Netflix · CD Projekt Red · Studio Trigger · Seasons 1 & 2

CYBERPUNK :
EDGERUNNERS

Night City Never Sleeps · Chrome Up or Die

Night City sits on the coast of what used to be California. It belongs to no state and answers to no government,  it is a corporate Free City, which means the corporations are the government and the word "free" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Six megacorporations divide the city's infrastructure, security, media, and healthcare between them. Arasaka runs private security and half the banking system. Militech sells weapons to both sides of every war. Kang Tao controls weapons manufacturing out of China. Trauma Team will extract a subscriber from a firefight for the right monthly fee. Everyone else either works for a corp, works around one, or dies at the intersection of two corps that don't care who they hit.

The people who don't fit into that structure are edgerunners — mercenaries, fixers, and freelancers who take jobs no official entity will touch, paid in eddies under the table, surviving on chrome and reputation. Night City has eaten most of them. The ones who last long enough to become legendary end up in the city's mythology, which is almost the same as a grave but more expensive.

CHROME & CYBERWARE

CYBERWARE — Cybernetic modifications installed directly into the body. Subdermal armor. Mantis blades fused to the forearms. Optical implants that record and enhance vision. Reflex boosters. The Sandevistan, a military-grade implant that dramatically slows the user's perception of time relative to everything else in their environment. The more chrome you carry, the more you can do. There is a ceiling.

CYBERPSYCHOSIS — When the amount of cybernetic modification exceeds what the brain can integrate, something breaks. The person loses the ability to distinguish between themselves and the machine. They become a threat to everyone around them. The NCPD's MaxTac unit — cyberpsychos with badges — gets deployed to terminate them. There is no cure. There is a line, and it moves depending on the person, and nobody knows where it is until they cross it.

CORPORATIONS — ACTIVE PLAYERS

ARASAKA — Japanese megacorp. Private military, banking, and intelligence. Runs Arasaka Tower in Night City's corporate center. Interested in cybernetic research that the public does not know is being conducted.

MILITECH — American weapons manufacturer. Perpetually at cold war with Arasaka. Will fund, equip, or arm anyone who creates a problem for their rivals.

KANG TAO — Chinese weapons corp. Significant presence in Night City by Season 2. Tied to corpo power networks in ways that become personal for specific characters.

NCPD / MAXTAC — Night City Police Department. Funded by corporations. Responds to calls based on subscriber tier. MaxTac is their cyberpsycho response unit — the last line before a situation gets officially classified as a massacre.

SEASON 1 · 2022 · Studio Trigger · David Martinez

  DAVID MARTINEZ
Grew up in the Arroyo district. Scholarship student at Arasaka Academy — his mother's goal for him was a corpo desk job, which Night City treats as aspirational. When that path closes, he ends up with a military-grade Sandevistan installed in his spine that he should not be able to run. He can run it. He ends up with Maine's crew: a veteran edgerunner and his partner Dorio, siblings Pilar and Rebecca, netrunner Kiwi, and Lucy — Lucyna Kushinada — who pulled David into the job circuit in the first place and who wants one thing above everything else: to get out of Night City entirely and go to the Moon.

David's story in Season 1 is about how far you can push the chrome before the chrome pushes back, and what you owe the people who stay next to you while you find out.

THE CREW: Maine (veteran edgerunner, crew lead), Dorio (Maine's partner, solo), Pilar and Rebecca (siblings, both combat-spec), Kiwi (netrunner, the methodical one), Lucy (Lucyna Kushinada, netrunner, the one David fell in love with), Falco (driver, the one who stays quiet and watches everything).

The fixer feeding their jobs is Faraday — Militech-adjacent, operational, never personally at risk. The threat hanging over the crew is Arasaka, which has a specific interest in David that he doesn't know about going in.

SEASON 2 · OCTOBER 20 2026 · Studio Trigger · Weak Kingsley

  WEAK KINGSLEY
Once known as King. A veteran edgerunner at the top of the food chain — heavy chrome, crew, reputation, the whole legend. He had cyberpsychosis and survived it, which required losing all of his chrome. Now he lives in Night City without any of it: no implants, no enhancements, no armor beneath the skin. A city that ran on his name while he was King has moved on. This is the premise of Season 2 — what it costs to be a legend in Night City, and what you're left with when the legend's equipment gets uninstalled.

Season 2's crew runs alongside Weak's arc: D, a Snake Nation netrunner who arrived in Night City with a specific person to kill and corpo secrets as collateral damage; Roman Carax, a young documentarian filming Night City from inside rather than from a press booth; and Talia Yang, who grew up in Night City's corporate world and ended up in the Maelstrom gang instead, connecting directly back to Weak's past through her mother Avida.

Your Role in Night City

SEASON 1 — STEP INTO THE CREW
David's place, or a crew member's, or a new addition Maine recruited before the season opens. Your chrome setup, your history in Night City, your specific reason for running gigs: yours to define. The crew exists as built. What changes is who you are inside it.

SEASON 2 — WALK WITH WEAK'S CREW
You are part of the Season 2 operation — chrome or chromeless, corpo or street, new to Night City or a veteran who's been watching it change. Your connection to Weak Kingsley, D's revenge arc, or Talia's situation: yours. Both timelines of Night City are open.

ORIGINAL EDGERUNNER
Your own crew, your own fixer, your own run. Either timeline, any district. Your cyberware loadout, your background — corpo dropout, street kid, nomad who came to Night City for a job and stayed — and the specific gig that puts you in the middle of something larger than a paycheck.

STEP INTO A CANON ROLE
Lucy running jobs while managing the thing she wants more than anything Night City can offer. Rebecca operating as the smallest person in any given room and the most dangerous one in it. D arriving in Night City with one name on his list and corps in the way. Say who and say which season.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners © CD Projekt Red · Studio Trigger · Netflix · All characters 18+