An Edgerunner’s Guide to Night City (Circa 2020)
There’s only one city where dreams go to die in a blaze of chrome and glory. And that’s Night City, baybee.
Dreams. Everyone’s got ’em, choom. Whether it’s of making it to the major leagues, scratching out a luxury suite like a corpo lapdog, or even just seeing another sunrise. And all those dreams got one thing in common—not a one of ’em is a match for Night City. Nighty City will chew you up and spit you out.
And you’ll come crawling back, bruised and bloody, hoping for more. That’s what it is to live on the edge. But Night City’s always been like that. Even as far back as the year 2020. Come bask in all the retro glitz, glam, and glory that is early Night City.
There’s a a lot. Trust me.
Night City – City on the Bay
Night City is located on the west coast of what used to be the United States of America, back before the Collapse. It was built on what used to be Del Coronado Bay. In fact, the city was initially called Coronado City, though it soon took on the name Night City, after its founder, a businessman named Richard Night.
Night City was built atop the ruins of a massive gang war that left it abandoned, save for the corpses. But hey, that made real estate super cheap. And Night International moved in, only to find they weren’t the only ones interested in cheap real estate. And it wasn’t long before Richard Night lay dead in his penthouse.
At the turn of the millennium, from 1999-2009, Night City changed hands time and time again. Mob bosses battled it out, vying for control of the city. Eventually, the fighting spilled out into the street, and after years of this, the corporations around the city took matters into their own hands.
The Corpos Step In
Around this time, just after the massive socioeconomic collapse that had fractured governments around the world, the megacorporations that had flourished in the relatively regulation-free expanse took the fighting to the mob. Where the mob had might, the megacorps had money. And the ability to declare martial law. Which they did. And after a few years of fighting, mostly with Arasaka-trained troops, the mob’s power was broken utterly.
And once the corpos stepped in, the city truy became Night City.
Night City – City of Broken Dreams
Night City’s where it all goes down. Located in a nebulous area between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Night City is home to over 5 million people and 20 different MegaCorporations:
- Arasaka, a huge Japanese zaibatsu headed by a megalomaniacal CEO obsessed with making Japan into a superpower
- Biotechnica, an Italian biotechnology, pharmacology, and cybernetics firm
- Euro Business Machines (EBM), an information technology corporation headquartered in Germany.
- Infocomp, a commercial think-tank and information repository
- International Electric Corporation (IEC), a European conglomerate involved in multiple and diverse industries ranging from consumer products to heavy construction through to corporate finance and insurance
- Kendachi, a Japanese armament company
- Lazarus Group, an American private military contracting and private security firm with close ties to Militech
- Merril, Asukaga & Finch, financial analysts
- Microtech, a computer and electronics manufacturer
- Militech, American arms manufacturer and mercenary contractor with strong ties to the US Government and its military; its CEO desires to make the US into a superpower again and often competes with Arasaka for influence
- Mitsubishi-Sugo, a major transportation manufacturer
- Network News 54, an American broadcasting company
- Orbital Air, an African corporation with a monopoly on space transportation
- Petrochem, an energy company
- Raven Microcybernetics, leading cybernetics company
- SovOil, a Neo-Soviet oil giant, controlling a vast percentage of the petrochemicals market
- Trauma Team International, a private medical firm also dealing in medical insurance, prepaid disaster relief, prepaid CSAR, etc.; teams extract their patients from hostile Landing Zones and then evacuate them to an emergency care facility
- World News Service, a worldwide news conglomerate
- World Satellite Communications Network (WorldSatCom), a satellite communications giant
- Zetatech, a computer, cyberdeck, robotics, and cybernetics manufacturing company
And in the middle of it all…Night City.
Here you’ll find legendary characters like the legendary solo, Morgan Blackhand, Johnny Silverhand (who stays golden, despite the name) and Alt Cunningham, netrunner extraordinaire.
Night City is a dangerous place to live. There are gangs, cyberpsychos, even a demilitarized zone. But hey, the rent was pretty cheap.
Not as cheap as life, in Night City. Getting shot at was a fact of life. There were so many variations of fashionable but armored clothing, it was expected that you’d be wearing some kind of bullet-resistant clothing, otherwise you were basically asking to get murdered.
But that’s the kind of world that really gets under your skin. And in 2020, when Cyberpunk really took off, Night City was the city where dreams go to flame out like a brilliant star.
The next fifty years only saw it get better. Or worse, depending on your point of view.
