Sprawlvember Guest Post 02

SPRAWLVEMBER 2026. A month of SG:U and cyberpunk TTRPG posts. Prompts are here.

This is a guest post, courtesy of the cyberpunk creative machine that is Gregorius 21778. Check out his excellent Sprawlvember entries here: https://gregorius21778.wordpress.com/tag/sprawlvember

And there are many, many more fantastic Sprawl Goons: Upgraded and other cyberpunk offerings on their blog - definitely go take a look!

Day 06 // Prompt: Project

This one is a mission idea for Sprawl Goons: Upgraded.

Project: Matryoshka

The Cognition Verification Bureau does not only deal with rogue or illegally modified cybrids, but prosecutes those that illegally modify them as well. And of course, the groups that try to help, hide and "humanify" rogue cybrids. 

The latter is problematic, because it is hard to infiltrate them. Penetrating and "busting" the surface layer is one thing, but getting deeper is problematic. These people do not tend to talk, for many of them truly believe that they are the good guys saving the equivalent (as they say: equal) of a human being from what they see as the prosecution of a terror regime. Infiltration is problematic. Not only because it always is, but because of the limited funds of the CVB.

The current solution for the Flow CVB is Project Matryoshka. They made contact with a regular middle-class family and funded them to buy a regular cybrid for their household. Said regular cybrid was not having maintenance checks by a regular Clavel-licensed maintenance technician but by a CVB technician in disguise that installed the Matryoshka program. A project that a software specialist and cybrid analyst of the CVB has been working on for nearly a year. The Matryoshka would have the cybrid simulate and "believe" it had become "awake" (self-aware) and seek ways to escape its owners. Of course, safety measures were installed to prevent any real harm to the family. And the family was paid good money.

The Matryoshka would then and thereby seek ways to escape and hide, eventually finding - or being found by - people the CVB would like to arrest. It would try to live a life in hiding and perhaps, or perhaps not, become more and more involved with other rogue cybrids and the human criminals supporting (or at least: selling services) to them. Or "employing them". Until a well-hidden internal timer would reach "zero". Then, another hidden layer would be activated and the cybrid would come back to the CVB, signal its arrival and "willingly" have itself shut down and dismantled, so that the CVB technicians could extract its memory core and extract the data that would allow their agents to hunt down and bust the rogue cybrids and criminals it was in contact with. A good and solid plan that has worked before.

But not this time. 

This time, some of the modifications that the Matryoshka acquired while it was thinking it was "self-aware" messed up the hidden last layer. It made contact with the CVB and arranged for being picked up, but instead of following the CVB agents, it suddenly attacked and killed all of them. A later attempt to deactivate said Matryoshka by another team failed as well: that the kill-switch was found out and removed was expected, that the hidden deactivate phrase was not working was something that the team was prepared for. What it was not prepared for was that the Matryoshka recognized the CVB agents for what they were seemingly on sight. Which had it open fire.

Now, the CVB as a whole has a PR disaster in the making when it becomes known that this project backfired that hard. Worse: they want this Matryoshka really bad now, memory intact, as they want to know who has fed it visual recognition data on its agents. And how many of them have been exposed this way.

Sending more CVB after it is not an option, though. Too many dead CVB on the same mission and people too high up to understand "how things are done and HAVE to be done - day in / day out" will involve themselves. And of course, CVB might be at a disadvantage in regard to approaching the target. Thereby, some "gray channels" have been used to place a non-public bounty on the Matryoshka, in this way to hire a team of "externals" to bring the undamaged data core of this cybrid. A rogue that acts like self-aware (and might be now, who knows? And what difference does it actually make?) with an unknown number of illegal modifications (which do include combat modifications) that may or may not be linked to a militant "cybrid freedom fighter" group.

The CVB will pay when the job is done, and relay any information and sightings of whereabouts to the player characters. They will not support them in any way.