NPC: The Darkness

We've all seen the footage a million times. It went beyond viral, it went epidemic. It's CCTV footage, from somewhere in the Docklands. It seems to show about 10 people (the footage is fairly dark and grainy) having an argument. They would later be identified as members of the McDougal and the Moretti crime families, a deal, a fight, a trade, who knows.

Then, 2:21 minutes into the footage, one of the McDougal party, Sam, is lifted into the air. Slowly, clutching his throat. Guns are unholstered, people get agitated, start looking above for drones. One man actually grabs Sam's feet and tries to pull him down.

After about 10 seconds, his head is violently twisted about sideways. He's now clearly dead, and his body falls limp to the ground. Shots are fired and the footage ends.

This would be forever simply the common enough footage of the underworld being weird. If not for a hacker that decided to enhance the man's neck.

 And there, you can see something. What depends on who you are. If you are that inclined, you can see just a plain shadow, due to the multiple light sources in that dock. But if you squint JUST right, the main shadow right across the man's throat is unmistakably a claw. A big one at that.

The other men (the ones that survived the fight) claim they saw nothing. Just shadows. And with that, a legend was born. People have it a name and threat little children with it. 'If you don't behave The Darkness comes for you'. Even among adults it is now common to hear 'the thief went in and out like he was The Darkness'.

Ever since that grainy footage, around 10 bodies have been found, killed in the same way. Men and women, all hard criminals, their necks snapped like twigs. In at least two other instances, there were dozens of witnesses. And always, ALWAYS, in the dark or at night. In places filled with shadows and darkness.

Something, it seems, is out there.

This one is a silly idea. A failed stealth operative experiment left a man (an android? a Gen?) able to fuse his body colour and texture with ambient shadows. Who knows what this would do to a persons' sanity? Hence New Hades newest vigilante....

Characters: The Cloud (Ralph 'Smoke' Harrison)

Once upon a time, there was a man. He was very bright, a doctor. He wanted to help people. He wanted to make them better. So he made these tiny machines that could fix people from the inside all the way out. And people were very happy.

One day, a messenger arrived, from a nearby kingdom (a message from Koruachi Corps) that said 'Come work for us, we'll give all the gold you need for your machines!'

So the healer went, and all was well.

But there was a problem.

The machines could heal or destroy. And the other kingdom was only really interested on one of them. The wrong one.

They tried to shut him down, and push him away. He fought back, and in the cross fire, a number of unprogrammed nanobots got free, and spilled over the man.

And they disassembled him. And he died.

He awoke in the same place, 2 days later. Naked, the lab empty and cold, all his research long gone. The nanobots had memorised his composition, and brought him back, slowly, cell by cell, particle by particle.

He could now partially command the nanobots keeping him alive. He could heal with them, as he wanted, or he could destroy, as they wanted. He found he was angry. And it was high time he did something about it.

My first attempt at a really exotic offensive power. Ralph has the Burst power, which allows for a area effect blast cone (the nanobots would attack everything in that area, like a flamethrower). Also, I needed a healer, so i gave him really good healing stats (nanobot-based, D8-D10). I also consider the nanobots as melee weapons (they probably won't care how far away the adversary is), so i gave them STR+D6 melee. I'm tempted to give him a very basic ability to change his face and skin colour, but am still debating it (too powerful?).

What are the limits....?

One of the key aspects of New Hades and the world it inhabits is the visible lack of oversight by institutions. The United Nations are gone, and so are most of the nations that composed it. The Corps have moved into this ecological niche, but capitalism being what it is, ultimately, unless you live in a place with a severe and proper policing system and/or governmental structure, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

I expect this would be generally a bad idea, as technology without oversight is a recipe for disaster. The solution for this, I believe is dual: a) people are pretty sure that another War will wipe out humanity, so everyone is playing nice, and b) the Corps hate each other so very very much. Sure, so you found a nameless rock in the middle of the Asteroid Belt and are there developing killer nanobots. You need parts, life support, equipment. A few people will know where you are, and the Corps have ears EVERYWHERE.

The old saying Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? asks 'Who will watch the watchman? I postulate that if the thieves are watching each other like hawks, one might not even need watchman....

The Four Rivers

I was born and raised in Lisbon, Portugal. It is a city build upon, surrounded by, and influenced by, a river, the Tagus. It is almost inconceivable to anyone to imagine one without the other. From it came food, cargo, people, and, on a couple of occasions, invading armies.

I decided to base New Hades around a river, or rather, four: The Cerebus, The Styx, The Phobos and The Deimos. In my mind, the first two flow from North to South, merge briefly and split into the The Phobos and The Deimos.

I thought that it would be interesting to keep things rooted in the past. There is a lot of material that will be coming from orbit and other planets, but most materials that are not made in the city, will be coming in by cargo ship. Normal, bog standard (maybe droid or drone driven) float-y ships. 

So The Docklands and The Factory District will be a hub of activity, 24/7, moving cargo around as fast as it comes in. There are also a number of smaller docks across the river in Rattown, where smaller, darker ships can be found. They might have come from Rust or further afield. What they are carrying or what they are there to collect is a mystery....

The mean streets of New Hades

One of the oldest cities we know about lies in the Pakistan-Indian border, in an area called the Indus Valley. It is called Mohenjo Daro, it's about 5000 years old, and its complexity would put most towns up to the late 20th century (and in some parts of the world to this very day) to shame. It had roads and streets (some with asphalt), boxed in between pavements. It had some squares, defined neighbourhoods, and what might have been squares or markets.

My point is this: we've been building our cities in the same way for millennia. It works. We're happy with the layout. So I imagine another 60 years won't make too much of a difference.

In New Hades, the roads will be kept up, at least in the richest parts of town. Same with pavements. A series of elevated or tunnel roads will bypass the centre of town, and allow for de-congestion. Bar the holographic signs, the Gens walking around, and the occasional maitnence droid, New Hades could be any major metropolis, today.

Also there will be one or two hovercars. Because, you know, you HAVE to.

Hovercars will be common, but expensive. The emergency services will have some, some rich people will have some, but most of the traffic will be on land.

Singing (and walking and shooting and dying, and....everything) in the rain.

In Blade Runner's Los Angeles, it rains a lot. And I mean, A LOT. In the original novel, Do androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, by Philip K. Dick, the author mentions on a number of occasions that the ecosystem has pretty much collapsed (leading to the death of most animals), and I've always believed that Ridley Scott (the director) chose to represent this pollution-covered, ecosystem-ravaged world, by simply showing rain pretty much throughout the movie, with a couple of exceptions: the main aerocar trip, showing off futuristic L.A., and at the end, showing actually sunshine, and mayhap a beam of hope for the characters?

But I digress.

Rain. I expect New Hades has a lot of it. It might simply be on of those chiches the cinema has introduced us to, but there you go. That said, in this new world, big parts of the globe have been at the very least devastated, if not made outright uninhabitable. So I do have a bit of ecosystem destruction, which I firmly believe would disrupt weather patterns. Add El Nino, global warming, and almost a century of not giving a monkey about the planet, as there were more pressing things on the menu (like that massive War), and the planet has survived, but not by much.

And it rains. A LOT.

Characters: The Puppet Master (Tegan 'TK' Keath)

Drafted in the latter days of the War, Tegan is a Drone Jockey (also known as a Rigger). Her 3D visualisation of the universe has been enhanced, and she has a Level 2 cyber implant, that allows her to mentally and instantaneously direct and command Drones - robotic constructs as varied as small helicopters, spheres or full blown attack vehicles.

These days, although the military work is not as frequent (there IS always some Corps vs Corps skirmish somewhere), there is plenty of independent missions to go round. To extend your perception onto a small (or big) inanimate construct is as helpful ans one might think, allowing to do stealthy recon or knocking-doors-down-and-killing-everyone-in-the-room with the same effort. It's just a matter of Novus and of how big your drone is.


Simple human, with no physical enhancements, but really high driving, allowing her to control drones. I've started her with 2, a small well armoured helicopter, and a stealthy, less well armed recon sphere.