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Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
This headache's a killer, you've felt it coming for days now. Well, it's here, and rubbing your eyes isn't doing any good so...

The rain falls in thick sheets, cut through with nauseating neon lights and smoke only a shade more noxious.

This is/was your home, though with how things have been going lately, you hardly recognize it anymore. There's trouble in the wind and on the wires, and their steady hum now sets your nerves on edge instead of calming them. You are (???), and somehow you feel like you're going to need every favor, trick, and scrap of knowledge you've got to get through whatever's coming

*CLASS SELECTION!*
You are :

A. A DodecaDeacon of The Machine Mind

The Machine Mind mandates that there be One Truth and Zero Falsehood. As a twelfth-level initiate, it is your job to spread the Truth and root out Falsehood. That's the official line anyway. You've found the world a little less binary.

B. A Hacker

Coder, cutter, cracker. There's many names for what you do, but only one result: success. You've made a name for yourself on the wires by freeing heavily secured information. Other things, you've found, are unfortunately much harder to free.

C. A Breaker

Sometimes (a lot of times) cracking skulls is easier than cracking code. That's where all seven feet of you (heavily augmented of course) comes in. You're more than a match for any punk who tries to cross you, but some things just might might break you before you break them.

D. ???

There are things in the dark, things that decency (and heavily armed corpsec) demands hide their faces in shadow and names in static. You happen to be one of them.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Sep 17, 2017

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Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
Hi, this is Woven Wires, a cyberpunk thing. If you like:
Computers!

Guns!

Internet!

and/or

Horrors created by the unrestrained exponential growth of private capital and technology! (and lots of gifs!)
Then this is the place for you!

Some notes: This is my first cyoa, so be ready for some rough edges. I expect to update a few times a week, with a lot of activity at the start as we flesh out our main character. I'm running this off my own homebrew so most things are gonna be under the hood. You'll see your choices, and then their consequences, which should be a lot more fast and fun than minmaxing and juggling numbers. Options will be in bold. Everyone is welcome to both vote and discuss options, even if you haven't been here from the start. For our first vote, We're finding out who we are! Also whether we hung around our hometown or are only now returning.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Sep 17, 2017

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
???

You have:
2 arms (meat?)
2 legs (meat?)
1 head (metal?)
1 set of armor(?)+helmet (Your clothes are thick and stiff, seemingly reinforced with ballistic weave. There's no kind of tab, logo, or label on any of them.)
1 knife (steel, standard)
1500 anon credits
1 copy of Windows 2077
1 data chip (standard, AI/SinDex research)
1 hand terminal (standard, on)
1 pistol (loaded(?), EM(?))
1 SinDex ID (supposedly for a "Kal Hinton", genuine(?))

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Dec 22, 2017

Nyaa
Jan 7, 2010
Like, Nyaa.

:colbert:
D. We are the mysterious man on the tv telling people to do dangerous poo poo for a little bit cash. We are Mr. Johnson.

sheep-dodger
Feb 21, 2013

D - A Terrorist Freedom Fighter
We watched as the corporations slowly took over every facet of our lives, monetizing our most intimate information, grinding down every right given to us and spitting out whoever wasn't profitable enough.
Unlike the others we didn't keep our head down, we picked up a gun, downloaded the anarchist cookbook and went to fight.
After a stint in corporate prison we are now back home, ready to take the fight to the mega corps again.

Crazycryodude
Aug 15, 2015

Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?


sheep-dodger posted:

D - A Terrorist Freedom Fighter
We watched as the corporations slowly took over every facet of our lives, monetizing our most intimate information, grinding down every right given to us and spitting out whoever wasn't profitable enough.
Unlike the others we didn't keep our head down, we picked up a gun, downloaded the anarchist cookbook and went to fight.
After a stint in corporate prison we are now back home, ready to take the fight to the mega corps again.

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:

sheep-dodger posted:

D - A Terrorist Freedom Fighter
We watched as the corporations slowly took over every facet of our lives, monetizing our most intimate information, grinding down every right given to us and spitting out whoever wasn't profitable enough.
Unlike the others we didn't keep our head down, we picked up a gun, downloaded the anarchist cookbook and went to fight.
After a stint in corporate prison we are now back home, ready to take the fight to the mega corps again.

A/DReligion is a balm in times of trouble, and we've been a lifelong believer. But while religion might be the opiate of the masses our background in 'security' let us find ecclesiastical information the church would rather be kept hidden. Already on the fence we created a new persona and joined the cloth. The plan: take it down from inside.

Nyaa
Jan 7, 2010
Like, Nyaa.

:colbert:
Changing my vote to Freedom Fighter

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
We have a clear consensus!

Have Blue posted:

D. ???

There are things in the dark, things that decency (and heavily armed corpsec) demands hide their faces in shadow and names in static. You happen to be one of them.

Just a heads up: there's an emphasis on thing in this option. Considering that part of the game is

Have Blue posted:

Horrors created by the unrestrained exponential growth of private capital and technology!

on top of being a Freedom Fighter, our character might be a failed experiment, a rogue clone, or something even stranger.

Continue? Y/N

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Sep 17, 2017

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:

Have Blue posted:

We have a clear consensus!


Just a heads up: there's an emphasis on thing in this option. Considering that part of the game is


on top of being a Freedom Fighter, our character might be a failed experiment, a rogue clone, or something even stranger.

Continue? Y/N

Y, no matter what the initial outcome is.

Something stranger: The physical manifestation of a CYOA protagonist, our cybernetic brain houses a hundred independent AI programs forced to navigate the world via committee of the damned/you are John system. The original personality is... Somewhere in there.

Ralith
Jan 12, 2011

I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today
Hell Yeah!

SerSpook
Feb 13, 2012




absolutely

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
You... we are... I am? Ugh, this headache makes you feel like your memory buffers are overflowing. Do I even have memory buffers? Your neural architecture is a bit hazy at the moment, maybe a diagnostic would get your meat and metal on the same page. What you can remember right now comes in flashes: a gun in your hand, crumpled bodies in SinDex uniforms, the grey walls walls walls walls wallswallswalls






You're on the street. You shouldn't be on the street. You shouldn't be on the street at all, especially in a maxsec issue jumpsuit after curfew. If you're lucky, you'll get locked up (again). More likely you'll get hacked up and spread over several "used parts" bins by some slicer gang looking for easy money. You need to go somewhere, anywhere but here:

A. Go Home
You lived here, once. Third stop on the subway, around the corner, up the stairs, and through an unmarked steel door behind the Soya Shack. Of course you no longer have a transport pass or your keys, but you'll manage.

B. Make Contact
Someone put that gun in your hand and pointed you at Sindex. If you made it out, you were supposed to head to The Shard and ask for a copy of "Windows 2077". Maybe you were set up, maybe the info's long since expired, but it's all you have to go on.

C. Get Fixed
You're quite fond of your genitals, thank you, but you could do without this headache. Plenty of front, back, and side alley techdocs could sort you out, for a price. You have a few credits left in your account, but a complicated fix could end up (literally) costing you an arm and a leg.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Sep 17, 2017

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:
C. Anything we sell we can buy back later. Body parts aren't exactly a sacred part of our selves anymore.

They're probably watching our home, but check it out anyway, see if we can scavenge anything.

Then maybe bribe some dipshit to go ask for the windows, see if he get's black bagged.

What's out skillset? Augs? Do we have an inbuilt rocket launcher leg?

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Outrail posted:

What's out skillset? Augs? Do we have an inbuilt rocket launcher leg?


Have Blue posted:

Your neural architecture is a bit hazy at the moment

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:

Turn it off and on again.

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Outrail posted:

Turn it off and on again.

You close your eyes and concentrate. In your mind you reach toward the switch on the wallwallswallswallswalls











You come to gasping on the pavement. The few people scattered around know better than to look at you, much less help you up. You're just another stimhead crashing out, or a convenient distraction hired by the pickpockets.

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:
Ah, so it's a software issue.

Unplug it and plug it back in?

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
Brains don't work that way, even in the future.

super sweet best pal
Nov 18, 2009

B

Do we have any possessions?

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


super sweet best pal posted:

B

Do we have any possessions?

This; also, possessions should probably extend to clothes, decorations, credentials (as in identifiers and passwords AND as in recognized competencies, and I'd even go so far as 'find a mirror and see what looks back at us'), etc.

Who we are to ourself isn't that big of a deal right now. Bonus in that knowing we can at least sort of get away with being weird under the radar in this neighborhood may be useful later.

DivineCoffeeBinge
Mar 3, 2011

Spider-Man's Amazing Construction Company
B.

Let's see how badly our contact plans to gently caress us.

Also, who and what they are. Or at least what they pretend to be.

girl dick energy
Sep 30, 2009

You think you have the wherewithal to figure out my puzzle vagina?
B

Also, find something reflective to look at ourself in.

Ralith
Jan 12, 2011

I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today
B and don't poke the mind worm until we're somewhere safe.

dont be mean to me
May 2, 2007

I'm interplanetary, bitch
Let's go to Mars


Ralith posted:

B and don't poke the mind worm until we're somewhere safe.

Which 'the mind worm'?

Ralith
Jan 12, 2011

I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today

dont be mean to me posted:

Which 'the mind worm'?
The one that just made us lock up in somewhere very not-safe.

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Have Blue posted:

B. Make Contact
Someone put that gun in your hand and pointed you at SinDex. If you made it out, you were supposed to head to The Shard and ask for a copy of "Windows 2077". Maybe you were set up, maybe the info's long since expired, but it's all you have to go on.



In the past few decades, concrete, steel, and glass have seemed ever more fragile in the face of neglect and recurring nanoplagues. If you were a well to do corp and didn't want your fancy flagship building to have holes eaten in it or collapse in ten years, you had to look to something new. For Paragon Tech, that was supposed to be a revolutionary fast growing monocrystal. A building that would not only build itself, but would also be "Durable as Diamond!". The tagline didn't hold up. There was a mistake in the grow lattice, or a fluctuation in crystallization conditions, something accidental (or deliberate) that created a massive fault line in the structure. On the day of its grand unveiling the Shard was tested, and shattered. The resulting rents in surrounding buildings, pavement, people, and Paragon's profits led to investors pulling out, and the site, with its tower remnant, being abandoned.

Still, real estate is real estate, and the prospect of a glittering fortress ended up being too appealing to resist. Various gangs and grey market groups have moved in since, and the Shard now serves as the center for illicit activity in NuYork. As long as you're willing to work around a worrying amount of monomolecular edges, there's no better place to go if you need something shady.

On your way to the door, you catch a reflection in one of The Shard's facets:


Ugh, who gets face augs?

...

That's my face!

That's not my face!!


The realization jerks you to a halt. You frantically paw at "your" face and pat yourself down:

You Have:
2 arms (meat?)
2 legs (meat?)
1 head (now hurting even more) (metal?)
1 maxsec jumpsuit (paper, the ID U0lOR0VS is written across the chest and back over a bar code)
1 anonymous 500 credit chit
1 pistol (surprised, you surreptitiously take it out and check it. It's a one and done: tiny lovely flashmolded plastic body, fused propellant charge, ceramic bullet. Undetectable to scanners and small enough to escape a cursory search)

Shaken, you continue on into The Shard. You easily find a software dealer on a lower level and ask him if he has Windows 2077.

"That's abandonware Gramps. You want it you can go pull it off a dead board on the wires."

Do you:

A. Keep pushing (write in)

B. Find someone more knowledgeable

There's plenty more software dealers in The Shard. A few even specialize in outdated tech.

C. Find someone more important
No two bit software pirate's gonna take on a corp, no matter how much they hate DRM. Look for someone who would and could.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 11:57 on Sep 18, 2017

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther
OOC: Nice to see some more people piling in! Any questions, comments or suggestions?

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Sep 18, 2017

super sweet best pal
Nov 18, 2009

B

Maybe we're a computer virus in mecha grandpa's brain? He was just trying to jack into AoL's matrix to read his email and got hijacked by the resistance.

Elfface
Nov 14, 2010

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na
IRON JONAH
I bet cyberprison hosed up, all those brain-upload rehabilitation lessons, memory scans for evidence, trying to delete the criminal part of a personality, they've gone and downloaded our mind into the wrong body. Some confused old man mind is running around in our much nicer body.

Also, maybe we're at the wrong The Shard. We should go to London.

But let's finish checking this one first. B.

AJ_Impy
Jun 17, 2007

SWORD OF SMATTAS. CAN YOU NOT HEAR A WORLD CRY OUT FOR JUSTICE? WHEN WILL YOU DELIVER IT?
Yam Slacker
B and try to recall our contact

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

AJ_Impy posted:

try to recall our contact

Fighting the corps is risky business. Most know well to hide their faces.

Their names too. You were given a place and a phrase, nothing more.

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:

Have Blue posted:

Fighting the corps is risky business. Most know well to hide their faces.

Their names too. You were given a place and a phrase, nothing more.

Even without a face this is a fairly distinctive hoodie.

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Have Blue posted:

B. Find someone more knowledgeable
There's plenty more software dealers in The Shard. A few even specialize in outdated tech.

You ask around about which vendor's got the best collection of deadtech. Most seem willing to indulge old man in a prison jumpsuit, though a few look at you oddly or say nothing at all. What they do tell you, is "down"


"down the hall"


"down past the cameras"


"down past the drones"


down
down


down







..........































Hello, how can I help you today?

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:
Hey Sparky, Windows 2077, ya got it?

Also, ask ourself 'anyone else in here?'

Have Blue
Mar 27, 2013


Panther Like a Panther

Outrail posted:

anyone else in here?


The room is dimly lit by scrolling data on large screens. You can't make heads or tails of any of it. Your host(?) sits in the middle of it all, staring out of her(?) monitor at you with blank eyes.There doesn't seem to be anyone else present.

Have Blue fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Sep 18, 2017

Elfface
Nov 14, 2010

Da-na-na-na-na-na-na
IRON JONAH
Well... we reached a destination... this thing looks like old tech. Maybe it's been sitting here since before we went to jail? Let's ask it about Windows 2077, and also if it knows who we are, since we don't.

Outrail
Jan 4, 2009

www.sapphicrobotica.com
:roboluv: :love: :roboluv:

Have Blue posted:


The room is dimly lit by scrolling data on large screens. You can't make heads or tails of any of it. Your host(?) sits in the middle of it all, staring out of her(?) monitor at you with blank eyes.There doesn't seem to be anyone else present.

No, I mean ask ourself. In our cyberbrain.

Ralith
Jan 12, 2011

I see a ship in the harbor
I can and shall obey
But if it wasn't for your misfortune
I'd be a heavenly person today
Ask our question, of course!

Have Blue posted:

OOC: Nice to see some more people piling in! Any questions, comments or suggestions?

I'm loving the atmosphere and imagery so far, and this type of setting is always fun. Will be fun to see the story develop!

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Loel
Jun 4, 2012

"For the Emperor."

There was a terrible noise.
There was a terrible silence.



Color me intruiged. This is like a scifi Paradise Lost.


Where you finding the images?

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