Detailing life in Night City during the Time of the Red

[HalC]

Hi All,
Many of you who might be tempted to run stuff in Night City, may want a forum to discuss things that are likely happening in 2045.

I recently got into a discussion about why the Radio stations, or more likely, the Pirate Radio stations, would make a major impact during the time of the Red. If many of those who are reclaiming materials from the city, or rebuilding parts of Night City, or are refugees who, after 20 years, are still homeless or struggling - they need a CHEAP way to get information. Enter the low cost low tech radio solution. Use a radio to pick up the signals...

So, I propose an option known as WVTC KVTC - otherwise known as Voice of The City. The owner/newscaster goes by the name of Lynne Tee, has a sultry sexy voice, deeper than is perhaps usual for a woman, but definitely not masculine deep. WVTC KVTC DJ has offered a 5,000 UB reward for anyone who can positively identify her - in addition to Night City's reward of 100,000 UB for her capture and conviction for misinformation and painting the City council in a bad light, you know, libel.

In terms of CP Red, she is a Media. She has to keep moving, so she doesn't get caught. She always opens up her announcements with "Ok now, for all you boppers out there..." as her signature line. No one has been able to confirm who she is, and far too often, she has announcements of things she has to have seen first hand for the details she gives out. Some think she is a Corpo Suit, others think she's the daughter of a public official. Many want to see her so bad as her silky voice is whiskey smooth. Her accent is sufficient to hint at time spent outside of the New United States - possibly England, or one of England's territories or even the Caribbean. Who knows.

[HalC]

New Item (if it already exists, forgive me):

Kendachi Mono-Tanto, Medium Melee, 2d6, RoF: 2, Hands: 1, Concealed: Yes, 750 eb, Expensive

Like its other steel brothers, the Kenachi Mono-Tanto is a fighting weapon designed to be pulled from concealment in times of need. Few people have these as it is Kandachi's newest of the new, brought out at the end of 2044 beginning of 2045. This weapon comes in two versions, one with a biometric ring, one without. Those whose hilts looks as though they were made with black neomylar woven thread, have a distressing tendency to short out (on a crit failure, a second 1 will short it out). The newer red hilted neomylar woven thread with white diamond pattern of 4 diamonds, is more stable. The sheath is a highly polished uniformly black reflective made of traditionally seasoned Ho-no-ki wood, coated in dozens of layers of Urushi Varnish. Add another 150 eb for the silver capped sheath for the tanto. A sheath for the Wakizashi would go for 250 eb, and a sheath for the Katana would be a further 400 eb. A complete set of matching weapons in the Mono- line of weapons would easily sell for 5,000 eb with their sheaths. But the core part of this ensemble is like buying Gold eating utensils but then storing them in burlap sack. To properly display all of this requires an Ebony Sadan-gake. This jet black wood with a Urushi Lacquer, would look as if it were synthetic material as the grain of the wood would be hard to see.

Traditionally, the weapons would be placed with the Katana on the top, hilt towards the left, resting atop a red silk or synthetic velvet cradle to keep the surface from being marred. The Wakizashi would be placed beneath the Katana, with the Tanto resting on the base.

Daisho-plus-one.PNG

[LordEntrails]

Not that the old rules (of our world) need to apply, but Night City is west of the Mississippi so it a "K" radio station and not a "W". i.e. KVTC

[HalC]

Thanks - I'll modify the entry to reflect that. The character is a Homage to the DJ character of WARRIORS movie fame. She hides in plain sight so to speak, but using a device used by people who have suffered vocal chord damage - such that in public, she has a mechanical voice. But when she's using the Mike on air, her natural voice is heard. Since no one knows what you look like via Radio, during the time of the Red, her voice could soothe, inform, and if necessary, inflame. Of course her name in the game is based on the real world actress name, as indicated, a homage...

[HalC]

Out of curiosity - would people like me to include stats on personalities and the like?

[HalC]

New entry tentatively called The Lazarus Protocol. The Laz protocol was initially developed by Dr. Crowe for use with an elite squad of solos whose mission parameters involved near insane levels of "suicide missions". The Lazarus protocol is the result of Nanites manufactured to a higher specification and sophistication not unlike Surgeon Nanites. At the time of creation and experimentation, these nanites could only be manufactured in a low gravity environment. Prior to the end of the Fourth Corporate War, Raven Mycrocyb was merged in with Militech, and Dr Crowe's expertise was meant to be used to the benefit of Militech. Sadly for Militech, Dr. Crowe was already experimenting with backup of his consciousness with a mechanical (so to speak) adaptation that exhibited an almost engram like affinity with his mind. When he was hooked up to a computer in Crystal Palace in an unregistered node at the Palace, Dr. Crowe began to take over the mainframe computer used for his interrogation. It wasn't as effective as the Soul Killer software, but worked in a similar fashion.

What is the Lazarus protocol?

The Mechanics of the "Cold-Casket"
When the subject (The Morrígan) hits the 0 HP threshold, the protocol initiates a Neural Preservation Sequence:

Cephalic Shell: Legacy nanites rush to the skull, creating a pressurized oxygenated barrier and a protective thermal gel around the brain.

Grave-Cold Status: The body’s circulatory system shuts down. The subject's body begins to cool to room temperature. To a thermal scanner, she is determined to be a corpse.

The Structural Buffer: The internal Bio-Pump locks the body, providing a +3 Body bonus to the "Irretrievable Meat Death" threshold. You have to literally dismantle the body to keep it down.

The Recovery: The "Hard Reboot" Table

When the system attempts to bring the Morrígan back from the dark, the "Audit" is resolved via a 1d10 roll. In this legacy build, the fail-safes are so advanced that even a "1" isn't the end—it's just a different kind of hell.

1: System Glitch. Result is a metabolic lock down. The subject's hitpoints stabilize at 1. The body enters into a neural frostbite status where the actions of the body suffer a -2 penalty for 2d6x4 hours
2-5: Delayed Boot. Standard cycle, subject remains in "Cold Casket" hibernation for 1d6 rounds before stabilizing at 1 HP
6-9 Fast Boot. Efficient stabilization. Subject stabilizes at 1 HP at the start of the next turn.
10: Overclocked. Stabilizes at 1 HP, gain an immediate extra action, and suffer a fixed 4 point humanity loss.

Background information: The Raven Microcyb Model-7 fabricator is required to manufacture the nanites or to activate them while in a gravity well. As a consequence, the delicate aspect of the nanite construction requires low G, the final fabrication requires normal gravity to activate. At present, there are only two Raven Microcyb Model-7 Fabricators in existence. One is on the Crystal Palace under automated control, the other, in a cache on Night City University property. The labs used at the NCU research for Raven Microcyb, were openly R&D labs for microcyb, but neath that lab was an underground facility some three levels deeper whose entry point was a nondescript door labeled as "High Voltage, Authorized personnel only". Behind the entry door, is a small cramped office. Near the back of the cramped office is both a drop down laser security turret, and a small square area marked with the standard "Danger" logo of yellow and black stripes. The reality is, that danger area is an actual lift down to the sections below. When the floor descends downwards, a new sliding floor tile covers the top, to shield anyone else from falling in. When the elevator returns to the top, the retractable cover returns flush with the door, allowing the floor surface of the elevator to return to the top. By 2045, this elevator is now a bit wonky, and a roll of 1d10 shows that it will act in the following fashion:

1: elevator failed to return flush with the flooring, and drops about 4 feet below the surface. The cover is retracted part way instead of all the way. Until that panel is forced back into a fully recessed manner, the elevator will not work.
2: Elevator is still down on ground level of the lab, resulting in a 30 foot drop. Bad news is, the shaft cover hides this fact. A perception roll is required to notice the cover is a cover.
3-8: elevator works as it should, but is slow and makes a lot of shuddering stops and starts, making groaning noises. It really needs more maintenance.
9: Elevator works as it should, it still groans a lot, but hey, what do you expect chum?
10: one of the rate times when the thing doesn't protest or groan. Everything works normally.

RFID chips identify authorized personnel when they enter into the small office, if you don't possess one of those chips, well, that laser turret that drops will do its cheerful best to hurt you. What is worse? That turret will drop, fire, then retract. Anyone fighting this thing will need to delay their action until they can time it to fire while it is down. NASTY.

If you can't get in this way, don't fear, there is a maintenance garage on Campus where the underground lab has a way to bring in oversized materials to the lab - such as things offloaded from a truck to the maintenance building facility. The bad news? Yup, you need that RFID chip. What is worse, there are 10 such laser turrets along with a heavy gas neurotoxin waiting for your pleasure. As a final indignity, that gas is also highly explosive in nature. A laser firing at the cloud from further down the access way will cause it to ignite, as if 5 frag grenades went off (less the fragmentation of course).

Not documented here, but available should anyone want it, is the maintenance road under the ground that is part of the Science and Engineering Hall maintenance building. That maintenance road is of course, trapped, and designed with human psychology as well as turning Solo instincts into death traps for soldiers or even ordinary people confronted with automated turrets. Oh, and Vesper-7 NeuroToxins from before the end of the 4th corporate war.

[HalC]

Already planning for session 2. It will be called "Going Postal". Our intrepid solo will - having left the service after 20 years for Militech (he was acting as a DI for training troops), will have been targeted by one of his best trainee's for a bit of bad luck. The trainee has evidence of criminal behavior of a Militech suit - the kind that ends in involuntary retirement and a change of scenery involving prison guards. The Suit will have taken the time to try and figure out where the incriminating insurance package was sent, as they didn't find it on the former trainee. Thinking that the man wouldn't just send the insurance somewhere easy, he placed a tag on the name of the Former DI, thinking "ok, any package deliveries would require a signature." What he didn't know was that the package will be an attempted delivery, but because Connor voluntarily separated from Militech with a pension, he will have his address as "not in existence". Connor won't have completed a change of address notification, and the base purged his old address entirely. The package will sit in the undeliverable room as will his first pension check. Both the letter and the package will be at the same holding warehouse.

Once Connor shows up, presents evidence that his package was undeliverable and is likely at the warehouse, the clerk, will take his time looking for it, and after finding it, will give Connor his letter, but the system will flag there is a package as well.

That flag will also alert the Militech suits' net runner "Hey, we got a ping, we know where the person Connor is currently at which post office. The net runner will notify an on call team to show up at the post office. In the meantime, someone else will have seen that flag alarm go off - a postal employee who happens to be a net runner. Most of the post office is automated and it is a treasured job in having a lot of free time to work on private stuff. For Disease Vector (netrunner who works at the post office) she will be unhappy that someone managed to penetrate her home system, and leave a flag in it. So, being the curious type, she will backtrack that netrunner intrusion to where the alert was delivered to, and will then start to play games with the netrunner by overwriting his fan cooling speeds on his deck, along with changing the voltage regulator on his deck to fry it after making it overheat with intensive CPU activity. In the meantime, the original team will start out for the Post office and arrive there within a reasonably short time.

Disease Vector will be assisting Connor to try and get his package from the storage room AND get out in time, but to get his attention, she will page his agent and cause it to play "Love is a Killer" so as to give him warning.

Eventually, the second team from Militech will arrive, a sniper and spotter team, where they will take a high point vantage and rain death on anyone who leaves the post office.

Team 1 will try to either terminate Connor or flush him out to where the sniper team can get to him.

Helter Skelter will play while the first team tries to flush Connor out. Jaws theme will play once the sniper team is in place. The postal employees will try to exit in fear from the birddog team flushing Connor out. That's why the Jaws theme will play via Fantasy GRound link.

This sets the stage for adventures 3, 4 and 5 as Connor tries to figure out why he's a target for retirement - permanently.

Once the criminal suit is neutralized, Connor need not worry about Militech any further (unless he goes overboard in dealing with the suit.).

Should be simple enough

[stryger1]

Depending on what technology radio broadcasters are using FM vs AM (really old tech) Her transmission range could be pretty far (for an AM base station) or short for a mobile transmitter or an FM broadcast. There would probably be more old FM receivers lying around than AM receivers BUT if you want to bring in news from beyond Night City, AM is a way to do that. It has been 30+ years since I studied that topic so if I've gotten any part of it wrong, please correct me.

[HalC]

Depending on what technology radio broadcasters are using FM vs AM (really old tech) Her transmission range could be pretty far (for an AM base station) or short for a mobile transmitter or an FM broadcast. There would probably be more old FM receivers lying around than AM receivers BUT if you want to bring in news from beyond Night City, AM is a way to do that. It has been 30+ years since I studied that topic so if I've gotten any part of it wrong, please correct me.

That is more than what I know. **chuckle**

What I would expect in the time of Red is that the radios would likely be cheap, those that survived the initial blast's EMP. Checking with an AI, it estimates based on the math, that the EMP would have been partially shielded by the steel beams and re-inforcing bars embedded in the cement. This would have acted as a faraday cage (not perfectly of course). Estimated radius of the blast was measured in single digit kilometers dropped down due to the initial containment effect of the building and its elevator shafts. Call it about a half kilometer for total electronics destruction, and up to about 2.5 kilometers for partial strength effects.

That means that portable FM radios would be the order of the day. Thank you for catching that detail.

[HalC]

New Entry: Silk Ends: A euphoric Stim stick that you smoke to get a happy high. When marketed in the streets, the slogan is "Wrap your Mind in Silk". The product produces a mild sweet smell when smoked, and the smoking aspect will last around 7 to 10 minutes due to the slow burn. Carcinogenic as hell, the Silk Ends are seen as the fun way to bypass the boredom of existence. The mild euphoria it gives the user is good for at least 10-Body hours. Healthy individuals will filter out the byproducts of Silk from their system more quickly than the low weight individuals or the sickly individuals.

The smell not unlike sugar means that when someone says "I smell Sugar" that is a way to say "I found a Seller of Silk!".