Neo-Kowloon
The World of NERVEJACK
Neo-Kowloon is a vertical mega-city built over the flooded ruins of Old Hong Kong. When floodwaters rose 40 meters in 2079, the government collapsed and refugees built upward — welding shipping containers to skyscrapers, stringing catwalks between towers, stacking lives on top of lives. The original architects designed it for 2 million people. Current population: 8 million. The infrastructure was never upgraded.
Seven sectors spiral around a central column called The Spine. Syn-Tech — the mega-corporation that stepped in after the Data-Crash of 2088 — owns everything above Sector 3. Below that, it's gangs, fixers, and desperation. It is always night in the lower sectors. The sky is choked with smog, holographic ads, and the undersides of upper platforms. Real sunlight only reaches High-Orbit.
The rain is acidic — pH 4.5. It stings exposed skin, dissolves cheap fabric, and pools in toxic puddles on catwalks. Everyone carries a Breather Mask or pays the price.
Despite everything, Neo-Kowloon is alive. Eight million people eat, sleep, fall in love, raise children, make art, and find reasons to laugh. The city is brutal but it's theirs, and they've made something human out of steel and smog.
The Seven Sectors
Sector 1 — The Spine
The central support column of the entire mega-structure. Syn-Tech's headquarters, the Sky-Tram hub, and automated turrets on every surface. Clean, white, sterile. The air smells like nothing — recycled and scrubbed of all scent. Corporate citizens call it "Civilization." Everyone else calls it "The Cage."
The class divide is vertical within the sector itself. Executive floors have real wood furniture and windows facing outward. Middle management gets internal offices with screen-walls showing fake weather. The maintenance level below has exposed pipes, flickering lights, and workers eating lunch on cable spools. Three worlds stacked on top of each other, connected by elevators that skip floors depending on your badge level.
Sector 2 — The Gardens
Designed as a green zone, but the plants mutated from toxic runoff. Now it's a jungle of bioluminescent vegetation, carnivorous vines, and hallucinogenic pollen. Squatter communities have carved out clearings where they cultivate the safer plants for food and medicine. Children here know which berries heal and which ones make you see your dead grandmother.
At night, it's the most beautiful place in Neo-Kowloon. Every surface glows — moss, fungi, flowers, even the water trickling down walls. The bioluminescence shifts in slow waves like breathing. The carnivorous plants close at night, making it paradoxically safer after dark.
Sector 3 — The Foundry
The city's cybernetics factory. The air is thick with metal dust. Workers get lung cancer within five years, but the pay is the best in the lower sectors. The rhythm of hammers and presses never stops.
There's pride here despite the danger. Craftsmen sign their work with tiny maker's marks — a tradition from old Hong Kong's toolmakers. A Foundry-made cybernetic limb with a maker's mark is worth triple. The workers have a saying: "Metal dust is honest." Meaning: the factory will kill you, but slowly and predictably, unlike the rest of Neo-Kowloon.
Sector 4 — The Stacks
Working-class high-rises made of shipping containers welded to skyscrapers. Connected by ziplines, catwalks, and cargo lifts. Chrome-Head gang territory. The Neon Bazaar, The Circuit Breaker bar, and The Pit fighting arena are its beating heart.
Despite the poverty, Sector 4 has the strongest sense of community — neighbors share food, watch each other's kids, and fight for each other. The Neon Bazaar spans three floors: food and junk on the first, weapons and chrome on the second, Night Market Cartel territory on the third. It's also the social heart of the sector: buskers play, kids chase each other between stalls, and couples share noodles on the mezzanine.
Sector 5 — The Drowned Quarter
Partially submerged in floodwater. Buildings connect via rusty catwalks and pontoon bridges. Iron Lotus runs it like a feudal kingdom — they control the water filtration plant and tax everyone who uses the catwalks.
Beautiful in its own decayed way. Bioluminescent algae lights the waterline at night, and the sound of water is everywhere. Mama Sato's sake bar sits on a pontoon platform that rises and falls with the water level — her lanterns reflected in the water are the most beautiful sight in the quarter. She's been serving warm sake for 40 years.
Sector 6 — The Wires
A tangled mass of server farms and data cables. Heat from the processors makes it 45°C all year. Null-Set hackers and data cults thrive here. There's no day or night — just the constant amber glow of server indicator lights stretching in every direction like a city of its own.
The Cathedral of the Algorithm is built inside an old data center. Server racks serve as pews. Father Algorithm preaches that the Data-Crash was divine will and maintains the only paper library in Neo-Kowloon in a hidden room behind the altar. The deepest levels of The Wires are unmapped — maintenance drones go in and don't come back.
Sector 7 — The Crater
A Null-Set bomb meant for a Syn-Tech weapons lab missed its target and killed 4,000 civilians. The crater is still radioactive. Radiation tides ebb and flow with no predictable pattern. Scavengers check dosimeters like fishermen check the weather.
The community here is paradoxically the tightest in the city — when your neighbor's Geiger alarm goes off, you share your shelter. Wildflowers grow where nothing should survive, pushing through irradiated concrete. The Memorial Wall stretches across what was once a residential block, names of the dead etched in salvaged metal. Someone maintains it. Nobody knows who.
The Factions
Ten factions fight for territory, resources, and ideology across Neo-Kowloon. Your actions shift your reputation with each of them — help one and you may make enemies of another. Every faction has its own territory, goals, and people worth knowing.
Syn-Tech
The ruling mega-corporation. They own water filtration, air recycling, the police, and the Sky-Tram. After the Data-Crash of 2088 wiped 90% of the world's bank records, Syn-Tech stepped in with their own currency system and became the de facto government. Some believe the crash was intentional. Their first CEO was assassinated — then uploaded to the corporate mainframe. Some say he still runs the company from inside the network.
Chrome-Heads
A cybernetic-obsessed gang that won Sector 4 during the Chrome Wars of 2091. They recruit by installing "Starter Chrome" — cybernetics that malfunction without monthly maintenance only Chrome-Head docs can provide. But their culture isn't purely predatory. They genuinely believe chrome makes you better. Communal charging stations double as social hubs where members trade upgrade tips and debate aesthetics.
Null-Set
Netrunners and hackers founded by seven people who survived the Data-Crash and realized it was engineered. Their goal: break Syn-Tech's monopoly on information. They maintain a free public data terminal in the Neon Bazaar that provides uncensored news and water quality readings. Syn-Tech has destroyed it four times. Null-Set rebuilds it every time within 48 hours.
Iron Lotus
A mercenary organization that runs Sector 5 like a feudal kingdom. Disciplined and hierarchical — closer to a military than a gang. They control the water filtration plant and tax everyone in their territory. Their combat academy trains recruits for two years and also teaches literacy and basic medicine. Some residents genuinely prefer their rule to NCPD indifference.
The Cleaners
Syn-Tech-sponsored death squads that "disappear" activists, journalists, and Null-Set sympathizers. Officially, they're a "sanitation company." They operate a black site called The Cage somewhere in Sector 3's factory district. Detective Cross has been narrowing its location for months.
Night Market Cartel
Controls 70% of drug distribution in the lower sectors. Baron Tsui runs it from High-Orbit — he has never set foot below the clouds. They maintain strict quality control (bad product is bad business) and run Neo-Kowloon's most popular underground radio station, NMC Radio. Even people who hate the Cartel listen.
The Drowned
Cultists who worship the flooded city below. They practice ritual drowning as baptism. Terrifying and compassionate in equal measure — they run the best soup kitchen in the lower sectors, serving actual vegetables while drowning converts in the flooded basement of the same building.
Red Chain
A smuggling ring that moves contraband between sectors via hidden ziplines, maintenance corridors, and bribed Sky-Tram conductors. They'll move anything — medicine, weapons, people — for the right price. Their pathfinders know routes through Neo-Kowloon that don't appear on any map.
Synth-Flesh Collective
Advocates for android rights. Syn-Tech classifies them as terrorists. Led by Dove — who is 90% machine herself. They organize through encrypted Neural-Link channels and art installations, and visit the Bone Yard weekly to perform remembrance rituals for decommissioned androids.
The Burnouts
Former corpo executives and engineers who went cyberpsycho. They live feral in the radioactive ruins of Sector 7. Some retain fragments of lucidity and technical knowledge — they might attack you or fix your Neural-Link. Their de facto leader, Phantom, was a schoolteacher before the bombing. His students' names are tattooed on his remaining organic arm.
History
Neo-Kowloon wasn't planned. It was survived into existence.
- 2079 — Floodwaters rise 40 meters. Old Hong Kong's government collapses. Refugees weld shipping containers to skyscrapers and build upward. The Stacks are born.
- 2085 — A mining accident shatters the moon. Its debris ring is visible on the rare nights the smog clears. The mining company paid survivors 10 credits each.
- 2088 — The Data-Crash wipes 90% of the world's bank records. Syn-Tech steps in with Cred-Sticks and becomes the de facto government. Seven hackers who survived the crash realize it was engineered and found Null-Set.
- 2090 — A retired Null-Set hacker named Mother Tang writes a virus that brings down Syn-Tech's Sector 6 firewall. She now sells dumplings from a noodle cart.
- 2091 — The Chrome Wars. Gang conflicts over Ripperdoc territory. 3,000 dead in six weeks. Chrome-Heads win Sector 4. Iron Lotus takes Sector 5. The borders haven't moved since. Families were divided.
- 2093 — The Neon Renaissance. A two-year cultural explosion after the Chrome Wars ceasefire. Street artists, musicians, and poets flood Sector 4. The Echo Wall, the Rust Box, and the catwalk murals date from this period.
- Present — Syn-Tech tightens its grip. Null-Set fights back. The Cleaners disappear people in the night. And somewhere in The Spire's servers, the uploaded CEO watches everything.
What It Feels Like
Descending through Neo-Kowloon is a journey through the senses. The Spine: silence, recycled air, white light. The Gardens: humidity, sweet rot, blue-green glow. The Foundry: heat, metal tang, rhythmic hammering. The Stacks: crowd noise, cooking smoke, neon. The Drowned Quarter: water sounds, salt air, rust smell. The Wires: server hum, fiber-optic shimmer, furnace heat. The Crater: silence again, but a different silence — not engineered emptiness but true absence.
Each transition is abrupt. There are no gradual shifts in Neo-Kowloon.
The Sky-Tram is the only place all of Neo-Kowloon shares the same air. A corpo in a pressed suit stands next to a Foundry worker with grey-dusted lungs, next to a Gardens squatter trailing bioluminescent pollen, next to a Chrome-Head with sparking wrist-servos. Nobody talks. Everyone watches everyone.
The city has over 1,000 entries of lore behind every street corner, every NPC conversation, every faction interaction. When you play NERVEJACK, you're not generating a world from nothing — you're stepping into one that already exists, with its own history, politics, grudges, and beauty. The AI game master draws from all of it.
Last updated: March 2026