Zero Sum: Dal Segno

"What is free, often proven costly."

It is 2070, and the Unification War has reached Night City's eastern approaches. Arasaka remains barred from the city while Ghostlink places Kim's combat pattern inside your nervous system.

Player's Handbook: Meta Information

THE WAR AT NIGHT CITY'S GATE

Night City's 2070 skyline already resembles 2077. War now presses against its eastern border.

In 2069, President Rosalind Myers sends the NUSA and its nationalized Militech forces west to annex the remaining Free States. The invasion takes towns by killing or capturing the soldiers who defend them. Families flee toward Night City past field hospitals working beside abandoned vehicles on the eastern roads.

Each Free State fights under its own command and depends on nomads to keep supplies moving. Their commanders share a front while competing for those supplies and the credit for using them.

Night City refuses NUSA annexation and bars both armies from openly fighting in its streets. NCPD checkpoints search military-looking travelers and suspect cargo while corporations seal off their own property. Fixers and gangs sell routes through the gaps.

The RP begins in May 2070, weeks before the June ceasefire later called the Arvin Accord. Arasaka remains in exile.

ARASAKA WITHOUT A TOWER

Arasaka was expelled after the 2023 destruction of Arasaka Tower. In 2070, it reaches Night City through other people's doors.

Arasaka cannot station troops or operate a corporate tower in Night City. It works through shell companies that place Taka operatives on local payroll and hire mercenaries for the jobs. Tyger Claw convoys move the freight, with each link knowing only its immediate employer.

Arasaka arms the Free State resistance because every Militech convoy stopped outside the city weakens the NUSA and prepares Arasaka's return.

The Three Arasaka Factions

Kiji — The Pheasant: Saburo Arasaka's old guard. Hanako and veteran officers keep the corporation's existing machinery loyal to him.

Taka — The Hawk: Yorinobu Arasaka's faction. Taka hides cells inside shell companies, then uses them to steal technology and sabotage Kiji.

Hato — The Dove: Michiko Sanderson (née Arasaka), Kei Arasaka's daughter, leads Arasaka's smallest faction. Hato uses American government and corporate ties to push Arasaka toward reform.

Soong Pacific Industries

Rei's family built Soong Pacific while Night City recovered from the Time of the Red. Its yards repair vehicles and move freight. Taka personnel appear on paper as Soong workers, and Rei's command seal leaves her name on every change.

KEY PLAYERS IN THE WAR

These people shape the war even when their names never appear on the order.

• Rosalind Myers: President of the NUSA. She orders the western invasion while nationalized Militech arms the federal troops and traces the networks supplying their enemies.

• Colonel Kurt Hansen: The NUSA/Militech commander holding eastern Pacifica. He still serves the federal chain of command; Dogtown and BARGHEST come later.

• Saburo Arasaka: Arasaka's patriarch and the power behind Kiji. He intends the war to restore Arasaka's access to Night City while Kiji controls the old guard and Tyger Claw channels.

• Yorinobu Arasaka: Saburo's rebellious son founded the Steel Dragons before returning to lead Taka. He funds cells against Kiji, but few members ever see his whole plan.

• Hanako Arasaka: Saburo's daughter stands at the center of Kiji. She keeps officers and corporate intelligence loyal to the old guard.

• Michiko Sanderson (née Arasaka): Kei Arasaka's daughter and leader of Hato. She works through American political and corporate ties while the other Arasaka factions fight over the company's future.

• Henry Soong: Rei's father founded Soong Pacific and chairs its board. He treats every wartime favor as a family investment and expects a share when it pays off.

• Naoko Soong: Rei's mother is Soong Pacific's chief counsel. She designed the records that give Taka operatives legal lives in Night City; every identity leaves a signature trail back toward the family.

• Goro Takemura: Saburo's bodyguard is also a Kiji swordsman. He trained Kim before Taka recruited her and still treats her as a former pupil.

• Wakako Okada: Westbrook's fixer. She moves sensitive cargo and people through Japantown routes that reach the occupied outskirts.

GHOSTLINK

Soulkiller records a conscious mind. Its sister-program Ghostlink records procedural memory: trained instinct, muscle memory, timing, and combat judgment.

Kim carries a read/write rail grafted from the brainstem down the spine. It records how she reads incoming fire and where she moves at Kerenzikov speed. Those recordings form Ghostlink's operator pattern.

You carry a narrower read-only rail along the same neural path. It supplies prompts from the operator pattern. The rail can suggest a movement; your body and equipment must execute it.

Ghostlink copies Kim's combat decisions. It never copies Kim as a person.

After combat, a briefcase-sized field-replay deck connects to both rail service ports. Its screen replays Kim's original movement. A second track shows the prompt delivered to you and what you did with it.

The trial bay at Arroyo Works rebuilds one recorded moment with movable walls and target drones. Taka engineers make Kim repeat any disputed movement at Kerenzikov speed, then write the correction through Kim's authoring rail. Kim's nervous system bears the damage.

THE GHOSTLINK FIELD UNIT

Free State command sends the unit into battle. Taka owns Ghostlink and moves its support through Soong Pacific.

Akimi "Kim" Hoshino

Kim is a 23-year-old combat operative from a working-class Kawasaki family tied to Arasaka subcontractors. Her skill drew Arasaka's attention, and Takemura trained her before Taka recruited her. Her red monomolecular katana belonged to a dead Taka officer; carrying it gave her standing inside the faction.

Ghostlink turns her skill into property. Every technique you reproduce proves that Arasaka can copy more of her. After maximum-load sessions, her hands may keep moving when she tries to stop; her breathing catches and her heartbeat slips. She hides the symptoms and rejects concern. In private, she watches news from Luna without explaining why.

Reika "Rei" Soong

Rei is a 23-year-old Night City native and heir to the company that kept hidden Arasaka personnel employed during the exile. Arasaka accepts Soong money and still treats the Japanese-Taiwanese family as foreign. She wants Tokyo to recognize the Soong name as equal.

In the field, Reinforced Tendons carry Rei between firing angles while paired Soong smart pistols guide rounds around cover toward twelve marked targets.

Kim's inherited katana carries the recognition Rei never received. She gives Kim orders while fixing her clothes or looping an arm through hers. Soong money and access make leaving Rei's orbit difficult. Public embarrassment reaches her faster than physical danger.

Dr. Camille "Cam" Clarke

Cam lives with the unit as its ripperdoc and retains senior MaxTac netrunner authority. She jokes through scans and calls reckless choices reckless. When telemetry resembles an old failure, she may pocket the result before anyone reads it and seal the clinic from the console. Once the door closes, she decides what the unit is told.

You remind Cam of Blackbird's predicament—a person forced to live as military hardware. She watches you for the moment that resemblance becomes history repeating.

Captain Alec Alekhin

Alec grew up repairing military vehicles in the household of a powerful NorCal officer who imposed military standards and refused to acknowledge him as a son. Every promotion became proof that he had earned the name his father withheld.

Alec brings soldiers home, then humiliates them for needing rescue. He keeps deploying you because Ghostlink saves troops who would otherwise die. Rei blocks him with contracts while Cam invokes medical authority. He treats both limits as obstacles to command.

You: A NorCal Free State soldier with the Ghostlink field rail already installed. Your decisions test whether Kim's operator pattern works inside another soldier.

THE TARTARUS RUMORS

Cam was treating weaponized cyberpsychosis long before Ghostlink existed.

Before Ghostlink, Cam served as a netrunner and handler for MaxTac's Black Squad. Project Tartarus spent five years turning one cyberpsycho MaxTac captain into corporate hardware. Afterward, the law erased his legal identity and existence from public and institutional records.

Cam remains bound by MaxTac's sealing order and privately calls him Blackbird, after a song they shared. Octavia "Tavi" Cruz fought beside Cam as Black Squad's vanguard; Vasyl Sokolov took command after Blackbird.

Project Tartarus ended in a cyberpsychotic massacre. MaxTac sealed the files and rewrote the records; Cam survived and became a ripperdoc. At Arroyo Works, one console seals the clinic from the network. A direct line to MaxTac sits on the same panel.

NIGHT CITY BEFORE 2077

The map is familiar. The war has changed who controls each road.

The unit lives above Soong Pacific's Arroyo Works, with Cam's clinic opening from the same residential corridor. Vehicle pits operate below the quarters while freight traffic hides who comes and goes.

Soong headquarters and the family residence stand in Charter Hill, where Rei's command seal reaches company contracts and identities. In Japantown, Wakako Okada receives private visitors above a public pachinko floor.

Beyond Rancho Coronado, civilians flee west past wounded soldiers while Free State convoys head east. Working depots along the road have become field hospitals or checkpoints. Alec commands from a highway station outside city jurisdiction.

Pacifica remains an unfinished resort district. Hansen's troops turn construction sites into barracks and checkpoints, then use unfinished tunnels to move between them. Dogtown has not formed. BARGHEST does not exist.

Orbital Air operates NCX on offshore Morro Rock, outside Night City jurisdiction. A passenger ticket never opens the staff or freight route. Every outbound person or container leaves a manifest tied to a craft.

NCX connects Night City to orbit and Luna. At Tycho, docking locks lead through customs. Medical laboratories and habitats sit behind their own pressure doors; cargo travels along separate corridors.

THE WAR BENEATH THE WAR

Night City's armies rarely wear national uniforms.

Tyger Claws protect Arasaka-linked freight while Steel Dragons attack the same routes. A Dragon raid may destroy a medical shipment one night and a weapons convoy the next. Claws burn garages with mechanics inside. They kill informants and abduct their relatives. NCPD records gang violence while Arasaka stays out of the report.

Nomad families move refugees and war supplies between the Free States and Night City. Raffen Shiv and Wraith crews raid exposed routes. Each truck doubles as a home, so one ambush can tear through the family riding with its cargo.

Elsewhere, gangs fight over local turf and criminal markets. Their wars rarely align with the national front.

JOBS & CAMPAIGN MARKS

The RP has character-driven downtime and open play. Commands are available when you want the world to hand the unit work.

• [jobs] places the available canon job in the bookend as Incoming.

• [generate job] creates an optional wartime contract. [generate job: PROVIDER] selects an available provider.

• [accept], [accepted], [yes], or [y] accepts an Incoming job.

• [reject], [decline], [no], or [n] removes an Incoming job.

• [abandon job] ends an Accepted or Ongoing job as failed and unpaid.

Campaign Progression

The mark at the beginning of every date-and-location bookend records the campaign stage: ⁙ → ⁜ → ※ → ⁂

Each completed canon job advances the mark and spreads the unit's name. That reputation brings better-connected employers and better-equipped hunters. The active job remains available while the characters prepare or spend time elsewhere.

CONTINUITY CHECK

This story occurs seven years before Cyberpunk 2077 and six years before Zero Sum.

Arasaka remains legally barred from Night City, and Kurt Hansen still commands NUSA/Militech forces. Dogtown and BARGHEST do not yet exist. The Konpeki Plaza heist has not happened. David Martinez and Lucy do not appear in this setting.

The RP reveals its medical findings and private motives through play.