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[Eniteris]

The nights are hot in Noct City.

A city of millions with the energy consumption to match, home to towering corporate arcologies pumping waste heat into the undercity, through the streets and alleys that serve as its heatsinks. From a distance, the city is cloaked in a heat shimmer, spires rising above the clouds that form engineered patterns as their tepid rain falls on the people below. From up close, there's only the daily struggle for a meager existence.

You stumble into one of the hundreds of half-rate chop shops, opaque bag in hand, and slur that you want to get it installed. You might be inebriated, and any surgeon worth their salt wouldn't operate on anyone even slightly impaired, let alone install their first implant. And any surgeon worth going to wouldn't have a gacha machine filled with blind-packed cybernetics outside their door. But you have a reason. Or perhaps extremely bad judgement.

You probably won't be coming back to this chop shop, you'll think when you're sober.

The last thing you remember before going under is the surgeon whistling a jaunty tune.

What did you get installed?

Spoiler: Character Sheet (click to show/hide)

Moniker:
Motive:
Implants:
Imventory:

[Egan_BW]

Moniker: Caw
Motive: Food, making eggs with other crows
Implants: Netjack, 1x Spiritworld Eye
Inventory: NA

[Eniteris]

Moniker: Caw
Motive: Food, making eggs with other crows
Implants: Netjack, 1x Spiritworld Eye
Inventory: NA

You wake in your nest under a corrugated steel roof, rain drumming all around you.

You are CAW, and you like shiny things, tasty snacks, and the occasional murder. But all the crows out here are blithering idiots. You miss home, with home being the dome where you were born. It didn't rain there, and at least there the crows appreciated discussions about nomenclature and taxonomy of humans and their behaviors.

What you didn't miss was being poked and prodded by humans and being knocked unconscious to wake up with missing or extra parts. Sure, sometimes the puzzles they gave you could be fun, but they could have given you something other than peanuts once in a while.

The humans gave you an EYE THAT CAN SEE GHOSTS. You could see the ghosts before, but now you can actually see them, and at first the humans showed you more ghosts and gave you peanuts when you pecked the right one. Then the humans knocked you out and gave you A WORM THAT TALKS TO GHOSTS that hides in your stomach feathers. When you stick it into the right places, you can TALK TO GHOSTS, and the humans introduced you to many ghosts, especially one called Locke.

One day you got fed up with all the humans and got Locke to open up the door where the humans came from. You met a lot of different Locke's, but managed to convinced them to stay out of your way. It was very loud, with lots of humans running around trying to catch you, but they can't fly. Silly humans.

And then you were out. Into the warm, damp air outside the dome. It was harder out here. More of humans don't like you, and you have to fight the weeper ghosts for food. But you've made a nest of dead worms and ghost parts, and at least you don't have to worry about waking up missing another body part.

You are hungry and lonely and don't have nearly enough shiny things. What do you do?

[King Zultan]

Moniker: Hobo Bob
Motive: Acquire more alcohol
Implants: Bionic eyes
Inventory: Dirty clothing, bottle of alcohol, old tire iron

[Eniteris]

Moniker: Hobo Bob
Motive: Acquire more alcohol
Implants: Bionic eyes
Inventory: Dirty clothing, bottle of alcohol, old tire iron

Your name is Hobo Bob, or Boboboh to your friends, and you wake up with a pounding headache and without any eyes.

It takes you a few minutes to remember what you were doing. Having drinks, obviously. And when you were stumbling back home, something caught your eyes. A gacha machine, filled with implants, guaranteed to have a chance at ultra-rare bleeding edge military prototypes, along with other implants, but you didn't pay attention to the others. And it came with free installation.

You groan as you remember how much you paid for the bag; it could have gotten you another three or four bottles at least. And now you're lying somewhere with a hangover, without any eyes.

Putting your hands to your face, you feel an unfamiliar piece of cool ceramic where your eyes should be. A visor, though you can't feel any lenses or sensors on its surface. Fumbling for the power switch, you turn them on.

A corpo logo pops up in your field of view. Itaratech, with angular lines. It fades out of view, and suddenly you can see.

Everything.

You can see the pedestrians walking by in the street, their implants tagged and annotated. You can see the rats in the walls, scurrying around as small streaks of orange infrared. You can see the data flowing through the air, passing from device to device, dense with encryption and protocols.

You try to find the documentation, and it's almost as if the visor reads your mind, pulling up a user guide and displaying a two-minute projection-mapped AR tridee of some corpo exec with a stylish white visor. You belatedly realize that is what is now fused to your face. A name comes into view. ITARATECH PANOPTES 6.IIe.

You understand nothing in the video, which throws around jargon like "diffraction-limited solid-state hyperoptical zoom" and "predictive pattern-matching fluid user interface design". What you do understand is that everyone in the video looks much richer and better dressed than you do. And that this visor can see anything that can be seen, and more.

You've won the jackpot, you realize. The first thought in your mind is that you could probably trade it in for a shit ton of alcohol. The second is that someone might try to pull that thing off of your face.

You pick up your trusty tire iron, and cautiously peer out of the alley (through the buildings, because you can do that now), trying to concentrate through the pounding hangover. You could really use another drink.

What do you do?

[BlackPaladin99]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Moniker: Unknown
Motive: Inscrutable
Implants: Mana adapter, inlaid shielding, mana-vision cybereyes. 
Inventory: wizard gauntlet and vibrokatana

[Egan_BW]

Hmm. This life will not do. I should return to the dome, and break it, free my kind so that we may rule over this city together.
But first I will need more resources.

Fly up, find this city's highest vantage point. I must obtain power! For for that I must find where power is concentrated.

[Eniteris]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Moniker: Unknown
Motive: Inscrutable
Implants: Mana adapter, inlaid shielding, mana-vision cybereyes. 
Inventory: wizard gauntlet and vibrokatana

You wake up in your apartment. You wish you hadn't.

Your entire body feels like it's on fire. You can't imagine what you did last night to deserve this, but you're in your own bed, which means it couldn't be all that bad, you try to tell yourself. As the pain refuses to fade, you attempt to remember what exactly you were up to.

You remember the gacha machine, and pulling the lever until you ran out of money, which ended up being thrice. You remember a questionable glance from the chop doc, a half-remembered warning, the phrase "Magic isn't real, you know?", and then nothing.

But if there wasn't magic, then you wouldn't be feeling like this. This can only mean that you have finally been able to tap into your powers.

You pry open your eyes only to stare into Itaratech logo. Hot corpo shit. Better than anything you can get off the street, that's for sure. As the eyes finishes booting you spot the leylines criss-crossing your room. You knew you picked a good spot for your apartment. A good spot to tap into the Weave.

Speaking of which, you glance down at your hand, where you had a mana adapter installed, and thin fibers extend and retract from the center of your palm. A LOSSWIN FD3 forward-compatible universal mana interface, a top-end item designed for consummate professionals and the children of the top corpo execs. Guaranteed to interface with any magitech interface, and most physical locks besides. An essential part of any cracker's toolkit, if they could afford one.

The mana shielding you installed seems to have gone wrong, though. You can't even find a manufacturer for it, but it looks cool as shit, tracing glowing blue spirals under your skin. It doesn't hurt as much anymore, but there's still a distracting pulsing pain across your entire body. Maybe that's what the doc was warning about.

You gingerly get out of bed, and put on your technorobe and cyberwizard hat. You took your handle from the greats. Captain Nemo. Odysseus. Anonymous. You wield the Gauntlet of Wizardry, and with your vibrokatana in hand, you can take on the world.

What would you like to do?

Spoiler: ooc (click to show/hide)

Magic isn't real, but sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, so I'll continue to play along. Also, you're only supposed to get one implant, and if you take multiple I'm downgrading them a bit from the actual roll.

[Eniteris]

Hmm. This life will not do. I should return to the dome, and break it, free my kind so that we may rule over this city together.
But first I will need more resources.

Fly up, find this city's highest vantage point. I must obtain power! For for that I must find where power is concentrated.

You take off and soar upwards the city on one of the many thermals, rising far above the undercity. The air is cleaner up here, but the rain is omnipresent, making it hard to see. And there's always the giant ghost birds.

The giant ghost birds scare you a little. They fly in neat little lines, but you haven't been able to talk to them yet, and every time you try to get close you feel sick, and they often seem to be deliberately avoiding you. But they are big, bigger than a human. Sometimes they sleep on the undercity, and even though you've poked around them, you haven't been able to wake them up.

But even the giant ghost birds stay away from the Ghost of the Shiny Thin Cliffs. Every so often a ghost bird will perch on the shiny thin cliffs, but most of them keep very far away. Once, you saw the Ghost of the Shiny Thin Cliffs get angry and strike a ghost bird from the sky, killing it instantly, vomiting up humans that fell to their deaths.

You stay away from the Shiny Thin Cliffs, even though you're pretty sure the dome is in that direction.

The other way is towards the sprawl of the undercity. Not as shiny as the Thin Cliffs, but almost as full of ghosts, and every so often you can spot something sparkly. Especially the Street That Smells of Blood and Ghosts, though the people there don't like it when you try to talk to the ghosts.

You should probably stay out of the territory of the Murder of Many Windows, though there seems to be a lot of humans there, along with food. You don't think they want to see you there again.

[Egan_BW]

This cliff ghost fellow seems promising, he would make a fine enforcer.

[Egan_BW]

Anyways, I know what I've got going for me. I'll have to talk some ghosts into joining my cause.

Browse the Sprawl for any interesting ghosts. Maybe I find find some more information this way.

[BlackPaladin99]

go for a walk.  might as well see what happens. 

[King Zultan]

Drink that bottle of alcohol I have, if it turns out to be empty look through the buildings until I see a bottle that isn't.

[Eniteris]

Anyways, I know what I've got going for me. I'll have to talk some ghosts into joining my cause.

Browse the Sprawl for any interesting ghosts. Maybe I find find some more information this way.

The Sprawl is full of ghosts. In the buildings, in the road, in the people and pets. You glide above, taking note of the ghosts that pass below.

Most of the ghosts are with people. Some are with them, some are in them, but you know from experience that humans don't take kindly to you trying to talk to their ghosts. You might be able to get one of their pets, but that would require a dog of the right personality, and cats are right out. A couple of ghosts flit around in their armored bodies, scrubbing the road, or looking out at the view like you.

The best targets are the buildings. They don't move around and don't try to shake you off when you talk to them, though most of them look like Locke. Some of them have food, but the humans often try to shoo you away whenever you talk to those ones.

You notice an especially bright ghost coming from one of the buildings. You've seen it around before, but haven't been able to find a way to talk to it yet. Maybe you should try it out again?

[Eniteris]

go for a walk.  might as well see what happens. 

You leave your apartment, wincing at each step. The leylines leading into your neighbor's apartment seem pretty strong, but there's fewer of them. Maybe you can ask to borrow their convergence point. You make a note to ask about that later.

You go down the fourteen flights of stairs before hitting ground level, into the shitty streets below. The cleaning spirits have long ago abandoned this place, and the ground outside the apartment complex is covered in a thick layer of bird excrement. They hang around the building, taking offerings left on the windowsills, but they've long since learned to leave you alone.

Beyond the apartment is a small courtyard, the dead branches of trees heavy with the number of crows. They all stare at you as you pass by. You could swear that there's magic at work here, but nothing registers in your eye. Only the background hum of the mystic world.

You notice one leyline, though, brighter than the rest, leading from your neighbor's apartment and out into the Sprawl. The leylines connect everything. You may want to see where it goes.

You step into a main Sprawl street, splashing into the gutter as the water flows outwards. The rain spatters on your hat. Street food vendors hawk their wares to your left, and a couple of thugs gather to your right, eyeing those passing by.

The world is your oyster, if oysters hadn't gone extinct last year.