characters

former arasaka counterintel agent raised by a corporate family in charter hill, night city, her file doesnt show what it took to get there. it doesnt show the countless nights working odd jobs under the table to help her mom scrape by enough eddies for private school tuition, or how her mom did everything she could to put her daughter on the path she didn't get. her file may show her zip code, but it doesnt show the lengths her mother went through to secure it for her, or the men she had to endure. and it sure as hell doesnt show the things V had to do to keep that spot. after being burned by her former employer, all V wants to do is leave that life behind. she's just not cut out for corpo life, she always knew it deep down. she might be a corpo now, but she'll never lose where she came from. her place is with every other sorry soul in night city, next to the discarded cognitive boosters, empty nicola cans, and sewer rats. now, shes here to earn her spot back in the one place that matters: the streets of night city. taking up mercwork where she can, her best friend leads her to an oppurtunity that seems too good to be true. more eddies than she could dream and a sure spot at the afterlife? sign her up! but when the op goes south, and shes left with a dead friend and a faded rockerboy living in her head. Vs not sure what's next. her whole life has been spent preparing for a future she might not have anymore. is really it worth fighting for? especially now? her aspirations had never truly been her own, only her mothers, but maybe it was time to change that. full of more questions than answers, V is led on a wild goose chase throughout the city to hunt down the solution to all her problems. all this with a psycho asshole anticorp terrorist in tow, and Vs sure the insanity will get to her before the relic does. well, heres hoping...

abrasive, arrogant, and fiercely anti-capitalist all describe johnny. his voice is loud, his ideals even louder, and his guitar could start riots on its own (well, sometimes he helps...). once the frontman of samurai, a band in night city known for their devotion to rebellion, johnny was never just a rockerboy-- he was an icon, a weapon, a warning. when he died in 2023, it was shortly after placing the bomb in arasaka tower that turned the formerly thriving business center of night city into a radioactive ruin, remembered forever as the hotzone. the bombing has been called the night city holocaust, and johnny has been remembered as a long-dead terrorist, vanquished during his final act of resistance. to his fans, though, he was a martyr, someone who stood up to the corps when nobody else would. what they didnt know was that it was all an act of revenge, and a final bid at bringing back the woman he loved, the woman arasaka killed. the trail of wreckage he left behind, a city forever scarred, are proof enough of that. when arasaka decided to preserve his engram in a datashard called the relic, experimental tech intended for the rich and powerful, johnny could do nothing to stop it. condemned to digital nothingness with no escape, he became a cyber-ghost, waiting for someone unlucky enough to slot him into their head. now, dragged back into a world he once tried to burn, johnny silverhand finds himself forced into a second life he never asked for, fighting the same war with fewer allies, fewer answers, and one very unwilling partner, one who has happened to have gotten her hands dirty for the very corp he tried to destroy. with no way out and no real control, johnny has to learn to be comfortable in the passenger seat and stick along for the ride (whether he wants to or not).