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Rache Bartmoss was a legendary netrunner in the early 21st century who became notorious as the man who caused the DataKrash and killed the Net. He invented the Demon and Hound series of programs. He also wrote the Rache Bartmoss' Guide to the Net and Brainware Blowout books alongside Spider Murphy.

Biography[]

1990s[]

Rache Bartmoss started netrunning for the first time at the age of four. When he first started, he used his real name because of his inexperience, not knowing the risks, but by the time he realized his mistake, he was good enough that it did not make a difference. Throughout the years, he had experimented with everything and tried every interface that Spider Murphy had heard of.[3]

2000s[]

For some time, Bartmoss tried working for companies, writing software for them, though he would always end up double-crossing them and running away before getting caught. He would then clean his record and move to other companies. In 2004, however, he worked for CCI Development for a year, since they did not deal with any wrongdoings.[3] During this time, he created the Demon programs for them.[4] He was later fired for dropping a political movie into the database code. Within a week, he fried their computer system and the company went bankrupt. Bartmoss later sold the source code to the Demon programs to several software houses and made enough money that he did not need to work anymore.[3]

At the age of seventeen, he met Spider Murphy for the first time when she came to warn him about her Corporate father wiping his SIN from the system.[3] He trained her from that moment on and they became close friends.[5] Rache Bartmoss, along with Spider Murphy, Dog, and Edger, would run the Net for fun, lynch NetWatch hacks without profit, because they could and it was the right thing to do, and do things others thought impossible.[6]

Shortly after the Pacifica region of the Net was formed, Rache Bartmoss would run the region with Alt Cunningham, who later called these times her best netrunning memories.[7]

2010s[]

By the early 2010s, Bartmoss moved into a conapt building on the edge of the Combat Zone, where he arranged for everyone who did not have a neural implant to leave the building, and instead arranged to have corporate workers with neural processors installed move into the building, whereupon he installed within them a hidden subconscious personality program to control them. He would use everyone in the building for surveillance and protection. After working on this secret project for a decade, it finally became operational in 2019.[8]

In September 2014, when the Ihara-Grubb Transformation Algorithm was released to reform the Net in order to provide a uniformed interface look and feel, Bartmoss stayed in while the rest unplugged to watch it redesign himself. During this time his heart stopped for 10 seconds.[9]

In 2015, Rache Bartmoss met Kimi Tara on the Net and took her out on a date. They slept together, which Bartmoss ended up regretting. She left him after with the intention of moving to the next media personality. He had become opposed to physical relationships after this event.[10]

2020s[]

In 2020, his heart stopped and physical body died for unknown reasons, though his life-support machines sensed it and super-cooled his body. Because he was connected to the Net at the time, he continued to live in there. After his physical death, he tried to contact Spider Murphy for ten months,[3] sending her an email to inform her of his death,[11] and told her his life memories so that they could finish compiling Rache Barmoss' Guide to the Net.[6] Around this time, Bartmoss released the "Succubus III" program, and made it look like Spider Murphy's net ICON as a last "big brother" prank,[12] so that she would be the lust object to "hormonally challenged losers" on the Net.[13] He intentionally waited until he was dead so that Spider would not be able to take revenge.[12]

In 2021,[14] Militech contacted Bartmoss for his help against Arasaka in the Fourth Corporate War. Being convinced by Alt Cunningham's digital ghost, he attacked Arasaka from the Net and located the master program of Soulkiller.[15]

Bartmoss died in 2022 after getting his signal tracked, which resulted in a Corporate raid on his conapt building.[16][17] Right before his death, Bartmoss contacted Spider Murphy and urgently invited her to a chat room, where he confessed his love to her before releasing the R.A.B.I.D.S. to the net and causing the DataKrash.[11][16][18]

2070s[]

In 2075, after his contract with the cryogenic freezer owners was expired, the freezer alongside Bartmoss' corpse was discarded at the Badlands landfill at his request.[19]

By 2077, Bartmoss was widely accepted as the mastermind of the DataKrash, though his ultimate fate was still a mystery. That year, V received an odd signal directing them to a set of coordinates in the Badlands. Deep in the junkyard, V found Bartmoss's fridge, confirming his death and putting to rest decades of urban legends and conspiracy theories. Johnny Silverhand immediately recognized Bartmoss despite the rot setting into his corpse, and had V salvage his cyberdeck. Upon taking the cyberdeck to the netrunner Nix at Afterlife for analysis, Nix sprung a trap inside and would have fried his brain if not for V's quick thinking. Nix found nothing of value in the cyberdeck except some mildly interesting chat logs, but gave V some epic demons as a reward for saving his life.[20]

Associated Quests (2077)[]

Associated Shards (2077)[]

CyberGeneration[]

Cyberpunk 2027[]

In the CyberGeneration timeline Rache's body was recovered by the Eden Cabal. They couldn't revive him, but upgraded his hardware so he could communicate through the Virtual Net. He serves as a tutor and mentor to young hackers, teaching them how to use the Virtual Net as their combination playground and abattoir.

Cyberpunk 203X[]

In the alternative timeline, Rache left behind boobytrap and attack programs all over the net. When his body was vaporized, his life-support stopped sending the delay codes. The programs went off, crashing systems and frying any netrunners jacked-in at the time.

Notes[]

  • In Cyberpunk 2013, Bartmoss's first name was Roche instead of Rache.
  • Rache Bartmoss considers himself a big brother to Spider Murphy.[12]
  • Rache Bartmoss does not like Johnny Silverhand, while Spider Murphy is supportive of him. Spider, on the other hand, does not like Kerry Eurodyne.[21]
  • Rache Bartmoss had a hairless cat named Deathwish.[22]
  • According to R. Talsorian Games, it is not certain the corpse found in the junkyard fridge belongs to Bartmoss, considering Johnny's unreliable memories.[23]
  • Mike Pondsmith has said the inspiration for Rache Bartmoss was a combination of several hackers he knew in his youth, but the closest real person to Rache was Harlan Ellison.[24]

Gallery[]

References[]

  1. ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (p.142)
  2. MACDONALD, M. Home of the Brave. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1992. (p.111)
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (pp.5, 6)
  4. PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk 2013: View from the Edge. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1988. (p.36)
  5. ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1996. (p.5)
  6. 6.0 6.1 ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1996. (p.6)
  7. ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (p.21)
  8. SEVILE, A. Firestorm Stormfront. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.139)
  9. ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (p.8)
  10. ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (p.49)
  11. 11.0 11.1 SEVILE, A. Firestorm Stormfront. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.144)
  12. 12.0 12.1 12.2 ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Firestorm Shockwave. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.44)
  13. ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1996. (p.77)
  14. PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk RED Corebook. 1st ed., Kenmore, WA, R. Talsorian Games, 2020. (p.301)
  15. SEVILE, A. Firestorm Stormfront. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.125)
  16. 16.0 16.1 SEVILE, A. Firestorm Stormfront. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.138)
  17. PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk RED Corebook. 1st ed., Kenmore, WA, R. Talsorian Games, 2020. (p.239)
  18. PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk RED Corebook. 1st ed., Kenmore, WA, R. Talsorian Games, 2020. (p.255)
  19. Notice of Expiration shard in Cyberpunk 2077
  20. CD Projekt RED. Cyberpunk 2077. Video Game, Multi-Platform. Poland, CD Projekt S.A., 2020.
  21. ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. 1st ed., Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (p.33)
  22. Mike Pondsmith on Reddit - "Rache Bartmoss also had a hairless cat named Deathwish. So when I play, I like to imagine Deathwish made it to the year 2077."
  23. R. Talsorian Games on Twitter - "All we're saying is, if a ghost on a broken chip living in your head says a corpse in a fridge is X in an time when biosculpting means you can look like anyone? Maybe you need to ask yourself if the corpse is actually X?"
  24. Mike Pondsmith on Reddit 2
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