Players

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LARP
Ascent to Hisseldale
Date
@ 8 p.m.
Convention

Intercon O

Location
Radisson Hotel, Chelmsford, MA, USA
Notes

Run at Intercon O.

Description

by Kendra Beckler

As residents of the Sprawl, you have always taken technology for granted. It's always been the only thing cheap enough to afford for the impoverished majority. Even with a life of abject misery, you could get by with enough drugs, simstims, cybernetic implants, and the latest trends on the black market. Jacking into cyberspace was your best escape from the dusty, rat-infested slums under the gray artificial sky.

That's over now - you're getting out of the Sprawl. A new cylinder called Hisseldale was recently commissioned by the Hissel corporation, based on the northern coast of Paris; construction has only just begun, bringing promises of employment and of influencing the culture and government of Hisseldale's future populace. Maybe you'll follow in the footsteps of so many other early migrants who set themselves up for success and became one of the wealthy high-orbit first families. You're on the TYL Pegasus Nightingale shuttle out to Hisseldale, the first shuttle in the first wave of voyages carrying Hisseldale's prospective workers, visitors, and migrants.

Just after the shuttle takes off on its 4 hour voyage, all passengers settle in and grab their decks so they will be jacked in for the flight. But something isn't right. Always, when jacked into cyberspace, one can with ease reach Chiba City and Tokyo, or the Freeside cylinder's colony of New Zion, or the set of Orbits Of Our Lives, or anywhere else desired. Except now. You can only jack into a cyberspace room the size of the shuttle, a room with no exits. When there, you can't flip to any other locations. You are completely cut off from Earth and the omnipresent cyberspace spanning it and all of its orbital colonies.

You're stuck with only the few people on board until the shuttle reaches Hisseldale. There is no escape by jacking in. You'll have to do something with these next few hours. Do you get to know the other passengers? Investigate the break in the connection to Earth's cyberspace? Argue philosophy? Deal with interpersonal drama that you've been avoiding? Try to find drugs to calm your mind? Start developing Hisseldale's culture and politics? Turn the shuttle around to head straight back to the Sprawl? While you think about these, a weightier question looms.

How will your society survive if cyberspace on Hisseldale is also cut off from Earth?

Cyberpunk set in the Sprawl, a world with sentient AIs, cloning, personality uploading, cryonics, and cybernetics, the game tackles philosophical issues of self, identity, humanity, and over-reliance on an omnipresent digital world. Warning for issues surrounding drug use and dependence. Ages 16+