Story

“The Breach” was a catastrophic cyber event that caused a crash in the security systems within the largest and most prestigious secure corporate archiving company in the world, the Palisade Bank Corporation. Their client list is rumored to be a “who’s who” of billionaires, leaders, and enterprises, and it includes the Tai Yong Medical Corporation, The Santeau Group, Picus Communications, Versalife, and the British Royal Family, among others. Until the Breach, the Palisade Bank Corporation’s digital vaults were fully protected by a next generation firewall known as “The Lavawall.”

Prague

By 2020, the “new” Czech Republic’s privacy laws were heavily in favor of banks and corporations. The radical stance threatened Switzerland’s monopoly as a financial haven. As a result, third-party Secure Corporate Archiving quickly became a booming industry, evolving Prague into the Swiss Bank of Data.

The Palisade Bank

Located in Prague, the Palisade Bank houses the property of several multinational corporations. It offers a place where highly sensitive documents and materials can be stored without fear of government subpoenas or investigation by international agencies.

The facility employs state-of-the-art technology to safeguard its priceless contents, and it’s guarded by Tarvos Security Services. Corporations such as Versalife, Tarvos, The Santeau Group, Picus, and Steiner-Bisley use the Palisade’s services.

The Palisade’s primary building, known as The Bank, houses individual storage units. These vaults contain physical objects (such as file boxes and other sensitive materials), as well as vid-screen and data ports connected to the Palisade Blades.

The Palisade Blades

Constructed in 2027, the futuristic structure of the Palisade Blades forever reshaped the skyline of Prague, as well as solidified the city’s place across the financial world. The Blades house a sophisticated operating system, along with endless fields of server farms. Multinationals helped finance their construction and use them to store their servers. The advanced capabilities of the Blades made it possible for the development of certain top-tier technologies.

The security systems and maintenance of the facility are managed by a powerful AI. The extent of its security protocols are known to be unbreachable, both physically and digitally. Or so it was thought.

The Blade environments are not designed to be visited by man. The facilities are fumigated to prevent mold buildup. Robots are in place to handle most tasks and maintenance needs. On the rare occasion when an engineer is required to enter a server chamber, it must first be clear of any toxins in the air. There are rumors that additional security features to prevent human intrusion exist and have been incorporated into the AI’s programming.

The Darknet

The Darknet is a private network where connections are made only between trusted peers using non-standard protocols and ports. As opposed to other distributed peer-to-peer networks, sharing on the Darknet is anonymous, and therefore, users can communicate with little fear of governmental or corporate interference.

For this reason, Darknet users are often associated with dissident communications and illegal activities. More generally, the term “Darknet” can be used to describe all non-commercial sites on the Internet, or to refer to all “underground” web communications and technologies.

The Neural Sub-Net

In 2023, Jakub Lanier invented a system that allowed computer-generated simulations to be fed directly into the brain via a backdoor in an augmented subject’s Neuroprosthetic Junction. This backdoor was called the Neural Sub-Net (NSN).

Regular use of the NSN was found to have therapeutic effects on people who had recently suffered physical trauma, especially Augs who had experienced critical failure of a core system. Seeing his invention’s potential in the palliative care of trauma victims, Lanier partnered with Milton Krieger to form Cybronica Bio-Medical in early 2025.

After the Panchaea Incident of 2027, Lanier wanted to make the NSN technology open-source to help people who had suffered as a result of the event, augmented or otherwise.

Rippers

Following the open-sourcing of the Neural Sub-Net technology, Darknet users found a way to use its operating system to gain backdoor access into programs and servers. Hacking was made accessible for all, without having to understand code.

This new form of hacking resembles a game-like interface within the Neural Sub-Net VR world. With it, a new brand of experts was born; they called themselves “Rippers” because the goal of these simulations was to access and extract data from servers.

When the existence of Rippers got out, the Palisade Bank Corporation instantly created a state-of-the-art firewall, called the Lavawall, to protect their networks. Although many hackers have tried to penetrate their defenses, none has succeeded. None, that is, until the Breach occurred.

With the Palisade’s Lavawall down, nothing was between Rippers and the exposed data within its networks. Word quickly spread throughout the Darknet, and soon, Rippers from all around the world were dropping everything they were doing to use their black market Neural Sub-Net kits.

Their goal? Extract the data. Expose the truth.