Rache Bartmoss is a legendary netrunner in the Cyberpunk-series who in the early 21st century became notorious as the man who caused the DataKrash and killed the old Net. He invented the Demon and Bloodhound series of programs. He also co-authored the Rache Bartmoss' Guide to the Net and Brainware Blowout books alongside Spider Murphy.
Biography[]
1990s[]
Rache Bartmoss was born in 1992 to unnamed parents.
At just four years old, Rache Bartmoss started netrunning for the first time. Because of his inexperience with the Net, he used his real identity, oblivious to the potential risks. By the time he had realized his mistake, he was good enough that it no longer mattered. Throughout the years, he experimented with everything and tried every interface that Spider Murphy had heard of.[1]
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.[1]
During this time, he created the Demon programs for them.[4] He was later fired for dropping a political movie into the database's 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.[1]
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.[1] He trained her from that moment on and they became close friends. 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.[5]
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.[1]
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.[2]
In September 2014, when the Ihara-Grubb Transformation Algorithms were released to reform the Net in order to provide a uniformed interface look and feel, Bartmoss stayed in to plant the R.A.B.I.D.S. viruses into the newly reformed Net[3], while the rest unplugged to watch it redesign himself. During this time his heart stopped for 10 seconds.[1]
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. Bartmoss denounced physical relationships after his encounter with Kimi.[1][6]
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,[1] sending her an email to inform her of his death,[2] and told her his life memories so that they could finish compiling Rache Barmoss' Guide to the Net.[5] 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,[7] so that she would be the lust object to "hormonally challenged losers" on the Net.[5] He intentionally waited until he was dead so that Spider would not be able to take revenge.[7]
In 2021, 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.[2][3]
Bartmoss died in 2022 after getting his signal tracked, which resulted in a corporate raid on his conapt building. 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.[2][2][3]
2070s[]
Bartmoss was still widely regarded as one of the greatest Netrunners to have ever lived and it was accepted to be the mastermind behind the DataKrash, though his fate still remained a mystery to most.[8]
In the year 2075, a contract that was made with the cryogenic freezer's owners expired and was not extended. The freezer, alongside Bartmoss's corpse were discarded at the Municipal Landfill in the Red Peaks region of the Badlands by the Revere Courier Services a per the contract's agreement.[9]
Around two years later, in 2077, the mercenary V received an odd signal directing them to a set of coordinates in the Badlands, where the mercenary found the freezer, "confirming" Bartmoss's physical death and putting decades of urban legends and conspiracy theories to a potential rest. The digitized psyche of Johnny Silverhand—contained on the experimental biochip installed into the mercenaries neuroport—immediately recognized the person in the freezer as Bartmoss.
The mercenary took Bartmoss's Elysia cyberdeck–which was still accompanying his corpse in the freezer–to the netrunner Nix at the Afterlife for analysis. Having jacked-in to the cyberdeck, but unaware of all the security measures in place, the netrunner sprung one of the various traps that were laid by Bartmoss and almost died as a result if it weren't for the mercenary's quick thinking.[10]
Stats[]
| Stats | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| INT | 10 | REF | 10/12 | DEX | — | TECH | 8 | COOL | 9 |
| ATTR | 7 | LUCK | 8 | MA | 7 (not now, of course) | BODY | 6 | EMP | 2 |
| Skills | Interface 12, Awareness/Notice 9, Composition 6, Education/General Knowledge 6, Programming 11, System Knowledge 13, Basic Tech 7, Cyberdeck Design 9, Cyber Tech 3, Electronics 8, Athletics 6, Stealth 8, Driving 4, Handgun 5, SMG 3, Martial Arts 2, Dodge 6, Expert: Chemistry 4 | ||||||||
| Cyberware | Neural processor, 4 X plugs, cybermodem link, Kerezinkov boost (+ 2)[sic], 2X chipware socket | ||||||||
| Gear | SGI Technologies Elysia | ||||||||
Associated Quests[]
Associated Shards[]
- Blaming Bartmoss - by 8ug8ear
- Notes: Full speed ahead
- Notice of Expiration
- Sayonara Station, by Luke Steelman
- Spellbook
- The Undoing: Fall of the First Net
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.[7]
- Rache Bartmoss does not like Johnny Silverhand, while Spider Murphy is supportive of him. Spider, on the other hand, does not like Kerry Eurodyne.[1]
- Rache Bartmoss had a hairless cat named Deathwish.[11]
- According to R. Talsorian Games, it is not certain the corpse found in the junkyard fridge belongs to Bartmoss, considering Johnny's unreliable memories.[12]
- 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.[13]
Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 ACKERMAN, D. Rache Bartmoss Guide to the Net. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1993. (pp.5–6,8,21,33,49,142,152)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 SEVILE, A. Firestorm Stormfront. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (pp.125,138–9,144)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk RED Core Rulebook. Kenmore, WA, R. Talsorian Games, 2020. (pp.239,255–6,301)
- ↑ PONDSMITH, M. Cyberpunk 2013: View from the Edge. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1988. (p.36)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Rache Bartmoss Brainware Blowout. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1996. (pp.5–6,77)
- ↑ MACDONALD, M. Home of the Brave. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1992. (p.111) — "Kimi Tara — No; but I dated Rache Bartmoss once, does that count?"
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 ACKERMAN-GRAY, D. Firestorm Shockwave. Berkeley, CA, R. Talsorian Games, 1997. (p.44)
- ↑ Cyberpunk 2077 - Shard: Blaming Bartmoss - by 8ug8ear
- ↑ Cyberpunk 2077 - Shard: Notice of Expiration
- ↑ Cyberpunk 2077 - Quest: KOLD MIRAGE
- ↑ 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."
- ↑ R. Talsorian Games on X: "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?"
- ↑ Mike Pondsmith on Reddit: "Sorry, but Rache is a creation based on several white hat hackers I knew during my mispent blue boxing youth. I think I picked the name out of the air--it just sounded right. The closest real person to Rache is actually Harlan Ellison--I was amazed at how "Rachelike" Ellison was when we met at a convention years back."