Cyberware

Chrome and Flesh

Cyberware is the defining technology of the age. It has reshaped what it means to be human, what it means to be capable, and what it means to be alive. In Night City in 2076 chrome is not unusual. Chrome is Tuesday. The question is not whether you have augmentations. The question is how much of yourself you have traded away and whether what you got in return was worth it.

History of Cyberware

The origins of cyberware lie in military and medical necessity. Early cybernetic prosthetics were developed to replace limbs lost in combat and industrial accidents functional replacements that restored basic capability without pretending to be anything more. The technology existed in rudimentary form through the late twentieth century but it was the military contracts of the early twenty-first century and the escalating demands of the Corporate Wars that drove cyberware from medical device to weapons platform to consumer product in the space of a few decades.

The Corporate Wars were the crucible in which modern cyberware was forged. The megacorporations competing for military contracts poured resources into augmentation research at a scale that peacetime medicine never would have justified. Soldiers needed to be faster, stronger, more durable and more lethal than their unaugmented counterparts. The corporations obliged. By the time the wars wound down the technology had advanced far enough that military-grade augmentation was filtering into the civilian market in various diluted forms and the corporations that had built their business on military contracts were looking for new customers.

The Night City Holocaust of 2023 and the subsequent Time of the Red created the conditions for cyberware to become truly mass market. The collapse of conventional medical infrastructure in the aftermath of the Holocaust left a population with significant medical needs and limited access to traditional care. Cyberware particularly the cheaper generations available from emerging manufacturers filled that gap. Replacement limbs for those who had lost them in the blast. Cybereyes for those blinded by the detonation. Neural interfaces for those trying to navigate the new fragmented NET.

By 2076 cyberware is as common as any other consumer technology. The market is stratified by generation and price point from budget Zetatech installations available at mall ripperdocs to military-specification augmentations that are not commercially available at any price. The technology has advanced to the point where the limiting factor is no longer engineering it is the human body's ability to accept what is being done to it. That limit has a name: Cyberpsychosis.

Cyberpsychosis

Every piece of cyberware installed reduces a person's connection to their own humanity. The medical and psychological community calls this Humanity Loss a measurable decline in empathy, emotional regulation and psychological stability that accompanies the progressive replacement of organic tissue with synthetic components. As Trauma Team's medical documentation defines it, Cyberpsychosis is a collective term for all psychotic and anxiety-related personality disorders caused by implanted hardware and behavioural modifications including software. The mechanisms are not fully understood even now. The outcomes are.

The condition can eventually affect anyone modified with cybernetics. A single cyber hand is unlikely to cause problems. Replacing all four limbs and both eyes starts the descent. The less empathetically stable a person is to begin with the more susceptible they are existing psychopathic tendencies accelerate the process considerably, which is part of why boostergangs and certain corners of the Edgerunner community have a higher incidence rate than the general population. It is quite common in gang culture where rapid cheap chrome installation without adequate psychological support is the norm. In polite society it is considerably rarer. Uncommon enough that people prefer to think of it as someone else's problem right up until it is happening on their block.

How It Presents

Cyberpsychosis does not arrive all at once. The early warning signs are subtle and frequently missed often deliberately, by the person experiencing them and the people around them. What the clinical literature describes as the initial presentation looks from the outside like a personality shift. A reduction in patience. A growing difficulty relating to other people as fully real. Decay of self-preservation instinct. Distancing from friends and family. Poor impulse control and outbursts that seem disproportionate to the provocation. The individual stops doing things that used to give them pleasure eating, sleeping, socialising. These are not dramatic symptoms. They are easy to rationalise. Night City produces stress. People change. The chrome is fine.

It is not fine. As the condition progresses the individual begins to identify more strongly with their mechanical components than with their remaining organic tissue. Other people start to register as weak and inferior obstacles or variables rather than individuals. Human interaction shifts from irritating to contemptible. This is the stage where the people around the affected individual usually start to notice something is seriously wrong, and also the stage at which the affected individual is least receptive to being told so.

Full Cyberpsychosis represents the end point of this progression. The individual has lost their sense of identity as a person either to themselves or to others and has developed a complete disregard for the lives of those around them. Not all cyberpsychos become physically violent some present with fragmented personalities, compulsive behaviours or chronic deception as their primary symptom. But violence toward living things, and people specifically, is the most common outcome and the one that Night City's emergency response infrastructure is built around addressing.

It is worth noting that bad installation compounds all of this significantly. A person who cannot afford a quality ripperdoc and ends up with poorly installed hormone blockers or substandard neural interface hardware may find themselves experiencing nightmares, auditory hallucinations and accelerated psychological deterioration as a direct consequence of the installation quality rather than the chrome load alone. Some call Cyberpsychosis a disease wrought by social inequality. The data does not entirely disagree with that framing.

Treatment and Management

There is no cure. There is management. The effects are cumulative and crossing the line into full psychosis makes removal of implants largely academic the psychological damage does not reverse cleanly even when the hardware is gone.

Empathy therapy exists and is available at a range of quality levels that mirror the cyberware market itself. Corporate employees with full benefit packages have access to genuine clinical support from qualified practitioners who understand the condition and can identify early warning signs before they become critical. Everyone else has access to whatever they can afford, which in Night City is frequently insufficient. There are treatment centers that specialize in Cybernetically Derived Dissociative Disorder notably always somewhere in Scandinavia or Japan. These clinics do exist but are also frequently used as an excuse to disappear someone experiencing cyberpsychosis. The real clinics are more high end health spas than medical clinics and can be extremely expensive and exclusive. Lesser facilities exist around the world and are reminiscent of high security rehab facilities.

Immunoblocker formally designated baloperidol and colloquially known by its street name is the pharmaceutical response to acute Cyberpsychosis risk. Despite the name it has nothing to do with the immune system. It is a cocktail of anti-psychotics, genuine immunoblockers and related chemicals that can suppress the effects of extreme cyberware installation and reduce the immediate risk of a psychotic episode. Its effectiveness as a long-term solution is considered questionable by most clinical practitioners. It is nonetheless widely used particularly by heavily implanted individuals who operate in high-intensity environments and cannot reduce their chrome load for professional reasons. These individuals are referred to as Chromejockeys or Chromefiends depending on context and tone. At the extreme end individuals who have effectively replaced their entire biological body and are maintaining any semblance of functionality through pharmaceutical intervention and sheer determination the term Fullborg is applied, usually not as a compliment.

Corporate standard practice for an employee believed to be approaching psychosis is to have them isolate from the public and await a corporate medical team. What the employee is typically not told is that the distinction between a corporate medical team and a corporate hit squad in this context is largely administrative.

Surveillance and Watch Lists

The government and the corporations which in Night City are frequently the same thing do not wait for the edge to be crossed before they start paying attention. Individuals known to be installing significant amounts of cyberware are commonly tracked by both governmental and corporate monitoring systems. This is one of the less-discussed reasons the ripperdoc economy exists at the scale it does. Not everyone getting chipped wants to be on a watch list. A street ripperdoc working out of a basement in Watson does not file paperwork with anyone.

MaxTac Night City's specialist response unit for Cyberpsychosis incidents deploys when the situation has moved past the point where any of the above interventions are relevant. Their operators are drawn from a range of backgrounds including in some cases individuals who have themselves been through the system. The unit applies overwhelming force. Collateral damage is an accepted operational parameter. The outcome of a MaxTac deployment is rarely ambiguous and civilian casualties in the vicinity are a documented consequence that the department's public communications office has become skilled at contextualising.

By 2076 the incidence of full Cyberpsychosis has decreased relative to earlier decades due to advances in implant technology and medical understanding. People still cross the line every day. The chrome keeps going in. Night City keeps producing the conditions that make it go in faster than is safe. And somewhere in Watson or Pacifica or Santo Domingo someone who was fine last month is not fine anymore, and their neighbours are about to find out.

Ripperdocs

A Ripperdoc is the street term for a cyberware installation specialist surgeon, technician, dealer and in many cases the closest thing their clients have to a primary care physician. The name is not flattering and was not intended to be when it entered common use. It has since been reclaimed by practitioners across the full quality spectrum as a professional identifier, worn with varying degrees of irony depending on where on that spectrum they operate.

Ripperdocs exist because the corporate medical system does not cover cyberware installation for most of Night City's population, and because a significant proportion of the chrome moving through the city is not the kind of product that corporate-approved clinics are licensed to handle. The ripperdoc economy fills both gaps simultaneously providing installation services to people who cannot access or afford formal medical facilities, and moving inventory that the official distribution channels either cannot or will not touch.

The range of what a ripperdoc is and what their practice looks like is as wide as Night City itself. At the premium end a licensed clinic ripperdoc operates out of a clean facility with modern surgical equipment, legitimate manufacturer supply chains and the kind of post-installation support infrastructure that produces good outcomes and repeat clients. These practitioners are surgeons in every meaningful sense of the word. They have training, they have standards and they have reputations built over years of doing clean work that holds up. Their waiting lists are long. Their prices reflect their quality. Their clients are loyal in the particular way that people are loyal to someone who has had their hands inside their nervous system and done right by them.

At the other end of the market the picture is considerably less reassuring. A street ripperdoc operating out of a converted shipping container in Northside or a basement unit in Pacifica is working with second-hand tools, inconsistent anaesthetic supply and inventory sourced from channels that neither party is going to discuss in detail. The work ranges from entirely serviceable to the kind of outcome that requires a second visit to a better ripperdoc to correct assuming the client recognises what has gone wrong and can afford the correction. Budget installations done under non-sterile conditions with mismatched hardware are a known vector for the kind of low-grade neural interference and hormonal dysregulation that accelerates Humanity Loss in ways the client does not immediately attribute to the installation. The ripperdoc in this scenario may or may not be aware of this. Their clients frequently cannot afford to care.

Between these poles is the vast middle ground of Night City's ripperdoc community competent practitioners working in reasonable conditions with mixed inventory, serving the working population of Watson, Heywood and Santo Domingo who need chrome at prices they can actually pay. These are the ripperdocs who become neighbourhood institutions. Who know their regulars by name and by chassis. Who will tell you honestly whether what you want installed is a good idea and whether the hardware you sourced from the market is going to play nicely with what you are already running. A good mid-tier ripperdoc with a reputation for honest work and fair pricing is one of the most valuable professional relationships a Night City resident can have. Finding one and keeping them happy is a skill in itself.

The inventory side of the ripperdoc business deserves its own consideration. Corporations sell premium cyberware through licensed distributors and approved retailers at the top end of the market. Everything below that tier moves through ripperdocs who source their stock from manufacturers, black market suppliers, corporate surplus channels, salvage operations and in some cases provenance that is best left unexamined. The used cyberware market in Night City is large, poorly regulated and entirely dependent on the ripperdoc network for distribution. Hardware removed from one person ends up installed in another with a frequency that the industry does not advertise. Whether the original owner consented to the removal is a question that gets asked less often than it should.

What all ripperdocs share regardless of quality tier is an absolute professional commitment to client confidentiality. The ripperdoc who discusses what they have installed in whom, or who maintains records accessible to outside parties, does not stay in business. In a city where a significant proportion of the population is on some kind of watch list for their augmentation load, the ripperdoc who keeps their mouth shut and their files clean is not providing a courtesy they are providing a service that their clients consider essential.

Cyberware Generations

Night City MUSH uses the generational cyberware framework as described in the Edgerunners book. See the House Rules page for full mechanical details. The following is the in-universe description of each generation.

Generation	Era	Description
Gen 1	Early Corporate War era	The first generation of commercially available cyberware. Bulky, unreliable and primitive by modern standards. Gen 1 installations are borderline museum pieces in 2076 occasionally still encountered in older residents who had them installed decades ago and never upgraded. Collectors find them interesting. Surgeons find them alarming. Functioning Gen 1 ware is a rarity.
Gen 2	Late Corporate War / Time of the Red	The generation that democratised cyberware. Gen 2 ware flooded the market during and after the Corporate Wars as military surplus and manufacturer overstock became available to civilian buyers. Functional but dated. The kind of chrome your mother might have had installed when she was young. Still available at the budget end of the market in 2076. Does the job. Nobody is going to compliment it.
Gen 3	Modern era — 2076 standard	The current standard of commercial cyberware. What most Night City residents are running in 2076. Gen 3 represents the mature state of civilian augmentation technology refined, reliable, extensively documented and available at a range of price points from budget Zetatech to premium Raven Microcybernetics. The baseline expectation for anyone getting chipped in 2076.
Gen 4+	Military specification — restricted	Beyond the commercial market entirely. Gen 4+ cyberware is military-specification hardware operating at capabilities that civilian regulatory frameworks were not designed to account for. Not available through any commercial channel. The experimental Sandevistan used by David Martinez is a confirmed example of what Gen 4+ hardware looks like in practice and what it costs the person running it. See House Rules for full mechanical implications.

Major Cyberware Corporations

Arasaka

Arasaka's cyberware division is inseparable from their security and military operations. Their augmentations are not typically designed for the consumer market they are designed for their own security forces and for sale to clients who can afford corporate-tier hardware. Arasaka occupies a unique position in the cyberware market they do not compete for volume. They compete for dominance in specific categories where they have decided to be the best and have allocated the resources to ensure it. This means that Arasaka Cyberware is most common among corporate security, netrunners, and Edgerunners.

• Mantis Blades Arasaka produces what is widely acknowledged as the finest Mantis Blades on the market. Their blade systems represent the current ceiling of what retractable forearm weapon technology can achieve edge retention, deployment speed, integrated concealment and the kind of finish that tells anyone who knows what they are looking at exactly which manufacturer made them.
• Stealth and Low-Profile Cyberware Arasaka's stealth cyberware line is unmatched in the commercial market. Their specialisation in low-visibility, low-impact augmentations produces hardware that is designed to be functionally invisible minimal external profile, reduced bioscan signature and installations that do not announce themselves to casual inspection. The kind of chrome you carry when you cannot afford to be seen carrying it.
• High-End Netrunner Cyberware Arasaka produces premium neural interface and Netrunner-grade cyberware for their own operatives and for sale to approved clients. Their Netrunner hardware represents some of the most capable deep-dive and architecture-penetration technology on the commercial market, operating in categories where most manufacturers do not compete.

Rocklin Augmentics

The creators of the Neuroport and widely considered the finest in Transhumanist cyberware, Rocklin Augmentics distinguishes themselves from other megacorps in that they specialize almost exclusively in cyberware that is meant to be used in or completely replace daily life. While the Neuroport is the most well known of their advancements and so ubiquitous that other corporations have started to produce them at different price points they also produce other very high end fashion ware such as the Signature Cybernetic Series and the RockXotics line. Rocklin Cyberware is not for the average citizen but for those who want the best in body augmentics to show the world.

• Neuroport — Rocklin Augmentics Neuron Rocklin is the primary commercial manufacturer of the Neuroport, the foundational neural interface hardware used by the majority of Night City's augmented population as their baseline installation. The Rocklin Augmentics Neuron is their confirmed Neuroport product and one of the most widely installed pieces of cyberware in Night City.
• Signature Cybernetic Series Rocklin's most culturally significant product line. Designed in collaboration with popular artists the Signature Series embraces aesthetic boldness over organic simulation open frameworks, unusual color schemes and proportions designed to be seen. The defining product of the fashion cyberware movement.
• RockXotics Line Rocklin's specialty cyberware range including the Fangtastik and other products that push the boundary between augmentation and body modification.
• Rocklin Augmentics Alpha Class Rocklin's full body conversion package. At the extreme end of their catalogue and a demonstration of how far the company's transhumanist philosophy extends when taken to its logical conclusion.
• Additional Products Rocklin's catalogue includes the Spider and Mercurius Cyberchairs, the RacerBracer, Quick Digits, Skydrivers and the Extra-Jointed Cyberlimb Upgrade.

Raven Microcybernetics

The premium brand in civilian cyberware. Raven produces augmentations at the top end of the commercial market the finest materials, the tightest tolerances, the most advanced technology available outside of military specification. Their products are favoured by elite Solos, corporate security and anyone with the eddies to buy the best. Raven's market share is one directly tied to customization, quality, and exclusivity. Having Raven cyberware means you dropped a pretty Eddy on making sure you had only the best.

• Sandevistan (Premium Tier) Raven produces what is widely considered the finest commercially available Sandevistan on the market. Their Sandevistan Mark VI became the gold standard for combat-grade reflex augmentation and remains the reference point against which other manufacturers' products are measured. Installed by Raven's own clinic technicians at considerable cost.
• Premium Cyberlimbs Raven's cyberlimb range represents the peak of commercial prosthetic technology. Indistinguishable from biological limbs in appearance and superior to them in capability, finished to exacting tolerances and backed by the only warranty in the cyberware market that is actually worth reading.

Kiroshi Optics

Kiroshi Optics occupies a position in the optical cyberware market that no other manufacturer has come close to matching. Their cybereyes and optical augmentation systems are the finest available on the commercial market years ahead of most competitors in resolution, integration capability, option slot architecture and the quality of the visual experience they deliver to the user. The only manufacturer whose optical hardware is considered to operate in a comparable tier is Raven Microcybernetics and possibly Arasaka, and even that comparison is contested by those who work with Kiroshi's premium lines.

• Cybereyes Kiroshi's flagship product and the standard by which all other cybereyes are measured. Available at multiple price points across the market but universally recognized by the distinctive Kiroshi iris signature visible under magnification. Their top-tier models deliver a visual experience that goes substantially beyond what biological eyes are capable of.
• Optical Augmentation Options Kiroshi's option slot ecosystem for their Cybereye line is the most extensive and best-supported in the market. Targeting systems, enhanced vision modes, recording hardware and specialist installations all benefit from Kiroshi's integration architecture.
• Visual Interface Systems Beyond the eyeball itself Kiroshi produces the full stack of visual interface technology Chyron overlays, Virtuality projection systems and the supporting hardware that turns a cybereye from a replacement organ into a sophisticated platform.

Zetatech

The mass market end of the cyberware spectrum. Zetatech produces affordable, functional augmentations for the working Night City resident who needs chrome and has a budget to work within. Their quality control is inconsistent and their warranty service is not something anyone should rely on but their products are everywhere and they work often enough that the market continues to buy them.

• Budget Cyberlimbs The most commonly installed replacement limbs in Night City by volume. Functional, available and cheap. The gap between a Zetatech arm and a Raven arm is significant. The gap between a Zetatech arm and no arm is more significant.
• Consumer Electronics and Interface Hardware Zetatech produces a broad range of neural interface hardware and consumer-facing cyberware at accessible price points. Their Cyberaudio and Cyberoptic lines represent the entry point for most Night City residents getting chipped for the first time.

Dynalar Technologies

The middle market specialist. Dynalar occupies the space between Zetatech's budget offerings and Raven's premium products quality augmentations at prices that working professionals can afford. Their products are known for durability and reliability and are the preferred brand of Night City's professional Edgerunner community who need their chrome to work when it matters. Dynalar is especially well known in the Linear Frame market for their use in construction for being easy to use and highly unlikely to break also unfortunately for being very heavy.

• Mid-Range Cyberlimbs and Sensory Augmentations Dynalar's core product range. Reliable, well-finished and competitively priced. The brand of choice for Solos who cannot quite stretch to Raven but refuse to run on Zetatech.
• Neural Interface Hardware Dynalar's Neural Interface line achieved industry standard status in the mid-range Netrunner deck market, cementing their reputation for quality engineering at accessible prices.

Militech

Militech is not known for cyberware in the way that specialist manufacturers are. Their augmentation division exists to serve their military contracting operations and the needs of their own forces rather than to compete in the civilian market. Where Militech does produce cyberware it is built to military specification durable, powerful and entirely uninterested in aesthetics or comfort.

• Linear Frames Militech produces high-end Linear Frame exoskeletal systems for the military market. Their Linear Frame hardware represents some of the most capable strength and endurance augmentation available, built to function in combat environments under conditions that civilian-grade hardware is not designed to survive. Not commercially available through standard channels.
• Body-Mounted Weapons Systems Militech's body-integrated weapons platform hardware is designed for military and law enforcement clients who require weapons systems that are part of the operator rather than carried by them.

Moore Technologies

Moore Technologies occupies a unique and extreme position in the cyberware market full body conversion systems for clients who have decided that the organic body is either insufficient for their needs or irrelevant to their identity. Moore produces the most advanced full body conversion cyberware available on the commercial market, operating in a category where most manufacturers do not compete and most clients do not go. On the less extreme end Moore also produces the finest in bone, joint, and muscle cyberware proving a dedication to making their users more than human.

• Moore Technologies Sheol Moore's most significant industrial product. The Sheol is a full body cyberware package designed for hazardous materials operations a complete conversion system that replaces the biological body with a chassis engineered to function in environments that would be immediately lethal to organic tissue.
• Fashion Full Body Conversions Moore Technologies achieved significant cultural visibility through their association with the musician Lizzy Wizzy whose full body conversion, performed live on stage during a concert, became one of the most documented and discussed cyberware events in Night City history.
• Berserk Implants The flagship muscle and nanite controller combat implant. The Berserk implant is favored by the Animals gang and Solos who want to get in and get dirty. Highly Illegal on the civilian market. Very popular.

Notable Cyberware — Reference Guide

Cyberlimbs

Cyberlimbs are the most visible and culturally significant form of cyberware augmentation in Night City. The decision to replace a biological limb is one of the most consequential a person can make not just medically but socially, professionally and in terms of how the rest of the city reads you when you walk into a room. Chrome has its own language in Night City and cyberlimbs speak it loudest.

At the budget end of the market the experience of living with a cyberlimb is a study in managed disappointment. Zetatech and comparable budget manufacturers produce limbs that function in the sense that they move and respond to neural commands and do not fall off but the lived experience of wearing one reveals the corners that were cut in manufacturing. Tactile feedback is degraded or absent entirely, leaving the user navigating the world through a limb that can grip and strike and manipulate objects but cannot tell them what any of it feels like. Joint response lags slightly behind intent in ways that are imperceptible to an observer and deeply noticeable to the person wearing it. Budget cyberlimbs also age badly components wear, calibration drifts and the ripperdoc visits required to keep a cheap arm functioning smoothly add costs over time that the initial price tag did not advertise.

Mid-range hardware from manufacturers like Dynalar closes most of those gaps. Tactile feedback is present and reasonably calibrated. Response time is close enough to biological that the user stops noticing the difference within weeks of installation. The limbs are finished well enough to pass casual inspection and built well enough that regular maintenance keeps them running without drama. This is the tier where cyberlimbs stop being a compromise and start being a genuine replacement.

At the premium end Raven Microcybernetics, select Arasaka lines, Rocklin's Signature Series cyberlimbs stop being replacements and become upgrades. Raven's top-tier limbs deliver tactile feedback that their clients describe as equivalent to or better than biological sensation to a degree that some high end cyberlimbs require rehab training to not hurt oneself. Response time is below human baseline. Strength and endurance exceed what organic tissue can produce. Rocklin's fashion lines treat the limb as a canvas, producing hardware in configurations and aesthetics that make no attempt at organic simulation and make a point of it. A Rocklin Signature arm is not pretending to be something it is not. It is exactly what it is and it is beautiful on its own terms.

What all cyberlimbs share regardless of price point is the platform function the arm or leg as chassis for additional installations. Weapons, tools, sensors and specialist hardware can be housed within the limb's internal architecture, turning a prosthetic into a multi-function system. The options available expand significantly as the quality of the base limb increases.

Cybereyes

Cybereyes are the most socially legible piece of cyberware a person can wear. Unlike a cyberlimb which can be hidden under clothing or a neural implant which is invisible entirely, cybereyes announce themselves every time you make eye contact with someone. The iris does not quite move like a biological one. The pupil response is slightly too precise. At the premium end the difference is subtle enough that most people cannot place what is wrong they just know something is different. At the budget end it is immediately obvious and reads the room accordingly.

At the bottom of the market cybereyes are a functional replacement for biological vision and not much more. Zetatech and comparable budget manufacturers produce eyes that see the basic input and output of visual information is present and serviceable. But the colour rendering is slightly flat, the low-light performance is marginal and the overall visual experience has the particular quality of something that has been engineered to pass a specification rather than to be good. Budget cybereyes also have a characteristic visual signature that marks their wearers immediately to anyone who knows what they are looking for. In a city where your eyes tell people who you are the budget option communicates something specific about your financial situation.

Mid-range hardware Dynalar, standard Kiroshi lines closes the gap significantly. Visual quality reaches and in several modes exceeds biological baseline. Low-light performance becomes genuinely useful rather than theoretically present. The iris response reads as natural to casual inspection. This is the tier where cybereyes stop being a compromise and start being an advantage.

At the premium end Kiroshi Optics operates in a category that most manufacturers do not reach and several have stopped trying to match. Their top-tier cybereyes deliver a visual experience described by clients who have had both as cleaner, sharper and more configurable than anything biological vision produces. The colour rendering is better. The dynamic range the ability to handle simultaneously bright neon and deep shadow in the same field of view - is substantially better. Raven Microcybernetics competes at this level and the comparison between their top optical hardware and Kiroshi's is the kind of argument that Netrunners and Solos have in bars when they have run out of other things to argue about.

The cultural dimension of cybereyes is impossible to separate from the technical one. The faint luminescence of a non-standard iris colour, the particular quality of light that premium cybereyes catch differently to biological ones these are readable signals in Night City in the way that clothing brands or vehicle choices are readable signals. Your eyes tell people what you spent, what you prioritised and how seriously you take the machinery you are running.

Neuroport

The Neuroport is the cyberware installation that most Night City residents get first and think about least. It does not change how you look. It does not make you faster or stronger or more dangerous in any immediately visible way. What it does is open the door the foundational neural interface that makes the majority of serious cyberware installations possible. Without a Neuroport a significant portion of the augmentation ecosystem is simply unavailable. With one, you are connected to it.

Rocklin Augmentics manufactures the most widely installed Neuroport on the market the Rocklin Augmentics Neuron and their product has become so ubiquitous that the hardware and the category have become effectively synonymous in common use. The installation is a clinical procedure typically performed at a licensed facility, involving a small hardware unit interfaced directly with the user's nervous system at a connection point that varies by installation type but is most commonly located at the base of the skull or along the upper spine. Recovery time for a standard installation is short. Most clients are operational within days.

The experience of living with a Neuroport varies by installation quality in ways that are subtle but cumulative. A budget installation from a street ripperdoc produces an interface that works the connection to compatible cyberware is established and functional but may exhibit latency in signal handshake, occasional dropout under stress conditions and the particular low-grade background noise that cheap neural hardware produces in the user's sensory field.

Mid-range and premium installations from reputable clinic ripperdocs using quality hardware produce a clean and essentially transparent experience. The Neuroport at this tier does what it is supposed to do and announces itself to the user only through the capabilities it enables the seamless handshake with the technology around you, the absence of lag, the interface that feels like an extension of the nervous system rather than something bolted onto it.

High-end Neuroports are rare and largely only the purview of corpo kids in the modern age as tight tolerances and miniaturized components are fairly new. This means that high end Neuroports the likes of which are made almost exclusively by Arasaka, Raven, and Rocklin require almost no recovery period and are completely seamless to the body. The Chyrons they produce are highly customizable, the Biomonitors are tuned perfectly allowing tailored modification of internal drug ware, and the sockets attached to the Neuroports are either nearly invisible or are custom made in gold or other high end materials to demonstrate wealth.

Culturally the Neuroport sits in an interesting position. It is the most common first installation in Night City the decision point at which someone moves from unaugmented to chromed but it carries almost none of the social signalling weight of more visible augmentations. Nobody reads a Neuroport installation as a statement. It is infrastructure. What matters in terms of social and professional legibility is what you build on top of it. The Neuroport is the foundation that nobody sees and everybody notices the absence of.

Kerenzikov & Sandevistan: The Eternal Debate

Both the Sandevistan and Kerenzikov belong to a class of Neuralware colloquially called 'Speedware'; implants wired directly into the nervous system to do one thing above all else: make you faster than the person trying to kill you. The technology traces its roots to the earliest days of military cyberware, when megacorp engineers used active combat units in South and Central America as living test beds, pushing mind-machine interface technology far past what any university lab would sanction. Solos were among the first civilians to adopt it seriously, and the category has remained inseparable from the Solo's trade ever since. The 2 implants function very differently but with similar outcomes, Both implants require a functioning Neural Link as their foundation; the wired artificial nervous system acting as a more durable platform for the speedware to modify without causing horrible side effects such as crippling neuropathy from burned out synapses, overheating from the body being run faster than it is meant to, and in rare cases the heart rupturing or deadly aneurysms being caused by the constant stress being put on the body(or in the case of the Sandevistan a sudden violent burst of drugs and hormones causing catastrophic blood pressure jumps and the body overheating to the point that blood can literally boil). Installing speedware without a Neural link is medically possible. But very likely to be the last stupid decision you make.

From the outside the 2 cyberware operate very similarly. Granting more speed and reaction. But internally they operate very differently. The Kerenzikov being a consistent boost to the users reaction times and perception but not granting actual physical speed boosts. It is all neural all the time and from the outside looks like the user is able to see things happening before they actually happen. This means that the Kerenzikov requires much more training to use and is favored by those who need to be constantly aware, such as Corporate security and bodyguards. The Sandevistan on the other hand forces the brain and body into short violent bursts of speed that is all too visible to those on the ouside, the user moving with lightning speed in a sudden flash. Sandevistan users usually more about surprise and getting the job done quickly and violently. Since a Sandevistan has to be turned on and takes a second to trigger they cannot always be ready for its use.

The Kerenzikov is the steady-always on choice. Named after the Soviet-era research program that produced its earliest prototypes, The Kerenzikovs commercial origins are unknown though it is very likely that the earliest gen2 models originate from the soviet military. Installed at the nape of the neck it embeds itself deeply into the user's nervous system and never switches off, providing a constant low-level acceleration of reaction time that becomes indistinguishable from the user's natural state after long enough. There is no button to push, no cooldown to manage. The Kerenzikov user is simply always slightly ahead. This is accomplished by the Kerenzikov speeding up the users perception of time around them via a cocktail of drugs, nanites, and sped-up nervous system transmission. In practical terms their draws are fractionally faster, their dodges just a little earlier, their reads of a room just a bit sharper than anyone else present. Chromejockeys who choose the Kerenzikov tend to be methodical types people who prefer a reliable edge they can count on over a spike they have to time. This does have several practical downsides. Notably the Kerenzikov forces the user to always view the world in slow motion which can over time become maddening, every conversation feels like an age with other people speaking so slow that makes talking to other people feel like a chore, making a pot of coffee feels like it takes hours, Even going to the restroom becoming an exercise in patience. In early models this was so bad that it would drive Solos into cyberpsychosis over the course of maybe a year or two if the cyberware was not removed and the user given therapy. Current models mitigate these problems somewhat by using the biomonitor intrinsic to Neuralports as a tuner, allowing Kerenzikov users to dial down the implant to its minimum factory settings and dial it back up with a thought for combat. This doesnt make the problem go away but it makes it much more bearable. Watching a 30 minute cartoon now feeling like a 40 minute show, rather than an hour and a half of your life wasted.

The Sandevistan is the harder hitting, shorter burning cousin of the venerabl Kerenzikov. Known by its nickname 'The Sandy' on the streets was invented by the US military and then handed off to a series of major cyberware corporations for ongoing development around the second corporate war, with the first commercially viable model made by Marconi-Ferranti in the UK. This chrome is activated deliberately instead of being always on and functions by flooding the user's system with a burst of neurochemical acceleration that compresses a full minute of combat into something that feels like slow motion from the inside. The Sandevistan is several times larger the Kerenzikov and is installed along the spine from the nape of the neck almost to the small of the back and produces a series of nanite derived hormones, neurochemicals, and drugs that push the brain and muscles into dangerous overdrive. This causes the body to be able to move at a blur to other people while speeding up the users ability to perceive the world around them to a degree that other people are moving in drifting slow motion. Some users have even claimed to be able to see bullets hang in the air though this is largely impossible with current generation cyberware. Sandevistans were developed independently of the Kerenzikov through corporate research into performance enhancement for high-value operatives, and its burst-and-recover design reflects that origin a tool built for decisive moments rather than sustained superiority. The cooldown afterward is significant, leaving the runner at baseline for the better part of an hour. This is still considered a very valuable trade off since the user is not subject to the constant temporal lag of a permanent perception boost. Meaning the only real downside of the Sandevistan is that if you need it in rapid fire succession you are shit out of luck.

"Chrome is not the enemy. Chrome is a tool. What you do with it and what it does to you that is the question nobody wants to answer until it is already too late."
— Night City MUSH is a fan project. Cyberpunk Red is property of R. Talsorian Games. Cyberpunk 2077 is property of CD Projekt Red. Cyberpunk Edgerunners is property of Studio Trigger and Netflix.