The Time of the Red: Cyberpunk's 2045, Red Skies and the World After the 4th Corporate War

Timeline#

1. 2022The 4th Corporate War goes hot between Arasaka and Militech. On 3 June the DataKrash begins when the RABIDS virus, set loose after Rache Bartmoss's death, starts eating the Net.
2. 2022On 29 September the Highriders of O'Neill Two declare independence in the Seven Hour War. In the fall, Southern California, Texas, the EEC and Japan nationalize Arasaka and Militech assets.
3. 2023On 20 August a small nuclear device destroys Arasaka's towers in Night City and kills more than half a million people. This starts the Time of the Red.
4. 2023The last pocket of Arasaka resistance in the US is cleaned out, and the government blames Arasaka for the blast.
5. 2025The 4th Corporate War is declared officially over. NetWatch declares the Net inoperable.
6. 2028Night City is refounded under a new charter, absorbing North Oak, Westbrook, Heywood and Pacifica.
7. 2035META, the language for NET Architectures, is developed to unify the remaining operating systems.
8. 2035 to 2049First Wave cities begin Reclamation and the first megabuildings go up.
9. 2044NetWatch secretly starts building the Blackwall.
10. 2045Cyberpunk RED takes place.
11. 2053The United States becomes the New United States.
12. 2069 to 2070The Unification War. In June 2070 Arasaka breaks the siege of Night City, which becomes an independent city-state.
13. 2077The year of Cyberpunk 2077.

What the Time of the Red is#

The Time of the Red is the post-war period of the Cyberpunk universe, starting in August 2023 and fading out in the late 2040s. Cyberpunk RED is set in 2045, so the game takes place well into it. The 2077 video game is a generation later.

The name stuck the way the Roaring Twenties stuck. The sky was red for the first couple of years, but the people who lived through it kept calling the whole stretch the Time of the Red even after the color faded.

Canon note: this is the RED layer of the setting. Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk V3.0 (2005) tell different stories after the 2020s, and V3.0 is a separate timeline.

Why the sky is red#

After the 4th Corporate War, particles from the nuclear blast in Night City mixed with debris from orbital weapon strikes, continent-wide firestorms, conventional explosions, and the burning of cities and farmland. That put a red haze over the skies of the whole world.

For nearly two years the sky looked bloody. After that it faded to vivid red sunrises and sunsets that lasted about a decade. There were also periodic blood rains, when a storm pulled the red particulate out of the air and left a greasy crimson slime on everything.

Opinion: the red sky is the best free prop in the game. Describe the sunrise before you describe the job, and a blood rain is a complication that costs the GM nothing. Cybereyes that cut through the red haze like fog are in the official copy for a reason.

The state of the world after the war#

The 4th Corporate War was Arasaka against Militech, and nobody won it. In Japan, the prime minister announced that Arasaka would be a Japan-only company for the next decade. In the US, the government blamed Arasaka for the nuke and promised to rebuild the country as the New United States. The global economy nearly collapsed, and the Net was already in ruins.

The Net is the change players feel first. The DataKrash left the old global Net unusable, and NetWatch built the Blackwall to wall off the rogue AIs. What survived are local, air-gapped NET Architectures that a netrunner has to physically reach. That one change rewrote hacking for the tabletop. The RED netrunning guide shows how.

Shipping took a beating too. Rogue, self-replicating Arasaka sea mines went on attacking ships after the war ended, and maritime trade nearly died for decades.

In Night City, around two million people were homeless after the bomb and the flooding. The city called in favors from edgerunners, and the Aldecaldos nomad clan and the StormTech corporation built temporary housing out of shipping containers. The core book lists the Neocorps that made headlines in the period, among them Arasaka, Biotechnica, Continental Brands, Danger Gal, Militech, Network 54, Petrochem, Rocklin Augmentics, SovOil, Trauma Team North America, Ziggurat and Zhirafa. It also covers the Highriders, the Drift Nations and the Deepdowns.

Night City in 2045#

Night City is rebuilt, not finished. It was refounded in 2028, and the Night City 2045 sourcebook (2026) covers 24 districts, 44 gangs, six criminal organizations and 23 security providers. See the Night City page, the district guide and the gang guide for the 2077 version.

Opinion: RED's city is a place where everything is borrowed. The housing is borrowed, the infrastructure is borrowed, and so is the peace. That makes a better playground than a polished megacity, because everybody wants something and nobody has enough.

How it bridges to 2077#

Mike Pondsmith has put it like this in an IGN interview: if Cyberpunk 2020 is Star Wars, RED is The Empire Strikes Back, and 2077 is Return of the Jedi. RED is the dark middle chapter between the two.

Between 2045 and 2077 the setting goes through a few big shifts. The United States becomes the New United States in 2053. The Unification War of 2069 to 2070 ends with Arasaka breaking the siege of Night City, which then becomes an independent city-state. Arasaka is a megacorp again by 2077. See the full dates on the Cyberpunk timeline.

If you want to read the 2077 side after this, start with the Cyberpunk RED overview and then the Cyberpunk 2020 page for what came before.

Fixer's notes: running a Time of the Red game#

Opinion: run recovery, not apocalypse. Nobody is scavenging for bullets. They are fighting over contracts, container housing and who gets the next NET Architecture to crack. The stakes are small, local and personal, which suits a lethal game.

Opinion: ask each player one thing the war took from their character. The Lifepath will hand you most of it.

Pair this page with what is cyberpunk if your table is new to the genre.