Chrome has a price. Push too much metal into a body and the mind snaps.
Chroma City: a neon megacity owned by three corporations and fought over by gangs. The snapped are called Redliners: unique, deadly bosses the city has to put down, and a hit show films every hunt. Start as a corporate trainee, a Gutter kid or a desert Outrider. Then a sealed case falls into your hands, and a voice inside it starts calling your name.
Every path ends the same way. A sealed case lands at your feet, and something inside it giggles. Hoshimura stole it. The Static Saints call it a god. Juno has her own reasons for wanting it. Everyone in the city wants what is on that chip.
Her name is Pixie. Slot her in, and she lives in your head: always listening, always teasing, and able to do things nobody in this city should be able to do.
After the opening, the whole city is open. What you write happens: your chrome works the way your persona says it does, and nobody undoes what you achieved.
Raised in Hoshimura's training programs. Your first assignment from Saeko Hoshimura: deliver a sealed case to Lumen, unopened. On the way, the case starts talking. The Live Wires hate corporations, so you start out distrusted.
Home with your mom, Lola, above a noodle shop. Outside, the Live Wires and the Static Saints start shooting over a case. When the smoke clears, it is lying at your feet.
Rolling up to the city with your best friend Rae when a Hoshimura transport crashes in the dunes ahead. There's a case in the wreck, and Rae wants to sell it in the city.
Redline is sanity under chrome. It climbs with implants, overclocking, diving into the networks and trauma. Drag the meter to watch someone go.
How much of a body is machine, 0–100%.
Ghost, Name, Problem, Legend.
Watts. Gigs pay in them.
Danger is judged by the grade someone carries. "She's running Black-label" means run. Divers plug their minds into the Deep to hijack cameras, doors, cars and other people's chrome. Below the Deep lies the Trench, where rogue AIs from the old net still live.
Nobody in this city is sane. Tap anyone to see their faces, and their Redline form if they have one.
The city's hit show films Redliner hunts like sports and posts the bounties on every screen. These three are still loose.
An ex-nanny who sings people to sleep forever.
A Halo mascot fused to his own costume, still doing catchphrases.
A Rust King built from forty people's chrome, with forty voices arguing.
"Hello, little one."
Hoshimura's head of enforcement. A hulking war machine of Black-label chrome with almost nothing human left. She is the only person known to sit at 100% Redline and stay in control, and she knows she is the strongest thing in the city.
