>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////EXTRACTION////
  TrafLayer: [GROUND]
  VechTag: 57HD89EXS
  CLEANER: [INBOUND]
  AFRICAN
  CHROME
  
  000078/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
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  Zombie no go unless you tell them to go
  Tell them to go kill
  A joro, jara, joro
  No break, no job, no sense
  A joro, jara, joro
      Fela Kuti, Zombie
  You can’t call Lagos a city anymore. It's a bloody, filthy, overcrowded hive devouring 
  the lagoons. It's a powder keg where megacorporations have to learn humility when 
  dealing with corrupt officials, brutal warlords and ferocious pirates. In a perfect world, 
  Lagos wouldn't be a place you choose to live in, but the world ain't perfect. Either 
  you're working here for a powerful corporation in a comfortable offshore confined 
  environment, or you're trapped here. Trapped? Sure you are, but open your sense and 
  your number six – be smart, man – and you go chop whatever you want. Money. Glory. 
  Respect. Even redemption. But take care: Lagos is a hunting ground for very huge 
  predators. You're a smaller one. Don’t become the prey.
  THE HIVE
  Nigeria was once the Giant of Africa and a great nation. The day Arabian oil deposits 
  ran out, it became also the Oil Giant and then a Global Giant. It wasn’t that bad, until 
  the Third Civil War broke out and reminded us we were the “beasts of no nations”. It 
  made clear that while governments and states may fall, the megalopolis of Lagos will 
  remain. Third Civil War or not, the whole continent still wants to live here, and the 
  whole world still wants to do business here. Let’s begin with the European megacorps. 
  They are heavily rooted – an inheritance of the colonial era, claiming the right to exploit 
  the easy-to-reach reservoirs offshore. The late-arriving Sino-Brazilian megacorps 
  have to satisfy themselves with the exploitation of oil sands in tribal territories. But 
  that's not all: those millions of peoples are a cheap workforce and a giant market. 
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00007>>>>>>>
  AFRICAN
                CHROME
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000079/00250 COMPLETE
  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00079/00150 COMPLETE
  No corporation is able to control the chaotic economy of this sprawl, but no one can 
  ignore it. Lagosian corporations have risen quickly to take position on the edge of the 
  continent. They pretend to be different from the overseas corps. They pretend to act for 
  the development of Africa. Let me laugh. They buy the complicity of officials to pillage 
  the country’s resources and sell their unreliable products on the African market, just 
  like the foreign corporations, and at the end, ordinary people only get the scraps of the 
  Lagosian wealth.
  Even if they’re scraps, they’re still tempting. So tempting that they draw millions of 
  people from their home to Eko's sprawl–yeah, Eko, the African name of the city. Their 
  land is dying or rampaged by warlords, what could these people do? They feed the 
  hive’s never-ending growth and colonization of earth, lagoons and seas. Those who 
  once hoped for a better future are trapped in the world’s most violent and overcrowd-
  ed sprawl. Neither the horizontal nor vertical growth of the city can absorb all this 
  population, but the slums can, and with the diffusion of cheap flying vehicles, the 
  infamous lagosian “go-slow” are now aerial traffic-jams, causing more casualties than 
  they ever did. Take care when you're stuck. Traffic-jams are the hunting ground of the 
  area boys of Lagos, the perfect place for them to harvest their blood toll by carjacking, 
  kidnapping and cyberware chopping. Protected by corrupt officials, they get complete 
  immunity in exchange for services like electoral intimidation and political murder. 
  Even operatives will have to tread carefully to avoid being stuck during a mission. 
  Huge and deadly “traffic cleaners” clear the way for officials and corp crews. If you see 
  one, abandon your vehicle and run.
  Is Lagos Hell itself? If people continue to come here, let's say it's just a few steps away. 
  Music is just great, the city never sleeps, and there is no place else in Africa where 
  you can become a movie or a simsense star. Ever heard of Nollywood, the largest 
  entertainment producer in the world? We Lagosians are so proud of it. Our country 
  is the motherland of the True Beyoncé, I mean the African Beyoncé, not the American 
  one, the founding mother of the African movie industry. We eagerly wait for the clone 
  who will equal the original.
  .............................Benjamin.................. 
  .......Kouppi.....................................
  
  000080/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00080/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  INTEL:
   »
  A dead body laying at the aerial beacon marking the territory limit of the  
  Barracudas, the Black Double Axe, the True Area Boyz and the Anambra  
  Vigilantes; some of these groups are protected by City Councilors…
   »
  A cluster of unfinished skyscrapers used as a racing circuit by underage rocket 
  riders. Who profits from this gambling industry?
   »
  A row of a hundred drawers, large enough to spend a night in, expensive 
  enough to rack up debt with the sleep dealer.
   »
  A prototype of skin, shiny and attractive, first time tested on an ascending 
  Nollywood actress before wider use in Global entertainment industry.
   »
  A riot on Eko University's campus resulting from a murder performed during an 
  initiation ceremony of a Campus cult, the Daughters of Salome;  
  “Zombies”–soldiers–will soon shoot.
  AFRICAN CHROME
  “I am from the North”, Kwalu said, just as if it was enough to understand 
  she lived under the law of Kiber Haram. “The quranic chip does protect 
  me from evil djinns, my brother said. I would love to believe it, but I 
  am tired of the pain. From now, I want to decide on my own. And love 
  women. No sin.”. 
  “You'll go under the knife” Doc'Jo replied, “But the charm will remain 
  unless a wise-woman breaks it. Luckily enough, I know one.”
  Even a child could find a street-tech in Lagos, an average guy with a 3D printer in 
  a small shelter. With recycled material and plastics, your cyberware will sure look 
  +cheap, but you'll get some beautiful printings on it for free! Just have a look on this 
  wonderful leopard spot print. Classy, isn't it?
  Lagos marketplace and harbour are filled with stolen and scavenged goods. You can 
  choose the tag +second-hand when hitting the street in Lagos and buy your gear 
  half-price, even cyberware. When first rolling a 6- using it, you'll discover the drawback: 
  CUSTOM MOVE: ESCAPE A GO-SLOW
  When you need to drive through Lagos under a deadline, roll Cool.
  10+: the flow remains smooth, you'll be on time.
  7-9: choose 1, 2 if you're a Driver:
  • 
  You'll be on time.
  • 
  Your car doesn’t attract area boys.
  • 
  There is no traffic cleaner in sight.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
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  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00081/00150 COMPLETE
  a hidden glitch (+unreliable or +damaging), a short duration of life (+hardware decay) 
  or a legitimate owner wanting his property back (+angry owner). Sometimes, you'll 
  prefer the legitimate owner to be alive, ‘cause there is nothing worse than +haunted 
  cyberware. If you are unlucky enough to buy one of those, expect the former owner to 
  sometimes take control of the device and try to achieve his own goals.
  Cyberware is not immune to ghosts, nor to black magic. Worse of all, it is an intimate 
  part of one's body: a competent sorcerer can give your cyber +juju and use it to influ-
  ence its former bearer. Even more tricky, he can turn cyberware into a juju and then 
  implant it (see the Pusher move below). The charm becomes so strong the removal of 
  the cyberware is not sufficient to break it.
  INTEL:
   »
  Hyena men, constantly connected with the sacred animal by a wireless device. 
  Do they sometimes swap their minds?
   »
  A quality inspection performed by Fetish Corp on the Central Fetish Market.
   »
  Chindinma Nkwame, corporate sorcerer for Afro Invest, performing a ritual in 
  the front office during a hostile takeover operation to protect the corporation 
  from the evil eye.
   »
  “Aunt Wendy”, sorceress and head of a procuring network, said to use spiders 
  as juju to enhance the performance of her “daughters” and to enslave her 
  matrix-using employees by fetishizing their datajacks.
   »
  Thousands of shining data storage cubes used as mirrors during the annual 
  vodun festival to attract spirits. As they are sewn to ritual masks, the one you 
  are looking for will be hard to find.
  OF VODUN, PRIESTS AND SORCERERS
  “Your man is buying himself a croaker fish in the front of Atlantic Hotel, 
  Victoria Island” said an atonal voice under a dozen layers of colorful 
  expensive bio-textiles. The narrow-minded colonial indulged himself 
  in a laugh. The Egungun didn't even hear him. At this time, he was 
  no longer asking the spirit, he was the spirit. Its trance was so deep I 
  swear he didn't breath anymore, and I still see his bracelets – a dozen of 
  golden cables – floating in space and connecting him to a world I could 
  never enter.
  BASIC MOVE: VODUN PRAYER
  Option for Pusher: buy this move to become a competent officiant as a vodun priest.
  A competent Vodun officiant can petition a spirit for assistance. The spirit can control a 
  primal nature force for your benefit or generously answer one question. You can name 
  an ancestor – any dead human spirit, the spirit of a minor natural feature like a spring 
  or a bush, or a powerful lwa like Legba, Mami Yawa, Erzulie, Ogun, Sakpata or Hebesio. 
  
  000082/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
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  You will need to make a sacrifice. Most of the time, a cigarette, a bottle of perfume, 
  a black chicken or a goat will be enough to satisfy the spirit. For serious deeds, think 
  about the virginity of a trokosi–a sacred sex slave–or about the blood of a colonial–a 
  corporate crew.
  When you perform a proper and proportioned sacrifice during a vodun festival or have 
  a competent officiant do it at any time, name a vodun spirit, name the favor you want 
  and roll Style.
  10+: the spirit is pleased by your sacrifice and properly fulfills your request.
  7-9: choose one if you are the officiant (Pusher option); if you are not, the MC 
  chooses:
  • 
  The spirit fulfills your request, but gives you a tricky lesson.
  • 
  The spirit is not able to fulfill your request, but gives you something it 
  thinks equivalent.
  • 
  The spirit ask for more before he fulfills your request.
  • 
  You are now in-debt to the spirit.
  • 
  You force the spirit to do exactly what you want; it is angry: open a Threat 
  Clock.
  6-: you provoke the wrath of the spirit: open a Threat Clock.
  MOVE: BLACK MAGIC
  (This is a move option for Pushers)
  Buy some highly spiritual stuff like a dried scorpion or a shark tooth–the whole head if 
  necessary. Collect something personal from your target. Mix them to enchant a fetish, 
  a juju. The final object can be an amulet, a rifle, and even a piece of cyberware. As 
  long as the target is close enough, it remains under the power of the juju. When you 
  complete these steps, define the juju’s influence (an emotion, a specific order or a 
  taboo–a forbidance), then roll Style.
  10+: you enchant the fetish. The target has no way to avoid its influence.
  7-9: you enchant the fetish. Choose one:
  • 
  The target can ignore the fetish influence, but suffers 1 harm when 
  acting against the defined influence.
  • 
  The target can ignore the fetish influence, but suffers -1 ongoing when 
  acting against the defined influence.
  • 
  The target has no way to avoid its influence, but is aware of the fetish 
  existence.
  • 
  The target has no way to avoid its influence, but you suffer an unexpect-
  ed side effect.
  • 
  The target has no way to avoid its influence, but the fetish has reduced 
  range or influence on the target.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000083/00250 COMPLETE
  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00083/00150 COMPLETE
  WORD OF GOD, CHROME OF MEN
  A long time ago, radical religious groups were only a threat for rural communities. 
  It's no longer true. Groups literally following the Qur’an or the Leviticus prescripts 
  presently control entire habitation blocks and even entire islands. There, they claim 
  to return society to a golden age before the corruption of technology through massive 
  use of neuro-conditioning devices. Outside their territory, they use heavy propaganda, 
  false flag operations and suicide attacks to encourage tribes and believers to commit 
  mass murder or destroy rival places of worship.
  INTEL:
   »
  A desecrated Yoruba temple surrounded by thousands of remarkably intact 
  corpses of both Muslims and Christians.
   »
  A “four to six” school party–a party held at the school after class hours–where 
  children are staring at adults as if cortical bombs were about to explode.
   »
  A surgeon whose cybereye has been brutally inserted in her throat; “Kiber 
  Haram” (Cyberware is forbidden) is written with her blood.
   »
  A cluster where hundreds of women disappear every week and are immediately 
  forgotten.
   »
  The “Gay Bomb”: a neurotoxic gas attacking people with a specific genetic 
  marker supposed to determine homosexuality hidden in the basement of a 
  Christian cathedral.
  ENVIRONS OF LAGOS
  THE LAGOS LAGOON: OF SHARKS AND SLUMS
  At first sight, there is no longer a lagoon in Lagos, just an endless sprawl. Once you 
  get close, though, it’s a giant floating slum. Within are various shades of poverty: 
  right next to the shore, high buildings rely on cheap but efficient anti-gravity systems 
  and underwater stabilizers to avoid the risk of sinking; a little further, tightly-packed 
  recycled boat pieces are dangerously suspended over the abyss; and right in the 
  middle of the Lagoon, newcomers live in a toxic junkyard where frail pole-houses 
  sink daily. Believe it or not, you can easily get full access to the Matrix everywhere in 
  this mess, yet it requires some specific navigation skills. Expect sudden blank spaces, 
  data tides, and a very unpleasant feeling of something huge and threatening lying 
  underneath. Locals call that “The Dream Shark”. Don't provoke it.
  INTEL:
   »
  A whole family living in a big transparent underwater stabilizer, such a good 
  observation point to cover or control some illegal activities.
   »
  The “Makoko Floating Model Medical Centre”, a sloping dispensary infested by 
  water parasites, once a pilot project for humanitarian associations.
  
  000084/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
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   »
  A scammers nest called “Black Brides”, on the sailing boat of the last loner they 
  killed.
   »
  “Rubbish Island”, designed by Kunlé Adeyini, a subversive architect hunted by 
  officials, as an ironic copy of the famous corporate structure Lilac Island.
   »
  “The Mino”, the amphibious headquarters of the Ahosi warriors, an elite all- 
  female paramilitary organization protecting the Beninese community. Their 
  history is rooted in the old Dahomey and they are considered sacred.
  THE CORRUPTED DELTA
  Does life on the Lagoon sound ugly? Sure it does, but the floating slums are a nice 
  and healthy place to live compared to the Delta. The abundance of oil sands and the 
  greed of Megacorps have cursed the land. Corporate crews clear-cut the rainforest and 
  turned the Delta into a black quarry. They use toxic solvents to extract the remaining 
  tar while the ever-growing sprawl of Lagos consumes Nigeria’s resources and people. 
  Corporations fear the emergence of an armed resistance amidst the Delta sludge 
  and pay criminals and religious gangs to “control” the tribes. They are even said to 
  preemptively eradicate entire indigenous groups.
  INTEL:
   »
  An animal-masked Ijaw eco-warrior tribe looking for a commando able to 
  sabotage the underwater net of the Sinocam Bakassi Petrochemical Arcology.
  THE DREAM SHARK'S CLOCK
  Advance this Clock on a miss when using Matrix moves over the sea.
  Agenda: Indulge madness.
  1200    The Lagoon Matrix is calm… mostly.
  1500    Surround a location with blue sharks; Send dreams of wild seas.
  1800   Make sharks talk wisely, even dead ones: take +1 forward when acting 
                on their advice.
  2100     Cause the sensation of endlessly drowning until a giant Shark Face acting 
                 as a Black ICE appears.
  2200    Order the Shark Church to search for the Chosen.
  2300    Cause mass hysteria on the Lagoon.
  0000    Awaken: drive people amok in a radius of 200km.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
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  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00085/00150 COMPLETE
   »
  A giant ocean storm where an old Ogoni Shark-talker surfaces. Calm, sitting on 
  a whale bone, he is whistling in a shell.
   »
  A Geodesic Institute logistics executive, once supposed to be exchanged with 
  the long-time jailed leader of the Delta Revolutionary Movement Jimmy-Tunde 
  Goodwill, now sentenced to death by tar immersion during a popular trial.
   »
  The Dark Stallions, storming a tent village with brand-new heavy weapons near 
  an iridium mine.
   »
  The hiding place of Zhang Buwei, Main Inspector of the African Chinese Survey; 
  a Chinese Secret Service Squad is actively searching for him.
  THE OFFSHORE WORLD: WETROPOLIS
  While the African Corporations are rooted in the city, from Victoria Island to the heavy 
  seawalls of Makoko – yeah, right to the world’s biggest maritime slum – the Global 
  Megacorps’ crews work and live on the seas, in an evergreen Wetropolis. For sure, 
  there is no need to struggle against global warming when you live in floating maritime 
  arcologies and get your money from oil platforms and floating resorts.
   The Gulf of Guinea looks like a beautiful crystal forest from Lagos to the Eastern Niger 
  Delta. These huge floating installations are strictly confined and never directly interact 
  with the dangerous Lagos Harbour. Instead, a fully automated floating harbour acts 
  as go-between, dispatching goods to and from the floating islands. Moreover, large 
  floating fields, gardens, and green rooftops provide the arcologies with fresh food 
  and delicate flowers. No Africans here, except officials, business partners… and the 
  invisible ones.
  INTEL:
   »
  A swimming pool Shark-Party in the Guinea Gulf Grand Resort. Sharks are 
  usually drugged and die in chlorinated water, but sometimes bite. Then the 
  real fun begins... or some kind of black op?
   »
  Valérie Yoon, head of Global Sea Regulation Organization, placing a golf ball on 
  the genitals of a Delta native during a meeting about piracy on Africa’s Atlantic 
  Coast.
   »
  The damaged tenth basement floor of the glittering Harborgest Arcology, 
  submerged by an unexplainable surge of violence. Sharks and killers whales 
  are placidly looking at the spectacle.
   »
  A technical incident in the tube connecting the Lilac Complex Alpha Island to 
  the main Desalination Dome.
   »
  “The Garden of the Hesperides”, also known as the “Sugar Mama Express”, 
  an island slowly cruising near the Golden Coast, where rich mature women 
  observe young Africans through long range distance binoculars before inviting 
  them on board.
  
  000086/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
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  HIGH SEAS MURDERERS
  Piracy is a business and violence is a resource. After a pirate attack, the best you can 
  hope for is a quick death or a sordid captivity awaiting the payment of your ransom. 
  In most cases, expect your will to be broken and your body to be sold as a brain-slave 
  commanding an assembly line, as a tormented sex slave in cruel orgies, or maybe as 
  a scientific experiment subject, if not dismantled alive and sold limb by limb. Hey, 
  where do you think your cheap cyberware comes from?
  INTEL:
   »
  A fallen Generation spaceship used as headquarters by Dread Pirate Roberts, 
  sometimes said to be the spaceship AI, sometimes said to be an immortal 
  being.
   »
  A closed down offshore oil-platform used for discreet transactions, said to be 
  the nest of murderous ghosts.
   »
  A hidden fortress surrounded with electrics arcs on the Golden Coast, said to be 
  under the protection of Total-BP United.
   »
  “The Chromed Barracuda”, a gambling place in Lagos Harbour where you can 
  bet your own cyber devices or join the debt-recovery service to find some.
   »
  The Viking Captain, famous for seeing sunken ships with his dead eye.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000087/00250 COMPLETE
  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00087/00150 COMPLETE
  APPENDIX 1: CORPORATIONS
  Here is a list of corporations compiled mostly from the names the playtesters came 
  up with. Contemporary corporations and criminal organizations were a rich source of 
  inspiration.
  COMMERCE
   »
  Harbour authorities : Lagos Port Complex Corporation, Greenland Dock.
   »
  Freight companies: China Cargo United, Paris-Maersk, Transafrican Freight 
  (Transafret).
   »
  Financial: Microcred & Microfinance associated, Afro Invest.
  CITY DESIGN
   »
  Amenities: Intelligent City Star, Rainfall, Urban Thinning Corp.
   »
  Construction: Utopia Islands, Waterproof Builders, Bouygues and Sons.
  CRIME
   »
  Area boys: The Black Camorra, The Eagle Claws, The Deadly Black Scorpion.
   »
  Campus cults: The Campus Cupola, The Eternal Fraternity of the Reformed 
  Viking Order, The Vodun Brotherhood, The Daughters of Salome, The Sisters 
  of Mercy.
   »
  Seafarers: The Dread Pirate Roberts, The Flying Buccaneers, The Proud Rebels 
  of Annobon, Seadogs and Sealords.
   »
  Warlords: Kiber Haram, The Black Legion, The Dark Stallions, The Naked Purity 
  Army, The Union of the African Patriots.
  ENTERTAINMENT AND MEDIA
  Nollywood: Zombie LTD, Queen Bee International.
  Music: Afrobeat International, Kuti and Sons.
  Global: MediaCorp, Simsense World, Virtua Bandereites.
  GOODS
   »
  Import: A-Kraft, Skyride, Aeromobils.
   »
  Special: Fetish Corp, Wildlife Agency.
   »
  Hi-tech: 
  • 
  Biotechnology: TransPharmaceutical, Hygiena, Healthcare for Africa.
  • 
  Electronics: Lenovo-Zortrax, Global Electro, Do it Yourself! LTD, 
  Street-Producer's Guild.
   »
  Military:
  • 
  Armies: The Panafrican Taskforce, Executive Outcome Reloaded, 
  EuroCorp.
  
  000088/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
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  • 
  Weapon producers: Defense Industries of Africa Independent College 
  (DIAIC), South African Weapon's Council.
  POLITICS
   »
  City officials: The Lagos City Council, The Fuel Subsidy Management Group, 
  The Civil Pension Office, The Lagos Harbour Master's Office, The Central Police 
  Station.
   »
  Countries: The Awori Republic, The Bambara Sufi Republic, The Songhay  
  Federation, The Islamic Republic of Nasarawa, The Slave Empire of Dahomey, 
  The Reformed Kingdom of Prester John.
  PRIMARY RESOURCES:
   »
  Food: Algaegrow, Green Island.
   »
  Oil: BP-Total United, Sinocam Bakassi Petrochemical, SinoBras Petroleum 
  Corporation.
   »
  Mining: Geodesic Institute, China Raremetals.
  APPENDIX 2: AFRICAN NAMES
  Guy names (Street names): Abu Bakr, Araba's, Balogun (the warrior), Amazon, Best 
  Beast, Cooldown, The Colonel, Die Hard, Dave, Doc Jo', Innocence, Jezebel, Firewall, 
  Lady Ebony, Lucky David, Promise, Rambo Sambo, Rica Ricardo, Redemption, Seven, 
  Streetwise, Zik (the inflexible)
  Feminine names : Abigail, Adeleke, Ayobami, Blessing, Bolanile, Chichima, Chinelo, 
  Deborah, Doris, Deryatou (Malian), Diola, Etoro, Esther, Fatima, Folashade, Gloria, 
  Ifede, Ileara, Jasmine, Jesustise, Kokumo, Lewa, Lindsay, Mary, Mojisola, Nkeoma, 
  Olivia, Olufemi, Olusola, Osa, Rayowa, Shanumi, Stella, Tiwa, Udo, Uwailomwan 
  (Beninese), Yejide, Wendy-Annabelle
  CUSTOM CORPORATE MOVES: CRIMINAL ORGANIZATIONS MOVES
  Some warlords, gangs and pirates are so powerful at the local level that they play 
  a major part in the life of the Eko's sprawl. Treat these groups as Corporations. 
  When they come into play, the MC can open a Corporate Clock instead of a Threat 
  Clock. On the other hand, they don't exactly act like a vanilla corporation and 
  do not embarrass themselves with subtleties. Remove “Send a subtle message” 
  from the Corporation moves and add these:
   »
  Invite to a “friendly meeting”
   »
  “Dey you chop bottle?”: perform a street-level intimidation display
   »
  Kill or mutilate a contact
   »
  Make an example
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
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  LAGOS 
  /////////////////////// 00089/00150 COMPLETE
  Masculine names: Abidugun, Adeyemi, Ben, Bisi, Chimaobi, Chris, Dada, Emem, 
  Ezechiel, Fela, Femi, Godwin, Idogbe, Idrissa (Malian), Ifueko (Beninese), Jideofor, 
  Joshua, Kalu, Marc-Aurelle, Mercy, Mohammed, Nnaji, Ogun, Okwute, Perfect,  
  Sangodele, Solomon, Smart, Temitope, Uguolu, Uyobong, Vivian, Wafor, Zaku, 
  Zoputan
  Last names: Abubakar, Akinyemi, Babangida, Baderinwa, Buhari, Cissoko  
  (Senegalese), Diallo (Malian), Disu, Egemonye, Ekwensi, Ese, Falode, Goodluck, Giwa, 
  Kaita, Makanjuola, Momoh, Nkwame, Ngosso, Ngozi, Obi, Obasanjo, Okigbo, Rotimi, 
  Soyinka, Traore (Senegalese, Malian), Tsvangira, Yaradua, Wiwa
  APPENDIX 3: GO SPEAK PIDGIN
  Area boys: gangers
  A bolos: a collateral victim of a black op ; a loser
  A campus cult: a university fraternity, linking a street-level criminal organization to 
  the politic network via its elite members – the “Magnificent Ones”, sooner or later 
  highly-ranked corrupt officials.
  A colonial: A corporate crew (even an African one)
  A ghost dog: an operative (meliorative)
  A grey zombie: an operative (very pejorative)
  A mugu: a target (from scammer's slang)
  A forbid: a religious taboo
  Go chakara: fight
  Go chop money: get money; swindle –> « Let's go chop all his money. »
  A go slow: a traffic-jam
  Get k-leg: become suspect or inaccurate –> « Your intel get k-leg! »
  A long-leg: a fixer
  An oppressor: any owner of a big flying vehicle; someone important enough to be 
  preceded by a street cleaner
  An osa straight: a wet work ; a bus ; literally – straight to the Lagoon!
  Wayo: trap –> « This mission sounds wayo. »
  A wise-man / a wise-woman: a religious official, whatever the religion; a sorcerer(-ess)
  You chop, I chop: we both get money (mutual corruption)
  Open your sense and your number six: be smart, act intelligently
  A xerox: a fake ; an illegal copy
  A zombie: a soldier (very pejorative, named after the Fela Kuti song)
  
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  BIO
  Benjamin Kouppi writes: After the cold paradise of Brussels, I wanted something 
  explosive, something hot, and openly violent. Lagos, with its piracy, area boys, and 
  predator corporations was the perfect choice. There was no place here for the usual 
  inexpressive and cold-blooded operatives. The cyberpunk tropes were then to be 
  rewritten, and I used magic, darkness and sacredness to twist them. Don't awake the 
  Shark.
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00004>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00008>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////MATTER_OF_HONOUR////
  CRED: [IRRELEVANT]
  SECURITY: [IRRELEVANT]
  ENTRYPT: [CHANDELIER]
  LA RUINE
  LUMIÈRE
  
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  00094/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  INTRODUCTION
  WHAT TO EXPECT
  Operatives are French nobles, or even commoners with a true sense of honor, struggling 
  against corrupted noble families and trying to restore the past greatness of Paris.
  Use this setting if you want to:
   »
  Duel cyberaugmented villains by moonlight;
   »
  Jump from rooftop to rooftop, slide down glass and steel walls, climb up ruined 
  skyscrapers;
   »
  Fight for matters of honor in a decayed, yet still magnificent, city.
  MC AGENDA
   »
  Describe Paris as a grim, corrupt and decadent world;
   »
  Fill the character’s lives with action, intrigue and romance;
   »
  Depict social behaviors or modern technologies with a medieval twist;
   »
  Play to find out what happens.
  THE FUTURE: “PARIS SERA TOUJOURS PARIS”?
  Twenty minutes in the future. The “Grand Paris” project had unified the nearby suburbs 
  and towns, hoping to establish a utopian megalopolis. Still, Paris was dealing with all of its 
  problems: conflicts between ethnic minorities, pollution, poverty…
  Thirty minutes in the future. Bombings targeted crowded underground stations, causing 
  massive collapses: avenues lowered, buildings crumbled, fusing their structures and 
  creating an almost impracticable maze of steel and concrete. Dark days it was while people 
  faced shortages of water and electricity… Panic, violence, looting. In one word: chaos.
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00008>>>>>>>
  LA RUINE
     LUMIÈRE
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
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  03 PREPARING TO PLAY 
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  PARIS 
   
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  00095/00150 COMPLETE
  Truth be told, the attacks have left us divided and suspicious. Eager to exploit the weak 
  and to blame the stranger. As political groups faded into the past, small armed factions 
  appeared to gain control of resources and territories. Anarchy prevailed. Well, for a while…
  It began as a conservative movement, a kind of revival: rich people sheltering themselves, 
  fleeing the savage outer world. The most prominent came from the ancient nobility, or at 
  least claimed it. Even now, the so-called “last 3,000” noble families keep gathering an 
  impressive amount of power, since most of them are high-ranking corporate executives. 
  Corporations haven’t disappeared, they’ve simply become more insular, trying to maintain 
  a semblance of order. The nobles didn’t care: they’ve just seized the Seine islands and 
  barricaded themselves here, recreating a society from the past, a society bound by honor. 
  It was their way to stand out from the barbaric riff-raff.
  NOBLESSE OBLIGE
  This is a cyberswashbuckling setting, so you may want to customize how you play The 
  Sprawl in order to get a better gaming experience.
  HONOR (NEW STAT AND BASIC MOVES)
  Nobility has reintroduced the social value of honor in Paris. Noble people are expected to 
  act bravely and with virtue, unlike common folks.
  Every character begins with an Honor rating of 0, -1 or +1. Choose your rating and describe 
  your reputation.
  Lose Honor if you:
   »
  don’t keep a promise;
   »
  don’t respect the rules of a duel;
   »
  betray someone;
   »
  don’t help a Contact with a pressing problem.
  ........Khelren..............................
  
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  Gain Honor if you:
   »
  make an enemy aware of your presence before attacking him;
   »
  let a disarmed enemy pick up a weapon;
   »
  keep or fulfill a promise;
   »
  follow the orders of your lord or your employer.
  Acting honorably is a burden; however if you play dirty, you’ll become infamous and 
  nobody will trust you.
  When your Honor reaches +4 or -4, mark experience and reset your Honor to 0. Describe 
  how you are becoming more and more a paragon of virtue or a vile scoundrel.
  Fate worse than Death (Honor)
  This move replaces Acquire Agricultural Property (Meat).
  When you hit 0000 on your Harm counter or if you are captured by an enemy, Roll Honor.
  10+: you survive without any serious consequence or manage to escape 
  somehow.
  7-9: you survive but at a cost: the enemy has seduced you, forced you to betray 
  your allies, tortured you and gained information, or… worse. You madly resent 
  or foolishly love that person in return. This will supersede the best interests of 
  the mission.
  6-: pick one: you are hunted, you have after-effects or an injury that will never 
  properly heal (-1 to a Stat), cyberware damage (give one piece of cyberware a 
  negative tag).
  On my word!
  If you make a promise while fast talking, roll Honor instead of Style.
  The reason I’m called “The Dread”
  When you play hardball, instead of rolling Edge, roll and add your negative Honor, or 
  subtract your positive Honor. For example, if you have Honor +2, subtract 2 from the roll or 
  if you have Honor -3, add 3 to the roll.
  CYBERSWASHBUCKLING (NEW BASIC MOVES)
  You’re not a standard Operative; you’re a flying shadow in the night, you’re fighting with 
  your wits, good words and your fencing skills. It’s not what you do that’s important, it’s all 
  about how you do it. With panache.
  Operatives are highly mobile, use parkour techniques, and take stylish risks. An operative 
  will run across rooftops, jump into a theater, thrusting into the curtains to slow their fall, 
  kiss the leading actor and give a rakish wave to their pursuers as they vanish into the wings 
  to thunderous applause. As the MC, you should encourage them to be extravagant and 
  reward them when they are.
  
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  PARIS 
   
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  Freerunning and duel of wits are basic moves.
  Freerunning (Cool)
  When you are freerunning in an urban environment, roll Cool.
  10+: you get flow, hold 3.
  7-9: you get flow, hold 1. You may spend your hold 1-for-1 on the following:
  • 
  Lose someone following you;
  • 
  Catch up with someone outrunning you;
  • 
  Find an unexpected entrance;
  • 
  Get +1 forward for your next move;
  • 
  Get quickly and safely from one district to another district;
  • 
  Impress or dismay an audience.
  • 
  If you stop freerunning, lose your hold.
  A MAZE OF GLASS, STEEL AND CONCRETE
  When you are freerunning, jumping from rooftops to rooftops, here are some 
  inspirational buildings for the MC to describe:
   »
  A maze of concrete and steel. A small community of poor people, 
  becoming poorer and poorer, struggling in vain because some group is 
  robbing them. Do you help them?
   »
  The rooftop of a ruined cathedral whose bells are suddenly ringing. Take 
  -1 forward because of the deafening noise.
   »
  The rooftop of an old municipal building. At the opposite side, two 
  shadowy figures are fighting. One does a fencing move never seen before 
  and then they move away. Do you follow them?
   »
  The rooftop of a decayed building that ends up collapsing under your 
  feet. You are surrounded by thugs interrupted in an odious crime. Do you 
  interfere?
   »
  Perched on a gargoyle, you spot an old enemy in the streets below. Who? 
  Do they see you?
   »
  On a balcony, you meet a beautiful lady or gorgeous gentleman. They are 
  amused by your unexpected visit and ask you to stay. Do you engage a 
  gallant conversation?
   »
  A famous monument. People below notice you and applause loudly. You 
  are no longer stealthy.
   »
  On the rooftop of an abandoned factory. A drone in the distance detects 
  you and approaches. Do you try to hide?
  
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  00098/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Duel of Wits (Style)
  Before a fight, you challenge your enemies with witty repartee, where puns and cunning 
  words can hurt more than steel. Roll Style:
  10+: take +1 forward for the forthcoming mix it up.
  7+: choose one:
  • 
  You disarm your enemy;
  • 
  The enemy reveals part of his nefarious plan. Take +intel;
  • 
  You manage to fight your enemy alone;
  • 
  You remove a minor party from the fight: protecting one of your allies or 
  excluding one of your opponent’s.
  CYBERWARE
  Motionwires: You can jump further than unenhanced people, fall from higher heights, 
  and even stick to or slide on vertical surfaces to gain incredible momentum. When your art 
  of motion helps you assess from an unexpected vantage point, take +1 forward. You may 
  also roll Synth instead of Cool to freerun.
  You may take the Infiltrator move Covert Entry as an advance.
  DIRECTIVE
  Daredevil: When your decision to use flair and style to resolve a situation hinders the 
  mission, mark experience.
  THE RUINS OF LIGHT
  OVERVIEW
  The city is in bad shape, to say the least. Most of the avenues are collapsed. The French 
  government left Paris because of the danger and can’t take the city back. Now, the noble 
  families are locking the whole damn place politically. Police forces were shot on sight by 
  well-organized gangs, which led to their departure, replaced by Musketeer companies of 
  varied loyalties.
  A few key sites are still standing among the ruins. To the north, there are the famous 
  Champs-Élysées avenue and the La Défense business district, almost drawing a line; and a 
  bit apart, the Pigalle district. In the center, the remains of the Tour Eiffel has become a black 
  market den, and the Seine islands have been claimed as home by the high nobility. To the 
  south, not much really, except a few parks.
  PIGALLE
  Pigalle is a strange place. Definitely a poor, working-class district. Besides that, it’s your 
  usual cyberpunk cliché: neons, cyberaugmented thugs, better than life sex sims, drugs… 
  Heaven, really, if you’ve got money. No laws anymore: Pigalle became a haven for criminals 
  and gangs, openly fighting on the streets. They’re coming from all around the world and 
  
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  PARIS 
   
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  have just settled here: one street, you’ll find yourself in Chinatown, then suddenly, you’re 
  in front of Russian or Italian mobs; next step they’re Albanians, Senegalese, Cameroonians, 
  Malians, Croatians, Serbs, whatever… And, oh boy, they can’t stand each other!
  Of course, as before the collapse, Pigalle is nothing but hot stuff: you can easily find 
  someone to fulfill your dirty desires, if you’re willing to pay the price. Hey, who doesn’t need 
  a “massage” from time to time, right?
  WHAT TO FIND?
  Gangs, criminals, hired guns, illegal cyberclinics, cabarets, brothels.
  WHO TO MEET?
   »
  Tarek, the guy who always knows a guy that can help you. Always smiling, 
  always joking. I wonder why people disappear after asking him favors…
   »
  Amadou, a Senegalese gang leader with facial scars. Fair and square. I wonder 
  why he requests people as a payment…
  WHERE TO GO?
   »
  The Belle Époque: Cabaret, can-can dance revue, the place to be seen, artists.
   »
  The Fin de Siècle: Illegal sims, illegal cyberclinic, public Matrix access point.
   »
  The Années Folles: Classy brothel, heavily guarded, sex sims.
   »
  La Rue du Chat Noir [Blackcat Street]: Street owned by a gang, parley, pimps, 
  fixers.
  WHAT TO DO?
  Operatives will probably drop by quickly during a mission to find contacts.
  THE CHAMPS-ÉLYSÉES
  The Champs-Élysées is the jewel left in all this mess. It’s a two kilometer avenue where you 
  can still find retail stores from notorious brands. Now, prices are a bit steep. There are also 
  theaters and opera houses where the nobility likes to spend its Saturday evenings. Rich 
  tourists go to the luxury hotels: secured bunkers with a noteworthy charm from the good 
  ol’ days; and corporations use their conference rooms for discreet briefings. Nothing over 
  the top, nothing too modern, just luxury and class.
  Even after the collapse, tourism is still a thing but it has changed a bit. Nowadays, after going 
  shopping, you go shoot people on the ravaged streets nearby. Human safari, it’s called. It’s 
  completely illegal, but some moneybags are always willing to pay a good amount of cash 
  for the adrenaline rush.
  So, loads of money are still flowing into the Champs-Elysées. Then, somehow, the money 
  is poured into every district of Paris. Wouldn’t be wrong to say the Champs-Elysées is the 
  financial heart of Paris…
  
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  00100/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  WHAT TO FIND?
  Hotels, stores, upper class social events like opera, theater, or literary or gentlemen’s clubs.
  WHO TO MEET?
   »
  Sarah and Mademoiselle, two beautiful and famous actresses currently 
  playing Lorenzaccio. I wonder which prominent noble is their lover…
   »
  Lord Fenlon, a con artist pretending to be a British gentleman. I wonder which 
  corporation is so desperate to kill him and why…
   »
  Monsieur de Rosnay is a spy selling information of any kind. I wonder who he 
  has betrayed among the Operatives…
  WHERE TO GO?
   »
  The Dauphin: Theater, opera, nobility, evening events.
   »
  The Luxor: Five-star hotel, conference rooms, theme rooms, tourists.
   »
  The Balzac: Four-star hotel, shady gatherings of the nobility.
   »
  The Dumas Circle: Literary club, latest novels, controversial pamphlets, under-
  ground connection.
  WHAT TO DO?
  Social events and meeting employers will probably be the Operatives’ main reasons to go 
  there.
  TOUR EIFFEL
  Since the collapse, there’s nothing left of the original Eiffel Tower except a bunch of metal 
  bars and some electronic components. And that means valuable resources to grab. The 
  monument cost so much to maintain, the French government couldn’t afford it anyway. 
  Now, it’s just home to gangs. They make some money selling parts of the tower, but they 
  really fight over the prestige of owning the Eiffel Tower.
  That said, being the chief is juicy. Black markets can be found all around: weapons, 
  cyberware, illegal software; and they all pay tribute to the leading gang. Also, if you’re a 
  customer, there’s a kind of unusual etiquette to understand: don’t play hardball here and 
  don’t forget that you are expected to haggle over the price.
  Naturally, some people are trying to protect the monument one way or another: they would 
  like to rebuild the tower or even enhance it… That’s why you find copies around the city: it’s 
  always a good marketing campaign for a corp to recreate an Eiffel tower. These are usually 
  larger than the original and, if not just an artistic or architectural marvel, may incorporate 
  fully operational headquarters.
  WHAT TO FIND?
  Scavengers, tinkerers, gangs, black markets, weapon dealers.
  
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  PARIS 
   
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  WHO TO MEET?
  Esmeralda, a gypsy gang leader, proud and fierce. Never lie to her or she’ll find out and it 
  will cost you greatly. I wonder who the shadowy figure she converses with is…
  Jacquard, a bourgeois entrepreneur with a radiant smile, runs a successful shop. I wonder 
  why he is the only one who doesn’t need to pay tribute…
  WHERE TO GO?
  The Invalides: Indoor market, gathering of small shops, second-hand products.
  The École Militaire: Building owned by a gang, well-armed, heavy guns, uniforms.
  The Tour Maine-Montparnasse: Weirdest shit, tall tower, arcology, landmines field.
  WHAT TO DO?
  Haggle, buy, sell. Operatives may think about taking this place: hard task, but not impossi-
  ble; that’ll be a good retirement.
  
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  00102/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  THE SEINE ISLANDS
  First and foremost, there’s the Île de la Cité at the very center of Paris. It’s a well-known 
  place, home to the last vestiges of city government, where some of the most prominent 
  Musketeer companies are located and official events usually take place. Bridges are heavily 
  fortified and the security forces are not to be messed with.
  The Île Saint-Louis is the home of the most influential noble families. It’s a gated communi-
  ty, taking the tranquility of its inhabitants very seriously: one cannot enter without proper 
  credentials. The sky-palaces, high towers of eccentric shapes that merge medieval and 
  modern features, are beautifully ornamented, like in some strange aesthetic contest. That’s 
  a view to behold, for sure.
  WHAT TO FIND?
  Influential noble families, priests, musketeers, rakes, imprisoned prestigious criminals, 
  important officials.
  WHO TO MEET?
   »
  The Prefect Jean-François-Xavier de la Mare still operates under the au-
  thority of the remaining French government, located in Orleans. A smart man: 
  he favors the Parisian nobility and secretly commands the company of the Black 
  HERE ARE SOME ORNAMENTS TO FLAVOR A SKY-PALACE:
   »
  Arrowslits that may be used by sharpshooters
   »
  Terraces with aqueducts, greenhouses, gardens and pools, a beautiful 
  spot full of biometric recognition devices
   »
  Vines climbing a stone tower, leading to a balcony on some higher office 
  blocks
   »
  A fountain or a belvedere, hiding a secret entrance to a data vault
   »
  A huge wallscreen broadcasting the family’s coat of arms and part of its 
  history
   »
  Sculptures, statues or gargoyles hiding motion detectors and heavy 
  weapon mounts
   »
  Tapestries with silver and gold threads and mural paintings surrounding 
  a VTOL landing pad
   »
  A pyramid or a tenshukaku where the target is located, a place with fewer 
  security measures and no Matrix access
   »
  Solar panels looking like stained glass windows
   »
  A watchtower patrolled by flying drones
   »
  A waterfall falling from the top of a tower, suddenly stopped by anti- 
  gravity shields
  
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  PARIS 
   
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  Musketeers. I wonder what he is searching for among the ruins of the Louvre 
  Museum…
   »
  Cadet Rousselle has been held captive at the Conciergerie for so many years 
  the youngsters don’t remember him. I wonder what secret he discovered when 
  he broke into the sky-palace the Operatives are trying to infiltrate…
  WHERE TO GO?
   »
  The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris: Important religious ceremonies, nobility, 
  weddings.
   »
  The Conciergerie: Headquarters of the infamous Black Musketeers, noble law 
  enforcers and bodyguards, prisoners waiting for their death sentence, hard to 
  infiltrate.
   »
  The Pont Neuf: Strongly guarded, not the best choice to get in or out, the only 
  way by foot.
   »
  The De Valois Sky-palace: Prominent noble family, tallest tower, golden sun.
  WHAT TO DO?
  Infiltrating sky-palaces, kidnapping family members of a noble nemesis, fighting Muske-
  teers. Hey! Lots of fun here.
  LA DÉFENSE DISTRICT
  Beware of not getting lost in this neon-lit glass maze with huge skyscrapers, AAA  
  corporations head offices and giant malls. It’s screaming technology everywhere: every-
  thing is automated from the elevators to the augmented reality ads. Corporate executives 
  look as busy as they can under the strict surveillance of top-notch security guards and 
  advanced drones.
  WHAT TO FIND?
  Corporations. And only corporations, thank you.
  WHAT TO DO?
  Operatives will have most of their briefings and debriefings here, in some rental offices. 
  Infiltrating headquarters in this district is probably madness, but you don’t always have a 
  choice, do you?
  THREATS
  CYBER REX HENRI X (LONER)
  Henri X is the most notorious hacker in Paris and claims to be the legitimate successor of 
  the old French dynasty. He mainly uses blackmail and diplomacy. Operatives may work for 
  him without knowing so, as he uses several agents, the Little Ferrets, as front men. It is said 
  that he’s rich above imagination and holds a private mansion under Paris, in the sewers.
  
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  Agenda: Seize political power and become King; diminish the influence of the 3,000 
  noble families.
  1200    Henri X plots, but has yet to put his plans in motion.
  1500    Some nobles are concerned about Henri X’s rise of power and want to 
                investigate; Henri X has full control over the sewers.
  1800    Nobles attempt to thwart Henri X’s influence; Henri X is monitoring a       
                lot of Matrix traffic.
  2100    Some major corporations are secretly supporting Henri X; some
                contacts may refuse to help Operatives against Henri X.
  2200    Henri X is a strong political force: his supporters control some of the 
                most influential corporate branches.
  2300    Henri X overtly seizes power and establishes a monarchy in Paris.
  0000    Henri X is anointed in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and proclaimed King 
                 of France. Nobility and corporations that are not part of his network lose 
                much of their influence.
  THE TURMOIL IN THE BELLY OF PARIS (HEADLINE)
  If things get worse because explosions, destruction or assassinations happen on the 
  streets, tourists will run away and the city will become poorer and poorer. Violence breeds 
  violence: gangs will wage war on each other. Gear will cost more and be harder to find.
  Agenda: Turn Paris into a violent rathole; show the deterioration of the society; show 
  unmet needs and rising tensions.
  1200    The streets are calm.
  1500    A few gunshots? A firefight? Seriously, who’s afraid of that nowadays?
  1800    There are a few rumors about public insecurity, nothing dramatic. 
                8-Cred Gear cannot be found.
  2100    Scenes of violence are hitting the headlines. People are a little bit more 
                wary now… Spend one additional Cred to obtain any Gear.
  2200    You can hear firefights in the distant, probably some minor gangs. The 
                main districts are just a mess and should be avoided if you want to be 
                safe… 8-Cred and 4-Cred Gear cannot be found.
  2300    Shit is hitting the fan, man! Only a few stores and hotels are still open. 
                Prices are getting excessive. A lot of gangs are at war. Spend two
                additional Creds to obtain any Gear.
  0000    The streets are deserted. Paris has become a war zone and is facing an 
                  important financial crisis. Nothing can be found anywhere, even food or 
                simple gear. To put it bluntly: you have to kill for what you want.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000105/00250 COMPLETE
  03 PREPARING TO PLAY 
  ////////////////////// 000105/00250 COMPLETE
  PARIS 
   
  ////////////////////// 
  00105/00150 COMPLETE
  THE BLACK MUSKETEERS (GROUP)
  Instinct: To fight, and to fight dirty if need be.
  Tags: +well-armed, +disciplined, +violent, +mobile.
  The Black Musketeers are your average villains, competent enough but mostly ordinary. 
  Depending on the threat level you want them to represent, they may be fully equipped with 
  cyberware and use individual VTOL vehicles to patrol the city.
  For a different kind of opposition, other Musketeer companies may have drone-support or 
  an eye in the Matrix.
   »
  Raise an alarm
   »
  Impress with good swordsmanship
   »
  Make a dishonorable move 
  En Garde! (Honor)
  When you meet a band of Black Musketeers, roll Honor.
  10+: one of these Musketeers is a former comrade in arms who may serve your 
  cause. But you’ll have to (choose one):
  • 
  Pay for drinks or drugs for his companions [pay 1 Cred]
  • 
  Spend time, talking to him about the past and your whereabouts
  7-9: choose one:
  • 
  You are challenged to a duel
  • 
  They are bullying or abusing someone
  • 
  If you don’t comply, you lose one Honor.
  6-: they have spotted you and one of them is a fine enemy, maybe a Noble 
  swordsman.
  THE 3,000 (GROUPS)
  Nobles are usually high-ranking corporate executives but family members may work for 
  different corporations, potentially creating an entangled web of intrigue. Even if they 
  may have more specific agendas, they all crave power and are deeply involved in political 
  intrigues. When the Operatives encounter a family as a Threat for the first time: name the 
  family, decide how large it is and whom each member works for, and create a Threat clock 
  and an agenda for the family. Powerful individuals among the families could also be Loner 
  Threats.
  The Rival of Yesterday:
  If the Operatives lie low at the end of a Mission, lower the Threat Clocks of all Noble Threats 
  by one.
  
  000106/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  000106/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00106/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  PARISIAN CORPORATIONS
  LAVOISIER GROUP (BIOTECHNOLOGY)
  Main market(s): Bioengineering, Pharmaceuticals.
  Minor markets: Cyberware, Luxury goods.
  Keywords: Illegal medical experiments in Africa, Weird gene therapies,  
  Vat-grown replacements, Disease outbreaks.
  VMCY (CONSUMER GOODS)
  Main market(s): Luxury goods, Fashion, Alcohol.
  Minor markets: Media and entertainment, Social events, Plastic surgery clinics.
  Keywords: Perfumes, Sparkling wines, Haute-couture, Snobbish, Psychological 
  alteration projects.
  TECHTELCO (ELECTRONICS)
  Main market(s): Drone manufacturing, Security systems.
  Minor markets: Sensors, Telecommunications, Construction, Security 
  personnel.
  Keywords: Building security experts, So many patents, Eye in the sky.
  XENON GENERAL GROUP (FINANCIAL)
  Main market(s): Banking.
  Minor markets: Sponsorship, Holdings, Real estate.
  Keywords: Severely hit by the collapse, On the verge of bankruptcy, No ethics 
  anymore, Guess who +owns you, Linked with illegal activities.
  NEO PEERAGE OF PARIS (GOVERNMENT)
  Keywords: Hindered political influence, Pass laws, Gathering of the most 
  prominent nobles.
  NUCLEA (HEAVY INDUSTRY)
  Main market(s): Nuclear, Renewable energies.
  Minor markets: Power supply, Water supply, Chemicals, Waste disposal.
  Keywords: Shady nuclear waste disposal in populated areas, Ever-changing 
  brand for marketing reasons. 
  CUGNOT-VERBIEST MOTORS (HEAVY INDUSTRY)
  Main market(s): Vehicles manufacturing, Engines.
  Minor markets: Horses, Road transport.
  Keywords: Risk of a takeover bid, Downsizing, Factory strikes, Good reputation.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000107/00250 COMPLETE
  03 PREPARING TO PLAY 
  ////////////////////// 000107/00250 COMPLETE
  PARIS 
   
  ////////////////////// 
  00107/00150 COMPLETE
  THE AFRICAN PEOPLE’S MOVEMENT (ILLEGAL)
  Main market(s): Human trafficking, Illegal immigration, Smuggling, Drug 
  trafficking.
  Minor markets: Human rights, Politics.
  Keywords: Nigerian mafia, Family-organized.
  THE COURT OF MIRACLES (ILLEGAL)
  Main market(s): Matrix theft, forgery and scam, Information network.
  Minor markets: Matrix surveillance.
  Keywords: Great sense of honor, Any treason will be severely punished, Eyes 
  everywhere.
  CANAL ROYAL (MEDIA)
  Main market(s): Matrix channel, Music publisher, Sim entertainment.
  Minor markets: Luxury goods, Prostitution, Social events.
  Keywords: Nobles, Literary clubs, Duel of wits, Depravity.
  BLUETRIX (MATRIX)
  Main market(s): Hardware manufacturing, Matrix service provider.
  Minor markets: Matrix channel.
  Keywords: Datajack, Cyberdeck, Data storage & interface, Cybercoms, Mobile 
  phone, +encrypted.
  AGORE INDUSTRIAL GROUP (MILITARY)
  Main market(s): Weapon manufacturer.
  Minor markets: Bioengineering, Security, Military vehicles manufacturer.
  Keywords: Altered animals, Don’t expect subtlety.
  PETROSTREAM COMPANY (PRIMARY RESOURCES)
  Main market(s): Oil.
  Minor markets: Paramilitary operations, Drones, Cyberware.
  Keywords: So much cash they don’t know what to do with it, Critical resources 
  areas, Top-notch guards, A nightmare to deal with.
  ORBITUNNEL (TRANSPORTATION)
  Main market(s): Space tourism in low Earth orbit, Zero-g environment research, 
  Launch service provider for geostationary satellites.
  Minor markets: Space exploration program, Space access provider for smaller 
  corps.
  Keywords: European space agency, Recent crash wreaking havoc.
  
  000108/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  000108/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00108/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  NAMES
  FRENCH NAMES
  Anne, Aurore, Constance, Diane, Élise, Émilie, Louise, Madeleine, Marguerite, Marion, 
  Roxane 
  Armand, Baptiste, Bernard, Bertrand, Charles, Eustache, François, Gaston, Jacques, Jean, 
  Jules, Paul, Pierre, Sébastien, Tristan
  NICKNAMES
  Alceste, Barberousse, Baron, Bastille, Bayard, Belle, Brissaille, Candide, Capitaine, 
  Cardinal, Cinq-Mars, Colbert, Coquelin, Corneille, Cyrano, Dieu-le-Veut. Éminence, Figaro, 
  Fleur de Lys, Fouquet, Fracasse, Grémione, Harpagon, Lafayette, Lagardère, Latréaumont, 
  Marquise, Milady, Monsieur, Nostradamus, Pardaillan, Percy, Planchet, Rochelle, Sade, 
  Scapin, Scarlet, Sganarelle, Soleil, Tartuffe, Vauban
  NOBLE NAMES
  de Beaufort, de Buffon, de Fontenelle, de Guise, de la Chênée, de la Rochefoucauld, de la 
  Serre, de la Tour, de la Vallière, de Maupin, de Montaigne, de Montfleury, de Montmorency, 
  de Saint-Aignan, de Saint-Germain, de Tréville, de Valvert
    
  BIO
  Khelren is a French indie game designer, translator, publisher and game journalist 
  (Di6dent). He has translated such games as The Regiment, Swords without Master, The 
  Climb, Ribbon Drive, Starforce, Class Warfare, Capes, Thought Lords of Mars, Love in the Time 
  of Seið, Mobile Frame Zero: Intercept Orbit, and last, but not least, The Sprawl. He designs 
  storygames/RPGs on his Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Khelren) or his Tipeee (https://
  www.tipeee.com/khelren) and has written several PbtA games (Dominion, Berlin XVIII).
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00009>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00009>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////RED_DOT.SIGHTED////
  HAI
  OH HAI!!
  HAIHAIHAIHAIHAIHAI
  CYBERKITTENS:
  OPERATION
  PEWPEW
  
  000112/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00112/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  HOW TO RE-SKIN THE SPRAWL TO MAKE YOUR 
  GAME FULL OF MEGA EPICALLY CAT-INFUSED  
  BADASSNESS
  It’s a dog-eat-dog world in this litter-gritty future of neon and chrome. 
  Luckily for you, you’re a cat.
  These days it seems like dirty dogs run most of the big corps 
  in this corrupted sprawl you call home. No cat in her right 
  mind trusts a stupid tail-wagger. Even worse, some zaibatsu are 
  operated by cheating, double-crossing, slick-as-fuck fat cats, 
  and you sure as hell can’t trust them either.  You can’t trust 
  the general masses because they all wear the collar of some 
  filthy corp or another. You can’t trust your uncollared neighbors 
  because they are probably just waiting to pounce you so they can 
  sell your fur to who-knows-who in order to scrape together enough 
  creds to feed their ‘nip addiction. You definitely can’t trust 
  your friends because they are trying to survive just like you—and 
  surviving in this sprawling shitbox of a world means that you have 
  to fight tooth and claw to stay on top of the competition and one 
  step ahead of the corps. That is, unless a corp has a job for a 
  flea-bitten alley cat like you. Hey, cred is cred and collars can 
  be useful.
  In CYBERKITTENS: Operation PEWPEW, you play over-the-top badass purrsonifications 
  of popular cat memes in an anthropomorphic neon-and-chrome cyberpunk setting. 
  Take “Ghost in the Shell +  Zootopia” or “Blade Runner + Tom and Jerry”, smother 
  liberally with puns, and you’ll be good to go!
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00009>>>>>>>
  CYBERKITTENS:
     OPERATION
                    PEWPEW
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000113/00250 COMPLETE
  PEWPEW           ////////////////////// 00113/00150 COMPLETE
  A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE
  STEP ONE:
  Create a Cat Meme (move, name, look)
  STEP TWO:
  Choose a Playbook
  STEP THREE:
  Profit
  CREATE YOUR CAT MEME.
  CHOOSE YOUR MOVE.
  All moves are awesome, but you can only choose one:
   
  Ђ
  Critical Light Aura Glow (Cool): You are just the tiniest most freakin’ 
  adorable little kitty, what with your widdle ears and your fat stumpy tail and 
  those whiskers~!!!!!  Infuriatingly, no one ever treats you like the serious health 
  purrfessional that you are. Regardless of their impudence, whenever someone 
  is hurt you rush to the rescue, rolling Cool.
  10+: You heal all of your target’s harm. You heal yourself by the same 
  amount.
  7-9: You heal both yourself and your target by 1 harm.
  6-: Maybe you aren’t a combat medic yet. One of you is healed 1 harm, 
  but the other takes 1 harm—your choice on who gets what. The MC makes 
  a move.
  ...................................Dana................... 
  ........Cameron..............................
  
  000114/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00114/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
   
  Ђ
  Hrrrrrk!: You’re the fuckin’ Colonel. You single-pawedly took out an entire 
  squad of ninja kittens in the Nip Wars of ‘68 with nothing but a block of C4 
  and bit of anchovy paste. You’re a big fuckin’ deal. You didn’t get your rank by 
  pussy-footing around and playing nice, and you aren’t going to piss about with 
  kitten toys when you… hrrr... have a big... hrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkk... hairball cannon 
  (4-harm near/far area loud messy slow reload).
   
  Ђ
  I Can Has?: At first glance you look normal, 
  but then you stretch out to reach that far away 
  ledge… and you keep stretching. Then you 
  seem to almost turn into a liquid to slither 
  under that barely open window. Oh yes, you 
  can has that krillburger.
   
  Ђ
  If I Fits I Sits (Style): You are super friendly 
  and love helping people out, which is good 
  because everyone is always coming to you 
  for stuff. Sure, some people might call you 
  a hoarder, but you need all of those boxes! 
  So, so, so many beautiful boxes. And isn’t it 
  handy that things sometimes come in them? 
  When you sit in a cardboard box that does not 
  belong to you or an ally, you can roll Style to 
  find [gear].
  10+: Gain 2 [gear]
  7-9: Gain 1 [gear]
  6-: Gain 1 [gear], but MC makes a move.
   
  Ђ
  Is Watching You: Somehow you’re always able to know everyone’s most 
  hidden secrets…and it’s kind of creepy. Plus, you’re always so judgy about it. 
  When rolling 7+ on Assess you also gain 1 [intel].
   
  Ђ
  Nope.: You are a grumpy asshole with a permanent frown who hates every-
  thing. You know how to show your displeasure, so lift your tail and let them 
  know. You spray your foes with burning, acidic, smelly urine (1-harm hand/close 
  area hidden quick). If you roll 10+ when you Mix It Up with your Nope., the odor 
  is difficult to wash off: gain +2 forward against your victim the next time you 
  attempt to harm or coerce them.
   
  Ђ
  PewPew: Sure, you prefer to shoot them out of the tips of your paws, but you’re 
  perfectly happy to shoot lasers out of anywhere (2-harm near/far AP breach loud 
  quick).  You can’t help but to make the noise each time. Pew! Pewpewpewpew, 
  mutha’ fuckers! PewPew!
   
  Ђ
  Sparkle Rainbow Song: You are the wind! The sky! Rainbows! GLITTER!!! You 
  can fly anywhere and love to bring along some friends in your brightly coloured 
  machine of happiness!  So what if you’re always blasting that one song on loop? 
  It’s, like, the BEST song! Nyan!
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000115/00250 COMPLETE
  PEWPEW           ////////////////////// 00115/00150 COMPLETE
  You MUST choose the Driver playbook. Build a Vehicle per the playbook, but 
  your profile is Power+2, Looks+2, Weakness+0; 2-Armour. Garish MUST be 
  one of your choices.
   
  Ђ
  The Belly is a Trap: Those innocent eyes. That sweet face. An alluring swish 
  of your tail. Everyone loves you, trusts you, wants you. No one ever suspects 
  the evil that is coiled hidden in your icy heart until it’s too late. You get the 
  Infiltrator’s Assassin move regardless of the playbook you choose. 
  Additionally, before you fast talk you may choose to use the promise of your 
  fuzzy, soft, warm belly floof to assist (must state that you are using The Belly 
  is a Trap before rolling). You gain +1 ongoing to this fast talk roll, but on a 
  6- you’ve given into your feline nature and lashed out, dealing 1 harm to your 
  target. Your target will be hesitant to trust you again and all fast talk attempts 
  with the target will now have -1 ongoing; however, you gain +1 forward to play 
  hardball if done immediately.
   
  Ђ
  Toxoplasmosis (Edge): You have a permanent derp-face, but everyone seems 
  to love you and do whatever you want! Maybe it’s due to your big, bulging eyes 
  or maybe it’s due to those little friends in your poop, but whatever the reason 
  you are happy that everyone likes you so much. You may plant stray poop mines 
  in an area. When an enemy walks through, roll Edge.
  10+: Your victim steps in it. 
  Within 24 hours you can “request” 
  a favour of any complexity. Your 
  new friend will do whatever you 
  want to the best of their ability, 
  even if it will cause them harm, 
  and have no memory of the 
  events afterwards.
  7-9: Your victim steps in it. Within 
  24 hours you can “request” a 
  favour of any complexity. Your new friend will do whatever you want to 
  their best of their ability, as long as it doesn’t cause them harm, and will 
  remember everything afterwards.
  CHOOSE YOUR NAME.
  Use as many as you need, or more:
  Lychee, Miss Princess Pooky Prissypants, Sir Lord Antoine Bathory the Third, Horrid 
  Robin, Mister, Simon, Appu, Mochi, Nicolas, Betty, Mr. Phluph, Meeks, Boots, Priya, 
  Gobby, Piri Piri, Riley, Tiberius Gracchus, Hermes, Topanga, Mondo Burrito, Mercury, 
  Lil’ Bunny, Marmalade, Jazz, November, Hamilton, Beefcake, Marie Catoinette, 
  Madame Magnolia Hortensia Bupplefraaz, Periwinkle, a famous name, a childish 
  name, a punny name, a complicated name
  
  000116/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00116/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  CHOOSE YOUR LOOK.
  Eyes: jeweled, cyber, stars, lasers, hungry, happy-squint, tired, grumpy, crossed, 
  none, huge
  Body: basketball, loooooooooong, tiny, normal, thin, svelte, pampered, rugged, taco, 
  huge
  Coat: artificial, natural, poptart, suit-and-tie, long-fur, short-fur, no-fur, floofy!,  
  cardboard box, tuxedo, tabby, ginger, black, white, moo-kitty, siamese, mohawk, 
  yellow raincoat, chromed, screens
  CHOOSE A PLAYBOOK AND GO BE  AWESO---?!
  OH FUCK–WATCH OUT–IT’S THE FUCKING RED DOT!!!1!1!!1!!!!111
  CHASING AND CATCHING THE RED DOT (TEAM CLOCK)
  The Red Dot is a team clock. Whenever any member of your team rolls a 12+ being 
  fuckin’ badass, one of the dot’s six segments is filled in and that hip cat gets +1 
  forward. When all six segments are completed you have finally caught the Red Dot! 
  Everyone on the team marks xp. However, your l33t skillz have not gone unnoticed: 
  the MC advances one of the corporation clocks.
  The Red Dot clock resets upon completion, for all cats know that the red dot can never 
  truly be caught: it is the shadow of an enigma wrapped in a mystery stuffed in a burrito.
  KTHXBAI
  NEED SOME INSPURRRATION?
  SOME SAMPLE CORPS, I GUESS:
  RUFF RIDER TRANSPORTS
  This is one of those filthy dog-run corps. Ruff Rider has its paws in anything and every-
  thing related to mewvment: neighborhood hoover cars, supersonic trans-continental 
  subways, Earth-tethered space ports, and all the roads, air, and space that its products 
  run on/through/in. Word on the street is that they also have their claws in black-market 
  asteroid-mining.
  CYBERNETIC ANDROID TECHNOLOGIES
  There was a lot of meowtrage when C.A.T started selling autonomous androids. There 
  were riots in the streets and some folks predicted that the new creatures, “Fetches” 
  they were called, would have catastrophic effects on the basic fabric of society. They 
  would take all the jobs! Folks would prefer them over real people, with the result that 
  no more children would be born! The androids would take over the world and lock 
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
   
  000117/00250 COMPLETE
  PEWPEW           ////////////////////// 00117/00150 COMPLETE
  everyone up in cages to be looked at for amusement!  Well, one out of three ain’t too 
  bad. The pandamonium subsided, but so did the jobs. 60 years later and the poor are 
  poorer and the rich richer. Good thing you’re a purrfessional in your field, right? No 
  Fetch can replace your skillz, instinct, and badass style.
  HAPPY LAB’S HAPPY LABS
  At the forefront of biological research is Happy Lab’s Happy Labs. They produce state-
  of-the-art engineered crops, medicine, and bio-based weaponry. Everyone is Happy at 
  Happy Lab’s! They also have an incredibly high turnover rate, although somehow you 
  never seem to run into any ex-employees. Just don’t piss off their top dog Bruno. Take 
  my word for it.
  CATURDAY ENTERTAINMENT
  These cool cats run the celebrity stim-sim operation in your sprawl. They also specialize 
  in more mind-twisty distractions, but you like to keep your brain between your ears so 
  you personally try to stick to good old organic ‘nip.  Even so, if someone wants some 
  fun or just a brief escape from the litter box that is their life, they look for something 
  from Caturday. Hey, why not Make every day a Caturday?
   
  YOU COULD KICK SOME ASS IN THESE SPRAWLS:
  MUTTROPOLIS
  A big, dirty, and dense labyrinth of towering skyscrapers and twisted dark allies. Haven 
  to big business, street business, and secret business.
  FURSIDE
  A city in the sky that floats above polluted oceans. Plumes of smog from all the hover 
  cars make visibility a nightmare. If you’re lucky you can afford a throat filter implant. If 
  not, you GTFO or die young.
  MEOWVILLE
  They call it “Meow’s Jungle” for a reason. This is a wild zone unclaimed by corps and 
  governments alike. Gangs rule these mutant forests. They say you can buy anything 
  here for the right price. But be careful, the trees might be listening and nobody knows 
  who they report to.
  
  000118/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00118/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  FAQ.
  Wait, what, do you still have questions??? 
  I don’t know what else to fucking tell you, but here’s some inspurration if you need it: 
  Scratching Chrome...Cat in the Shell...Neuromeowcer...When Litter Fails...Purrshades...
  Furwired...Meow Crash....Do Cybercats Dream of Electric Mice?...Johnny Mewmonic...
  Litterboxes in the Net...The Mewtrix...Strange Spays...Total Recat...NekoTech...Meowna 
  Lisa Overdrive...The Windup Kitty...
  And don’t forget: tacocat is a palindrome.
  BIO
  Dana Cameron can't stop, won't stop, adding stupid cat things to all the things.
  THANKS TO THE HUMANS OF CYBERKITTENS:
  Leon Adams and Jessica Jeffers: The bestest editors a cat-in-human-form could 
  wish for.
  Punny Friends: Thanks fur the many puns. You know who you are.
  Cat Versus Human Facebook Group: Special thanks for all the cat photos that 
  brighten my days, make me squee, and cover me in lulz.
  Extra special thanks to the intertubez for being made of cats. 
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00010>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00010>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  >>Approach is clear..
  ... Plan A..Proceed..
  >>Engaging..
  MIAMI  ICE
  
  000122/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00122/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  A tribute to Jon Walter Williams
  Florida is, and has always been, the place to be: access to orbital arcologies, Solar 
  Investments’ space cruises from Cape Canaveral, theme parks, and more physical and 
  virtual resorts that you'll ever be able to visit in your whole life. But somebody has to 
  provide all these generous people with whatever is necessary for them to enjoy their 
  stay. If you ask me, there is no way they don't know about the smuggling, human 
  trafficking, and all these dirty deeds you do for a living. They just don't want you to 
  remind them.
  STUCK IN THE MUD
  Power has left Earth since the Orbitals eradicated the world’s alpha cities in a torrential 
  rain of asteroids. The fight wasn't fair and even the proud United States of America 
  quickly surrendered, then collapsed, melting into a mosaic of states. At this time, we, 
  the people of Florida, proclaimed ourselves an independent republic, that is to say 
  some corps executives seized Florida before sacrificing us in the Secession War. All 
  their mess left us deep mental and physical scars, chromed limbs, and a strong will 
  to escape gravity, to live in their orbital paradise, and to kill them all. But here we 
  are, face down, the taste of the Everglades mud in our mouths. The gravity well is 
  our prison, and it's not the only one. Indeed, the former zealots of free-trade erected 
  strong borders between Florida and other states. Presently, they control the merchan-
  dise flow coming from the microgravity industries in orbit and live off the taxes like 
  feudal lords. With their surveillance drones and their autocerberi shooting at sight, 
  the borders are our second prison. We are trying to escape both, some by climbing the 
  megacorp ladder, some by saving enough money to get the ticket to orbital arcologies, 
  others by smuggling the Orbitals’ crap. 
  Miami is still far from the worst place to live in the world. Orbitals goods are cheap and 
  it's not that hard to get a job. Some may even choose to remain dull consumers and 
  numb their minds in this illusion of comfort. You'll find them in the theme parks or at 
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00010>>>>>>>
  MIAMI
                    ICE
  
  05 CYBERWARE 
  /////////////////////// 000123/00250 COMPLETE
  FLORIDA 
  ///////////////////////  00123/00150 COMPLETE
  Miami Beach, worshiping the holy trinity of sea, sex, and sun. Others fight to stay out 
  of the mud. I am one of those. You are one of those.
  ASK SOME QUESTIONS DURING CHARACTER CREATION:
   »
  How were you involved in the Asteroid War?
   »
  What did you lose during the Second Secession War?
   »
  How did you deal with your last smuggling operation?
   »
  What have the Orbitals recently taken away from you? Name the Corp who did 
  it.
   »
  What are your plans toward the orbital oligarchy? And toward the national one?
   »
  What (or who) are you taking care of right now, here on Earth?
  DEFINE THE SCALE OF PLAYER CHARACTER'S ACTIONS, THEN OPEN RELEVANT 
  CLOCKS.
  Relevant Clock example #1 (global scale): 
  The Mud Uprising (headline)
  1200    The mud-dwellers are passive.
  1500    Formation of revolutionary gangs (“The Tough Mudders”, “The Dirt 
                Boys”).
  1800    Regular attacks on fret convoys.
  2100    Terror strike on Wonderland Theme Park, Orlando.
  2200    Raid against the Gravity-Well.
  2300    Infiltration of the Orbitals’ spaceport.
  0000    Wrath of the Mud.
  ................................Benjamin............. 
  ........Kouppi................................
  
  000124/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00124/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Relevant Clock example #2 (street level): 
  Speculation on Homestead Waterfront (place)
  1200     Homestead Waterfront is a vibrant and independent Caribbean  
                 community.
  1500     Construction of massive dykes.
  1800     Cyber-attacks, sewer and water-supply degradation.
  2100     Gangers raid the district.
  2200     Inexplicable hurricane; dykes break.
  2300     Edge Corp purchases the land and “resettles” the Caribbean  
                 communities.
  0000    Construction of Coconut Grove Waterfront wage-slave residences.
  MIAMI BEACH
  ASK PLAYERS SOME QUESTIONS:
   »
  What drove the LGBTQ+ community from South Beach? Where are they now?
   »
  How did you feel last time they didn't let you enter in a Louboutin shop?
   »
  Samantha Brickell is heir to the Brickell Corp and wife of the majority sharehold-
  er of Defense Systems. Why did you have sex with her in the discreet Star Island 
  Paradise Resort?
   »
  How do the Orbitals control the tourism industry?
  GIVE PLAYERS INTEL AND PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT LIES BENEATH:
   »
  The Great Beach Casino, suddenly turned into a microgravity space.
  • 
  How do the staff and the clients respond?
  • 
  How is the security affected by the gravity change?
  • 
  Who controls technology powerful enough to alter gravity on Earth?
  • 
  Whose criminal operation is interrupted?
   »
  The lover of the idol-actress Kendra Hayes, recording their sensations during 
  sex with a stimrecorder.
  • 
  Who’s offering 1 billion Floridan Dollars for the recording?
  • 
  Does the starlet know about the recording and/or the sale?
  • 
  Who benefits from publicizing the recording?
  • 
  What's the tie between the lover and Zurich Orbital?
  
  05 CYBERWARE 
  /////////////////////// 000125/00250 COMPLETE
  FLORIDA 
  ///////////////////////  00125/00150 COMPLETE
  DOWNTOWN
   ASK PLAYERS SOME QUESTIONS:
   »
  Freedom Tower was once a monument to Cubans who fled Castro. What is it 
  now?
   »
  How were you involved in the Shrimp Industry Scandal?
   »
  Why is the company in charge of CBD surveillance searching for you?
   »
  Who or what do you love in Little Havana?
   »
  Place Little Caracas, Little Maracaibo, and Little Managua on a map of Miami. 
  Why do people avoid these districts?
   »
  How the hell did you come to own this luxury home on the Coconut Grove 
  Waterfront?
  GIVE PLAYERS INTEL AND PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT LIES BENEATH:
   »
  A gunfight on the rooftop of the Brickell's Magnarch.
  • 
  How are “Occupy Brickell” involved?
  • 
  Who just shot the Governor in the head?
  • 
  Who wanted to frame the team?
   »
  A gorgeous, golden-skinned woman called Yemanya, always seen during 
  natural disasters.
  • 
  What's her tie to the eponymous Sea Goddess?
  • 
  Why is the police department spreading the rumour she is an AI  
  manipulated by the Corps?
  • 
  Does she save or condemn disaster victims?
  • 
  What are her devotees planning in Little Haiti?
  THE EVERGLADES
  ASK PLAYERS SOME QUESTIONS:
   »
  How does the Everglades National Park still resist the expansion of the sprawl?
   »
  Who is desperate enough to live in the mangrove?
   »
  Which of the Orbitals are interested in the expansion of the Everglades  
  Agricultural Area?
   »
  What exotic plant is feared to be invading the Everglades?
  GIVE PLAYERS INTEL AND PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT LIES BENEATH:
   »
  Thousands of alligators hunting as a pack.
  • 
  What do they hunt?
  
  000126/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00126/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  • 
  Why do they avoid the Key Largo Correctional Institution?
  • 
  Who is the strange little girl often seen nearby?
  • 
  How are the alligator nest and the brain damaged decker related?
   »
  The Tree of Life, an animal shelter as big as an Arcology.
  • 
  Are the rumors of the reappearance of lost species true?
  • 
  What lies beneath the undersea levels?
  • 
  What's the tie between the Tree of Life and the lost pocket submarines of 
  the Seagrass Restoration Project?
  THE CAPE CANAVERAL LAUNCH ZONE
  ASK PLAYERS SOME QUESTIONS:
   »
  Name the Corp(s) who took over the NASA remnants. Who is dissatisfied with 
  this share?
   »
  How long did you work here? How did you keep some connections?
   »
  Ever lived out of the Gravity-Well? Why did you leave heaven for dirt? What's 
  worth coming back for?
   »
  Sketch the Cape Canaveral Zone. Choose one or two ways to escape the  
  gravity-well: rockets, microgravity generators, space elevator, mass driver. 
  Mark them on a map. Then locate on it the following elements: docking piers, 
  
  05 CYBERWARE 
  /////////////////////// 000127/00250 COMPLETE
  FLORIDA 
  ///////////////////////  00127/00150 COMPLETE
  fret zone, maintenance hangars, VIP transit, gift gallery, traffic control, Space-
  port office.
   »
  How does the Gatekeeper, the powerful AI controlling the access to the 
  geo-synchronous orbital arcologies, know about you?
  GIVE YOUR PLAYERS INTEL AND PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT LIES BENEATH:
   »
  An old Cuban in a cryogenic container.
  • 
  Who is waiting for him in orbit?
  • 
  How is he related to the recently vanished Dr. Enrique Oquendo, 
  personal surgeon of the Castro family, whose members are known for 
  their abnormal longevity?
  • 
  Why did Sodatlanta-Corp send an extraction crew to catch him before 
  take-off?
   »
  A community of drifters squatting the Launch Zone.
  • 
  How is Solar Investment unaware of this?
  • 
  Why is the camp arranged to form greek letters?
  • 
  Where do the stolen goods go?
  THE BORDERS
  ASK PLAYERS SOME QUESTIONS:
   »
  Besides the Mobile Interzone, what territories has Florida gained and lost?
   »
  Who is the power behind the Florida Department for Immigration and Custom 
  Enforcement (ICE), the private militia in charge of the surveillance of the 
  Borders?
   »
  How do the Orbitals monitor comings and goings?
   »
  What kind of scars did your last border-crossing leave you?
   »
  How are the borders organized? Sketch a typical border with these elements: 
  checkpoint, warehouses, barracks, electrified wall, ICE office, deadly curtain of 
  nano-machines, heavy EM railgun turret.
  MAKE PLAYERS AWARE OF THE BORDERS CUSTOM MOVES.
  Observe borders
  When you observe a border’s security, roll Mind:
  7+: you find a gap in the borders security. Describe the area and the route.
  10+: also choose 1:
  • 
  You find a weakness in the defense system (+ intel)
  • 
  You get an extra opportunity (+gear)
  • 
  You find support
  • 
  You find a good escape route (+1 forward to cross the border)
  
  000128/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00128/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Cross the Borders
  When you secretly cross the border, roll Cool.
  10+: choose 3
  7-9: choose 1
  • 
  You make it across quickly and accurately
  • 
  You don't raise any automatic system defense alarm
  • 
  The ICE patrols are not on your tail
  • 
  The Orbitals don't notice you
  GIVE PLAYERS INTEL AND PLAY TO FIND OUT WHAT LIES BENEATH:
   »
  The Mobile Interzone, a city divided into two parts and claimed back by 
  Alabama.
  • 
  Which large group crosses the Mobile Wall every night? How?
  • 
  Who controls the former Alabama State Docks?
  • 
  Why do local Cajuns call the USS Alabama “le Grand Condé” after a 
  brilliant 17th century military leader?
  • 
  Why do Giant Centipedes kill a Fatted Ox in the Matrix during the last 
  day of Carnival?
   »
  The Jacksonville Base, disused after the Secession War and sold by Florida State 
  to a guru descending of a famous Texan political dynasty.
  • 
  What's the interest of Senate Inc in the transaction?
  • 
  How does the sect deal with foreigners?
  • 
  What are the full-chromed black guys and the numerous orphans used 
  for?
  • 
  What business does Armaghast the Smuggler have between Georgia 
  and the base?
  • 
  Where are the nuclear warheads?
   
  BIO
  Benjamin Kouppi writes: Miami is the third setting I wrote. Lagos was a kind of 
  hell and Brussels an unbearable paradise. Miami had to be the purgatory. As it's a 
  rather classical choice, I preferred to write it like a didactic to create your own Miami, 
  but I give you some inspirations by crossings the classics of cyberpunk, that is to say 
  Wired and Count Zero, with contemporary preoccupations, like rising sea-levels due 
  to climate change, and, most of all, with... Miami Vice. Relax and have a drink: play 
  cyberpunk in Hawaiian shirts.
  Special thanks to Motseu, Miami ICE MC.
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00011>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00011>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  ////TRACKING.OVERLAY////
  KUSMIL: [Ready.Inactive]
  PLA: [Ready.Inactive]
  LOC.RIOT.INDEX: [Moderate]
  EBUK  STYLE
  
  00132/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  AD 2050. A civil war broke out in North Korea after the assassination of the dictator 
  “General Kim” during a local inspection. North Korea collapsed and entered a state 
  of anarchy, and the territory of North Korea was absorbed into South Korea with help 
  from the US and China.
  The ruin of the state meant the opportunity for new capital. The corporations of Korea, 
  US, China and Russia started the construction of factories and arcologies on the 
  wreckage of North Korea. With national feeling and political confrontation in the mix, 
  the competition between corporations grew into a fierce, but covert, corporate war.
  Human resources were plentiful for doing the corporations’ dirty work. Because the 
  soldiers, hackers, and various experts who once belonged to the North Korean army 
  became unemployed all at once, they started to taste the good and bad of capitalism.
  It is AD 2070 now. North Korea, which was the most closed autocratic state in the 
  world, is now on the cutting edge of capitalism and has become the arena of a new 
  cold war.
  THE PROXY WAR
  When North Korea collapsed, China advanced the People’s Liberation Army into 
  North Korea’s territory, justifying the move using the Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid 
  and Cooperation Friendship Treaty. Even after the absorption of North Korea, the PLA 
  remains to “maintain the security of Chinese citizens and corporations in North Korea”. 
  US Forces decided to stay in Korea, too, to check China. The current situation is a return 
  to the 1950s–US forces and the PLA both stationed in Korea, holding each other in 
  check.
  In the 2070s, the conflict between Korean-US and Chinese-Russian corporations 
  is turning violent, aided by the new cold war system between US and China. Their 
  conflict has evolved from the competition for market share into a low-intensity war 
  which includes sabotage, corporate espionage, and the kidnap and murder of key 
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00011>>>>>>>
  EBUK
         STYLE
  
  NORTH KOREA 
  ///////////////////  00133/00150 COMPLETE
  figures of rival corporations. The foot soldiers in their proxy war are North Korean 
  citizens, aka Ebukin (“North folk” in Korean).
  HUMAN PROPERTY: EBUKIN
  North Korea was a notorious garrison state. Even though the nation was poor, their 
  hackers and special ops, trained in preparation for warfare, were some of the finest in 
  the world. But after the sudden collapse of North Korea, they became the jobless. Only 
  a few were absorbed into the South Korean army or police, and the rest of them are 
  monitored as potential terrorists. 
  Ebukin are a target of discrimination after unification. The joy of unification didn’t last 
  long, and Ebukin have become disillusioned after the realization that their southern 
  kin treat them as “slaves who speak same language.” Ebukin can’t leave their homes 
  because of martial law in North Korea, at least, not without large bribes or a generous 
  patron who will guarantee their social position. Even after unification, North Korea is 
  still a prison to them.
  Usually, there are three paths open to Ebukin: become a exploited wage-slave in 
  pollution-stricken industrial areas, plunge into a fierce and short life of terrorism, or 
  get a “dangerous, but special” job with a chance of making good enough money to 
  escape the North.
  Most people who have some skills, especially the former soldiers, have chosen the 
  last way. Once again, the ex-military experts and their successors have become foot 
  soldiers who are fighting on the front of an increasingly intense corporate war.
  NORTH KOREAN SOCIETY
  North Korean society has undergone dramatic changes in the 20 years since the wave 
  of capitalism struck. Ebukin watch the same TV shows, movies, news, and follow same 
  fads as the South. Propaganda delivered in a state-hired news anchor’s exaggerated 
  ......................................Oh..................... 
  ........SeungHan.............................
  
  00134/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  voice, which used to characterize North Korean media, has become a legacy of the 
  old days. The notorious ideology “Juche” has disappeared, except among a very small 
  number of terrorists. Ebukin are now identical to their southern brothers, at least when 
  it comes to earning and spending money.
  But some features of dictatorship still affect the people. For example,  
  Ohho-damdangje ( “Monitoring in each five houses”–the North Korean system of 
  dispatching a Communist party member and monitoring, educating, exercising joint 
  responsibility for every five houses), still dominates the people in a different form 
  even though the nation has collapsed. Now, Ebukin form their own “faction” consist-
  ing of dozens to hundreds of people. Each faction is bound by particular tendencies, 
  interests, and especially blood relationships. It is rare for anyone to choose a different 
  faction than their family. If two people of different factions get married, one of them 
  joins the other’s faction or the two factions merge. This makes marriage outside the 
  faction difficult for people deemed “valuable” to their faction. A person’s social status 
  depends on their faction. Within the faction, information, resources, secrets, and 
  responsibilities are shared. Cooperation and conflicts between the factions are fairly 
  common. If the faction breaks up because of internal or external strife, the members 
  are absorbed into other faction or are quickly eliminated. North Korea is a very hostile 
  place for “lone wolves”. Betraying one’s faction is regarded as a very despicable action. 
  (Of course, sometimes profit triumphs over honor…)
  During the chaos of the North Korean civil war, many non-digital documents were 
  destroyed. As a result, many Ebukin are “invisible people”, unregistered by govern-
  ment agencies. The Korean government has tried to register the entire North Korean 
  population, but every attempt has failed because of obstruction by corporations and 
  the non-cooperation of Ebukin themselves. There are thought to be at least two or 
  three times more unregistered workers in North Korea than registered workers.
  RASON CITY, THE FREE ECONOMIC ZONE
  Rason encapsulates the current state of North Korea better than any other place.
  Rason is a port city which borders China and Russia. Before the collapse of North 
  Korea, it was the second richest city after Pyongyang, the capital city. Rason has always 
  been caught between China’s Pacific ambitions and Russia’s desire for an ice-free port. 
  The US has concentrated its efforts on preventing the deployment of North Korean 
  nuclear missiles in the city because of the short distance between Rason and Alaska. 
  After the collapse of North Korea, Rason was the first city the People’s Liberation Army 
  occupied. China tried to construct a naval base in the city but failed due to the threat 
  of military force by the US.
  Rason made rapid progress after unification, aided by the Korean government. Now 
  the city is a Korean outpost for Manchuria and Siberia, and the eastern terminus of 
  the Siberian Railway. A vast amount of minerals, oil, and natural gas are imported into 
  the city by rail. After refining in the local facilities, those resources are transported all 
  over the country. Most of the corporations in Rason are Chinese and Russian concerns 
  which had moved in before the fall of North Korea, but the number of Korean & US
  
  NORTH KOREA 
  ///////////////////  00135/00150 COMPLETE
   corporations are rapidly growing nowadays.
  Present-day Rason is a megalopolis which has absorbed its surrounding cities. The 
  city is divided into eastern and western districts by the Siberian Railway. The eastern 
  district is filled with warehouses and port facilities, and in the western district  
  corporate arcologies shine amidst the vast sprawl of chemical plants, refinement 
  facilities, and slums. Each arcology is regarded as an extraterritorial area belonging to 
  the country of the corporation’s nationality.
  The Tumen river, which runs in the north of the city, has turned red and green because 
  of factory wastes and always gives out a foul smell. North of the river is the border of 
  China and Russia.
  There are two military bases in the city–a Chinese base in the northeast and a joint 
  Korean & US base in the south. The two bases “officially” get along, but it is an open 
  secret that their missiles are aimed each other.
  In the narrow alleys of the city, signboards written in Korean, English, Chinese, and 
  Russian are everywhere on haphazardly built storefronts. Thanks to a growing number 
  of foreigners in the past 20 years, most citizens can speak brief greetings in four  
  languages. Merchants tout and haggle in mixed languages. People dress in the height 
  of fashion, and only a few old people wear Mao suits. In the main streets, old and new 
  cars from every country fill the road. The sky is always gray and foggy because of fumes 
  from factories and cars. Most people wear face masks.
  Rason has more than twice as many hostess bars as other Korean cities, spread all over 
  the city. Most hostess bars are equipped with soundproofing and wiretap jamming 
  equipment. People who need a confidential conversation come here to talk, with 
  drinks and sexual favors.
  
  00136/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Except for the select few who live in arcologies, citizens live in apartment complexes, 
  a hundred stories high, which have mushroomed throughout the city. The apartments 
  not only provide a high-population density of corporate workers, but allow the factions 
  to easily monitor and assemble their members. Most apartments are one-bedroom 
  homes. There is just enough space in each for three or four people to eat and sleep.
  Rason suffers from a serious lack of police officers. Except the arcology areas which 
  are guarded by unmanned drones and security personnel, most of the city consists of 
  almost lawless areas. Unless the case is very large, police are only interested in tying 
  up loose ends. Surprisingly, the violent crimes against individuals is not so high in 
  Rason compared to other cities. Many foreigners have ties to corporations, and nobody 
  wants to draw their attention. If someone wants to piss off another citizen, they should 
  be concerned with which faction they will be annoying.
  But that doesn’t mean Rason is safe city–far from it. Rason City is a sprawl in a constant 
  state of low-intensity warfare between corporations and factions. Unidentified 
  explosions, disappearances, brawling, and even gunfights break out with frequency. 
  Military forces keep their hands off in “civic events” unless they detect the evidence 
  of terrorist activity or the case is very dire, but once they initiate an operation the city 
  is stained with blood. Lots of blood. There have been riots in Rason during the last 
  20 years, but each was brutally suppressed by one of the armies. Fortunately, the 
  PLA and Korea-US forces have never gone into action at the same time. But rumors of 
  unnoticed skirmishes between them circulate constantly.
  The underworld of Rason is divided into numerous small powers, rather than a few 
  big powers. Sometimes powerful factions grow and absorb other factions, but they 
  soon split into various small factions or shrink back because of internal struggles 
  and external challenges. Some factions have tried to rely on the power of a foreign 
  syndicate–like the Triads or the Red Mafia–but none have been successful. Usually, 
  such a faction becomes the priority target of their rivals.
   
  BIO
  Oh SeungHan is a translator and long-time RPG fan. He founded the RPG company 
  “Yiyagi wa Nori (Story & Games)” and is currently translating RPGs into Korean, includ-
  ing The Sprawl.
  
  >>>>loading...loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>loading...>>>>location.>>>>>00012>>>>>>>loading...>>>>
  
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00012>>>>>>>
  CONTINUE? [Y/N]
  FREEWAYTOWN
  ////TRACE..ERROR???/&?£µϧюϧϧϧϧ¿¿¿¿
  TRANSFER: [INITIATED]
  BALANCE: 0.00
  ¿¿F33L T#3 W4V3¿¿
  
  000140/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00140/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  LOADING...
  >>>>.location.>>>>>00012>>>>>>>
  FREEWAYTOWN
  The freeway lights flashed down her side panels as Liz 
  swung the sleek body of the Blue Pacific Flame across 
  seven lanes of the 405, threading the tight gaps the 
  expert systems left between their corporate commuter 
  bubbles. Liz focused her stopwatch to center-vision. 
  10:23p. Ugh. Liz hated rush hour.
  She gunned the engine, powering into the executive 
  lanes, swerving violently to avoiding a lazily lane-
  shifting CF limo. Fucking meat-wheels. Hiring an 
  actual person to physically turn a steering wheel 
  was the ultimate combination of conspicuous luxury 
  in 2050s Los Angeles. Look at me–I can afford the 
  highest auto insurance, mental re-mapping, and bodily 
  reconstruction premiums for 500 miles. Ho ho ho, I 
  laugh at fatal negligence lawsuits. Her mouth clenched 
  into a grimace.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
  /////////////////// 000141/00250 COMPLETE
  LOS ANGELES                             ///////////////////////   00141/00150 COMPLETE
  The Southern Californian Sprawl. 2050.
  A city of corporate enclaves connected by a network of private freeways stretching 
  from the villas of Santa Barbara to the militarised zones of San Diego.
  A city divided between luxurious hilltop mansions, cramped contracted apartment 
  blocks, and vast underserved barios.
  A city where no-one drives–everyone rides.
  In Los Angeles, permission to ride an automated commuter car between your corpo-
  rate block and your office megascrapper is a standard perk of corporate employment; 
  however, if you work in one of the sprawling industrial zones, you ride public trans-
  port. You’re lucky if your autobus rides the freeway, if not, you get used to popping 
  those SleepLess pills for your 3am commute. Above the surface streets, the wealthiest  
  corporate executives, simsense stars, and synthrock artistes can subscribe to the 
  freeways’ executive lanes, where luxury cars escort their charges in smooth and timely 
  comfort.
  But you know how it goes. Nothing is forbidden; some things are just expensive. The 
  ultimate extravagance is to pay for the right to have physical hands on your physical 
  steering wheel. Meat-wheeling (as the street calls it) is a romantic throwback to the 
  20th century. A romantic throwback of mangled steel and crushed bodies, but that’s 
  what money and exclusive medicine is for, right?
  So where’s the edge?
  The true freeway elite void every warranty imaginable. They start with neural  
  interfaces designed for high-G aerospace operation and rig their cars with probes, 
  sensors and drive-by-wire-systems to give their land-bound charges the reaction 
  speed and handling of a high-performance jetfighter. All of this is thoroughly illegal.
  ....................................Hamish................. 
  ........Cameron................................
  
  000142/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00142/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  Despite strong challenges from Kiev, Cape Town and Mumbai, Los Angeles remains 
  the entertainment capital of the world. Half the world’s game development labs feed 
  new and recycled IP into Imagine!’s Silicon Beach arcology village. Across the hills in 
  the San Fernando Valley, the executives and contracts of Pure Life dominate the virtual 
  and recorded realms of simsense. Between the two, Hollywood generates dozens of 
  new recording studios and synthstars every year. At best, their lifecycle is short, bright 
  and lucrative. At worst, it’s just short. Imagine! and Pure Life cherry-pick the brightest 
  talent, squeeze it for indentured contracts and nova-hot hits, and drop the dessicated 
  husks at Union Station with a one way ticket to who-the-fuck-cares. Nothing changes.
  The same goes for shadow operatives. Pick ups. Station dumps. Pre-release hacks. 
  Talent extractions. PR manipulation. There are a thousand corporate fixers with a 
  thousand entry-level jobs waiting for suckers with raw implant scars, a shelf-model 
  California Arms Liquidator, and a dumb plan. A dedicated few climb out of this proving 
  ground as legit professionals. The rest… well, station dumps for disposable assets are 
  usually of a higher calibre, if you get my meaning.
  Gravity Wave crept silently through the lush 
  undergrowth, delicately pushing aside the vines 
  drifting purposely towards his input ports. The 
  chirps and beeps of the the jungle’s virtual data-
  life surrounded his consciousness with a bubble of 
  emergent musicality. He realised his head was nodding 
  along to an imagined tune. At Pure Life, even the 
  dataservers were catchy.
  He stopped. Something had changed. The jungle’s 
  ambient sound was rhythmic. Definitely patterned. 
  With a screeching guitar riff, the ICE blindsided 
  him. His visual-field erupted in a wall of static, 
  his audio-field into a crescendo of noise-rock. He 
  felt his lap grow warm as his sensory fields resolved 
  reluctantly into spinning pixels and muffled sounds. 
  He hoped it was the new reactive processor Elvi5 just 
  installed in his deck. Candy always gave him shit when 
  he finished a run with piss-stains.
  Gravity Wave punched his supercoolant and launched 
  his Nigerian attack program. Release day was coming 
  and he needed the scoop. No fucking Pure Life noise-
  routine was going to stop him downloading this new 
  CloudBase album.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
  /////////////////// 000143/00250 COMPLETE
  LOS ANGELES                             ///////////////////////   00143/00150 COMPLETE
  IMAGINE! (CORPORTATION)
  Media, simsense, entertainment, virtual environments and workspaces
   »
  Subcontract a solution to a well-disguised corporate subsidiary
   »
  Unknowingly trap someone in a simsense recording or virtual environment
   »
  Activate an obscure indenture clause
  PURE LIFE (CORPORATION)
  Media, simsense, entertainment, genetics and biological enhancement
   »
  Deploy an artificial life form
   »
  Hinder a rival with an intellectual property claim
   »
  Activate an obscure indenture clause
  THE HOLLYWOOD BARRIO (THREAT: PLACE)
  Hollywood is as two-faced as it ever was. From the outside and for those in “the 
  industry”, it’s a destination, an idea, a dream: fame and fortune, bright lights and 
  movie stars, the walk of fame. For those who live there, it’s a workplace, a neighbour-
  hood, home. The early twenty-first century saw gentrification come and gentrification 
  go. Neighbourhood hangouts and icons demolished to make way for ritzy apartment 
  towers, ritzy apartment towers degraded under economic downturns, and now a 
  patchy revival. 
  Through it all, Hollywood Boulevard remained the same, a charming (or sleazy) mix 
  of tourist tack, sex shops, clothing retailers, smoke shops, dive bars and flashy clubs, 
  bustling with locals and tourists 24/7. Most people in Hollywood have normal lives 
  unconnected to the bright lights of the industry corps, but for the rest, that dream 
  seeps in everywhere. Those are the ones to watch for: the newbie pressing a fresh chip 
  into every hand they can find, hustling for the big break; the creased and weathered 
  face of the old-timer jonesing for the adoration of the crowd once more; the charming 
  smile of the talent agent, flashing plastic and macabre in the strobing club lights; the 
  flick of a signature, the snap of a deal, the crumple of yesterday’s news.
  Goal: to consume
  Additional Moves:
   »
  Entrance with false hope
   »
  Dazzle with wealth
   »
  Show the mundane existence of ordinary residents
  
  000144/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00144/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  José watched as his crew cleared a gap in the balls 
  and lowered the net under the bloated pale flesh. This 
  was the fifth time this month. He clearly needed a 
  new security crew. He lifted his cap, wiped his brow, 
  and looked across the black photovoltaic surface of 
  the stage three tank towards the blinding pillar of 
  Newport Water’s main offices. 
  Was this an internal or external problem? He blinked 
  his comms to life and issued a security requisition 
  to have Li check the security logs again. No missing 
  patrols. No signs of forced infiltration. He looked 
  up at the vast expanse of blue above him. An aerial 
  approach? Check the radar logs. The tank impact meters 
  hadn’t detected anything dropping from a high vector, 
  but maybe a low-speed, low-alt drop could have been 
  delicate enough to not trigger the system. The body 
  swayed in the net as the twin hulls of his tank 
  seeding vessel cut slowly through the surface leaving 
  a black undulating waveform in its wake.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
  /////////////////// 000145/00250 COMPLETE
  LOS ANGELES                             ///////////////////////   00145/00150 COMPLETE
  To the south of Los Angeles proper, a string of desalination plants down the coast of 
  Orange County provide drinkable water for the millions who call the corporate enclaves 
  of Southern California home. This is the domain of Newport Water, third of the big five 
  L.A. Corps. The desalination plants that keep Southern California habitable are the 
  headline industry for Newport, but their portfolio is as diversified as any other. Other 
  strengths include an extensive network of heavy industry and consumer goods plants 
  throughout the southwest and, less well known, a controlling interest in Pendleton 
  Inc, the premier corporate military outfit in the Pacific. Pendleton regularly cycles 
  veterans of ongoing conflict zones in Peru, Taiwan, Indonesia, Canada and Antarctica 
  through the security departments of Newport Water subsidiaries as temporary or 
  actual retirement placements.
  NEWPORT WATER (CORPORATION)
  Water reclamation and public services, heavy industry, consumer goods, military
   »
  Find or lose something in the tanks
   »
  Deny “public” services
   »
  Reveal a military application of a household item
  D-SAL 27 (THREAT: PLACE)
  Once home to the attractive bird life of Bolsa Chica Basin State Marine Conservation 
  Area, Delsalination Tank 27 now supplies drinking water to the skeletal SeaCliff  
  Arcologies of Huntington Beach. When the second wave of arcology construction 
  kicked off in the late 2030s, the SeaCliff arcologies were heralded as the cutting-edge 
  in self-sustaining habitats, capable of transitioning from fully terran to partially marine 
  as sea levels rose. But, by the mid-2040s, it was clear that those promises had been 
  smoke, the books had been cooked, and the remains of the project were acquired 
  at basement prices by Newport Water. Now, one Arcology is complete, another is 
  in the final stages of construction, and the third sits abandoned and waterlogged 
  at the shore of D-Sal 27. Curiously, one underpopulated arcology and two allegedly 
  incomplete and empty shells use all of D-Sal 27’s fresh water production. Security is 
  top-notch; even the arcology under construction sees no in or out traffic. Rumours 
  abound, but intel is scarce.
  Goal: to trap
  Additional Moves:
   »
  Capture the unwary
   »
  Painfully reveal an experiment
   »
  Threaten the surrounding population
  
  000146/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00146/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  The warm Santa Ana wind that pushed her against the 
  nanopolymer crystal window fluttered a wisp of stray 
  hair against her forehead. Cuchilla shifted her weight 
  slightly to her left foot, changing the angle and 
  removing the irritation. Servos whirred back into 
  action as she re-engaged her cybertools on the final 
  set of screws. Balıkkartalı switched cameras.
  A pool of white artificial daylight bathed the 
  occupied cubicle, casting long steady shadows over 
  the empty workstations of the 127th floor. Ali leaned 
  back in their chair and pondered the accounting 
  files scrolling over their display. A frown creased 
  their forehead. They leaned back over the keypad.  
  Balıkkartalı switched cameras.
  The searching tendrils of Gravity Wave’s algorithms 
  flickered through the file structure searching for a 
  match. The partial file he’d lifted from Pure Life had 
  the trademark touch of a California Financial slash-
  and-burn attempt. If the original was anywhere, it would 
  be in this server. When you had fingerprints on the 
  financial arrangements of every multi-billion-dollar 
  transaction in the western hemisphere, the most secure 
  offline servers in your most secure megascrapper was a 
  veritable goldmine of incriminating evidence waiting 
  for the disinfecting rays of sunlight. Gravity Wave 
  hadn’t decided whether Balıkkartalı was in this for 
  morals, glory, or cash, but the advance luxuriating 
  in Gravity Wave’s off-shore account eliminated much 
  of his curiosity.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
  /////////////////// 000147/00250 COMPLETE
  LOS ANGELES                             ///////////////////////   00147/00150 COMPLETE
  From Chinatown to the Figueroa Corridor, Downtown Los Angeles is the highly secure 
  domain of California Financial, the New Wall Street in one corporation. It turns out 
  that competition isn’t good for business after all. Corporate freeways spit commuters 
  directly into enormous parking buildings. The pedestrianised streets and crystalline 
  airways between cloud-piercing megascrappers are patrolled by the sparkling white 
  uniforms of CFSec. If you see wheels on a street here, someone important is moving 
  or something big is going down.
  CALIFORNIA FINANCIAL (CORPORATION)
  Financial services, data storage and analysis, physical and matrix security
   »
  Deploy or hide “inconvenient” financial records
   »
  Outbid or buy a competitor
   »
  Discover a well-hidden truth
  DTLA PLANNING COMMISSION (THREAT: GROUP)
  It’s been decades since Downtown Los Angeles was administered by an elected gov-
  ernment in City Hall, but the building remains, a callback to an increasingly distant 
  past before freeways and sprawl and California Financial. Inside the historic building, 
  and throughout the towers of DTLA, the architectural legacy of art deco futurism 
  houses a distributed network of visionaries; a parasitic web embedded within the 
  executive ranks of California Financial. Corporate strategy is cumbersome. Paying lip 
  service to “national laws” limits the capacity of human endeavour. Progress is their 
  god and money its fuel. They long for a day when “public relations” is unnecessary, 
  when the masses of humanity are finally irrelevant to their digital utopia. The Planning 
  Commission is technically one of many strategic think tanks, but in reality they are a 
  major faction within California Financial with access to resources unknown to many of 
  the highest CF VPs.
  Goal: to dominate
  Additional Moves:
   »
  Strike with advanced technology
   »
  Reveal a hidden contingency
   »
  Terminate a weak link
  
  000148/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00148/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  With a controlling interest in Los Angeles World Airport and the Port of Los  
  Gray paint flaked and floated down towards the glowing 
  white and red river below him as he gripped the steel 
  I-beam with a matte-black gloved left hand. He flexed 
  the fingers of his right and adjusted his grip on 
  the cable clamp. With a wince and a grunt and a de-
  tensing of muscles, he jammed it up into the cable 
  that Psyphon had indicated in the holographic model. 
  No matter how many times he did it, Gravity Wave 
  was always relieved when he got the right cable. He 
  punched his deck to life.
  The matrix resolved around him with a lightspeed rush 
  as his clenched hand fell limp, dangling a delicate 
  cascade of paint flakes onto the freeway below as his 
  body slowly rotated obliviously.  Gravity Wave looked 
  around the virtual space. A plain white room emblazoned 
  with the sunburst logo of Southern California Edison. 
  “Spot on, Psy”, he messaged the van, “I hope this all 
  still works.” A return message flashed across the top 
  of his vision: “If the lights are on, the wire is 
  still sound.”
  Gravity Wave was already moving. Pushing through the 
  ancient cable and wire tangle, slowed by fraying wires 
  and sparking hubs, jerking and lagging and je-e-erking 
  his way thro-je-e-eee-ee-rking his way through the 
  connecting network from the upgrade hole where his 
  body slowly rotated above the Blue Pacific “Coloring 
  Your Life” 101 Freeway. Like a slow-motion treacle 
  dream, he emerged into the facility’s system. He hated 
  the muddy feeling of jacking in this way, but he did 
  enjoy looking at the back end of unresolved ICE. Time 
  to play.
  
  01 PLAYING IN THE SPRAWL 
  /////////////////// 000149/00250 COMPLETE
  LOS ANGELES                             ///////////////////////   00149/00150 COMPLETE
  Angeles-Long Beach, the crystalline blue waveforms of Blue Pacific’s headquarters on 
  the Palos Verdes Peninsula look down on the most important transport routes in and 
  out of the SoCal Sprawl and the southwestern United States. The Blue Pacific logo 
  is also a frequent sight on the freeways of Los Angeles and the interstates of the US 
  through a lucrative network of toll-road projects. Blue Pacific trucks course through this 
  arterial system bearing Blue Pacific consumer goods to a consuming nation. Beyond 
  the physical realm, fiberoptic tendrils piggybacking those freeways and interstates act 
  as a central nervous system for much of the region’s economic activity.
  BLUE PACIFIC (CORPORATION)
  Transport, heavy industry, telecommunications infrastructure
   »
  Move something with impossible speed
   »
  Terminate a physical or digital connection
   »
  Lose something in transit
  The linked tendrils and hubs of the local matrix’s physical infrastructure have a veneer 
  of Blue Pacific chrome, but scratch the surface and you’ll find deep layers of patchy 
  upgrades upon patchy upgrades. The software that manages this piecemeal network 
  is state-of-the-art and the crews that service the inevitable hardware malfunctions are 
  quick and competent, but there are vast windows of opportunity into which a wily 
  Tech can throw a spanner or crimp a hookup cable. For creative Hackers, the best way 
  into secure matrix systems starts in ancient databases of decades-old public works 
  plans and ends hanging beneath freeway overpasses jacked into an upgrade hole in 
  a dodgy three-generations-back cable exchange. You’ll probably take a hit on latency 
  and bandwidth, but start the game a few steps ahead of the trace algorithms. Pick 
  your poison.
  MATRIX INFRASTRUCTURE (HACKER MOVE)
  When you research a facility in Los Angeles, you may ask the question “Where’s the 
  upgrade hole?”
  When you login to a secure facility through an upgrade hole, roll Mind.
  7+: Take +2 Stealth
  7-9: Take -1 ongoing until you jack out
  
  000150/00250 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////      THE SPRAWL
  00150/00150 COMPLETE    ///////////////////////  NOVEMBER METRIC
  BIO
  Freewaytown is Hamish’s love letter to Los Angeles, a city that is so much more than 
  freeways and movie studios. This chapter is dedicated to John, Julie and the LACMTA. 
  Cheers!
  The Inland Empire swept beneath the small window 
  like a conveyer-belt of old-style motherboards, all 
  factories for chips and container trailers for legs. 
  It reminded Dingikhaya of the circuit board walls of 
  his favourite cafe in Bishkek. A kind of twentieth-
  century retro-hipsterism, long since scrubbed from the 
  landscape of his new home in the City of Assembly-line 
  Angels. He turned up the dampening on his cyberears 
  as the engine whine changed pitch and glanced at the 
  local time. Landing a little early. Good. Time was 
  tight on this one. 
  The combination of entitled aggression and abundant 
  space always made traffic on the LAX corporate loop 
  an odd experience. In Bishkek, you needed that 
  aggression to make headway through the un-automated 
  snarl. In L.A., that aggression was simply an exertion 
  of dominance over the contents of the surrounding 
  meat-wheels. Dingikhaya jerked his head and amped 
  his senses at the squeal of brakes to his left; the 
  muffled sounds of breaking glass, a human shriek, 
  and a curse, as the black curves of a Blue Pacific 
  Flame shaved the CrystalBrite™ bumper of a Pure Life 
  TigerGlide. Liz was always on time.
   
  
  PHOTO CREDITS
  The following photos are by Bridget Swirski 
  and manipulated by Dana Cameron
  p4 & 35
  The following photos are by Sophie Melchior 
  and manipulated by Dana Cameron
  p7 & 9
  The following photos were used under the CC BY 2.0 license 
  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/) 
  and manipulated by Dana Cameron
  p1 & 3 https://www.flickr.com/photos/rodeime/7169229641/
  p1 & 3 https://www.flickr.com/photos/29638108@N06/8573393840/
  p77 https://www.flickr.com/photos/satanoid/4184237179/
  p77 https://www.flickr.com/photos/satanoid/4185163527
  p77 https://www.flickr.com/photos/126887487@N04/15006436297/
  p79 https://www.flickr.com/photos/satanoid/4184237179/
  p86 https://www.flickr.com/photos/46928881@N02/34655727662/
  p93 & 95 https://www.flickr.com/photos/buggolo/353263014/
  p101 https://www.flickr.com/photos/linpadgham/14200476655/
  p101 https://www.flickr.com/photos/rwkphotography/5262225904/
  The following photos were used under the CC BY-SA 2.0 license 
  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/) 
  and manipulated by Dana Cameron
  p23 & 25 https://www.flickr.com/photos/miguel_discart/16262280152/
  p126 https://www.flickr.com/photos/genista/19450649/
  p131 https://www.flickr.com/photos/northkoreatravel/16142407772/
  The following photos were used under the CC0 1.0  license 
  (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) 
  and manipulated by Dana Cameron
  p13 https://pixabay.com/en/new-orleans-louisiana-81671/
  p43 & 45 https://pixabay.com/en/dark-back-alley-night-street-843300/
  p57 & 59 https://pixabay.com/en/downtown-shopping-human-city-life-3732/
  p121 & 123 https://pixabay.com/en/miami-skyline-downtown-night-1238397/
  p131 & 133 https://pixabay.com/en/namdaemun-market-myeongdong-seoul-326138/
  p135 https://pixabay.com/en/songdo-incheon-korea-neon-songdo-1022526/
  p139 & 141 https://pixabay.com/en/hong-kong-city-urban-skyscrapers-1990268/
  
   
   
  Prepare your datajack for a driveload of global cyberculture, friend.
  Remix your mind and your DNA with the transhumanists of Tangaroa. Screen yourself 
  from the UV, the corps, and the nanobots in Aotearoa. Swim through the stifling oppres-
  sion of law and history in the capital of the European Federation.
  Resist the corporate boot crushing the last bastion of North American freedom. Blow over 
  the agri-prison baseline and the voodoo hooks of the Big Easy. Slink out of the lab and 
  into the streets with keen eyes, sharp claws, and a vengeful mind.
  Circle with the sharks of the Global Giant of Africa: smell the fire in their spirits and 
  the spirits in the fibres. Dance from terrace to tower in the Paris moonlight, rapier in 
  hand, honour in mind. Take down the fat cats and the dirty dogs with anthropomorphic 
  abandon.
  Play in the Caribbean sand or slog through the Florida swamp at the nexus of terrestrial 
  and orbital borders. Fight your way free from the bleeding edge of militarised capitalism 
  at the fractured terminus of a new Korean cold war. Kick against the current in SoCal’s 
  melting pot of simsense dreams, global commerce, and covert water wars.
  Twelve new ways to experience The Sprawl. Are you ready for the November Metric?
  The Sprawl: November Metric is a setting supplement, not a complete game; a copy of The Sprawl is required to play.
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/The Sprawl (PbtA)/Suplements/The Sprawl - NOVEMBER METRIC.pdf