Cthulhupunk the Masquerade
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - Call of Cthulhu.
"You're a big bad vampire. Hey, great, congrats. Now keep it to yourself." - Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.
In 2077, apathy and isolation choke the world. A gray shroud—fallout screens veiling mega-corporate arcologies—casts the sky in the flickering pallor of a dead channel. The divide between the elite and the downtrodden gapes like a wound: the rich hoard power and privilege, while the poor rent their flesh to ad-drones just to choke down synthetic slop. Decadence rots alongside cynicism and greed. Humanity frays as meat surrenders to metal—chrome limbs and neural jacks preach the elite’s transhuman gospel, a frantic grasp at digital eternity. Gothic spires rake the smog, their shadows echoing a culture of spiked leather, neon-threaded punk, and fetishistic gloom. Crime isn’t an outlier—it’s the pulse of the streets, as expected as the next corporate ad. Mega-corporations, or "korps," fuel this hollow frenzy of consumption, their logos burned into every corner of existence.
So it was decreed by our unseen overlords.
The korps are no mere businesses—they’re feudal empires without borders. Private currencies jingle, armies march, spies slink through the dark, and public security keeps the masses in line. Loyalty is bought with a lifetime deal: jobs, med-tech, hab-units, schooling for the sprogs, a retirement pod, and a gleaming urn in the korp mausoleum. Executives reign as neon-lit barons, their underlings tethered by dread and devotion. Hundreds of korps sprawl across the globe, their reach strangling everything from ramen joints to smartgun assembly lines. They prop up the last brittle illusions—progress, safety, purpose—that have kept humanity blind to the void for eons. Most korpfolk, swaddled in their sterile bubbles, would shatter if they glimpsed the Mythos. Only a rare few—hardened agents and whispered specialists—catch the fractures in reality, and even they quake.
Yet beneath the korps’ polished veneer, a deeper rot gnaws. Humanity dances as marionettes for supernatural cabals—vampires, werewolves, wraiths, and stranger things—who’ve tugged the strings of power since the first cities rose. Their wars of intrigue span centuries, unseen by mortal eyes. The vampires’ Camarilla, a blood-soaked oligarchy, upholds the Masquerade: a sacred vow to cloak their kind from humankind. To defy it—siring a fledgling without leave—means a head lopped off in the dust. But rebellion festers; some Kindred dream of tearing down the veil, lording over mortals like livestock. Werewolves snarl over turf and ancient grudges, while wraiths murmur from the beyond, their agendas as opaque as the grave.
Even these nightborn tyrants are but fleas on the hide of reality’s true masters. The Mythos—a term whispered by those who’ve peeked beyond the veil—names the ancient, alien horrors that dwarf all else. These Great Old Ones and their spawn, older than stars, slumber in drowned ruins or lightless gulfs between dimensions. They are not gods of worship but of madness: vast, incomprehensible entities whose very existence mocks reason. Their awakening promises a deluge of blood and chaos, a cosmic unmaking. Secret cults—among mortals, vampires, and others—kneel to these titans, spilling gore and chanting lunacies to hasten the end. To them, the korps’ sanitized order is a heresy, the Earth a slab for their eldritch lords.
Still, defiance flickers. Shadow-clad Inquisitions hunt the Mythos-touched, torching cults and their devotees with grim zeal. They collide with korp enforcers, supernatural factions, and fanatic cells in a silent, frantic war to stave off doom. On the streets, cyber-runners smuggle relics etched with alien runes, while gothic Kindred sip vitae in penthouse crypts, deaf to the stellar clock ticking down. 2077 trembles on a blade’s edge: a neon-drenched dystopia where illusions unravel, and the stars pulse with incomprehensible hunger.
Lovecraft’s immortal beings follow a clear taxonomy.
The Great Old Ones, like Cthulhu, Hastur, and Tsathoggua, are immensely powerful but still physical entities, bound by time and space to some extent.
Next are the Outer Gods, entities from beyond space-time, often lacking fixed forms. Most are mindless, though the most powerful may possess some awareness. Only Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, exhibits anything like a human personality, delighting in tormenting humanity. The Outer Gods range in power from the omnipresent Yog-Sothoth and Azathoth, the Demon Sultan, to nameless lesser deities who gibber mindlessly in Azathoth’s court. Aside from Nyarlathotep, they are largely indifferent to or unaware of humanity.
Lastly, the Elder Gods resemble traditional deities, linked to primal archetypes. This group includes Nodens, Lord of the Abyss, Hypnos, God of Sleep, and possibly figures from mythology such as Bast and Neptune. They often appear in human form, though this may be a projection of human perception. The Elder Gods seem more active in the Dreamlands than in the physical world.
Culture
The pulse of 2077’s culture is a warped, discordant hymn to decay. Music slithers through the air—slow, oppressive, and sinister—with basslines that throb like the heartbeat of something vast and unseen. Vocals, when they surface, are a guttural murmur, buried deep in the mix, their words incomprehensible yet chillingly familiar to those who’ve glimpsed the Necronomicon’s forbidden pages. It’s no coincidence: some lyrics are lifted straight from those profane incantations, whether by design or cosmic accident. Nightclubs catering to the lunatic fringe—pale-faced thrill-seekers draped in black velvet and spiked chrome—are magnets for this sound. These dens of the macabre, with their strobing lights and sweat-soaked crowds, draw those already half-seduced by the Mythos’ allure. They’re fertile soil for cultists, especially the nihilists who see the end of all things as a twisted salvation.
Among the performers, the line between artist and sorcerer blurs. A Mythos-tainted Tremere vampire—masquerading as a gaunt, charismatic DJ or singer—might weave chants into their set, turning the writhing crowd into an unwitting congregation. The energy of a thousand screaming fans becomes fuel for a summoning ritual, a blood-curse, or some other shard of eldritch witchcraft. Rumors swirl of lovecraftian ghoul bands, their claw-scarred instruments keening with an otherworldly wail, playing to packed houses of corpse-pale devotees. Stranger still are the human acts that perform solely in the Dreamlands—that shifting, nightmarish realm reachable only through occult sleep. Admission isn’t cheap: a vial of your blood, a whispered secret, or a fragment of your soul, bartered to the faceless gatekeepers who guard the way. Few return unchanged, if they return at all.
Violence, too, has reclaimed its throne. Gladiatorial combat roars back into vogue, a brutal spectacle beamed across every korp-sponsored holo-feed. Arenas—some sleek and neon-lit, others rusted hulks in abandoned districts—host clashes between cyber-augmented humans, their bodies a patchwork of flesh and steel. Fights range from bare-knuckle brawls to duels with mono-blades, smartguns, or experimental weapons fresh off the korp assembly line. Fatalities aren’t just common—they’re the draw, blood splattering the sand to keep the masses baying for more. The most infamous bouts pit chromed-up runners against each other, their enhancements pushed to grotesque extremes: retractable claws, subdermal armor, eyes that glow with targeting overlays. Betting pools rake in billions, while korps scout the survivors for their private armies—or harvest the losers for spare parts.
Crime itself has evolved into a grotesque parody of governance. The Mafia, Yakuza, South American cartels, Chinese Triads, and Russian Bratva have shed their underworld skins to emerge as mega-corporations—feudal kingdoms in all but name. They’ve carved out vast swathes of territory in their ancestral homelands, from Sicilian strongholds to neon-drenched Tokyo sprawls, where their word is law and their enforcers are judge and executioner. Nominal governments—hollow shells on the payroll—rubber-stamp their autonomy, preserving the illusion of national sovereignty. These criminal korps mirror their corporate cousins, issuing their own scrip, fielding private militias, and running espionage rings that rival any intelligence agency. Their citadels bristle with gothic opulence: marble villas flanked by laser grids, pagoda-fortresses wired with AI sentries, or jungle compounds guarded by gene-spliced beasts.
Within their domains, loyalty is absolute, enforced by a mix of lavish rewards and ruthless terror. Residents live under a perverse social contract—protection, jobs, even schools and clinics, all branded with the syndicate’s mark. Step out of line, and you’re a ghost: vanished into a vat of acid or shipped to a black-site arena for the next blood-sport broadcast. These enclaves thrive on the chaos beyond their walls, peddling narco-synth, wetware hacks, and occult relics to a world too broken to care. Yet even these lords of crime are blind to the Mythos’ shadow creeping closer, their empires as fragile as the korps they emulate when the stars finally align.
Cyberwear is only starting to come into its own. There are basically three grades of the stuff: State of the Art (SOTA), Standard, and Street. You can get anything you can pay for at the SOTA or Street grades. The difference is that SOTA is safe, reliable and (if the buyer wants it that way) invisible.
Street cyberwear is obvious, ugly and frequently unreliable.
SOTA cyber can be bought, but it's only available to characters with higher Social Status, Wealth, a powerful Patron or an appropriate Unusual Background.
Standard cyber is safe, reliable and unobtrusive, but not invisible (it can he spotted, or automatically detected by touch).
There are also a lot of cybermods that are just flat unavailable at Standard grades - mostly military and espionage-oriented stuff. Black market cyber is, by definition, either SOTA or street. Offensive, defensive or spy modifications are always harder to get than general utility or information-processing gear.
As far as guns are concerned, most countries limit high tech arms ownership strictly to licensed users, of course, that doesn't mean that they are in any way unavailable. . .
