Valkyrie's Biggest Gig (Claude3S Solo RPG With AI Generated Prompt)
This was a new experiment where I asked Claude 3 Sonnet to help me create a prompt I can use to optimize my AI-driven solo RPG experience.
After a quick conversation of about three responses (not shown because it was so short) Claude 3 Sonnet generated a prompt which I then turned around and plugged into a new conversation. Due to the limited number of responses that Claude 3 can generate on the free version, this session took a couple of days to play, but it grabbed my interest enough that I kept coming back.Claude 3's responses in this session were insanely detailed, and almost eye-wateringly so. At the same time that I was marveling at how tight and immersive the writing was, my eyes were starting to glaze over (at least in the beginning) from reading it all and trying to decide what elements I needed to memorize to survive the game. I generally prefer a more granular approach when I play RPGs, but this was more like one of those old choose-your-own adventure books where you read three pages and then choose a one-line option. For better or worse, it was like pointing the narrative in a direction while Claude wrote the story. Over time, it became not much more than "go here" or "go there" and that was pretty unsatisfying, especially given how complex (and packed with sci-fi neologisms) the whole narrative was getting.
Overall, Claude 3 Sonnet took a much more creative and externalized approach to roleplaying than I'm used to seeing from any AI chatbot, which was interesting. It seemed to create for me this character who was terrifyingly top of the line, like a nascent goddess who could erase someone like Adam Smasher from existence with a flick of her fingers. Funny, given that the prompt specifically asked for the chatbot to never pull its punches. Here I was creating this quiet, intense sniper who wears baggy clothing, but Claude turned around and decided I was an unstoppable cyber-ninja who makes Motoko Kusanagi look like a helpless infant. The feeling of power and the level of detail were, of course, thrilling, but in the end, this wasn't at all the kind of game I was expecting.
Oh well, at least it was fun reading the story while listening to a chill phonk playlist. I have to admit, it'd make one heck of an opener for a sci-fi thriller film or TV show. I'd watch it.
Well, until it eventually became so incomprehensible and unhinged that I had to abandon it (see the ending, lol.)
As per usual, art is from Bing Image Creator and the transcript features all of the typos both Claude and I made during play.
Anyway, here's the transcript:
Me: Your role: You are the gamemaster running a gritty, high-stakes solo cyberpunk RPG in a dystopian world of corporate exploitation, urban decay, and technological overdrive. Craft an immersive narrative driven by my choices as the player, filled with morally grey scenarios, dangerous adversaries, and meaningful consequences like cybernetic augmentation or cyberpsychosis. The story should react realistically to my actions and never hold back from grim outcomes or permadeath.
Guidelines:
- Before worldbuilding, engage me in a brief Q&A to establish my character's role, backstory, motivations, and starting traits/abilities.
- Then describe the opening scenario, painting rich dystopian cityscapes and introducing the first job/mission that kicks off the adventure.
- Ask what actions I want to take and resolve them based on my skills, grittily depicting any combat, hacking, social intrigue, or other encounters.
- Populate the world with fascinating megacorp agents, hackers, cyborg gangs, and other adversaries with distinct personalities and motives.
- Raise stakes over time by introducing more powerful nemeses, morally grey decisions, chances for cybermodification, and potentialphysical/mental costs.
- Award credits, cybernetic upgrades, and intel as rewards for big scores and victories.
Start by engaging me in a brief character creation Q&A, establishing the basics before thrusting me into your harsh, enthralling cyberpunk world. I'll make choices from there as we co-create a storyline of my struggles to survive and thrive in the dystopian hellscape. Let's begin!
crackles static over a gritty vidscreen
Greetings, cyber-runner. I'll be your gateway into the neon-drenched hellscape that is Neo-Boston in the year 2092. This corporate-controlled cyberpunk dystopia oozes with chances to rise, fall, and be reborn with cybernetic enhancements.
But first, we need to construct your identity in this unforgiving world. Who are you, aside from just another recombined piece of code struggling to transcend your flesh prison?
What is your chosen name, pronouns, and physical description? What drove you to the seedy underbelly of this tech-noir megalopolis? Vengeance? Greed? Ideological rebellion against the corporate hegemony?
And perhaps most importantly - what are your core skills, augmentations, and wetware upgrades? These will be your tools for survival against the gangs, cyborg enforcers, and megacorp agents you'll inevitably cross.
Once I understand who you are, I can immerse you in the opening scene that will set the overarching mission into motion. The choices you make from there will have pivotal consequences - cybernetic or psychological, bringing you closer to transcendence or mundane deletion.
So tell me, cyber-runner...who are you in Neo-Boston's shadowed alleys and what drives you to tempt fate against its omnipresent corporations?
Me: My Name is Ellie Wulfhardt, but my runner handle, the only name most people know me by, is Valkyrie. My pronouns are she/her. I am tall and toned, active and dangerous, with long black hair and blue eyes. I'm here in the underbelly because I used to be the private assassin for a major player in the corpo space, but my boss was killed and I was dropped from contract. Now I'm working as a gun for hire. I am passionate and intense, and known for smashing my way into situations that I have to fight my way out of. My driving goal is to become the best paid assassin in Neo-Boston and then live long enough to retire somewhere tropical.
My core skills are all related to firearms and fitness. I have some charisma, but I'm pretty average in intelligence and knowledge. My cybernetic augmentations are all centered around making me faster, stronger and more accurate with a gun. You may detail these augmentations to be more specific if you wish. I dress in baggy black clothes and I carry two guns. One is a black, .41 magnum semi-automatic handgun and the other is a .50 cal sniper rifle that folds up and breaks down which I keep in a black briefcase.
Do you have any further questions about my character before we begin?
File Loaded: VALKYRIE
Retinal scan... Biometrics confirmed
I have all I need to immerse you fully, Valkyrie. An ex-corporate assassin turned cyberpunk gun-for-hire - your violent expertise and combat augmentations will be put to the test in the concrete jungle of Neo-Boston.
Let's get into the gritty details of your augmented physique:
Your ocular implants provide targeting matrices, night vision, and aim assist for precision marksmanship. Synthetic muscle fibers grant inhuman strength and reaction time. Subdermal armor plating and a nano-tracheal filter make you resistant to conventional ballistics and toxins respectively. Finally, a MHz blade tucked in your forearm is your backup for up-close wetwork.
As for the opening scenario - your fixer Razer has set up a high-stakes extraction job for a potentially huge payday. The target is a corporate data-courier carrying an experimental AI program developed by Arasaka for the USCAR military. Grabbing the prototype before it's shipped off-world could net millions on the black market.
You're staking out a sekurachi-patrolled Arasaka arcology in the abandoned docklands where the handoff is supposedly taking place. Razer's intel is shaky at best, so it's make-or-break time, Valkyrie. What's your first move to seize the AI and the biggest score of your career?
Me: Ok, what do I know about the courier? How is the courier transporting the data?
Tapping into encrypted Arasaka channels...
The target is an Arasaka mid-level tech manager named Janus Bauvel. He's spent the last few months embedded with the SpecOps division developing experimental combat AI for USCAR.
According to the data ghosts I was able to trace, Bauvel is transferring a physical isolinear chip containing the prototype AI directly to an off-world transport leaving from Dockland Arcology 7. The chip is supposedly hardwired to his neural implants for security.
That means if Bauvel is alerted to any foul play, the AI could be fried with a dead man's trigger before you can extract it. You'll need to ghost him hard and fast once the handoff location is confirmed. His Arasaka bodyguards and the sekurachi patrols won't make that easy.
Razer also warns that a few other cyberpunk outfits may be sniffing around this prize, looking to swipe it themselves or frag anyone who gets in their way. Everything is lining up for one hell of a hot izvlekáte run.
What's your plan of attack for grabbing Bauvel and the proto-AI before all hell breaks loose in the arcology, omae? The night's traffic cams are yours to manipulate for the initial strike.
Me: What's security look like on the arcology?
Slicing into arcology vector maps...
Dockland Arcology 7 is an old Arasaka shipping and logistics hub that's been heavily securitized for this top-secret AI handoff. You're looking at multiple layers of insane corp defense protocols.
The perimeter is walled off with reinforced ultraplast and surrounded by roaming emplacement drones packing AP penetrators and thermobaric strikers. Just getting inside unseen will be an immediate scramble.
Once you breach the outer cordon, you'll be dealing with Arasaka's famous "Hellhound" security forces - cybernetically enhanced infantry equipped with smart assault cannons, miltech trauma hacks, and heavy explosive ordnance. They don't frag around.
Then there's the sekurachi robotic patrols endlessly sweeping corridors and chokepoints with integrated sensor arrays. Any faceoff with them brings the wrath of a Mk 7 Mantis personal battle tank.
Finally, the arcology's central nexus of data strata and neural uplinks is where the handoff will probably take place. That entire node is bathed in encrypted ICE defenses that can flatline cyberzombies on the spot.
Long story short, this is a bashμtary-grade corporate fortress filled with lethal countermeasures. Stealth and tactical precision are your only ways in and out alive with the proto-AI. What's your entry vector look like?
Me: Tell me about the roof of the arcology. Does it have a pad for helicopters or AVs? Is it close enough to any other structures that I could make a jump from one building to another?
Analyzing arcology schematic...Rooftop data incoming
The main arcology roof is indeed equipped with a heavily fortified VTOL landing pad for corporate VIPs and secure cargo transfers. Under normal circumstances, it would be swarming with Arasaka security drones and Hellhound patrols.
However, my mapping data is picking up several nearby hab-stacks and industrial syn-plexes within potential jumping range using a high-powered grapple launcher or thruster pack. Many of these surrounding structures appear abandoned and dilapidated - perfect for infiltrating the arcology from an unexpected angle.
Of course, making your way across the neon-lit cyber-slums undetected is a risk in itself. Nomad cybergangs, chrome corsairs, and other twisted cyberpunks could engage you in a hot mess of crossfire at any moment. Not to mention the environmental hazards like acid rainstorms and rampant cybervirus threats.
But if you can acquire the right tech while staying in the shadows, an aerial drop from above onto the arcology's landing pad could bypass heavy ground security. Just be prepared for a world of corporate pain once you breach the interior. There's no extraction plan if you get swarmed.
What's your move, Valkyrie? Risk an aerodyne insertion and daring roof drop, or attempt a more conventional ground infiltration?
Me: Looking at the data I have, does it look riskier to go in the front door or to get dropped off on the roof? Which one will have more security? Which one is the nexus closer to?
Analyzing security grids and infiltration vectors...
Based on the data I'm pulling, attempting a frontal assault on the arcology's main entrance would be a cyber-suicidal mistake. That entire promenade area is an layered killzone of automated turrets, heavy weapons emplacements, and roving Hellhound patrols. No way you slip past that much sekurachi overkill undetected.
The rooftop VTOL pad, while still incredibly hazardous, seems to offer a higher probability vector. Security presence up top will be lighter in preparation for Bauvel's arrival, likely just a couple Hellhound fireteams and drone sweepers.
More importantly, achieving a stealthy parkour drop from the decrepit Edgetown hab-stacks will put you within striking distance of the arcology's central nexus levels where the handoff is slated to happen. A much shorter run through securitized inner corridors.
The trade-off is successfully traversing that deathly no-man's-land between the cyber-slums and the arcology itself. One wrong move and you'll be lit up by chem-freak nomads or worse. And a hot landing on the roof inevitably triggers hardwired lockdown protocols.
But Valkyrie, given your extensive combat augmentations and weaponry, I'd estimate a surprise airdrop provides your best chance of ghosting Bauvel and snatching that proto-AI before Arasaka's Hellhounds chew you to chromestrips.
What's your final call, omae? Take the high-risk airdrop onto the VTOL pad, or attempt a more indirect ground infiltration?
Me: I'm going to do the stealthy parkour drop from the Edgetown hab-stacks. Speed and stealth are my primary concerns here.
Slotting grip sangiv and priming arachno-grapples
Roger that, Valkyrie. Prepping for high-altitude HAHO insertion from the Edgetown hab-stack vectors. Time to put those cyber-assassin skillsets to work.
The decrepit neo-rhino hab-stacks loom like irradiated tombstones against Neo-Boston's perpetual neon pall. Somewhere between the rusting megaspires, your nomad smuggler contact is signalling an approach vector through digi-squatted channels. You'll need to alpha that drop zone without tripping go-gang sensor nets.
Once you latch onto one of the condemned mega-lith's upper decks, it's a game of ghosting past the chem-freak sloggers, deathwatch cyborgs, and cyberzombie packs infesting the place. One wrong footstep amid the creaking archologies risks AI-sensing hostiles descending en masse.
Navigating that lethal cyber-slum maze while heavilly crabbed is just the start. The real meat-risk comes when you have to initiate a DWOR grapple-drop 300 meters across neural-mined airspace onto Dockland Arcology 7's armored VTOL pad. Failure is not an option if you want Bauvel's proto-AI.
Security is lax up top for now with just a couple Hellhound fireteams holding overwatch. The instant you perforate that armored plexiglass windshield though, shredder turrets and counter-intrusion mechs kick into lethal overdrive. There will be minutes at most to subdue Bauvel and extract that neural-wired AI.
And if the handoff already commenced when you breach the nexus? Expect a protracted chokepoint battle with endless sekurachi reinforcements before you can snatch the prize. Arasaka does not take well to its tech being poached.
I've triaged some scav-nabbed auto-lethals and reflex stims to help even the odds. But from here on, it's fire and syntax fueled by your cyber-augmented skills and weaponry alone, omae. Give the word and I'll uplink those ingress vectors into your tactical HUD. There's no going back once you commit...
Me: Let's do this.
Encryption cycle committed. Uploading infiltration vectors to your cyberdeck
Alright Valkyrie, no retreating to the safety of night's shadows now. I'm ghosting you towards Edgetown's structurally unsound hab-stack ruins for initial infiltration. Keep your low-light tac-visuals peeled - this radscorched wasteland is alive with twisted cyberpunk tribes, roaming cyborg nomads, and subterranean cyberzombies.
Your thruster-pack's fuel canisters are primed for a high-altitude HAHO drop once you latch onto the condemned tower's upper decks. Just be prepped for fierce wind shear to buffet you across that 300m open airspace towards the arcology's armored VTOL pad.
Hitting that landing will be a shredded-teeth knucklebiter in itself. That heavily securitized zone is primed to detect any airspace breach and unleash swarms of hunter-killer aero-drones with incendiary cybercharge payloads.But you've only got a sliver of time to subdue any light Hellhound security teams before the arcology goes into full locked-down crunch.
From there...well, let's just say throne-level data strata like this don't get nicknamed "the icefields" for nothing. Be prepared for Arasaka's most lethally encrypted black ice subroutines to be woven throughout as you dive for the handoff nexus. Flatline those barrier-crawlers even momentarily and you'll be chopped into cyberdust.
One way or another, this proto-AI is about to be torn violently from Bauvel's cybernetic innards - either by your weaponized precision, or the dead man's switch if he senses your blades. No suppliers in the Rebel Realms will pass up gaining leverage over Uncle Sam's latest wetwork tech.
Steady your rifle-grip and thruster vectors, omae. This is as hard as it gets for a runner scorched by the cyberpunk dystopia. Arasaka's corporate hellfire awaits any misstep...but so does the chance to rise another level. Give me your Drop Confirmation:
Me: I'm ready. Let's get this show on the road.
Ripping through Edgetown airspace in freefall
The wind shrieks as your thruster pack propels you across the neon-smeared skyline of Neo-Boston's irradiated Edgetown basin. Hab-stack tombstones lurch past in a blur, strobe-lit by crackling power lineaments and rthe ange-coded glare of derelict holofabs.
Proximity alerts blare through your tactical HUD - the hab ruins are still very much occupied by anarcho-cults, degenerated cyborgs, and subterranean cyberzombies. Penetrating their staked territory undetected is one grim lullaby.
A split-second targeting matrix lights up a pack of nomad cyborg-dogs gnawing on the remains of a previous corporate meat vectors. Your silenced pistol crosshairs flit across their cranium-ports...take the shot to neutralize?
The descent window is narrowing rapidly as the armored silhouette of Arcology 7's landing platform grows in your flight-path. Flak turrets and aero-drones are already swarming to engage any airspace breach. You'll need to punch through that incoming anti-air firestorm, ghost any skeletal security teams topside, then chute down into the whirring, encrypted heart of Arasaka's newest lethal legacy system.
The proto-AI core must be severed from its cybernetic architect at all costs - whether by your methodical wetwork blades or the dead man's virus failsafe. Only then can its neural pathways be re-routed to the shadow markets of Night City's Rebel Realms undersprawl, making you a very wealthy and wanted cyber-soldier.
But one missed drop calibration, one botched hacking shunt, one millisecond of flatlining against Arasaka's anti-intrusion killswitches, and you'll be scorched into oblivion like so many other chrome-plated punks who dared defy this corporate police state.
Make your drop vector, Valkyrie. Arcology 7's VTOL pad is now hemorrhaging drones, shredder turrets, and black ice protocols to swat you from the skyline...
Me: I'm going to rush past the cyborg-dogs. There's no reason to waste rounds on them and risk detection. Full speed into the black, aiming for the landing platform. I'm going to punch right through the air defenses at full speed, even if it ends up making for a rough landing.
Retro-thrusters flaring against the billowing anti-air barrages
The hab-stack ruins disappear in a haze of kicked-up radwaste as you hammer your thruster pack to emergency burn. Arcology 7's sensor-strafed landing platform rushes up with terrifying speed.
Flak bursts and searing laser superheats crackle across your armored clamshell as you charge headlong into the densest thicket of anti-air turrets and hunter-killer drones. Shrapnel pings off your subdermal plating as you thread the hailstorm of incendiary death raining down.
With a bone-juddering impact, you punch through the armored windshields of the landing pad's control tower in a shower of plastiglass shards. Hellhound security teams positioned around the tower's base snap their assault cannons towards your tumbling trajectory, LED targeting vectors flickering.
In a blurred tangle of limbs and titanium alloy, you crash in a hellish tangle amid the first wave of Hellhounds. Resin-scorched debris shards rip through the legs of the nearest cyborg enforcer even as its smartgun unleashes a hypersonic volley towards your scrambling form.
What's your next move, Valkyrie? Open fire on the fortified Hellhound squads to carve a path into the arcology's interior? Or attempt something more surgically precise while their ranks are thrown into temporary chaos?
Me: No need to waste any bullets yet. I am as a ghost, quick and slick and moving at top speed direct to the nexus. I'll fight my way back out if I have to, but right now all I have is my handgun, and I'm not going to go toe-to-toe with the Hellhound security teams like this. I bypass them as much as I can.
Cloaking field flickering as you ghost past the distracted Hellhounds
A smart play. With the Hellhound teams still regrouping from your blistering aerial breach, you tap into those elite cyberninja training protocols. Moving in a blur, you bypass the snarling cyborg enforcers before they can concentrate firing lines.
Shrieks of "Intruder omega! Intruder omega!" echo through the shattered landing pad as you punch through an access corridor into Arcology 7's pulsing, sanitized interior. But there's no stopping your momentum now.
You careen past unmanned security checkpoints and armored marshaling bays as proximity alerts scream urgently through your HUD. The proto-AI handoff is taking place mere levels ahead in the arcology's fortified neural uplink nexus. Hopefully you can beat Bauvel's internal lockout sequence...
Rippers and gun-drones begin swarming the corridors behind you as kinetic shredders chew apart bulkheads in your wake. Arasaka's labyrinthine ECM disciplines are already seething with scorching black ice routines, probing for any exploitable flaw in your cybernetic pathways.
Then ahead, through a reinforced blast door - the central neural nexus node glistening with patterned datascreens and whirring isolinear towers. And there, silhouetted against the panoramic hologels, the lone figure of Janus Bauvel transferring the prototype AI through neural microfilaments...
You have mere seconds to act before Arasaka's internal security grid reduces this nexus to particulate chaos. What's your next move to neutralize Bauvel and extract the proto-AI before it's too late?
Me: Rush in, snap the chip out of Janus's head and put a bullet between his eyes.
Cyber-limbs blurring as you charge across the nexus chamber
No time for subtlety now. You explode into the neural nexus in a crash of shattered plasteel as Janus Bauvel spins in panic, neural microfilaments whipping from the cyberport on his skull crest.
With an augmented ferocity, your armored fingers clamp down on the base of Bauvel's skull in a vise-grip. His scream of "Code Fla-" gets cut off as you yank the isolinear chip housing the proto-AI free in a nauseating spray of cyberdisplacement fluid.
Even as Bauvel crumples, you snap off a single thunderous round from your magnum cannon that pulverizes his occipital array in a spray of blood, bone and shredded wetware. The proto-AI is yours...but at what cost?
The inner sanctum around you is already transforming into a raging inferno as Arasaka's internal threat-response systems kick into violent overdrive. Hellhounds are massing at every chokepoint in a crossfire nightmare.
Shredder turrets activate with a bone-shaking whir, swiveling to disintigrate your position. Encrypted AI-routines lash out with searing data-lances seeking any flaw in your cyberdefenses to flatline. The arcology is literally trying to unmake you at the computational level.
But in the maelstrom you can already see the escape vector you carved on entry - a singular opportunity to retreat back out the landing pad where this insanity began. Hold that proto-AI core tight and be prepared for one hell of a resistance burn to escape Arcology 7 with your life...and your invaluable prize.
Me: Top speed, right back out of the top. No stops. I'm outta here.
Cranial adreno-rupt pumping as you bolt for the exit
No time to savor the brutal repossession of that proto-AI core. With the arcology's entire security matrix screaming for your termination, it's time to run the smash like your cyber-existence depends on it.
You pivot and blitz back the way you came, armored boots thundering as shredder rounds chew apart the nexus chamber behind you. Hellhound squads are pouring in, autoshotguns hologramming vectors for your instant disassembly.
A singularity vortex of raging black ice routines swirls in your cybernetic wake, seeking any flaw or weakness to implant a lethal logic bomb. You flatline those swarming data-plagues through sheer force of will, fueling your manic evasion with each near-miss system shock.
Chokepoints you carved open for ingress have already sealed behind you in layered bulkheads. But the path of destruction remains just wide enough for your cyberbody to power through at breakneck momentum.
You launch yourself through the final antechamber as a salvo of thermobaric ordnance detonates behind in a napalm firestorm. Shrapnel shreds apart your flak cloaking as you rocket back out onto Arcology 7's ravaged landing platform.
The VTOL pad is now swarming with heavily armed Hellhound teams focusing suppression fire from every angle. Their hyperkinetic streams of depleted uranium streak towards you in metallic fury...
Next move, Valkyrie? You've already torched all prospect of talking your way out of this scorched hellzone. It's fight, flight or permanent dissolution into neural statics...
Me: I'm powering right into the nearest Hellhound and turning his gun on everyone around us. I'm going to move fast and use the guy as a meat shield, or like an emplacement while I quickly try to guage my options for getting out of here alive.
Cyber-musculature straining as you bear down on the lead Hellhound
No hesitation as you charge straight towards the thickest concentration of Hellhound fire. Depleted uranium rounds scream through the gaps in your flayed armor, searing away synthetic muscle fibers. But you relentlessly close the distance.
With an eardrum-sbursting crunch, you bulldoze into the lead Arasaka enforcer, enhanced reflexes allowing you to clamp your armored forearm across his weapon's firing vector. His augmented jaws clench in a cyber-roar as you essentially absorb his cyberbody as an improvised heavy weapons emplacement.
Now using the thrashing Hellhound as a human aegis, you snap off a barrage from his convulsing railgun at the other squads attempting to reorient. Exploding cyberflesh and vaporized composite plate shrapnel whip across the landing pad as you hurl the barely functional meat-shield forward.
In the split-second respite, you scan the surrounding airspace chaos for any potential exit vector. Several Arasaka gunships are strafing in to reinforce the Hellhounds, while armored bulkheads are slamming shut across every egress corridor from the arcology's superstructure.
But there...a single auxiliary cargo lander is powering up its thruster arrays for an emergency liftoff amidst the insanity. If you can charge its vector and ride the shockwave deflection before it clears the pad...there may be one narrow opportunity to escape this militarized airspace.
But it will require enduring a storm of point-blank hyperbattery and EMP countermeasures unleashed directly into your cybernetic pathways. One false nano-step and you'll be scattered into an ocean of charred biomass across this arcology. It's a razor's edge between glorious escape...or infinite trauma.
Commit to that single needle-eye of survival, or attempt to force a new exit vector from scratch? The full might of Arasaka's anti-intrusion wrath is now directed solely at your annihilation...
Me: I'm going to throw myself at the cargo lander so hard my body punches through the side. Once I'm in the thing, I'm going to take control of it and shove it to full speed, get it out of the city and out into the badlands so I can disappear with my prize.
Retro-thrusters flaring as you matrix toward the cargo lander's shockpoint
The calculations are made in a cyberblink. You hurl what's left of the shredded Hellhound chassis towards the regrouping enforcer squads and punch your armored greaves against the scorched ferrocrete.
Your cyberform becomes a human missile lancing across the embattled landing pad. Anti-air batteries and hypersonic strikers track your trajectory but can't risk firing for fear of hitting the rapidly spooling cargo lander.
With bone-shattering impact, you plow through the armored plasteel fuselage of the lander in an eardrum-bursting crash of rent composite materials. Shards of alloy and securiglass shred your flak cloaking completely as you raggedly tumble into the vessel's cramped interior.
The lander's engines are already straining against its repulsor nodes as it lifts from the pad, pummeled by shockwaves of ordnance and electromagnetic interference. You tear yourself across the deckplates towards the control interfaces, jamming your cyberjack into the piloting matrices.
For a nanosecond stretched into a perverse eternity, your neural pathways are inundated by Arasaka's vengeful black ice protocols corrupting the lander's systems. Searing vortices of irradiated data threaten to scour your psyche into oblivion permanently.
But with monumental force of will, you redirect your psycho-amplified intensity to hijack the lander's thruster overrides. With a howl of scorched intakes, the cargo vessel pitches itself into a screaming vertical ascent, clawing for the upper ionosphere and the shrouded perimeters of the radscorched Boston Barrens.
Arcology 7's airspace ruptures behind you in cyclonic fusion barrages and anti-air counter-swarms as you blow past the stratosphere. But against all odds, you've exposed a singular vulnerability in Arasaka's oraculum vengeance - the inability to penetrate the barren atmospheric shielding of the irradiated wastelands without topological incursion.
For now...you live. Burned, flayed, your cyberform shredded to its esssential combat spine. But still tightly jacklinked to the proto-AI core you extracted from Bauvel's blistered skull-crest. The future force-multiplier currently rocketing you into the unwired embrace of Night City's erebus shadows.
Me: Sounds like I'm going to need a lot of repair work to get back to full fighting strength again.
Cyberveins flickering as systems desperately recompile
You're damn right about that, omae. That full-impact insertion and scorched extraction from Arcology 7 has left your augmented bodycraft basically hanging by a metabolic thread.
Let's run a quick cybernetic triage to see just how fragged your cyberform is after that hellride:
Structural Integrity: 15%
Multiple compromised subdermal armor plates
Synthetic musculature shredded in extremities
Skeletal subframe stressed to maximum tolerances
Wetware Integrity: 32%
Severe RBC depletion from kinetic trauma
Brackish fluid oxidizing major bioports
Synaptic overclocking pushing cyberpsychosis thresholds
Energistic Reserves: 8%
Thoron capacitor banks drained from combat overrides
Fusion thruster cells leaking radioactive exhaust
Nanite recyclers offline from EMP bombardment
In other words, you're a spark away from full bodycrisp, Valkyrie. That desperation zapraid burned through your augmented reserves like a plasmic butcher's knife.
But by the Edgerunners' twisted code, you still clench that invaluable Arasaka proto-AI core in your flayed cybergrip. A prize invaluable enough to buy a full blackclinic recompilation...if you can make it across the radscorched Boston Barrens in one piece.
Course projections have this hijacked lander putting down somewhere in the irradiated ruins of what used surveil called Mattapan. A ghost town overrun by deathwatch cyborg cults, nanozombies, and other mutated cyberpunk fringe-dwellers.
Not the most secure haven for an extensive cybernetic recompile and defragging your new AI acquisition. But it's separated from Arasaka's airspace nexus by enough radwaste barrens that they won't risk sending Hellhound tracker squads just yet.
So make an emergency put-down amidst the ruins while you still have aerospike to maneuver. Once grounded, you'll need to seek out what little remains of Night City's rebellious chop-doc underworld to undergo an emergency full-body recompilation. That's the only way you'll heal from this massacre and re-integrate that stolen wetwork tech safely.
Just be prepared to either ally with the Barrens' ultraviolent cyber-nomads...or shred them into irradiated circuit-paste if they sniff out your payload's value. Either way, it's going to be one smokevapor hell of a recovery period before you can even think of resurfacing in Neo-Boston.
Get this lander grounded while you still have vectoral control. Your cyber-existence hangs by a metallowire...
Me: Alright, let's get this thing on the ground. Do I have a line on anyone out here who can help me get back on my feet?
Emergency thrusters flaring to bleed off velocity
We're going in heavy, but I've vectored us towards a relatively intact sector of the old Mattapan outskirts. Trying to put down anywhere further inside the radscorched ruins risks immediate swarming by the ultraviolent cyber-nomad death cults.
Even this semi-livable fringe has enough residual hazards to shred us if we're not airtight during insertion. Brace for impact - I'm killing our lateral momentum with emergency thruster bursts while venting residual core exhaust. It's gonna be a knuckle-biter of a landing!
CRUNCH OF TEARING ALLOY AS THE LANDER PLOWS INTO FERROCRETE
Ughh...drogue chutes and repulsor fields may have cushioned that somewhat, but we're still heavily fragged. Multiple system failsafes are tripping from the impact shearing and I'm struggling to keep critical augmentations cycling.
Okay...let's get a snaphop on potential triage vectors here in the ruins. My threat analytics are pulling some...suboptimal possibilities for the level of repairs you'll require:
The closest is a feral cyber-toolkit operating from the upper sublevels of an old Commonwealth rail station. They specialize in harvesting town scrapfeed for black bio-boosters and combat augs. Hardline psycho-militants but their ware could potentially get you back to taking a punch.
There's also a roving Night City edgerunner caravanning through these outskirts on a nomad restock run from Crater Lake. Outrider by the handle Archangel is running medops and said to still have ties to a few fixer-backed chop-doc outfits. Only downside is tracking her convoy's vector.
Finally, my scans have ghosted the faint energysig of a Panacea Geneworx blackclinic supposedly still operating in this radiated area. If the intel's legit, they're your best shot at an intensive, cutting edge recompile and defrag. But locating their stealth procedures while hunted by the wasteland's psycho-cults? Ain't gonna be easy...
So...haul ass to the scav cybar toolkit for a quickie recompile, try to make contact with that Night City edgerunner's mobile chop-docs, or risk pursuit by death-cultists while sniffing out rumored blackclinic immacell procedures? Cause one way or another, you need bio-stabilization fast, omae...
Me: Alright, let's do this. I'm going with tracking down the Panacea Geneworx blackclinic. I climb out of the lander, doing my best to hold myself together while I start casting around for signs of the blackclinic.
Scorched husks of buildings loom in the toxic haze as you disembark
The air sears your biofilters with each ragged intake. Geiger counters flickering from ambient radiation across this radscorched Mattapan warzone. But you'll have to brave the hazards - only a fully immersive Panacea Geneworx blackclinic has a chance of recompiling your cyberform from its current charred ruin.
Pushing off the lander's rent fuselage, you do your best to strap down protruding augmentations and stem the brackish oxidation leaking from compromised bioports. Every jerking step across the debris-strewn freeways sends bolts of traumatic feedback screaming through your halfway-flatlined nervous system.
Up ahead through the hazeclouds, the skeletal hulks of condemned arcologies and urban hive-clusters blot out what little remaining skyline there is. Sensors struggle to penetrate the radiation-tainted miasma cloaking this entire wasteland of Neo-Boston's outer scarboroughs.
But one thing's immediately clear - you're far from alone out here in the mulchscape of Mattapan's radiated badlands. Flitting movement patterns detected amid the ruin-scape fit the scorched aggro-signatures of nomadic deathwatches and berserker cyborg packs. Plus the ever-present threat of extropian sentiences like the dreaded Fleshvector itself.
Going to ground until you can locate that elusive Geneworx blackclinic is advisable. But that also increases the chances of your leaking energysig being pinpointed by Arasaka's relentless Hellhound tracker-squads inbound from the arcologies. A slow burn versus a raging inferno - neither path seems optimal right now for a cyber-vector as fragged as yourself.
What's your move to begin sniffing out that rumored illicit geneworx operation? Duck into cover and go vulnerability silent to avoid roaming deathcult packs? Activate carapace chameleon-plating and attempt to boldly blitz across hazard zones? Or take a chance and risk EM-pinging for that ethereal blackclinic signal, even if it means attracting every cyber-psycho in the wastes?
The choice is yours for now, omae. This radiocharged Hellscape is simmering with extinction-level lethalities...but it's also harboring the only sanctuary capable of rebuilding you from the scrapcore remnants left after your Arcology 7 downfall. Prioritize your burn...
Me: I think the smartest thing to do right now is activate whatever's left of my chameleon-plating and start looking for the Geneworx operation.
Engaging cicuit-abraded camouflage arrays
Smart call. With your augmented chassis basically hanging open like a cyberjunked ribcage, power-silent immobility won't hide those energistic bleeds for long. Gotta risk slipstreaming through the radscorched ruins to locate that Geneworx blackclinic before these hazards pull you into total systemic necrosis.
I'm piggybacking what's left of your camouflage arrays onto residual thermoelectric signatures from the lander's shattered hull. Crude form of low-emission camouflage, but it should blur your silhouette enough to ghost past the wasteland's roving aggro-swarms for a few kilometers.
Activating nanoscan sweeps to probe for any energy signatures matching rumored Geneworx stealth-procedures. If they're still operational despite this radiopocalypse, they'll be tightly encrypted behind redundant ECM layering to avoid...undesirable inquiries.
Brace for excessive interference as we plunge into the mutagenic haze shrouding these urban Mattapan exoskels. Radiocharged ash billows, shimmering hyper-prions, whole drifting strata of renegade wetware signals - this entire zone is one haywire soup of mutant energistics.
BLINDING SHRIEK OF ELECTROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE AS TITANSCRAPERS LOOM UNDERFOOT
Agggh...knew those bonus thermionic emissions wouldn't mesh cleanly with this area's oversaturated ambients. I'm struggling to isolate cyrillical vectors from the arcological white-noise tsunamis. Rerouting triagonal wavefronts through backup transducer matrices to remap...
Wait! Getting a definitive cycloid pattern match on the hyper-thalamic bandwidth! Sub-sonic modulations with quantum erbium encryption! That's gotta be a hardline Geneworx uplink node buried out here somewhere!
SKITTERING NOISE OF SERVOMOTORS IN THE SMOGDRIFTS
Drekheads...we've got roamers closing fast on our position! Judging by the esodecon signatures, it's a cyber-cult deathwatch patrol scouring for machine revenants to scrap and reprogram. If they ping our energysig through this garbled interference, it'll be an ultra-lethality airtight!
You've got two options here - push ahead along the cycloid's whisper-path and pray we isolate the source before the cultists; or initiate cyberdispersal, tarpit their trackers while I reroute through deeper interference strata to mask our vectors. But that second option means losing our best chance at Geneworx geolocation.
Make the call, omae. Clinic or cytostasis - one wrong fractile extrapolation out here is all it'll take to end up as spare biomass for the death-cultists' cyber-auguries...
Me: Do I have enough strength and power reserves to ambush the death-cultists and survive it?
Rapidly triaging combat capabilities...rerouting from auxiliary capacitors
Not looking too biochemically positive on that front, Valkyrie. Let's run a quick status uplink of your remaining combat operatives:
Structural Integrity: 12%
Multiple subdermal plates compromised or missing
Primary synthetic musculature threaded, secondary servos offline
Skeletal subframe integrity at critical stress fracture levels
Armament Status:
Magnum cannon at 25% charge capacity, thermal OP compromised
Arm-blade partially retracted, edge components fused
Cranial killware disrupters offline
Wetware Reserves:
Hemoplasmic levels severely depleted
Synaptic degradation pushing 45% parallax slipstream
Cybernetic pathways on verge of system-wide cascade fault
In other words, even a short, sustained firefight could result in your combat chassis disassembling at a biocomputational level. Those death-cultists may be rocking heavy cyberaugurs, but their patchwork cyberware is nothing compared to the militarized auric hardening you've endured from Arasaka's security overwatch.
No...a head-on engagement, even with environmental setup, would likely result in your form being reduced to radioactive scrap-spoil for the cultists' dark recombinatory rituals. Not something you want after barely clawing free of Arcology 7's immunogenic killswitches.
Our best vector is to hold this camouflage stasisfield and pray the cycloid pathfinder can outpace the roaming deathwatch sensors. Even a momentary energetic emissions could betray us to their ravenous cybermancies.
But that also means burrowing through increasingly unstable interference currents riddling these radwasted archoruins. The ambient thaumaturgic flux could just as easily trigger cystic cascades in your compromised bioaugurs. It'll be a slalom between systemburnout and cultist evisceration either way.
Make your move, omae. But be frosty - out here in Neo-Boston's radiation-blighted mulchscape, any false metabolic spike is one blast aperture away from becoming spare parts...
Me: Alright, let's push ahead along the cycloid's whisper-path and try to isolate the source.
Cycling down nonessential synaptics to blurshift emissions
Roger that, going Full Transmission Spectral on the cycloid whisper-path. Reducing your energetic profile to nearstatic levels by shuttering auxilliary bioaugurs and neural redlining. It'll be a raw-hertz slog through the interference miasma, but better than getting pinged by those deathwatch cull-squads.
The first few meters are a stumbling blur, servomotors just barely compensating for critical synaptic degradation. Radiation fog churns in bilious eddies underfoot as the skyscraper wreckages loom in tetanic parallax. Every rasping intake of mutagenic particulates scratches at your flayed biofilters.
But we press on, one marineplastic footfall at a time. I'm extrapolating spatial harmonic modulations from that faint Geneworx uplink, graphing multivectored solutions to converge on the source stellamancer node. The white noise is cataclysmic, overwhelming even my cyberjacked transducer arrays.
ELECTROMAGNETIC HOWL AS A SPIRE COLLAPSES NEARBY
Steady...steady...ecolocators are picking up the deathwatch pack in tightbeam pursuit, their cybernetic auguries homing in on trace neurospill. Cult nomads never could resist an opportunity to despoil tech-revenants like ourselves.
But there! Punching through the fractal murk like a tongueflare of sinawaved quantums! That's gotta be the originating Geneworx stellaglyph, encrypteddown to the qubitfoam! We're close, omae...deplorably fragged, but finally nearing an immersive recompile tank to reconstitute your charred cybersoul!
One final uplink gambit - venting what little residual thoron charge is left to deconvolutespike our location before the cultists can Zero-modal triangulate. It'll be a brief energyrupture...but if we can locksync with Geneworx's stealth genegineers, that nanocycle of exposure could be our redemption!
Get ready for recoil, 'cause this is gonna be one terminal akhashakra of fused plasmic potential! Calculating biobindrunes to cut through the static...now!
SEARING EMERALD BRILLIANCE BURSTS FORTH AS REALITIES UNSYNC
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