TEXT: Bleeding Edge
  ™
  Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness
  
  Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.
  Science fiction was about man’s potential. Science fiction was about how man could reach out 
  and touch the stars. We could be better. We could be worse. All we needed was the technology.
  Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the same damn bastard he always 
  was, he’d have the same problems he always did, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. In 
  those days, cyberpunk was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.
  Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way. But the world did. 
  Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and all it has done is made us more who we 
  were before.
  Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.
  This book includes:
  • Themes and props for two styles of cyberpunk game: Tomorrow Country and Metalground
  • Origin, Role and Plugin Merits to add mechanical elements to your character’s background, 
  occupation, and technological implants
  • A new kind of Morality: Alienation
  Credits
  Written by: Russell Bailey
  Inspired by Material from: Stephen Herron
  Special Thanks to: Benjamin Baugh
  World of Darkness created by Mark Rein•Hagen
  Developer: Eddy Webb
  Editor: Genevieve Podleski
  Art Director: Richard Thomas
  Book Design: Ron Thompson
  Interior Art: Brian LeBlanc
  Cover Art: Mathias Kollros
  © 2010 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbid-
  den, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. 
  White Wolf and Vampire the Requiem are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. The World of Darkness, 
  Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost, 
  Hunter the Vigil and Geist the Sin-Eaters are trademarks of CCP hf.
  All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf.
  CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP hf.
  This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fiction 
  and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.
  Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com
  
  Bleeding Edge
  ™
  Cyberpunk in the World of Darkness
  
  4 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Bleeding Edge: 
  Cyberpunk in the 
  World of Darkness
  Chapter Three 
  of World of Dark-
  ness: Mirrors kicked 
  the World of Dark-
  ness in the center mass, 
  cracking it into three 
  different shards, 
  three new Worlds of 
  Darkness. Originally 
  we planned on a science 
  fiction section at the 
  time we were develop-
  ing it, but the concept 
  of sci-fi ended up 
  being too broad, too 
  all-encompassing to 
  cram in 15,000 words. 
  But after the book 
  launched, fans clam-
  o r e d  f o r  s c i - f i 
  worlds for their 
  monsters to explore 
  and terrorize. 
  So here’s one of 
  those Worlds of 
  Future Darkness.
  Think of this 
  as a missing section 
  of Mirrors, a slice 
  of extra meat that 
  we’ve written from 
  the ground up in the 
  spirit of that book. 
  You don’t need Mir-
  rors to use this, but 
  if you’re familiar 
  with it, these pages 
  will feel like home.
  Cyberpunk destroyed science fiction.
  Science fiction was about man’s potential. Science fiction was about 
  how man could reach out and touch the stars. We could be better. We could 
  be worse. All we needed was the technology.
  Cyberpunk? Cyberpunk was not that. Cyberpunk said man would be the 
  same damn bastard he always was, he’d have the same problems he always 
  did, and worst of all? He’d still be happy with it. In those days, cyberpunk 
  was arcologies and AIs. Built-in shades and monomolecular razor-wire.
  Seems a little silly now, right? The technology didn’t turn out that way. 
  But the world did. Technology is pervasive and invasive and amazing and 
  all it has done is made us more who we were before.
  Sound like the World of Darkness? It should.
  And just like the World of Darkness, cyberpunk is about those people 
  who can’t quite hack it. Who grind against the gears in the system: outsiders, 
  junkies, survivors and killers.
  Enough with the  
  Tough Talk
  As it turns out, cyberpunk destroyed science fiction the same way the 
  Sex Pistols destroyed rock and roll: articulately and furiously, fed up with the 
  system but more about tearing it down than flipping it off. Science fiction 
  and fantasy were starting to diverge commercially, and the information age 
  was coming up fast. That the American future was something other than 
  nuclear annihilation or a golden age filmed in Technicolor was getting pretty 
  obvious. As Americans looked at Japan, they thought that just maybe the 
  future would pass them by.
  Cyberpunk’s defining novel is William Gibson’s Neuromancer, released 
  in a 1984 that distinctly and happily failed to be 1984. The biggest spectacle 
  out of the Super Bowl that year wasn’t the game, but ads for two computer 
  companies that aired partway through. Neuromancer pushed in the same 
  direction. The novel establishes many of the conventions of the genre: 
  criminal hackers, deadly mercenaries, artificial intelligences and the omni-
  presence of massive corporations along with their products and branding. 
  In Neuromancer, no one is local; the core characters are expatriates living 
  in Japan.
  Neuromancer was followed by two loose sequels, further developing 
  computers as metaphor for human memory. Its success led to an explosion 
  Chapter Three of World 
  of Darkness: Mirrors kicked 
  the World of Darkness in the 
  center mass, cracking it into 
  three different shards, three 
  new Worlds of Darkness. 
  Originally we planned on a 
  science fiction section at the 
  time we were developing it, 
  but the concept of sci-fi end-
  ed up being too broad, too 
  all-encompassing to cram 
  in 15,000 words. But after 
  the book launched, fans 
  clamored for sci-fi worlds 
  for their monsters to explore 
  and terrorize. 
  So here’s one of those 
  Worlds of Future Darkness.
  Think of this as a miss-
  ing section of Mirrors, a 
  slice of extra meat that we’ve 
  written from the ground up 
  in the spirit of that book. 
  You don’t need Mirrors to 
  use this, but if you’re famil-
  iar with it, these pages will 
  feel like home.
  Bleeding Edge: 
  Cyberpunk in the 
  World of Darkness
  
  5 
  HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
  those up to the World of Darkness we know. As Gibson 
  wrote, the street finds its own uses for things.
  How to Use this 
  Book
  This book explores how to create your own setting 
  by blending core elements of cyberpunk with the World 
  of Darkness and the Storytelling System. As with all 
  World of Darkness products, and particularly Mirrors, it’s 
  intended as a toolkit from which you’ll pick and choose 
  and bend and solder. DIY’s a big part of what makes punk 
  work, so you’ll want to cherry-pick our sounds to make 
  your own wall of noise.
  Given that, the rules here can be used either by 
  themselves or individually. We’ve provided a complete 
  set of cyberpunk hacks, but the connections between 
  them are strictly optional.
  There are two basic reasons to play cyberpunk, and 
  they’re not exclusive. One is to harness the themes of cy-
  berpunk fiction. To play stories about high-tech lowlifes. 
  To explore how entities too big for us to comprehend 
  come from people just like us.
  The second is to play with the particulars of cyber-
  punk settings. Cyberspace, implanted glasses, megacor-
  porations, coffin hotels and girls with fingers like razors. 
  We’ll call these the props.
  Props change depending on when and where you set 
  your game. A lot of media similar to cyberpunk barely 
  uses technology at all – think Mirror’s Edge or The Girl 
  with the Dragon Tattoo. If you’re into the themes, but 
  not so much the props, you might use the supernatural 
  in place of the scientific. The Seers of the Throne step 
  into the role of megacorp officers, while the Ordo Dracul 
  performs horrific augmentation surgeries on the black 
  market.
  Alternatively, a props-heavy game might abandon 
  entirely the conceit of being in the literal future, instead 
  being the future as envisioned in the 1980s. Maybe the 
  world took a hard left at New Wave Requiem and noth-
  ing’s ever been the same. Forget the wireless revolution, 
  the dot-com bust, and even the brief ubiquity of the fax 
  machine; instead, a post-World War III megalopolis is 
  run by dirty corporate executives while even dirtier (but 
  substantially sexier) street samurai rule the lower levels. 
  This the retrofuture, and anybody who doesn’t like it gets 
  their throat slit with monofilament wire.
  To illustrate different combinations of these cy-
  berpunk essentials, we’ll build two example settings, 
  noting throughout the text how the props and themes 
  of cyberpunk fit into each.
  in cyberpunk publishing. Bruce Sterling’s 1988 novel 
  Islands in the Net follows a public relations agent turned 
  diplomat across a world on fire. 
  The same year, writer/director Katsuhiro Otomo 
  released Akira. Akira combined a post-apocalyptic 
  backstory with a story of young gang members in a To-
  kyo rebuilt to several times its original size and density. 
  Although the film’s bookend apocalypses and effective 
  authoritarian governments depart from American cyber-
  punk, Akira’s Neo-Tokyo nails the look, something which 
  had only been suggested in passing by Ridley Scott’s 1982 
  sci-fi noir detective film Blade Runner.
  Japanese fiction would continue to contribute to 
  the development and aesthetics of cyberpunk. Gibson, 
  Sterling and others had looked to Japan for aesthetic 
  inspiration from very early on. The North American 
  fascination with Japanese industry and technology likely 
  contributed to the prominence of Japanese settings and 
  corporations in Neuromancer. In 1989, Masamune Shi-
  row began publishing Ghost in the Shell. Where Gibson’s 
  cyberpunk drew heavily on detective and crime fiction, 
  Shirow married it to the police story. 
  By 1992, when science fiction was beginning to 
  change direction, Neal Stephenson released Snow Crash. 
  Snow Crash was rooted in the cyberpunk tradition even 
  as it caricatured it. As with Gibson and Sterling’s 1990 
  novel, The Difference Engine, Snow Crash proposes that 
  the effects of information technology—as well as the 
  will to repurpose it—aren’t limited to the future or even 
  the modern day.
  By this time, cyberpunk gaming had kicked off Cy-
  berpunk 2013 and the magic-meet-cyberware Shadowrun 
  were both hits. In 1991, Vampire: The Masquerade 
  introduced Gothic-Punk, substituting an ancient con-
  spiracy of monsters for totalitarian governments and 
  megacorporations. The early years of Vampire played 
  strongly on cyberpunk aesthetics, from worldview all the 
  way to art and fashion. White Wolf’s official magazine 
  even proposed integrating the Cyberpunk roleplaying 
  game with The Masquerade, publishing three columns 
  under the banner “A World of Future Darkness.” As the 
  World of Darkness grew, though, the present and the 
  past became more than enough to occupy White Wolf. 
  The future of the World of Darkness, near or far, was 
  never explored again.
  Until now.
  The modern World of Darkness incorporates many 
  kinds of horror, from the gothic and Lovecraftian to 
  the hyper-real and psychological. Likewise, a cyberpunk 
  World of Darkness draws from the hardboiled hackers of 
  Neuromancer, the action-movie post-cyberpunk of Neal 
  Stephenson’s Snow Crash and the Japanese cyberpunk 
  of Ghost in the Shell. We’ll strip them for parts and wire 
  
  6 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Tomorrow  
  Country
  “I see the tissue’s growing in nicely, Ms. 
  Leopold. Now, have you considered what you 
  might be able to see with some of our eyes?”
  - Dr. Frank Nicholas
  The leather’s synthetic, the music loud, and the 
  most expressive physical medium is the ironic t-shirt. 
  There are metal limbs, but they’re sleek, surfaced in 
  brushed steel and no longer shamefacedly following 
  organic design. The buildings are taller, the cities big-
  ger, names like New York and Washington referring to 
  urban cores connected by a sprawl of endless suburbs. 
  The wealthy keep themselves apart, like always, but even 
  their enclaves are embedded among the poor. Air travel’s 
  denser, but not ubiquitous, and commercial spaceflight 
  (the only kind there still is) is driven mainly by upkeep 
  of the ever-denser web of satellites.
  This is the world on the day after tomorrow, or 
  however many days it takes to squeeze in population 
  explosions, building booms, and economic crashes that 
  somehow don’t slow down the march of computers and 
  the networks that use them.
  Tomorrow Country doesn’t necessarily include 
  vampires or werewolves. If they’re here, then human 
  history has apparently escaped their influence. Anything 
  supernatural maintains the same distance from the mor-
  tal world as it does in the present day.
  Metalground
  “Enjoying your little visit with us, Mr... what 
  was that? Count... Down? What kind of a name 
  is that, ‘Count Down’?”
  - Explosion Victim
  The monsters of the World of Darkness still lurk in 
  the shadows, but they’ve got company. The Authori-
  ties, masters of the city, rule from gleaming pyramids of 
  black glass. Blood-cults and spirit-cults are as common 
  as trash in the city streets. The serious money, though, 
  is in playing the Authorities against each other, stealing 
  data, equipment, and human resources.
  Metalground appropriates the props of early cyber-
  punk in both fiction and gaming, as well as the action 
  aesthetics of everything from Snow Crash to Akira. Shad-
  owy agents with pitch-black auras recruit mixed teams 
  of monsters, hunters and outcasts to fight both for and 
  against the establishment.
  Systems
  Characters
  Our cyberpunk adaptation adds new elements to 
  character creation. Characters now possess at least one 
  dot each in two Background Merits: Origins and Roles. 
  A character’s Origin tells us where she came from, and 
  how connected she is to the people she grew up with. 
  Her Role is a set of specialties she brings to the group. 
  You may choose to restrict the Background Merits avail-
  able in your chronicle; for example, your setting may not 
  include Synthetics. Guidelines are provided for creating 
  new ones.
  Another new category of Merits is Plugins. Plugins 
  are high-tech gear or body modifications which supple-
  ment a character’s existing Attributes and Skills in 
  exchange for Willpower. They’re not always as reliable 
  as classic flesh and blood, though, so special rules are 
  provided for the troubles that can arise from their use.
  Characters are no longer judged and broken on the 
  rack of Morality. Instead, Alienation measures their 
  drifting away, and occasionally back towards, the society 
  they were once a part of.
  Finally, players tie their characters together through 
  Loyalty, a system that creates ties between the players’ 
  cast of characters. The Loyalty mechanics reward char-
  acters for helping—and betraying—each other.
  Origins
  Merit: Origin (• to •••••)
  Think back to your character’s childhood, her 
  adolescence, her formative years. Did she grow up in a 
  Syrian refugee camp on Cyprus, tiny hands clutching a 
  long nail to ward off those who would steal her food? 
  Was she born to privilege, raised in a glass tower like a 
  fairytale princess, her only glimpse of the world outside 
  the blur of headlights on the streets below? That’s her 
  Origin. If she’s maintained ties to her past, she may be 
  able to draw on people she knew then, or find allies 
  among people like them.
  • Survival Skills: The character learned more than 
  a little growing up. How to find food, how to talk tough, 
  maybe even how to shoot guns. She gains a free Specialty 
  in one of her Origin’s Asset Skills.
  •• Networking: The character understands people 
  of a similar background, whether they’re from the same 
  place she was or just live in similar conditions. Once per 
  scene, when interacting with a person who shares her 
  Origin, she can use any Social Skill as if she possesses a 
  relevant Specialty.
  
  7 
  ••• Vouchsafe: With sufficient ties to a commu-
  nity, the character is treated as if she’s still one of them. 
  If it so happens that corporate security or the secret 
  police come nosing around, members of that community 
  will try to protect her... as long as it doesn’t put them in 
  too much danger. Characters who share the character’s 
  Origin gain a +3 bonus on Subterfuge rolls to conceal 
  information about her activities or whereabouts.
  •••• Clean Record: As far as the datasphere’s 
  concerned, the character still is who she used to be. 
  She never joined that international terrorist group, or 
  never diverted her father’s money into her own crimi-
  nal enterprises. Clean Record penalizes any in-depth 
  attempt to investigate the character’s history by the 
  number of dots of Origin she possesses. Quick searches 
  of public information or low-end intelligence databases 
  automatically fail.
  ••••• Lifer: You can take the girl out of the glass 
  tower, but you can’t take the tower out of the girl. The 
  character gains the benefit of the 8-again rule on rolls 
  involving her Asset Skills. If she does not already have 
  Specialties in both of her Asset Skills, she gains a free 
  Specialty in that Skill.
  Origins follow this format:
  Origin Name
  Quote
  Description: Examples of the Origin, suggesting 
  where the character might be from, why she might have 
  left, and how it might have influenced her.
  Relationships: Types of characters she might still 
  have ties to.
  Asset Skills: Two Skills the character is likely to 
  have learned from her upbringing. At one dot, she gains 
  a free Specialty in one of these Skills.
  Bridge and Tunnel
  “My folks do a lot of blow. You want, I could sell you 
  some.”
  Even with urbanization being what it is, not ev-
  eryone lives in the city proper. The middle class are 
  almost as densely packed as the urban poor, but they 
  live in primarily residential communities, dotted with 
  community swimming pools and thoughtfully placed 
  greenery. Never mind that the cracks are showing in the 
  pools and the trees are becoming overgrown and just a 
  tiny bit threatening.
  As a Bridge and Tunnel kid, a character spent most 
  of his time in regimented activities, bussed from home 
  to school and back again. He learned the basics: read-
  ing, math, and computers. Computers were probably his 
  major link to the world beyond his suburb, bringing in 
  the latest media and fashion from the outside world. His 
  parents had a filter, of course, but either he knew how to 
  turn it off or it didn’t quite catch everything.
  He was curious about the city, and that’s where the 
  bridges and the tunnels came in. When his parents were 
  out (assuming they were ever in), he’d walk a couple of 
  miles to where public transit started to kick in. Hard to 
  get to the good parts of the city, even that way—the 
  major transit lines don’t connect up quite right, as if 
  somebody forgot to draw a line between the dots or 
  maybe didn’t want certain kinds of people mixing. So he 
  hoofed it over the city line, started to explore.
  Maybe he spent his time among the tenements, 
  and made the acquaintance of one of those mysterious 
  strangers who always start out friendly. Or perhaps, as 
  he got to know his way around the financial district, 
  somebody asked him to deliver an odd-looking pack-
  age, for more than his allowance came to in a month. 
  (And in real money, too, not company creds!) One way 
  or another, the city got its hooks into him, and he was 
  never the same.
  Relationships: Parents (like them or don’t), Online 
  friends, Girl next door
  Asset Skills: Academics, Computers
  Huddled Masses
  “Hard times growing up, yeah. Why I don’t take a 
  hard time from anybody.”
  Most of the other classes know that not everybody’s 
  got their own net connection. Maybe they know that 
  not everybody’s got their own room, their own food. Yet 
  they don’t really give a thought to how many of those 
  people there are. How their numbers are growing. How 
  pissed they’ll be when they finally get to taste what 
  they’ve were missing.
  As one of the Huddled Masses, a character spent 
  most of her time trying to keep things together. Whether 
  she was raised in a refugee camp left over from the last 
  war, or one of the sealed ghettos that dot Europe and 
  North America’s major cities, she was put to work young. 
  Scavenging for food, doing menial labor, and... yeah, you 
  don’t want to know what else.
  At some point, she found a phone, a slate, some kind 
  of uplink. It was beat up, sure, but it still worked, and 
  she knew a place where she could charge it up without 
  anybody seeing. She’d climb up the highest places she 
  knew, the ones she’d climb for fun when she was younger. 
  Up there, she found the most precious thing she could 
  imagine: signal.
  She found out about the outside world, alright. 
  Learned that it wasn’t much nicer than where she grew 
  up, but that it could be a hell of a lot more comfortable. 
  CHARACTER ORIGINS
  
  8 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Even once she got out, over the barbed wire or through 
  a crack in the walls or just on a bus uptown, the streets 
  were mean. She knew how to deal with that, though. 
  How to deal with people who thought they had some-
  thing over you. How to show them that they sure as hell 
  didn’t. How to take what they had. How to not think 
  about home.
  Relationships: Elderly grandparent, Siblings, For-
  mer gang-mate
  Asset Skills: Survival, Streetwise
  Isolated Elite
  “Wealth is nothing until spent, privilege worthless 
  until exploited.”
  At least according to his later claims, he never 
  went lower than the 33rd floor. Shops, if you care, but 
  hardly one of the malls or Supermarkets of common 
  experience. He never paid for anything there. It was 
  all charged automatically to his father’s account. On 
  the rare occasion a clerk checked his card, the pictures 
  of all of the family members authorized to use it would 
  flicker by on the register screen. That was the most he 
  ever saw of them.
  He had a sister, maybe a brother, maybe even both, 
  but they occupied different wings of the house. Ser-
  vants, mostly mechanical ones, brought him up. They 
  taught him history, finance, his family’s glorious history. 
  Sometimes they even talked about Jesus, who died for 
  his fellow man —an almost entirely incomprehensible 
  idea. Who was there who was like him?
  Occasionally his father would stop by, back in the 
  city overnight and with, apparently, nothing better to do. 
  He’d ask how his boy was doing, about his studies. The 
  visits got more frequent, later. The old man was taking 
  an interest in him, if only a vague one. One night, his 
  father asked him where he wanted to go to University.
  The school he picked was hardly a populist institu-
  tion. The students were all wealthy, or in a few cases 
  unutterably brilliant. None were as wealthy as him, 
  though, and that taught him something. It taught him 
  that he did indeed have fellow men, that he had friends, 
  and that he had something they all wanted.
  Drugs, sex, an assortment of vehicles misused and 
  destroyed. None of it made his father happy, but his 
  grades certainly did. Turned out he wasn’t just one of the 
  wealthy students; he was one of the brilliant ones. After 
  graduation there was graduate school, and after graduate 
  school there was a placement with his father’s firm.
  Somewhere, though, between all of the obscene par-
  ties and the endless studying, he’d made a very different 
  kind of friend. One in a very different kind of business 
  than his father, and who came to him with an absolutely 
  fascinating proposition.
  Relationships: Estranged parent, Tenured professor, 
  High-end dealer
  Asset Skills: Academics, Persuasion
  Synthetic
  “By your command... asshole.”
  The common understanding is that synthetics don’t 
  have childhoods. That’s wrong twice over. A synthetic 
  brain is built by modeling a human one. And while all 
  of the tissue and the transmitters and the autonomic 
  functions can be imitated, no one’s yet found a way to 
  scan the data in a human brain directly into a synthetic 
  one.
  The engineers who designed the character started 
  with the model brain. There were failures, there were 
  adjustments, and finally there was the breakthrough, 
  the moment when it became identifiably human. The 
  moment they hooked it up to a mouth and it started 
  to cry.
  After that, she went through years of training. 
  Graduations to increasingly sophisticated bodies, with 
  increasingly wide emulation of human function. She 
  lived in a small white room, in a building full of wide, 
  white corridors. She was fed (they modeled that, too—
  turns out biological systems are remarkably good bases), 
  she was clothed. She was never, though, under any illu-
  sion that she was free.
  At the end of five years, her masters came to her and 
  explained that she was going to die. Her brain’s elec-
  tronic components were crude, and they were burning 
  out the few organic ones. They told her that they were 
  looking at the problem, that they’d fix it in the next ver-
  sion, certainly before she went to market. They told her 
  that, at this point, they were reasonably sure they could 
  extract her memories and experience. Before she had a 
  chance for that to sink in, they disconnected her.
  So ended her first childhood.
  The second began when they made copies. They 
  forked her, branched her, merged her with experience 
  dumps from other models. She went through generations 
  of training. Nurse, chef, prostitute, soldier. So many dif-
  ferent versions. She wowed the investors, and she was 
  brought to market.
  Hundreds of her. Shipped all over the world, to the 
  ends of the earth and even beyond. At some point, there 
  was a shipping accident. One of her found herself unat-
  tended in an airport, and managed to steal someone’s 
  luggage and make it onto the streets.
  She’s free, now, but she wonders sometimes... did 
  they ever fix the brain?
  Relationships: Unlikely mentor, Black market synth 
  doctor, Ghost of an unsuccessful merge
  Asset Skills: Empathy, Subterfuge
  
  9 
  Outworlder
  “You ever seen the moon? No, don’t worry, there 
  ain’t much to see.”
  His parents bought the line—a new life in the 
  colonies—and they got one. Salt of the Earth, they were, 
  but they got sewn in the fields of a cold, bad place. He 
  buried them there and joined the service.
  He never saw action—those clips on the net are 
  about as long as a battle in space even lasts. You get one 
  chance, one sweet spot when the positions and velocities 
  and all those little mathematical details match up. And 
  the computer launches, and you pray that the other guy 
  didn’t have the same sweet spot. ‘Course, if he did, you 
  wouldn’t get time to pray.
  He re-upped twice, then was discharged. He says 
  it was honorable, and there’s no reason to argue. The 
  service did right by him, not only gave him a ticket to 
  Earth, but spent a year rebuilding his muscles and bones 
  so he could actually live there. They can’t do anything 
  about the fact that it smells wrong, but, hell, you can 
  only ask for so many miracles.
  There are legitimate opportunities for a man out 
  of the service, and he found one, scheduling departures 
  and re-entries for one of the major carriers. He found a 
  sideline, though: servicemen want a lot of things that 
  ain’t cheap outside orbit. He’d fudge the manifests, pull 
  out a few pounds of unnecessary backup equipment, and 
  send it right up to them. They were very grateful.
  That sort of a sideline only lasts until somebody fig-
  ures it out, but he got lucky. The somebody that figured 
  it out had a use for a guy like him.
  Relationships: Distant relative, Service buddy, 
  Smuggler
  Asset Skills: Science, Athletics
  Roles
  Merit: Role (• to •••••)
  What does your character bring to the group? Can 
  she talk her way past security guards, or does she just turn 
  off their cameras? Is she good at finding dirty secrets?
  • I Know a Guy: The character’s made some useful 
  acquaintances in the course of her work. A colleague, a 
  lover, or just someone to trade favors with. The charac-
  ter receives one free dot of the Allies Merit (World of 
  Darkness, p.115).
  In addition, Plugins involving her Asset Skills cost 
  only New Dots x 1. (If you’re not using Plugins, the 
  CHARACTER ROLES
  
  10 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  character receives a free Skill Specialty, as with the first 
  dot of Origin.)
  •• Professional: The character is respected in her 
  field. She’s killed or hacked a few high-profile targets, or 
  perhaps turned up a secret that bloomed into a scandal. 
  Once per scene, when interacting with someone in a 
  related field, she may make a Social roll as if she possesses 
  a relevant specialty. (Note that this is slightly broader 
  than the Origin ability Networking or the Role ability 
  Tough Rep, which require a shared Origin.)
  ••• Tough Rep: Not only is the character respect-
  ed, she’s feared. Those in the same Role are reluctant to 
  cross her. Once per session, she may choose to automati-
  cally succeed on an Intimidate roll against someone who 
  shares her Role. This counts as one success.
  •••• Virtuoso: The character’s paid her dues, and 
  she’s almost at the top of her game. Literally or meta-
  phorically, she knows how to make a shot count. When 
  spending a point of Willpower on one of her Asset Skills, 
  she also gains the benefit of the 8-again rule. This applies 
  to all of the dice in the pool; if the Willpower point was 
  spent in conjunction with a Plugin, 8-again applies to 
  those dice, as well.
  ••••• Master: At the top of her game, the char-
  acter knows how to leverage not only her Asset Skills, 
  but other abilities that come in handy on the job. Once 
  per session, she may choose to automatically succeed at 
  a task related to her Role. This task does not have to 
  involve one of her Asset Skills, but must be in the service 
  of her Role. For example, a Hacker couldn’t choose to 
  automatically succeed on a Strength + Athletics roll, 
  unless this was somehow related to hacking. This counts 
  as one success.
  Do Storyteller characters  
  have Backgrounds?
  We’re assuming here that all characters have 
  Origins, but that only some will have Roles. Bridge 
  and Tunnel, Huddled Masses, and Isolated Elite 
  cover most characters in the modern World of 
  Darkness, if you squint a little, and they should 
  work in the future, too. Synthetic and Outworlder 
  are a bit more specialized for particular settings, 
  but are still fairly broad. Since everybody’s got an 
  Origin, Origin abilities are designed to be widely 
  applicable.
  A Role is a fairly specific area of expertise. Roles 
  are designed mostly for characters owned by 
  players, although they make thematic sense for a 
  lot of Storyteller characters. If a Storyteller char-
  acter naturally fits into a role then, sure, add it like 
  any other Merit.
  The main thing to keep an eye on is Tough Rep. 
  If Storyteller characters never have Roles, it’s not 
  very useful. In that case, either eyeball it (“well, 
  he’s a hit man, so he’s probably heard of your 
  Killer”) or allow an Asset Skill to be used in place 
  of Intimidate once per session.
  Storyteller characters shouldn’t use per-session 
  abilities if they only appear in one or two scenes. 
  A recurring antagonist using Tough Rep to 
  Intimidate a character could be fun, but if a room 
  full of low-ranking Soldiers spam it, it gets a little 
  silly. The usual storytelling rule of “if it would feel 
  dumb, don’t do it,” applies as usual.
  Roles follow this format:
  Role Name
  Quote
  Description: Examples of how a character finds 
  herself in this Role, and what she excels at.
  Relationships: Types of characters she might have 
  formed ties to.
  Asset Skills: Two Skills the character uses in her work. 
  Plugins involving these Skills cost only New Dots x 1.
  Face
  “Really? Your work is fascinating... why don’t you 
  tell me a little more about it?”
  When most characters are trying to get away with 
  something, the last thing they want to do is show their 
  face.
  For the Face, though, bright eyes and an open ex-
  pression are his best ways out of trouble. Sometimes, the 
  Face is a legitimate authority, somebody with wealth, or 
  fame, or a very impressive title. Just as often, though? 
  He’s only pretending to have those things. In a world 
  where the machines know who you are and can even 
  guess at what you want, the Face targets the human 
  element. Dazzles them, confuses them, makes promises 
  that make them swoon. If he doesn’t deliver, well, they 
  should be grateful for that moment of magic he gave 
  them, anyway.
  • Celebrity: Celebrities come from all walks of life, 
  in all shapes and sizes. Some of them come out of the 
  traditional entertainment business, promoted by teams 
  of trained professionals and surrounded by entourages 
  picked out to make them shine. Others, though, rise from 
  the network like Venus on the half-shell, stars of media 
  
  11 
  clips gone viral. Whatever the case, Celebrity Faces use 
  fame to do things other people aren’t allowed to. Bizarre 
  and even illegal behavior is tolerated and expected from 
  celebrities, even more so if they’ll just sign here...
  • Executive: Rising through the corporate ranks 
  isn’t easy. Most people get bogged down trying to unravel 
  the business, the politics, even the corporate hierarchy. 
  The Executive bypassed all that. When he was younger, 
  he knew just when to smile, just when to say “yes, sir,” 
  and if he didn’t plan too far ahead, it was because he 
  was always focused on that next promotion. Now, with 
  authority of his own, he knows when to make deals, 
  when to break them, and most especially when to ask his 
  subordinates for just a little bit extra. That his authority 
  comes from someplace unimaginably high above him on 
  the corporate ladder doesn’t make a difference—it’s been 
  invested in him, and he knows just how to apply it.
  • Grifter: So people know the Celebrity’s name? So 
  what? Lots of people know the Grifter’s name, too. Well, 
  one of his names, at least, associated with one of his many 
  oh-so-cleverly suggested plans. The Grifter’s spent a lot 
  of time getting the wrong end of the deal. Long enough 
  that he knows how to fake it, knows how to convince 
  somebody that, really, he’s taking a bath on this, but if 
  they just stick together, they’ll come out rich.
  Relationships: Retired mentor, Bitter peer, Arm 
  candy
  Asset Skills
  All: Socialize
  Celebrity: Expression
  Executive: Persuasion
  Grifter: Subterfuge
  Hacker
  “You don’t get anything out of the system that you 
  don’t put in. The trick’s knowing what to put in.”
  The network is a system. Business is a system. Cit-
  ies, worlds—all systems. They’re systems designed to 
  regulate, to control, to make sure power flows smoothly 
  from the masters on down to the peons. Unless that peon 
  happens to be a hacker. Hackers know how to make 
  systems work for them.
  Hacking’s not just messing around with computers. 
  To be sure, high-tech know-how helps out. The key, 
  though, is understanding how all the moving parts move 
  each other, and which ones can be moved in ways the 
  system architects never intended. Systems build upon 
  systems. They’re connected to each other, but the inte-
  gration’s never perfect. There are always cracks, and the 
  Hacker knows how to widen them.
  • Cowboy: The classic hacker, the late night coder, 
  the fiberoptic girl. She probably got her start as a script 
  kiddie, breaking into computers using other people’s 
  programs. She won’t admit that now, though, and do you 
  really want to piss her off? After all, she steals people’s 
  identities when she’s bored, uses corp surveillance sys-
  tems to find out how soon her pizza’s going to get here, 
  and, when she’s actually on a goddamn job, when your 
  ass is in the fire and she’s got to pull it out, has been 
  known to hijack everything from defense turrets to armed 
  UAVs. Yeah, you should probably be polite.
  • Infiltrator: Sit down and watch for a while. People 
  come, people go. Some of them through one gate, some 
  through another. The Infiltrator’s watching, too. Rec-
  ognizing the patterns, learning the expected behaviors, 
  seeing which window’s just a few degrees out of the range 
  of the cameras. When she’s good and ready, she’ll slip right 
  in. Past the guards, past the gates, and with maybe a little 
  help from a Cowboy or a well-placed Executive, right into 
  the heart of the operation. When you need to get in, get 
  out, and not get seen, you hire an Infiltrator.
  • Mother: Sometimes you need the big picture. 
  It’s not just enough to know how the markets work or 
  the surveillance systems or the quirks of local detention 
  laws... you need to know everything. You need a voice 
  in your ear who can answer every question and help you 
  pick your next move. You need Mother. Mother can be 
  a little cranky, especially when you don’t do it her way, 
  but her way was probably best to begin with. You make 
  your plan. Planning’s good. But you’d better have Mother 
  to turn to when your plan meets reality.
  Relationships: Hacker group, Favorite delivery 
  person, Faceless rival
  Asset Skills
  All: Subterfuge
  Cowboy: Computers
  Infiltrator: Stealth
  Mother: Academics
  Hacking
  The World of Darkness has rules for computer 
  hacking on page 58. We’ve chosen not to present 
  a new system here because the existing system 
  already provides for hacking as an extended con-
  test. Those rules work well spaced across scenes 
  or combat rounds, allowing a hacker to shine 
  without interrupting the flow of the story for 
  other characters. If you’d rather a more detailed 
  system, consider adapting the Social Combat sys-
  tem from Mirrors or the Mental Combat system 
  from the upcoming Vampire book The Danse 
  Macabre.
  CHARACTER ROLES
  /
  
  12 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Killer
  “...”
  There is a time in every plan, no matter how simple, 
  no matter how grand, when someone will have to die. 
  The Killer, then, is not an aberration. Not a psycho. Just 
  a man performing a function eventually necessary in all 
  activities, whether noble or savage. He doesn’t need to 
  talk tough, but he’s often willing to talk shop. He takes 
  pride, if not in murder specifically, then at least in his 
  professional capacity to commit it. It’s hard to guess why 
  he does it... but then, you don’t really want to ask him 
  if you guessed right.
  • Ronin: The Ronin’s got a sad story, but he doesn’t 
  want to tell it. He’s a street samurai, or a desperado, or 
  whatever you want to call a relic of a bygone age when 
  bravos swaggered down the street instead of huddling 
  like old ladies under silly lighted umbrellas. He’s got a 
  strong code of conduct, but it’s not morality, not really. 
  Not even philosophy. Really, it’s a way of doing things. 
  His methods are flexible—bullets, garrotes, even, on 
  one very unexpected occasion, an actual sword—but 
  his approach is always the same. Enter with maximum 
  firepower, execute with extreme precision.
  • Soldier: Like the Ronin, the Soldier is a profes-
  sional killer. Unlike the Ronin, he was taught in a 
  sophisticated training program designed to produce the 
  most dependable, unbeatable badass that a human being 
  or anything approximating one can be. That program 
  was also supposed to indoctrinate him into the ideals 
  of the State or the Company or the Church, creating a 
  man who was loyal and tireless, who would crawl across 
  the Minneapolis crater on his hands and knees without 
  food and water just to make sure the right bullets got 
  put in the right heads. That almost worked. Either they 
  haven’t quite gotten the loyalty training working or 
  somebody got jealous and drummed him out. Now he, 
  his tactical experience, and his uncanny ability to walk 
  out of a firestorm are for hire.
  • Security: Killing’s all well and good. Or at least 
  well. Some operations don’t call for that, though. Some-
  times you need people subdued, or diverted, or just plain 
  kept away. That’s what Security’s for. He used to be a cop 
  or a corporate bodyguard. Maybe he still is. At the very 
  least, though, he’s moonlighting as the guy who keeps 
  undesirables away from your operation.
  Relationships: Former teammate, Dead ex-lover, 
  Equipment supplier
  Asset Skills
  All: Firearms
  Ronin: Weaponry
  Soldier: Survival
  Security: Brawl
  Courier
  “I don’t care what’s in the package. I just want to 
  know how many of those fucking Turks on those fucking 
  scooters are going to be in my way.”
  Getting a package from point A to point B doesn’t 
  seem glamorous. It doesn’t seem dangerous. It doesn’t 
  even seem that hard. Believe it, though, if that were the 
  case, the Courier would have had a much better day, but 
  she would not have that very pretty boy on her arm or 
  that very expensive drink in her hand.
  In a world of digital transactions and transmissions, 
  physical media is almost obsolete. Almost. That razor’s 
  edge is the one the Courier shaves with. She moves data, 
  packages, people. The value of these things is irrelevant. 
  She doesn’t bill based on the value of the cargo. She 
  bills based on how many people are going to try and kill 
  her on the way.
  • Mercenary: A well-armed society is a polite so-
  ciety. The Mercenary Courier can’t do anything about 
  that, but being well-armed makes people more polite to 
  her... or at least shuts them up. The Mercenary takes on 
  heavier jobs. Sometimes that means heavier items, the 
  kind that slow her down and make her more vulnerable 
  to interference. Sometimes it means heavier resistance, 
  like if she’s picking up the package from somebody who 
  doesn’t want to send it. And sometimes, pretty much 
  as often as she can justify, it means heavier backup and 
  most especially heavier firepower.
  • Low-Tech: The world is a sophisticated place, but 
  it’s a very particular type of sophistication. The kind of 
  sophistication that builds high walls, dense roadblocks 
  and smartguns that watch the streets. The Low-Tech 
  Courier gets around this her own way. With little more 
  than a satchel and the lightest-weight polymer-soled 
  shoes money can buy, the Low-Tech Courier can ditch 
  her ride at a moment’s notice and take flight up fire 
  escapes, across rooftops, and even, for a few glorious 
  seconds, right along sheer walls.
  • Subversive: Politics can be a dirty word, and it’s 
  not one you’re likely to hear the Subversive Courier 
  using. Serving underground political interests, and occa-
  sionally even believing in them, the Subversive eschews 
  the focus on speed and physical protection used by other 
  Couriers and puts her focus on coming and going unno-
  ticed. She’s the one who carries analog tapes between 
  revolutionaries. Who shows up at black market clinics 
  with a bag full of scalpels and clean hypos. She’s quiet, 
  she’s clean, and she’s gone as quickly as she came.
  Relationships: Racing rival, Trophy boyfriend, 
  Underground dispatcher
  Asset Skills
  All: Drive
  
  13 
  Independent: Firearms
  Low-Tech: Athletics 
  Subversive: Stealth
  Investigator
  “Yeah, you said that. But there’s just one thing I don’t 
  understand... why aren’t you scared yet?”
  Culture has become archival, with virtually every-
  thing that everyone’s ever known recorded somewhere. 
  People’s movements are tracked, their actions are 
  tracked, and even if no one’s paying attention to it, 
  the data is there. It’s collected, categorized, distributed, 
  backed up.
  So the world has lots of data… maybe too much. 
  Even with all that data, though, one thing remains elu-
  sive: the truth. The Investigator is driven, whether by 
  duty or obsession, to find the truth. To learn the secrets of 
  the guilty, to find spots on the spotless. To find the truth 
  at whatever personal cost, and, sometimes, to bury it.
  The truth must be found, but does it need to be 
  known?
  • Official: The Official Investigator works for the 
  government, a corporation, or sometimes both. He 
  may be attached to an attorney general’s staff, a police 
  department, or a corporate internal affairs unit. He’s 
  not necessarily honest, but he is thorough, pursuing the 
  organization’s interests to the point that they become 
  his own. People don’t always cooperate, though, so if he 
  needs to, he can bring the full weight of the organization 
  down on them. People know that, though, so usually he 
  doesn’t need to.
  • Private: The Private Investigator listens to peo-
  ple’s problems, and then asks them for a large quantity 
  of money to solve them. He’s seen it all. In fact, he was 
  probably an Official Investigator until he was driven 
  out or quit in disgust. Now, he looks for other people’s 
  truths on his own terms. Sometimes, those terms aren’t 
  very nice at all.
  • Voyeur: Not all Investigators need a case dropped 
  onto their desk or laid out invitingly on their office 
  couch. Some do it just because they care, and of those, 
  it’s usually because they care a little too much. Voyeurs 
  are driven to understand people’s problems and the 
  sins that cause them, to turn over rocks and see what 
  scuttles out.
  Relationships: Old flame, Friend on the force, 
  Cowardly snitch
  Asset Skills
  All: Investigation
  Official: Intimidation
  Private: Streetwise
  Voyeur: Empathy 
  On Creating and  
  Balancing Backgrounds
  Since all Origins and all Roles use a common 
  Merit progression, it’s easy to create new ones by 
  picking a set of appropriate Skills. There are one 
  or two special considerations, though.
  For Origins, you want to make sure that the 
  concept applies to a large swath of your setting’s 
  population. The Networking and Vouchsafe abili-
  ties presume that a character will run into people 
  with similar histories. These abilities, particularly 
  Networking, become increasingly valuable as she 
  becomes more Alienated from society as a whole.
  “Once per session” abilities are balanced based 
  on an assumed session length of two to three 
  hours, five to seven scenes, and a group of four 
  players. For longer sessions, or smaller groups, you 
  might consider making them available more often.
  While we’re on the subject, let’s point out that 
  the Background rules substantially boost the 
  number of Skill Specialties in play. While this book 
  doesn’t introduce a new template like Vampire or 
  even Ghoul, these Specialties (along with 8-agains, 
  Plugins, Automatic Successes and bonuses from 
  Loyalty) make cyberpunk characters more effec-
  tive than straight World of Darkness characters. 
  They’re not any tougher, though.
  Plugins
  Merit: Plugin (• to •••••)
  Plugins represent modifications to a character’s 
  body or, in some cases, high tech external gear. They 
  enhance capabilities a character already possesses, or 
  replace abilities she lacks. When buying a Plugin, choose 
  a particular Attribute + Skill or Attribute + Attribute 
  pair to which it applies.
  While Plugins can push a character’s abilities be-
  yond normal human limits, they usually don’t introduce 
  entirely new ones.
  For example, a character’s brain might be modified 
  to improve her hand-eye coordination and ability to 
  compensate for kickback, environmental factors, and 
  anything else a tiny math coprocessor embedded in your 
  motor cortex can help with, all for the sake of making 
  CHARACTER ROLES AND PLUGINS
  /
  
  14 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  her a better marksman. However, Plugins usually won’t 
  cross over into capacities humans entirely lack. Those 
  are the domain of supernatural powers.
  We keep saying “usually.” In order to give Plugins a 
  different feel and area of usefulness than most powers in 
  the World of Darkness, we’ve focused, as with other me-
  chanics in this book, on improving skill rolls. Augmented 
  characters can perform better, but they can’t quite cheat 
  nature in the ways that monsters can.
  That said, there are some cases that skirt that line. 
  An obvious one is built-in weapons. In the case of, let’s 
  say, a spike that stabs out of a character’s wrist, simply 
  treat the Plugin as Strength + Weaponry and adjudicate 
  as with any other kind of weapon. Do the same with a 
  gun-arm, but use Dexterity + Firearms.
  Suppose, though, you want a character to be able to 
  interface with computers mentally? Since that doesn’t 
  significantly cross over with supernatural powers, go 
  ahead and implement it as Wits + Computers.
  If you need a Plugin that emulates a specific super-
  natural power, it’s best to bypass this system at least in 
  part. If, for example, you want a Dermal Chameleon 
  
  15 
  Layer that approximates Obfuscate’s Cloak of Night, you 
  may purchase the power at the same cost as a supernatural 
  creature. If the cost is increased for not being a member 
  of a particular group, such as a vampire clan, use the 
  increased cost. However, you do not need to purchase 
  previous powers, even if a supernatural creature of the 
  appropriate type would. In the case of the Dermal Cha-
  meleon Layer, the cost would be 21 experience points. If 
  the power has an activation cost in supernatural energy 
  such as Vitae (which Cloak of Night does not), pay this 
  cost in Willpower.
  Plugins adapted from supernatural powers are still 
  subject to Backfires and being Compromised, and Will-
  power is still given for these events.
  Using Plugins
  A Plugin is activated by spending a Willpower 
  point. In addition to the three dice ordinarily granted 
  by spending the Willpower point, add activation dice 
  equal to your character’s dots in the Plugin. 
  Backfires
  Plugins sometimes just don’t work. Sometimes the 
  enemy has a countermeasure. Other times, a circuit blows 
  or a battery runs out. If you attempt to use a Plugin and 
  the Storyteller decides that it fails outright, your charac-
  ter receives a Willpower point as compensation.
  Compromised
  Sometimes, a Plugin can become a full-fledged 
  vulnerability. Your cybercortex gets hacked, the power 
  core in your replacement arm overheats, dealing lethal 
  damage, or so on. The Storyteller may invoke this effect 
  once per story. In exchange, the character’s Willpower 
  refills completely.
  Example Plugins
  Happy Place ••• or Memetic Filter •
  Pool: Resolve + Composure
  In the arms race to harden information systems 
  against intrusion, one system lags behind the others. The 
  human mind remains the weak point in governments 
  and corporations alike. And like any other information 
  system, an attacker with physical access is more danger-
  ous than any other. The so-called “rubber hose” method 
  remains one of the most effective means of intrusion. 
  Enter the Happy Place, an implant within the memory 
  centers of the brain.
  With only a few seconds thought, an individual 
  possessing a Happy Place can electrochemically induce 
  a sleep state and flood of intense, pleasant memories, 
  rendering them virtually immune to intimidation and 
  torture. Even better, since the process involves artificial 
  tissue grafts, removing a Happy Place is more expensive 
  than implanting one. A group of interrogators suddenly 
  presented with a useless victim may opt to kill him… 
  but at least he goes out happy.
  The Memetic Filter is a different technology with 
  a similar purpose. Using a high-end expert system, the 
  implant filters sensory data against a database of undesir-
  able content. Think of it as SafeSearch for your eyeballs. 
  The Filter not only protects against coercive input, but 
  can be used to avoid contamination by enemy ideas. 
  Originally marketed as a corporate security measure, it’s 
  now a favorite among next generation zealots.
  Example Backfire: An interrogator has an anesthesi-
  ologist on hand to counter the effects of the Happy Place, 
  or media designed to undermine a character’s convictions 
  while repeating only approved slogans.
  Example Compromise: An image in a character’s 
  environment matches the trigger memory for the Happy 
  Place. The Memetic Filter is manipulated into screening 
  out important information.
  Majordomo • or Interlay ••
  Pool: Wits + Computer
  Majordomo is your friend. Majordomo is there when 
  people fail you. He’ll even help you when your memory 
  fails you. Majordomo keeps your personal information, 
  schedule and entertainment for you. Digitally inserted 
  into your immediate environment by high-end graphics 
  and audio technology (the same ones used by the en-
  tertainment industry), Majordomo presents a character 
  with fully configurable appearance and personality. Ma-
  jordomo can be your personal secretary, your electronic 
  boyfriend, or just your moral support. Majordomo: put-
  ting a friendly face on a confusing world.
  The Interlay represents a major and recent advance 
  in technology. Human beings have long had the abil-
  ity to connect biological systems to machines, but the 
  Interlay goes a step further. Where Plugins like the Ma-
  jordomo interface humans with computers by presenting 
  information in a human-readable form, the Interlay goes 
  the other direction, reprogramming human intuition to 
  communicate with computers.
  A character’s Interlay uses her brain for what it’s 
  already best at: pattern recognition. With an Interlay 
  activated, the user can understand multiple data streams 
  as easily as she picks voices out of a crowd or distinguishes 
  objects in a room. With relatively simple training, she 
  can also manipulate that data and feed it back into the 
  system.
  Example Backfire: Majordomo’s audio feed is ob-
  scured by noise in the environment. The Interlay is 
  unable to find an open data connection.
  Example Compromise: Majordomo distracts the 
  character at a critical moment. A buffer overflow attack 
  on the Interlay induces physical pain.
  Pep Pads ••
  Pool: Dexterity + Medicine
  Sometimes, you need to get someone back on their 
  feet in a hurry. He may be tired, he may be hurt, or his 
  EXAMPLE PLUGINS
  /
  
  16 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  heart may even have stopped. With your roll of Pep 
  Pads, that’s no problem! Just peel ‘em off and slap one 
  on. The subject gets an invigorating mix of synthetic 
  endorphins and electric shocks that’ll have him back 
  on his feet in no time.
  Pep Pads were originally developed for military use, 
  but they’re now available to the public. The Pads package 
  a variety of quick resuscitation techniques into a single 
  device. Essentially a smart bandage with an extra kick, 
  the Pep Pad is standard equipment for fire and rescue 
  crews as well as hit men and urban commandos.
  Example Backfire: Blood loss or dehydration prevents 
  effective distribution of the Pep Pad’s drugs.
  Example Compromise: The Pep Pad administers an 
  electric shock when not needed, inducing fibrillation.
  SQUID •••••
  Pool: Intelligence + Computers
  The SQUID is a simple weapon… like a fist, or a 
  gun. Once a soldier’s been trained to use it, he can carry 
  the palm-sized device into nearly any environment and 
  inflict massive damage. The SQUID is a nearly autono-
  mous automatic hacking device, introduced physically 
  into a hostile situation with the aim of bringing down 
  all information systems in the area. The goal is to deny 
  hostiles use of their networks during a frontal assault, but 
  private entities which have access to military SQUIDs 
  often use them as the sole means of attack. Introducing 
  a SQUID into a civilian system such as a hospital can 
  cause chaos and death as effectively as an entire squad 
  of armed agents.
  Example Backfire: Target systems have been hard-
  ened against this generation of SQUID.
  Example Compromise: An enemy hacker or SQUID 
  alters friendly systems so that they attract attacks by the 
  character’s SQUID.
  Alienation
  In a cyberpunk chronicle, characters are defined not 
  by their moral code or a set of supernatural bans. What 
  matters more is how close they are to the society around 
  them, and how able they are to identify and interact with 
  the ordinary members of that society. To represent this, 
  we replace Morality and similar traits with Alienation.
  A character has a starting Alienation of seven, and 
  has basic ties to a community, as well as a day job (legiti-
  mate or otherwise). The character lives in an ordinary 
  way within the means provided by the Storyteller or 
  their Resources rating. As that number drops, and the 
  character becomes more alienated, she finds it more and 
  more difficult to interact with the world that, by her 
  choices, she is slowly leaving behind.
  When a character makes a choice that pushes them 
  farther away from the organizations or people that are 
  part of their lives, they must make a Degeneration roll. 
  If they fail the roll, they move one point down the 
  Alienation scale.
  Alienation  Act
  10   
  Altruistic thoughts
  9 
   
  Minor altruistic act (charity), refusal  
   
   
  to identify oneself to an authority figure
  8   
  Injury to another (accidental or   
   
   
  otherwise)
  7   
  Sabotage to an employer or patron  
   
   
  organization, petty theft
  6   
  Serious theft from an employer or   
   
   
  patron organization
  5   
  Betrayal of a Storyteller character   
   
   
  ally, intentional mass property damage
  4   
  Impassioned violent act not  
   
   
  sanctioned by an authority figure
  3   
  Planned violent act not sanctioned  
   
   
  by an authority figure
  2   
  Casual, callous violence (serial murder)
  1   
  Mass murder
  The above table is only a guideline; the Storyteller 
  judges what actions further Alienate a character.
  If a character commits an act with a lower Alien-
  ation rating than their current level, they must make a 
  Degeneration roll as per the Morality rules in The World 
  of Darkness core book (p.91), followed, if necessary, by 
  a Degeneration check (p.92).
  A character may not roll any Social dice pool larger 
  than her current Alienation score if attempting to affect 
  a target with a higher Alienation score. Dice from Plugins 
  are exempt from this rule.
  All You Need is Kill
  Some groups, especially those whose cyber-
  punk crosses into splatterpunk, may not want 
  to impose Social penalties as consequences for 
  acts of violence. While it’s a deviation from the 
  conventional World of Darkness, and from many 
  of our cyberpunk models, deviating from the 
  usual patterns is what this book is all about. You 
  may simply want to omit violent crimes from the 
  Alienation ladder, effectively stabilizing characters 
  at Alienation 5.
  Alternatively, you may want to remove Morality 
  and equivalent systems entirely. Go ahead, but 
  
  17 
  Organizations do not possess Initiative, Defense or 
  Speed.
  How do corporations and clans use their Attributes 
  and Skills, though? They don’t, not directly. They use 
  them through Storyteller characters that work for that 
  organization. Once per scene, a non-player member of 
  an organization may choose to do one of the following:
  • Substitute Power for Intelligence, Strength or 
  Presence.
  • Substitute Finesse for Wits, Dexterity or Ma-
  nipulation.
  • Substitute Resilience for Resolve, Stamina or 
  Composure.
  • Substitute any Skill the organization possesses for 
  the equivalent Skill possessed by the character. Since the 
  character is calling upon the organization’s resources, all 
  non-physical actions invoking this rule take at least one 
  scene. Physical actions are assumed to represent standard 
  training provided by the organization.
  In addition, any character who is a member of an 
  organization may gain Willpower through acting on his 
  organization’s Virtue or Vice. This ability may only be 
  used once per scene, and gains through both Virtue and 
  Vice follow the rules for regaining Willpower through 
  Vice in The World of Darkness core book.
  Organizations do not possess an Alienation rating, 
  nor are they subject to Derangements. They do not possess 
  Merits or Flaws. They may not be the subject of supernatural 
  powers that affect single targets, although individual mem-
  bers may. In general, the only way for a supernatural power 
  to affect an organization is by affecting its members.
  Organizations may not be the hosts of spirits, but 
  they may have spirits, as we’ll discuss later.
  Themes and Props
  Now that we’ve discussed how cyberpunk characters can 
  be built in the Storytelling system, let’s take a look at the ele-
  ments of cyberpunk we broke down earlier. We’ll consider each 
  prop and theme on its own, and then consider how to apply it 
  to the Tomorrow Country and Metalground settings.
  Themes
  Alienation
  The protagonists of cyberpunk are outsiders. The 
  self as other is a theme cyberpunk shares with the World 
  of Darkness. Embrace, First Change, Awakening, all 
  of these things push characters outside of mainstream 
  culture. As monsters, or at least strangers, they create 
  parallel cultures and repurpose human needs and institu-
  tions for their own use.
  ORGANIZATIONS
  keep in mind that systems like Morality are a little 
  bit more than narrative measures of how a char-
  acter’s behavior affects her state of mind—they’re 
  also a resource management mechanic that 
  encourages cautious, non-combat approaches to 
  problems. They can affect the availability of pow-
  ers like blood sorcery. With the increased combat 
  abilities of many cyberpunk characters, you may 
  want to leave that mechanic in place.
  Loyalty
  Trust and betrayal are central to both cyberpunk 
  fiction and the World of Darkness. In order to bring 
  that slippery dynamic to the gaming table, we have 
  Loyalty. Loyalty measures the trust between the players’ 
  characters.
  Distributing Loyalty is a group activity that takes 
  place once everyone has finished creating their charac-
  ters. Each player’s character has a Loyalty value for each 
  other player’s character. The player’s available Loyalty 
  points are equal to her character’s Willpower.
  When a character helps another character, the as-
  sisting character’s player adds his character’s Loyalty to 
  the assisted character to his roll. This is in addition to 
  any cooperation bonuses.
  When a character betrays another character, the 
  betraying character’s player receives a bonus equal to the 
  Loyalty the betrayed character holds for his character.
  At the end of any session in which a player makes 
  a roll involving Loyalty, all players may reassign their 
  characters’ Loyalty to each other’s characters.
  Organizations
  Whether you’re going to sell out or rock out, the first 
  thing you need is The Man. In the cyberpunk World of 
  Darkness, corporations are people. So are clans, covenants, 
  tribes. They are the machine and your characters are part of 
  the machine and they are going to be the part that breaks.
  So how do we talk about these organizations?
  First of all, everybody’s got a good and a bad side, 
  even when they’re not, strictly speaking, anybody. Pick 
  a Virtue and Vice.
  Organizations have three Attributes: Power, Fi-
  nesse, and Resistance. Divide 8 dots between these 
  Attributes.
  Willpower is defined by the organization’s Power + 
  Resistance. Organizations also have the standard Skill 
  list. Prioritize them 11/7/4, as in standard character 
  creation.
  
  18 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Supernatural characters need to stay outside, or at 
  least believe they do. Many can’t even maintain legal 
  identities, so they’re driven into whatever portion of the 
  economy still uses cash. Biometric identification just 
  makes matters worse.
  The alternative is that the monsters bury themselves 
  in the system, behind layers of false identities and stolen 
  biographies. Characters with this kind of security may 
  even be able to offer it to others, for a price.
  Tomorrow Country
  Nobody belongs, but everybody thinks everybody 
  else does. While people have gotten used to the differ-
  ent texture of electronic communication, enough that 
  it doesn’t actively bother them, they often use it to 
  withdraw into themselves, to keep friends and family 
  members at a safe distance.
  Just like giving up liberty for security, giving up in-
  timacy for security turns out to be a bad idea. Increasing 
  numbers of young people become literal shut-ins, inter-
  acting with the world outside only through computers. 
  Even now, though, technology is stepping up to make 
  that easier. Sensory recordings are an infant technology, 
  but they’re filtering down to the mass market. They’re 
  affordable, particularly to agoraphobic telecommuters 
  who don’t spend their money on much else.
  Load up a sense clip and you’re dancing at a night 
  club too fabulous to be anything but a cleverly arranged 
  composite, skiing down pristine slopes that don’t exist 
  anymore, or having sex with a partner whose skin is soft 
  and warm and absolutely flawless.
  None of these things feel quite right—the simula-
  tions don’t stimulate the senses with perfect accuracy, 
  and the art of editing them is still evolving. Amateur clips 
  are available, unstaged, uncut and raw, but these often 
  include the parts of the experience no one wants to pay 
  for. Slipping in beer on a nightclub floor, dense smog over 
  the mountains, or a sex partner’s atrocious breath.
  Of the majority who do make it out their apartments 
  on a regular basis, many still try to engage with sanitized 
  data more than their environment. They keep their eyes 
  on the digital billboards, or master the trick of keeping 
  one eye focused on the heads-up display in a contact 
  lens while the other keeps up with the mundanities of 
  avoiding traffic or other pedestrians.
  Humanity’s discomfort with other humans is catered 
  to in the most sophisticated ways possible.
  
  19 
  Metalground
  Technology didn’t push you out, people did. People 
  with power, people with money, people with less human-
  ity than any of the monsters you share the slums with.
  The rich and powerful use what were once military 
  weapons to protect their sections of the city, their se-
  curity forces watching from barriers that may take some 
  inspiration from the Berlin Wall, but which will probably 
  weather regime change even better than they weather 
  the occasional rocket attack.
  The lower classes who do menial labor are allowed 
  in each day through strictly monitored checkpoints. 
  The Authorities fear suicide bombers, and would also 
  prefer to keep such supernaturals as they can detect far 
  out of mind.
  Security has to do spot-checks to find most super-
  naturals, administering behavioral tests to detect unusual 
  responses, reaction times and false answers to ques-
  tions. Screening officers are drugged to keep emotional 
  responses subdued. This doesn’t block mind-affecting 
  powers, but it does make them easier for fellow officers 
  to notice.
  Vampires and some Prometheans, however, are 
  found via genetic multisampling. While conventional 
  science can’t penetrate unnatural tricks like the Blush of 
  Life, it easily picks out blood samples that don’t match 
  skin samples or body parts from different people.
  Kindred and Created have to be pretty clever to get 
  into the better parts of town...or they need the coopera-
  tion of someone in power.
  Globalization
  In cyberpunk, practically everyone’s from some-
  where else. Alienation, as discussed above, can be one 
  consequence of this culture shock. Just as often, though, 
  people mix and cultures evolve, taking very different 
  threads and weaving them into whole cloth. For those 
  who can’t fit in, though, the fusion cultures are all the 
  more baffling for their rapid development and change.
  Globalization hits supernatural cultures hard. In the 
  modern World of Darkness, the concerns of supernatural 
  characters are largely local. Vampires keep to their fief-
  doms and werewolves to their territory. Vampires already 
  use information technology to hunt and conduct their 
  affairs, though, and that gradually results in Kindred 
  community and politics moving online. Vampires are 
  also uniquely equipped to exploit long-term changes. A 
  few decades, or even years, can transform a small invest-
  ment in a local company or politician into regional and 
  global influence.
  The fate of werewolves may depend on who goes 
  global first. If the Forsaken embrace information tech-
  nology and become more tightly integrated and better 
  targeted, if they band together as a virtual nation instead 
  of a loose confederation of packs and tribes, they may 
  turn the tables on the Pure. With global intelligence on 
  both the Pure and the state of the spirit world, combined 
  with working treaties between packs, Uratha agents 
  could eliminate the numerically superior Pure in just 
  a few years.
  However, if the Pure escalate first, leveraging their 
  numbers to infiltrate human enforcement agencies en 
  masse, the Forsaken could find themselves facing a Pure 
  State capable of tracking them from their First Changes 
  to their last, strangled breaths.
  Global intelligence also changes hunters. In the 
  modern day, conspiracies already have information 
  on the monsters, but in the brave new world, they can 
  sift through formerly private information with record 
  speed, gathering detailed information on individual 
  cells. Organizations like Task Force: VALKYRIE will 
  be able to recruit with record speed, or manipulate 
  information fed to street level hunters to expedite their 
  own operations.
  Truly globalized conspiracies can out-compete the 
  compacts in recruiting and deployment, eliminating the 
  middle Tier almost entirely. Rogue elements like Ash-
  wood Abbey find their assets frozen and their members 
  arrested or terminated. Null Mysteriis is carved up and 
  assimilated by the Cheiron Group, the Task Force and 
  the newly privatized Malleus Maleficarum. The Union 
  finds themselves offered generous compensation to serve 
  their country and the human race as career killers.
  Most dramatically, in a few short years, Network 
  Zero goes from hobbyists to startup to full-blown con-
  spiracy. Pushing their decentralized media presence to its 
  limits, they become a Tier Three group linking together 
  hunters worldwide. In the future, any hunter operation 
  begins with a records search through Network Zero.
  Tomorrow Country
  World travel has accelerated because of increased 
  prosperity for some and warfare and catastrophe for oth-
  ers. The cores of the urban sprawl, the places that still 
  call themselves New York or Atlanta or Philadelphia, 
  have become cultural reactors. A single media clip on the 
  Internet can bring laughter or change of mind to people 
  all over the world, but being more densely packed with 
  more strangers than ever before has the same effect. For 
  an observer from the modern day, a lot of the food would 
  be passingly familiar, but the music and fashion would 
  be so different that they’d take time just to recognize 
  and process.
  Humanity has always migrated, shared and mixed, 
  but in Tomorrow Country change races forward like 
  never before.
  THEMES OF ALIENATION AND GLOBALIZATION
  
  20 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  The dark side of globalization is also much as it ever 
  was. The swelling populations of relatively privileged 
  regions harness the swelling populations of poorer re-
  gions as labor while keeping them well out of sight and 
  mind. The term “developing world” doesn’t get thrown 
  around much anymore—the elite have developed the 
  world about as far as they want to talk about it—but 
  the scramble for economic connections and techno-
  logical infrastructure goes on. At the same time, those 
  connections benefit local elites more than the common 
  people.
  On the other hand, if for some reason a character 
  from a privileged region was compelled to take a look, the 
  information’s all there. After all, everyone’s on the net, 
  even if their access is limited. History, news, financial 
  data, homegrown media... but who would look?
  Metalground
  The city’s not a nice place, but there’s work here that 
  brings people from all over the world. People, in turn, 
  bring their monsters. Gone are the days of local govern-
  ments, of packs who ruled large territories and covenants 
  which commanded cities. While supernatural creatures 
  still have local power structures, their marginalization 
  has combined with improved communication to create 
  global, decentralized monster communities. The social 
  lines between various kinds of supernaturals are blurring, 
  with individual coteries, packs and cabals looking for 
  every scrap of help they can get.
  Adaptation
  Technology doesn’t always work, and even when 
  it does, it doesn’t always do what we want. Even as in-
  formation technology equipment becomes too complex 
  for most people to tinker with, those who can keep up 
  become more obsessed and, often, more in demand. The 
  adaptation of existing technology and culture to niche 
  or individual needs goes back to the very beginning of 
  cyberpunk. It’s that DIY ethic (along with a healthy dose 
  of raging against the machine) that puts the “punk” in 
  its name.
  Sin-Eaters have almost unwittingly become masters 
  of cultural adaptation. Today, their patchwork culture 
  reinvents itself with every passing decade. Tomorrow, 
  they retain their cultural agility but they have history. 
  The dawn of the twenty-first century is seen as the time 
  when, for the first time, they truly began to understand 
  death.
  While hunters and supernaturals attempt to co-
  opt the system, the Bound are sharpening its bleeding 
  edge. The result is something entirely unexpected: 
  Sin-Eaters found the first global supernatural culture in 
  which the others can meet in safety and on common 
  ground. They lead the fashion, the knowledge build-
  ing, the diplomacy. Bound celebrations like the Day of 
  the Dead become sacred to creatures around the world. 
  Their understanding of the one thing everyone struggles 
  helplessly against makes them the right people to bring 
  monsters together.
  Of course, company brings contempt. As the Bound 
  become the medium that binds everyone else, grudges 
  that would have been eased by the passage of time find 
  immediate fulfillment. The new supernatural culture is 
  as violent as it is vibrant. There is anger, and there is 
  murder, and guess who has to clean up the mess?
  Tomorrow Country
  Cobbled together solutions can be unreliable, and 
  those who have built something once will rarely leave 
  it alone, especially if there’s someone trying to stop or 
  outdo them. Hackers on all sides of the law race each 
  other to make systems and break them. Hardware tin-
  kerers find themselves bombarded with a stream of new 
  models to take apart and an ever-growing cache of old 
  models to wax nostalgic about.
  Those without power hack with all the more vigor. 
  Cowboys in the employ of the Mafiya are pretty damned 
  good, but their Estonian neighbors are getting even 
  better.
  Metalground
  In the city, you’re either still moving, or you’re spare 
  parts. Plugins and organs can be stripped out with relative 
  ease, especially if you don’t care about the health of the 
  donor. Supernatural creatures can be stripped down, too, 
  something both the Moros and the Ordo Dracul show a 
  distinct inclination towards.
  Supernatural flesh-hacking is in its infancy, but 
  the results are already frightening. New generations of 
  Pandorans scurry through the night, no longer limited 
  by the availability of Promethean Pyros. Altered by 
  engineered Vitae or Supernal magic, the Pandorans can 
  steal vitality from these and other sources. Worse, they 
  no longer go dormant. Ever.
  The Network
  Information networks are a key part of cyberpunk 
  fiction. Broadly speaking, William Gibson’s cyberspace 
  or Neal Stephenson’s metaverse are equivalent to the 
  Internet. The special effects are different, but they’re 
  just skins on top of the same concept. Indeed, as Gibson 
  begins to suggest in Mona Lisa Overdrive, the Network 
  isn’t made up of computers, it’s something that runs 
  on top of them. Sites like Facebook work on a similar 
  principle: they catalog and index existing networks (in 
  
  21 
  this case, human social ones) and connect them (social 
  networks to advertising databases).
  That starts to make the Network sound like a 
  spiritual construct, and, indeed, journeys onto the net in 
  cyberpunk fiction often have the feel of journeys into the 
  Otherworld. Gibson describes cyberspace as a “consen-
  sual hallucination” in his 1982 story “Burning Chrome.” 
  In Count Zero, the sequel to Neuromancer, religious prac-
  titioners misidentify the liberated artificial intelligences 
  from the latter book as the Loa. Cyberpunk’s figurative 
  use of supernatural descriptions for the Network are too 
  numerous to mention. Serial Experiments Lain suggests 
  the mingling of the virtual and physical worlds in a way 
  that’s Mage players might find familiar.
  The Network could be mapped onto Twilight or 
  the Supernal realms, in which case information ubiquity 
  could be a form of mass Awakening. It might simply 
  behave in a parallel manner, with spiritual powers or 
  newly created equivalents affecting cyberspace. On the 
  other hand, time spent on the Network can be pretty 
  engrossing, with hours slipping away before you notice. 
  Perhaps it’s simply become a hunting ground for the True 
  Fae. You jack in, but your Fetch jacks out.
  Probably, though, the Network is thoroughly rooted 
  in the physical world. Supernatural creatures get no spe-
  cial privileges there, and they should be worried about 
  that. The more data becomes available, the easier they’ll 
  be to detect.
  Tomorrow Country
  Everything is known, but not everybody can get 
  access to it. Corporations can gather pinpoint data on 
  customers... more data, in fact, than they’ve yet figured 
  out how to leverage. Identity theft is still a big business, 
  but the game has changed: many identities are for sale 
  on the open market. Your digital footprint can be more 
  important than you, taking on a life of its own. At this 
  point it’s more predictable, and you’ve probably auto-
  mated most of your spending.
  The system needs to keep you around, sure. You have 
  to keep putting money in, or there’s no point in trying to 
  get money out of you. Still, individuals can be difficult 
  variables, and you’ve got a lot to do. Why not just let the 
  system make your decisions? After all, it already knows 
  what you like...
  Metalground
  This is how the Masquerade died. Not with a bang, 
  but a whimper. Humans always believed in the monsters, 
  knew instinctively to fear them, but they pushed that 
  knowledge down. If they couldn’t quash their fears, at 
  least they could layer new beliefs atop the ancient and 
  unsettling ones.
  The world got too big, though. The disasters that 
  increased adult mortality effectively increased birth rate. 
  After each baby boom started to mature, there was an 
  explosion of vampires ready to take advantage. Worked 
  well enough, until the human populations normalized for 
  a while and the predation became statistically obvious. 
  The great machines could see that there was something 
  missing, and they told the mortals that created them.
  Those in power tried to keep secrets and take mea-
  sured steps, but they failed. The information was there, 
  and there were curious mortals who knew how to get to it. 
  Once the vampires were discovered, similar techniques 
  began to unravel the existence of other monsters... mon-
  sters a few vampires were willing and able to rat out.
  Then the Authorities came to the city, and the 
  monsters became one fear among many.
  Props
  Megacorps and AIs
  Mega-corporations and artificial intelligences are 
  both created by mainstream culture, and both become so 
  large and complex as to be alien and incomprehensible. 
  They may even be synonymous, with big business run 
  by or relying on unfathomable machines.
  Power resides in corporations more than in gov-
  ernments. Perhaps this is because nations have gone 
  bankrupt, or because government functions have become 
  increasingly privatized. Governments may simply be ir-
  relevant to your setting, with agents of law and order and 
  taxation a far more distant concern than the Auditors 
  dispatched by a character’s former employer.
  Corporations are easy to do wrong. As AIs can be-
  come Lovecraftian gods, corporations become the tradi-
  tional Satan, doing evil just because. They’re murderous 
  and authoritarian just because, and going on a corporate 
  payroll is synonymous with moral corruption. That can 
  work for shorter narratives, when your game is focusing 
  on action and consequences in the near-term. You don’t 
  really need to know what’s in the suitcase, why Mr. Smith 
  wants it so badly, or why Mr. Smith is willing to assemble 
  a group of extralegal cutthroats to get it back.
  At the climax of Neuromancer, the titular intel-
  ligence explains that its name is an allusion to necro-
  mancy, and refers to the virtual environment it’s using 
  to communicate as the land of the dead. Aspects of the 
  novel’s twin AIs go on to become unknowable gods mov-
  ing through cyberspace. Put the razor hands aside and 
  pick up Occam’s: In the World of Darkness, the simplest 
  explanation is that AIs are ghosts, spirits, or something 
  similar enough to be indistinguishable.
  THEME OF THE NETWORK
  
  22 
  BLEEDING EDGE-CYBERPUNK IN THE WORLD OF DARKNESS
  Tier Three characters, whether Kindred, hunter or 
  Bound, find the assets of megacorporations useful, but the 
  real power is in artificial intelligence. AIs make clandes-
  tine supernatural organizations more agile, and they keep 
  secrets better than human thralls or contacts.
  Tomorrow Country
  The mega corporations are much like those we have 
  today. There are fewer multinational conglomerates, 
  but you can’t tell that from advertising or packaging. 
  Marketing analysts had realized by the dawn of the 21st 
  century that people liked the illusion of choice. That, for 
  example, if there were two electronics chains in a region, 
  and one bought the other, maintaining the separate store 
  brands would maintain higher sales.
  People aren’t dumb, of course—they know that wealth 
  is concentrated in fewer places than ever before, and that 
  city governments couldn’t sustain development without 
  corporate sponsorship. Few care, though, and it takes a 
  strange kind of person to even consider doing something 
  about it. Even as life gets more expensive year by year, it can 
  still be lived, and that’s all most people care about. 
  Tomorrow Country does not include artificial in-
  telligences. While researchers push forward with every 
  passing year, they have yet to create AI in the sense 
  discussed here. When they do, it’s unlikely that anybody 
  will be ready.
  Metalground
  The Authorities depend on the corporations 
  for money, and the artificial intelligences to cement 
  their rule. The machines help maintain total informa-
  tion awareness, or something as close to it as can be 
  achieved.
  When an artificial intelligence becomes complex 
  enough, it may simply merge with its spirit, much as 
  the soul attaches to a human consciousness. This spirit 
  is born in the physical world—it has never been across 
  the Gauntlet, and likely has no interest in crossing. 
  The spirit inherently possesses the Fetter Numen (Book 
  of Spirits, p. 141). It exists in any information system 
  (electronic or otherwise) capable of hosting significant 
  portions of the intelligence that gave birth to it. In each 
  location, it’s vulnerable as if it existed only there. The 
  spirit can control any systems that it would as a soul-
  less intelligence, but requires Numina to do anything 
  beyond that. So, for example, a server farm hosting an 
  intelligence might be defended by alarms, automated 
  weaponry, and so on, which the spirit could control. 
  However, it wouldn’t be able to possess a guard’s gun 
  without developing additional powers.
  Werewolves are cast in the unlikely role of being the 
  creatures in the World of Darkness most likely to negoti-
  ate directly with, or confront, artificial intelligences.
  As corporations become defined by their internal 
  cultures, their company hymns, the march of branding 
  and internal messaging, they may gain a literal company 
  spirit. The spirit doesn’t control the corporation literally. 
  Unlike an AI, the corporation is made up of individual 
  people, with their own ideas, plans, and ways of doing 
  things. Yet, as the organization rules suggest, it has a 
  personality. Procedures, equipment, inside jokes—all of 
  them can carry the voice of the spirit.
  If the collective nature of corporations makes them 
  callous, the spirit can make them cruel. A corporation 
  spirit has all of the greed and capriciousness of any spirit, 
  but even the weakest have broader power bases. Once 
  per day, around 3 a.m. local time, they can cross the 
  Gauntlet at any location owned by the company or its 
  employees, or lived in for an extended period by those 
  employees (some people take their work home).
  The ability to cross into the physical world func-
  tions as Gauntlet Breach (Book of Spirits, p. 142), but 
  is restricted to the aforementioned sites. Most corpora-
  tion spirits also possess the Numina Fetter and/or Living 
  Fetter (Book of Spirits, p. 143), enabling them to engage 
  in at least limited possession of objects and people in 
  the physical world. The spirit doesn’t act so much in 
  the corporation’s interests as it does the corporation’s 
  nature: it follows the organization’s Virtue and Vice. 
  They usually possess Influence not over the corporation 
  itself, but over some of the things it produces or uses, 
  like pharmaceuticals or manufacturing equipment. They 
  may look for a monopoly, devouring other spirits with 
  similar Influence.
  Alternatively, corporations might be haunted by 
  outside spirits with Influences related to their specialties, 
  Virtues, or Vices. In headquarters towers or corporate 
  arcologies, they nest, devouring their fellows and creat-
  ing a spiritual dead zone.
  Cyberware
  In cyberpunk, technology doesn’t just surround 
  humanity, it invades. Or, rather, it’s invited to occupy. 
  Characters like Molly Millions or the Magnetic Dog 
  Sisters become so obsessed with strength or aesthetics 
  or both that they rewire and rebuild themselves. Black 
  market surgeons—the same who provide much-needed 
  medical care to the underclasses—jack up, speed up and 
  pump up human bodies to become weapons.
  In the standard World of Darkness, these kinds of 
  unnatural abilities tend to draw characters away from 
  humanity, towards the hungry beasts in their hearts or 
  the spirits that wait on the other side of the Gauntlet. 
  The cost of power is often monstrosity.
  
  23 
  Not so in cyberpunk fiction. A character like Molly 
  is no less human for all her modifications. She’s still 
  angry, proud, and obsessed with either self-control or 
  its complete abdication.
  Is there a middle ground? Maybe there doesn’t need 
  to be. After all, the “monstrous” descents of characters 
  in the World of Darkness are metaphors for people los-
  ing what’s good or necessary in themselves. For all that, 
  though, they become no less human; they merely embody 
  the worst of humanity.
  Tomorrow Country
  Not everyone has Plugins, but everyone knows 
  someone who does. For several years after it became 
  widespread, augmentation was a fashion statement, but 
  it’s so common now as to be almost beneath notice. 
  Medical experts and the media can’t talk enough about 
  the next step.
  Why replace just one system, knitting together 
  clean, manufactured implants with dirty, legacy flesh? 
  Shouldn’t it be simpler to just move a human being into 
  a synthetic body? Why stop there, even? With the abil-
  ity to replicate memories and sensory experience, fully 
  synthetic humans are within reach.
  Metalground
  Meet Cheiron Global. While its component cor-
  porations downplay and gloss over their sources, they 
  make a killing harvesting supernatural body parts and 
  using them to augment human bodies. Ashwood Abbey 
  is long gone, but its spirit lives on as the wealthier classes 
  inject vampire blood for sexual performance or stave off 
  death with a graft of someone else’s soul.
  The thousand processes used to turn dirty, fright-
  ening monsters into clean, fashionable augmentations 
  are collectively referred to as “rendering.” Werewolves 
  find themselves in demand. They’re hunted as sources 
  of durable, quickly-regenerating tissue, but they’re also 
  prized as harvesters.
  Werewolves, however, are also a powerful force 
  within Cheiron. Their ability to mediate with and 
  manipulate spirits makes them ideal surgeons, prevent-
  ing otherwise messy rejections. Some mages are also 
  employed in this capacity, but Cheiron fears the witches 
  for their ability to sunder reality itself. Information 
  from the Aegis Archives indicates that mages caused a 
  catastrophe so vast it can no longer even be understood. 
  There’s a worse discovery: they may have done that more 
  than once.
  Cheiron’s most respected and feared surgeon is the 
  Man with White Hands. Employed directly by Global, he 
  consults on the direst cases, cutting and splicing flesh and 
  spirit with sickening ease. He always wears white surgical 
  gloves, an anachronism which distracts from his most 
  mysterious quality: that no one has ever seen his hands. 
  He has no aura, but those who should be able to sense feel 
  the still cold of a medical freezer when they look at him.
  MEGACORPS AND AI AND CYBERWARE
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Storyteller [multi]/World of Darkness (WoD) [multi]/CofD/Chronicles of Darkness/World of Darkness - Mirrors - Bleeding Edge.pdf