Version City: Intro

Here is my bit of MacGuffin for Cyberpunk: Version City. Let's see.


Version City is the anyplace of the Sprawl. It emerged as a cultural center of the Southern Sprawl to offset Boston's dominance in the north. It is hard to say exactly where it is, though somewhere between Virginia and where Washington once was is a good guess. After the rockings of Washington and New York, America's urban structure had to be completely retooled.
There's Boston in the North, Atlanta in the South, and Version City dead in the middle. Version City was never incorporated under such a name, but it was on the outskirts of the Washington crater, and as the density increased, the punks who lived there named it after the depressing old songs played over PA systems on the decrepit coastal transit trains.
I've gotten a lot of requests, lately, from people asking what happened to all of the old songs...
The obscure Clash tune struck a chord with the depressed commuters in BAMA's nowhere zone, and Version City was born. The corps moved in and tried to reincorporate, but they had no better name for the nowhere zone than the one it had already received. So Version City stuck.
The futility of renaming the city was seen as a clear message: Version City belonged to the punks. They didn't fight, they simply moved in. Graffiti art and thriving underground markets popped up, and suddenly nowhere zone looked more attractive than anywhere within 400 miles. The city sprung up in 10 years, and it didn't take long for it to show up on the map, incorporated, and officially named Version City.

2022 was the year of the edgerunner. Early in the year, New-Wave Pol Punk band The Kamikazes were broken up by the murder of the lead singer, Mike Jima, by the Russian Mob. Through the investigations of now-famous freelance PI Arthur St. Cloud, connections to major media labels competing for the band made headlines, and soon they wanted Arthur dead. This was easier said than done, as Arthur was well-protected both by corporate interests and a cadre of allies, including the "more than a little insane" solo Mike Walker. This caused Biotechnica, a company in competition with the Russian Mob's backers, SovOil, to hire Lars Blackpool to protect St. Cloud. Lars, a self-described "professional murderer", was hardly the most stable choice for the job, though in his 7 years as a mercenary, his record was impressive, and so violent it was disturbing. He wasn't without injuries, although he had cybered up significantly since a stint of work on the West Coast with famous Yakuza fixer Nori Takahashi. Lars was, most importantly, bribeable, and he turned on St. Cloud, leaving the job to find out why the Kamikazes were so important. By the time Arthur tracked Lars down, the surviving members of the Kamikazes were dead, and Arthur had lost his corporate support. Lars played tag with Arthur, but finally struck, using another rock star, the famous stoner DJ Ruff, as bait. The ambush was set, and Lars and two other mercs broke up the party, injuring Arthur significantly, and killing the two techs who accompanied Arthur and Mike. Mike, the only one who walked away, swore revenge on Lars, but Lars disappeared into the midwest. Within the past two weeks, Mike was found murdered, apparently caught asleep and beheaded with what appeared to be several shotgun blasts. Lars, with the shotgun in hand, was found dead in an airport bathroom in Version City, hundreds of miles away from the location of Mike's murder in Boston. Lars was considered the most dangerous assassin in the country for nearly a year during his manhunt, and now, someone in Version City killed him without even a lookover. The only leads in this case are Arthur St. Cloud, due to be released from the Mass. General Hospital Trauma Ward in a week's time, and DJ Ruff, currently in hiding in his "Grotto of Ganja" rumoured to be outside of Vancouver. In the meanwhile, Biotechnica, Arasaka, and ADC, Blackpool's former employers, have refused to comment on any knowledge of the identity of the assassin, or his methods or motives.