The part that involves you
Be a runner.
The services that run the city manage themselves, and do it well. The net under them is hardware in buildings that somebody owns, there is never enough of it, and the owners compete for it. When that competition needs someone to go into another firm's racks, they hire a runner.
You take one job at a time, with one deck that has memory for about half of what you want to load. You take what you were sent for and disconnect before anyone works out who was in there.
The role, precisely
A contractor, hired by the job.
- Somebody else is paying
Work arrives from a client with a budget and a short brief. They hire you so the trip stays off their own payroll.
- Hired by the job
Each job stands on its own. You are paid when it is done, and the next one is a new contract.
- The deck is the whole of your capability
Memory is the scarce resource in every deck ever built, and the spec sheets say so. Before each raid you choose which kinds of ICE you can answer, and the raid plays out from that choice.
- Leaving is always available
Disconnecting banks everything you are holding, and you can do it at any moment. It is the only good ending, so a lost run is one where you stayed too long.
The first decision
Choose whose deck you run.
Two companies in this world make decks worth buying, and they disagree in public about which numbers matter. Both catalogues are online and in character, with part numbers, specifications and lead times.
Cybrscape
A two-bench repair shop from 2011 that started building whole decks in 2018. Five Marks, I to V, on a chassis where every serviceable part comes out on its own.
- Will deal with one person who owns one deck.
- Quotes in credits at the works. Memory is fitted, the deck is run for four hours against the mark's test card, and the signed card ships with it.
- Thirty-six months of warranty from the date on that card, and it transfers with the deck if you sell it.
- Publishes service turnaround monthly, including the months it missed.
Nitrosoft
One product line, five generations of it, shipped faster than most people finish paying for the last one. Their claim is that they waste less of the same memory than anybody else, and they publish the harness so you can check it yourself.
- Sells through a yard's supply desk: a quote is raised against a deck code and a quantity.
- Credits settle on the yard account, and they say so up front.
- Benchmarks everything, states the ceiling on its own headline number, and compares itself to Cybrscape by name.
- Slower to answer the phone, and their support page is specific about how much slower.
With Cybrscape you deal with the manufacturer, and the works knows your deck by its serial number. With Nitrosoft you get a line on somebody's supply account. Pick the one you would rather have.
Neither link is a shop. Both sites price everything in credits, and credits cannot be bought. Neither has a cart, a card field, a checkout or an account. If a page there ever looks as though it will take a payment, treat it as a bug in the fiction. Our terms say so in their first sentence.
Before you go
Six words that will get you through any page in this world.
Every term in the vocabulary is a thing somebody manufactures, licenses, resells or bills you for.
- Deck
The machine you jack in with. People buy them, finance them, have them repaired and outgrow them. Memory is the scarce resource in every deck ever built.
- Warez
Programs you load into a deck. Sold by people who are careful about invoices and careless about provenance.
- ICE
What a company puts in front of its data. There are three kinds, Barrier, Ward and Sentry, and each does a different job.
- Trace
How close someone is to knowing who did it: a guess, made by people at desks, that gets better the longer you stay.
- Credits
The money. In-world prices are in credits, and there is no way to buy them.
- The net
All of the above, plus the buildings it runs in. It is owned in pieces and routed between rivals, and its owners audit it less often than they think.
What is being asked of you
For now, the ask is two catalogues.
There is no account to make, no list to join and no code to redeem. The lite build, NetGodz RUN, plays in a browser. The full NETGODZ is in development with no date, and this site will be the first to say when that changes.
The five company websites are up now. Decide which deck you would run, and you have joined in as far as anyone can yet.