April Full Preview and Grid Wars!!!

Hello everyone!

The pledge manager for Grid Wars is now open. If you are a backer, check your e-mail for the link to redeem your rewards. If you have just learned about the Grid Wars: Age of Cybepunk tabletop wargame that you can entirely print on your home 3D printer, be sure to check out this link, become a late backer, and get 77+ cyberpunk miniatures and complete Grid Wars rules and cards today.

https://www.myminifactory.com/campaigns/gridwars-age-of-cyberpunk-175

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Mortimer was never much interested in the whole surrounding reality. He did not like it, he did not hate it either. It was just there, and it was stupid. Much to the disappointment of his sole guardian, who was all about conquering the real world for real man, Mortimer lost himself in the virtual reality. The freedom, flexibility, lack of hierarchy could all be found on the Grid. No set roles.

The Grid is not a world's simulation. It's a VR Internet with users, data, and cyber entities flying through cyberspace, sometimes creating something magnificent for a brief second, just to collapse into a cloud of bits a moment later.

Because of the grid's unique unsolvable encryption left behind by the AI, everyone is free to use it as they see fit.

Businessmen like Suzanne Vega (code-writer) and Tuba Rao (data security) use it for honest (for the most part) work.

Artists use it to create. Mr. Two and Mr. Robots were the first to use a seemingly useless grid's property to resonate to create music that can only be heard online. It is also something you cannot even imagine to hear until you experience it. Although the duo has mysteriously disappeared, you can come to their eternal concert on the grid performed by avatars. They won't ever create anything new now, but their compositions will be classics forever.

For most, the grid has simply become a part of life. And just like in life, there are bad guys that use the grid for bad stuff. Elliot Heck started as an activist, but in time his happenings became thin on message and full-on crazy destruction. Because he is using outdated computer equipment from another era nobody is even close to stopping him for now.

Then, there is Yoburi. A hitman working with all factions depending on how much they pay. It is rare to die on the grid, unless you are consensually entering risky regions. You could possibly die of exhaustion due to losing the track of time and being stupid enough not turn on a heart-body monitor. You could suffer from synapse burn-out but literally everything would have to malfunction for it to happen. Or you could encounter Yoburi. He either has found some unimaginable backdoor or, as some theorize, the hits are actually performed in reality and faked to look like synapse burnout for, perhaps, reputation. The only sure thing is that when he has a contract on you, the only choices are never logging back in or dying.

The bad guys were a perfect excuse for the mighty and powerful of this world to try to regulate the grid. For our own good, of course. The ability to finally profit from it would be just a convenient consequence. Metal Combatants were created. Almost impossible to hack. With weapons designed to rip the texture of the grid. The brute force approach.

It took a single line of code to make their weapons completely obsolete and all the money spent on the combatants wasted. You can often see the line graffiti on buildings around town as an anarchistic statement to resist.

Since then, the Gridwatch was created. A very broad and a very loose collective. Almost every user of the grid considers themselves a part of Gridwatch but there are two known key figures.

T-Erro (avatar: Athenon) used to be a black hat. In a heist run on corporation, their intrusion detection systems burned out her brain, well, a part of it. Luckily, she survived. The higher functions were intact, except the ones responsible for compassion, empathy. and remorse. Contrary to what we might think about ethics it did not turn her evil. It just made her see clearly what is important. And a little evil, too, perhaps, she is a ruthless killer but at least her final goal seems calculated and noble so far.

Bradley (avatar: Jaffa) is the grid's white knight. Since a childhood accident he is on life support and the grid is a place where he spent his entire life. He thinks in code, he is obsessively connected to every community to compensate for the lack of actual human contact, and he fights for the grid. This makes him a perfect leader, until one day he will have to choose between sacrificing the grid or reality. And we might not like his choice.

The current Gridwatch's focus is to sabotage the production of The Webspinner. The defeat in the first battle of the elite versus the grid just made the elite throw more money at the problem. Webspinner is believed to be the first entity that will not log to the grid but rather be simultaneously in reality and virtual reality. Its web technology could stop the data transmission and hold it hostage until the users comply with the 'reasonable regulations'.

In all this seemingly chaotic craziness Mortimer has found a place for him as an inventor. He built the Wrecker, a one-of-a-kind vehicle, Dori, a notoriously-out-of-RAM pet drone he gifted to his friend Suzanne Vega. But his biggest achievement is a prototype portal gun. It allows the user to travel through the grid at the highest possible speed and because the special relativity does not apply it is basically teleportation.

This, however, is not that uncommon in cyberspace. What's truly remarkable is that when the portal closes it leaves no trace and no digital footprint of you ever being there or where you've gone. On the other hand, the gun will sometimes move you to a completely random location. 999 out of 1000 it will be just an empty space due (the odds are probably higher, the grid is virtually infinite).

And this time was the same. Mortimer was doing research for the newest project and encounered an E-H-M. Those creatures are rather uncommon and entirely digital. They defy entropy by building themselves up from the scattered parts of code. They are believed to be the grim reapers of the grid, and it is not a hoax entirely. The animus energy left by a person who departs when online is what causes their creation. There are many ways to deal with an E-H-M, but he did not have to be there any longer anyways so he just set the gun to the next location and summoned the portal.

As soon as he went through it, he knew that it glitched, he knew the feeling.  He was ready to log out and move back manually right after the blink but then...

...he was standing on a regular street. It was unusually empty but everything was there. The buildings, the cars, the trash. The only thing missing was life. He looked up at the skyscraper and noticed that the upper floors are still rendering, layer, after layer, after layer. And then he felt an actual... breeze. On the grid. And it could only mean one thing.

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Ryan Ricksson was in the middle of deciding if he should pour another scotch or call it day (well, not really, the choice was already made after the first sip from the first glass) when he received a message. It was from Mortimer.

- Grandpa, we have found another matrix. This time we have until December until we are all pulled in a simulation.

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Happy Printing
CF Team