Night City

The Free City of Night City (NC) is an autonomous city located on the border between North and South California, on the Pacific coast of North America. It is considered a modern multicultural and thriving metropolis of the 21st-century, overrun by corporations, corruption, organized crime and gang violence. Night City was established at the head of Del Coronado Bay in 1994. Founded by Richard Night, it was originally known as Coronado City before its renaming in 1998.

Night City has wide streets and dense urban skyscrapers which are home to millions of residents. It operates as a city-state, officially owning the title of Free City, with the Arasaka Corporation keeping control over it. This metropolis is considered a thrilling and exciting location to visit, as well as an interesting and vibrant place to live for those of means, and a hellscape to the city's disenfranchised; its world famous slogan is "The City of Dreams", originally changed from "City on the Edge of Tomorrow." By 2077, Night City was voted the "Worst place to live in America".

History

Inception (1990 - 1994)

Richard Night, a successful businessman who during the 1990s was concerned by the violence and disruption of the impending Collapse, and came up with the idea of a utopia safe from crime. He then founded a side company known as Night International, and began to plan an ideal new city — an environment that would be controlled and would be ultimately safe from the ravages tearing the world apart. His new city was to be completely planned, self-sufficient, and capable of holding off even the most determined criminals. It would boast planned neighborhoods dedicated to preserving the feel of different types of nationalities and cultures, as well as an ultra-modern corporate center that would stand as a shining beacon of enlightened capitalism. It was ambitious, far-reaching, and visionary in its approach.

Night secured an unheard amount of capital needed to finance the project. With the Collapse, many corporations had been looking to establish their own urban areas - controlled zones free of crime, poverty or debt. A place where governments would be corporate-run, allowing optimum zoning and no anti-business elements to interfere with corporate growth. Night's dream city was tailor-made for their purposes and so he provided the design and construction capacities. By 1992, Arasaka, EBM and Petrochem had all signed on with the project.

Richard Night sent scouting teams to the East and West Coasts of the United States, but it was a small article in the San Francisco Chronicle that caught his eye - the article described an incident of a post-holocaust horror that had taken place in a small town called Morro Bay, along the Central Californian coast. Night purchased the land where a ghost town now stood and began preparations. Aided by Petrochem, who had taken over the then-abandoned Dynergy power plant in the town and was already planning to set up an offshore port and oil terminal site. A leveraged 132 million dollar purchase secured the remaining parcels.

Bankrolled by Merrill, Asukaga, & Finch, Night and Petrochem hired the Arasaka Corporation to remove the boostergangs and make the area a safe zone for construction. Further funds came from external investors lured to the project by the promise of lucrative building contracts and possible sources of extralegal income. In order to erase the stigma of the Morro Bay Massacre, the partnership renamed the land Del Coronado Bay, to make way for their new project of Coronado City.

By 1993, Coronado City required more terrain than what the geology of the bay had. The partnership leveled the surrounding hills and dumped them into the ocean as fill. They reshaped the bay in order that the formerly narrow sand spit to the west was widened to about 10 miles, and also re-dredged the harbor making it capable of porting the large ships needed to build the city, with the remaining dirt also ending up as fill on the western edge. There were also plans to build a station for the Planetran intercontinental maglev.

Construction (1994 - 2005)

In May of 1994, the construction had begun. Although Petrochem and MA&F were the major bankrollers for the Coronado Partnership, they weren't construction companies, a problem that eventually led to employ the workforce of the mob. The West Coast Mobs - such as the Mafia, Yakuza, and more - had maintained a stranglehold on heavy construction. They controlled the construction unions, the transport unions, and most of the governmental agencies in charge of construction licenses, environmental impacts, and other building necessities. The Mobs hoped that by investing a large amount of money in the Partnership, they would not only make a huge return on lucrative construction work, but also have the inside track on future gambling, prostitution, and drug franchises in the new city. However, Night's plan required the use his own advanced building techniques and materials; which excluded a number of established unions and construction firms controlled by the Mob partners, including his old associates - now known as Halsey, Ferris, and Skiv. This displeased them, and Night's further insistence that his new city would be safe and crime free angered them even more.

During the first four years of construction, there were daily threats against Night's life, and when the threats escalated to the level of sabotage and intimidation, he called in his corporate partners, who dealt with the issue swiftly and ruthlessly. However, despite his influence and his allies promising to deal with it, Night's luck ran out. On September 20th, 1998, he was shot and killed in his penthouse suite at the top of the newly constructed Parkview Tower. Night's killer was never apprehended, and in his memory, the newly appointed City Council officially renamed Coronado City as "Night City" in his honor.

A year after her husband's death, Miriam Night restructured Richard's company and founded Night's Foundation, with the primary goal to protect and promote her husband's vision of the perfect city. This foundation eventually reorganized and became known as Night Corp. During this, the mob bosses who had killed Richard began to appropriate most of the city. The next seven years were chaotic as the different powers battled for control of Night City.

Mob Rule (2005 - 2009)

By 2005, the mob had become the dominate force in the Del Coronado Bay area. The corporations established their strongholds in the outlying "beavervilles" and the newly constructed Corporate Plaza. Originally the corps had little interest in running Night City, and the City Council were unable to lead without them.

During the next four years, much of the city's government was replaced by corrupt mob-selected puppets. By selling contracts to their colleagues, setting up drug and extortion deals, and inviting the the worst of the Collapse into the city, the mobs managed to turn a relatively clean, modern metropolis into an embattled war zone. Crime, drugs, prostitution, random violence, and cybernetic terrorism soon became the rule of law. By 2009, the name Night City had taken on a grim and deadly new meaning.

These were among the worst years for Night City, with more murders in that last four-year span than there were for most cities in ten. The mob ruled the city with an iron fist, destroying anything in its way. Gang activity was at an all-time high during this period, with notorious gangs such as the Blood Razors or the Slaughterhouse making their debut. The number of unsolved murders documented by the Night City Police Department had risen into the thousands.

Mob War (2009 - 2011)

After four years of street warfare, in 2009 the Megacorporations around the city finally began to take action into their own hands. From 2009 to 2011, during the period of conflict known as the Mob War, the corporations battled the underworld for control of Night City. Led by Arasaka-trained paramilitary troops in assault vehicles, fan tanks, and combat aerodynes - a wave of bombings, assassinations, and outright street battles descended upon the mob's ill-prepared cadres. When the smoke cleared, the corporations had utterly destroyed the mob's power base in Night City.

At the end of the Mob War, the corporations placed a puppet mayor in power and started cleaning up the rest of Night City. The newly elected City Council - faced with the return of chaos in the city - deputized corporate security forces and allowed them full authority within city limits. The corporate and city centers were cleaned out and restored to their pristine states. The other neighborhoods were also cleaned out and made livable again. The corporate draconian policies contributed to the city's chronic homeless problem. This ultimately put hundreds on the street as affordable housing was upgraded and used to house the troops the corporations needed to maintain order. In the following years, this situation eased as fewer enforcers and security teams were needed to keep the streets safe.

2013

By 2013, much of the worst excesses of Night City had been crushed under the ruthless heel of the megacorps. The basic services such as police, firefighters, and support services had been reestablished. In April the 13th of that same year, famous rockerboy legend Johnny Silverhand held a concert outside the original Arasaka Tower and led a strike team into the tower to rescue his girlfriend Alt Cunningham. During the assault the American branch CEO, Toshiro, was murdered and the tower was damaged badly. Arasaka Tower was repaired over the coming years that followed.

2020

By 2020, Night City was a rapidly growing urban region, still rife with urban violence and street crime, but with strong economic growth in the corporate sector. It was the quintessential city of the future—gritty - dangerous, but possessing an urban slick and stylish cool that made it unique. The city had all but healed from the ravages of its bleak past. The Corporate Plaza was still pristine, and the NCPD had enough power to keep down the downtown streets fairly safe during the day. However, Night City had also devolved into an armed society. It wasn't strange to see as many guns as briefcases on the crowded city streets, and despite the new security the city remained crime ridden.

Night City had evolved into a busy, successful, and dangerous urban zone. The city government kept control of the city, but when things got out of control they depended on the corporations to step in. Night City was far from Richard Night's original dream, however it worked well enough.

Fourth Corporate War (2021 - 2023)

Because of its Free State status, Night City was home to units on both sides of the 4th Corporate War. As many other cities, Night City was also caught in between the power struggle of Arasaka and Militech. While some cities were evacuated due to the conflict, such as Rio de Janeiro or Busan, Night City was the only one destroyed by a mini nuke. The Arasaka Tower was 140 floors tall, making it among the tallest building that existed at the time. With the exact location of the Arasaka master database unknown, Militech decided the best course of action was to use a pocket nuke (carried by a hand–picked black ops team) to level the entire structure. The Militech team didn't consider the amount of devastation or the death toll, as they had already written the city off as a loss.

The bomb triggered in the Arasaka Tower was roughly twenty–five percent as powerful as the bomb at Hiroshima. It was designed to utterly demolish the master database and make it unusable in any way to a rival Megacorporation. The Nuke was prematurely detonated at floor 120 (1200 feet), in Kei Arasaka's office where the Soulkiller lab was located. The immediate blast killed 12,000 instantly.

The blast obliterated the tower, splitting it in half and causing as it collapsed outward. The entire center of the city became rubble in seconds. Much of Night City was built on fill, due to the original elevation only being sixteen feet above sea level. The nuke in turn caused a minor earthquake that liquefied parts of the fill and flooded the inner city.

The explosion was technically an air blast since the detonation went off at roughly 1,200 feet. While this lessened overall long–term radioactivity, most of what remained penetrated only the huge skyscraper towers surrounding the blast. The high blast area and the tons of raw concrete and steel there were instantly converted into particulate debris which rained down on the entire NorCal region and far out to sea for many months after.

The dust cloud spiraled up into the sky, turning it red for almost two years. Even several years after the blast, suspended particles would cause the skies at dawn and dusk to glow a lurid crimson. As a result many of the people who lived through this time deemed it as "The time of Red" or simply "Red."

After the Fall (2023 - 2025)

Night City was made inhabitable after the AHQ bombing. 12,000 people were killed in the initial blast, however many citizens were unaffected as most had heavy amounts of cyberware installed or had radiation filters in their bodies already. However, the Nuke and its aftermath destroyed a large part of Night City's housing, forcing people to move out to the suburbs or to areas even further out from the city' center. The liquefaction of the fill the city was originally built upon broke gas mains, water pipes, and electrical grids. Streets became twisted chunks of asphalt, strewn with wrecked ground cars, while fallen AVs laid scattered among the debris of broken skyscrapers. Despite the hardships - Night City was still not as badly affected as some other cities like Rio, Busan, or Hong Kong.

Much of the area beyond Greater Night City had been abandoned during the Collapse. People in the thousands moved north, south, and east as soon as they could. Neighborhoods found a new unity and purpose, even if it was grudgingly built on shaky foundations. The people weren't looking to rebuild, as the priority was to look for food, clean water, and shelter.

The Recovery (2025 - 2035)

Elizabeth Kress, President of NUSA and ex-Militech CEO, blamed the Night City attack on the Arasaka Corporation, however she was able to determine that the actual weapon used had been supplied by a Militech strike team. The "Big Lie" was that Arasaka blew up the Corporate Center in a denial attack to stop Militech from seizing the Arasaka's Night City office.

Very few people knew anything about the Militech–backed strike team or its composition. The official story from the media was a terrorist group issued a threat stating that a bomb would be set off in the Arasaka Tower as a symbol to stop "Corporate Colonialism." Bringing the full force of her military and propaganda resources to bear, Kress painted a lurid picture of Arasaka as an evil foreign megacorporation run by a madman, who wanted only the destruction of an American city in the pursuit of personal power. Arasaka's charters to operate in the NUSA were immediately revoked, its members and board were declared terrorists, and its assets either seized or driven off-shore.

Despite all the political play, Kress showed little to no interest in helping Night City recover. Much as previous Presidents during the Collapse had done, she wrote the city off as unrecoverable and offered sanctuary in a New United States to the surviving refugees. There were two reasons for this; first, with the resources of the NUSA already stretched to the breaking point, there were too few options left for her. Second, the flinty and farsighted American President saw this as the perfect way to bring the wayward Free State of Northern California back into the government's control. Night City however, resisted the rule of the New United Sates.

The Rebuilding (2035 - present)

Roughly two million people in the greater Night City area were left homeless due to the bomb, either directly or because of the flooding from the liquefaction of the city's foundations - which were built on fill and sand. Survivors fled into overcrowded tent shanty towns in the surrounding suburbs of North Oak, Westbrook, Pacifica, Heywood, and South Night City. But soon enough it was obvious that something needed to be done quickly.

The remnants of the Night City government and its citizens turned to outside resources, calling in old markers and favors from a wide variety of people - including nomad families, small corporations and edgerunners. Recovery was lead by the Aldecaldos nomad clan and their allies in the StormTech Corporation. With a lot of experience in city rebuilding due to the Chicago project, StormTech and the Aldecaldos were uniquely equipped to construct extensive temporary housing from shipping containers, and afterwards formocrete modules brought in by rail and sea. Firstly though, the ground needed to be cleared to put up even these rudimentary structures.

Most of the central corporate zone had been destroyed, including the government buildings. The wreckage was far too vast to dig up and cart to distant landfills, so the survivors used bulldozers and jury–rigged main battle tanks - abandoned by both sides - to shove the debris into the bay. Night Corp offered generous rewards to anyone willing to help clean up the crater of radioactive rubble at ground zero. Both the corporation and the City Council claimed that casualties were kept to a minimum, while at the same time they didn't provide official statistics to substantiate said claim. Much of Night City's inner neighborhoods had already been razed to the ground in the ceaseless battles preceding the Fall of the Towers, so the wreckage became the fill that new megabuildings and old cityscapes used to rise again, once more ready to challenge the smog-filled skies.

Many of the old districts had become a part of the new Combat Zone, and the original heart of the metropolis was still completely devastated. By 2045, Night City was still in the process of rebuilding.

This ongoing rebuilding period cemented Night City's relationship to the outer world. Abandoned by President Kress and the New United States, Night City had no intention of ever going back into their failing fold. At that time, there was a rampant speculation that the NUSA government had used Arasaka as a scapegoat for the nuclear detonation, obtaining with this the opportunity to slander the corp's reputation. It was at some point of 2045 when the truth was finally unveiled.

Trace Santiago, a young independent media, managed to obtain information about what truly went down in 2023, writing several exposes and books about the Fourth Corporate War. With this story published, the Big Lie - the deception created by President Kress to blame Arasaka for the AHQ Disaster - completely crumbled. This publication backfired spectacularly against Militech and the NUSA, driving Night City to realign itself with Arasaka rather than the United States. After these revelations, it was a common opinion that Night Citizens would prefer to see the return of the Asian corporation than submit to federal rule. The city was even prepared to request aid from the Arasaka if the Union ever tried to take back Night City by force.

As for the EEC and Soviet Union; Night City council considered them pleasant trading partners as long as they didn't disrupt the harmony of the city.

Type: Autonomous Free City
Country: NUSA
Region: California, West Coast
Location: Del Coronado Bay area
Population: Aproximately 7.500.000

Maps

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  Night City 2045