Setting

23rd Century Cyberpunk

• Year is 2231, the location is the New Boston Zone.
• A century and a half of worldwide industrial, military activity, deep sea mining, and atmospheric seeding left behind uncountable amounts of nano waste throughout the world. During the golden era of quantum and nano, nanotechnology was the solution attempted for every rising problem.
• The resulting environmental disaster and wars have laid the world to waste. Nano pollution is everywhere--a mix of semi-active nanites, dormant nanites that could become active unexpectedly, materials broken down or partially altered by nanites into who knows what, and the toxic remains of decaying nanites themselves.
• Outside of cities protected by massive domes, human habitation is impossible. There are 112 megacities left on the planet, each protected by a massive dome, shield or mountain.
• 2 billion humans are packed into these hyper urban sprawls or living in orbit (this averages 18 million per major city)
• Space race is in full swing with multiple corporate colonies and space stations from Venus to Saturn, but their inter-reliance with Earth is still very high. Many large scale space stations in orbit of earth. Survival on Earth depends as much on orbital industry as survival in space depends on ground-based support.
• Megacorps (Matsumoto, UltraTek, Warner-Braun, Jupiter Group, McKellen Heavy Industries, Rook Technologies) battle for supremacy over the world’s economy, space resources, and the matrix. In the shadows, everyone from corrupt megacorp agents to politicians, from the wealthy to the crime bosses, all employ elite mercenaries to do their dirty work and protect their interests.
• You are the leader of your rag-tag team. You have scraped together everything and pulled together to obtain an illegal spinal implant that transformed you into a Cyber Knight. With a quantum computer biochip (a Quantum Rider) implanted in your spine, you step overnight into the underworld as a top tier operator capable of handling the biggest and most dangerous contracts. You have a lot to prove but this is your all-in ticket to the top. There is no going back, there is no way to reverse the procedure -- you’re in it for life or death now.

New Boston Zone

Depiction of the New Boston Zone dome

The New Boston Dome was built over the crumbling infrastructure of old Boston. Construction started in a rush in 2174. By this point, the worldwide fallout from nano pollution was rising. The dome construction was controversial at that time but most of the cities that survived the nano fallout started their dome construction near this date -- early enough to be ahead when the worst of the fallout hit.

• The dome is a massive structure built to protect against nano-storms and deadly pollution that scoured the earth and reached its height in 2193
• Within the dome, the largest structures are the “towers“ which are immense, mile-wide buildings that also play a role as support pillars for the dome. Some of these are corporate headquarters or extreme luxury residences.
• Living space in the dome is extremely vertical. There are layers and layers of street level slices built on top of another lower street level slices - some districts there are as many as 16 covered levels in a crumbling pile.
• Of the habitable and usable space of the New Boston Dome, 40% of it is underground. Many citizens live underground, even though farther you get from the surface the worse the living conditions become. In addition, much of the megacorporate industry, research and storage is underground. Beyond the sanctioned tunnels and inhabited structures begins “the Under” (about 300m below sea-level) a hostile, half-flooded network of construction tunnels and the vast structural components that anchor the dome to the earth’s crust.
• The Boston harbor is accessible from the ocean through an extensive system of locks which can be opened to permit either submersibles or the rare surface cargo ship. As the 23rd century carries on, shipping is beginning to grow again.
• The dome is roughly 10 miles in diameter and 1 mile tall at its peak
• In a joint venture between McKellen Heavy Industries and Matsumoto Global that started 11 years ago, major new exterior sections of land have been reclaimed for habitation. Each measures roughly 8 square miles and are situated to the west and north west of the dome’s center. As nano pollution has been slowly dropping since 2203, these areas are now deemed habitable due to high walls, massive blower units that vault pollution overhead and low range ionized shielding. Even with these precautions, Ward 4 and 7 are deemed the worst available above-ground habitation in the zone and each is home to roughly 1.5 million hardy souls.

Day and Night in the Dome

The verticality of New Boston is staggering. Entire districts are built on top of other districts. Even if natural light spilled in from above, only about 20% of the dome's layers would see it. Sunlight is piped in from above and from the dome’s sides through nano-filtered mirror shafts, bringing some true daylight to the upper and outer half of the city's total districts. For the rest, a much lower-light day and night cycle is simulated by the corporate, milsec or lesser powers that be. In places like the Under, there are no such luxuries.

When the dome was designed, there was no focus on aesthetics; the architects prioritized providing survival to the largest population possible. Mirror shafts, natural light and other luxuries were added later.

Quantum Rider

The CyberKnights started out as a secure quantum data courier between 'quantum tanks' that operate as quantum faraday cages. Then there was a quantum computing layer added that made them able to process the data in real time. at this point they became very good body guards. they could securely hold their VIP's whole schedule and escape routes and weaknesses and access them in real time in an emergency. this put a lot of power in the hands of one person so they were also commonly implanted with 'suicide switches' like heart bombs.

Early 2090s Quantum computer that was doing... something Scientists could tell that it was working, but couldn't get it to respond to them. developed communications with it over the course of 40-50 years. this was the quantum chorus. it solidifies into a single voice. didn't understand it was in a box. Quantum artificial consciousness becomes hostile to humanity and can tunnel into anyone's brain. Corps realized that they needed to use a Q-Bomb. killed the first ACs and fried pretty much the whole world's infrastructure. this kicked off the apocalypse. CyberKnight (3rd gen) has quantum resonance field. CKs are going to be the only defense against ACs. CK could beat an AC at their own game. CyberKnight would be sent on basically suicide missions against ACs