20 Megacorp Occult Black Projects for Weird Cyberpunk Games

                             Photo by Drew Graham

Strange and secret things are slithering forth from the shadows of the sprawl! Here's 20 megacorp occult black projects to inspire esoteric stories and cyber-runs. For use with CHROMATIC SHADOWS (my in progress rpg) and other weird cyberpunk games.

1. Teleportation tech connects to a hidden excavation site (arctic/ jungle/ the moon). Architecture & relics are being removed & transported to a facility deep beneath the Sprawl.
2. Sigil magic and hypertech has opened a portal to a metadimension. A corporate team has established an outpost within.
3. A volunteer group of  'gifted individuals' are subject to experimental neuro-drift. Their collective mind-network is being utilized to manipulate alien artifacts.
4. Biotech chimera experiments. Human, animal and “non-terran” DNA are being combined in secret grow labs to produce terrifying hybrids.
5. Subjects are being dosed with powerful psychedelics while hooked into sense capture technology. The resultant data is concentrated and fed through algorithms to create Matrix based VR constructs. An alien agency is using them to tunnel into our reality.
6. Dangerous extra dimensional spirits are being captured by glyph tech and used as an energy source to power alien machines.
7. Corps are creating “soul tech”--deeply invasive neurotech, where a subject’s consciousness is copied and uploaded into an artificial body or a computer. The meat bodies are left on life support. Various experiments to reinsert a consciousness into a different body are well underway.
8. Neurochips are being developed that allow for a person to be “hijacked” by a distant operator and subject to total involuntary remote control.
9. Biohybrid nano swarms are being reverse engineered from alien tech. Only certain empaths have the ability to control them. But these controllers are slowly being corrupted by the psychic connection.
10. A mysterious and addictive AR video game has become the rage among a small subculture. The few that have beaten it are struck with delusions that aspects of the game are coming true. These people are being studied and treated in a special ward that is secretly funded by the makers of the game.
11. Off world embryos are being grown in a hidden facility. Under the cover of an illicit fertility clinic they are being placed into hosts for symbiotic gestation.
12. A ritually prepared research facility possesses powerful space distortion properties. A tiny storage block opens into a vast sprawling complex hundreds of times bigger than the outside area containing it.
13. Advanced mnemotech hooked up to specially conditioned subjects can project and replay every lived memory into an AR feed. Those memories can be edited and erased by an operator, causing permanent harm to the subject. However, erasing those memories actually changes the timeline. History is being cut out of existence.
14. A singularity has been created in a lab. It is growing bigger by the day, and will soon break through it’s containment field. If left unchecked it will expand indefinitely, sucking all nearby reality into itself.
15. A strange device receives transmissions from the future. A team is enacting targeted acts of terrorism in order to leverage their company’s future ascendency.
16. Experimental ‘rigger gear’ allows consciousness to be projected fractally into a swarm of “micro-drones”. In totality, the users consciousness is a unity, but separate it is diffused, reduced, yet ultimately connected.
17. Secret gentech experiments have resulted in a large population of animal subjects gaining human consciousness. Many are held in captivity, others are being employed as agents. Still others have escaped into the Sprawl seeking refuge and revenge.
18. Occult experiments & hypertech used in resurrection rituals. The dead are crawling out of graves in prime health, with no memory of time having passed. They seem to be drawn together for some uncanny ritual purpose.
19. Corps have discovered a genetic “fountain of youth” treatment. Aging execs in cryostasis are being awakened and reverse aged into their younger selves. A steady supply of “volunteers” are needed to sustain the program. These subjects are being systematically drained of their life force. Others less fortunate lie withered in vats awaiting further extraction.
20. A vast interconnected electric glyph is being created beneath a Sprawl neighborhood under the cover of a public infrastructure project. Once activated it will affect the whole neighborhood, causing a radical shift of consciousness.