TANGLE FEED · HONG KONG 1994 KOWLOON FREE CITY 2077

KOWLOON 2077

The real city fell. This one only climbed.

An adult cyberpunk/sci-fi inspired roleplay world by Drivai, built on a place that really existed: Kowloon Walled City, the lawless enclave inside Hong Kong that was torn down in 1993–94. Here it never was. One shared lorebook for an 820-metre city of rain, neon and debt, where 300,000 people still make a home, and where creators build their own characters.

Enter the City Open the Data Bank
REAL WORLD New to the Walled City? Start with the real one: 1847–1994, ~33,000 people on 2.6 ha, photos and sources. Real History ▸ NEW FILE Who runs the City? The Office, the Crown and seven gangs. Pacts, grudges, cameras, and the legends nobody will confirm. Power ▸ NEW FILE The City Calendar. Lion Night, the Stair Race, Cool Night, Hungry Ghost Month, the Lantern Crossing and the typhoon parties. Festivals ▸
  • 820metres tall · real: 14 storeys
  • 300,000+residents · real: ~33,000
  • 2.6hectares, the real footprint
COVER ART · WIP
SCROLL

HK · REAL-WORLD RECORD · NOT WORLD LORE

There was a real Walled City

FILE KWC/1847–1994HISTORICAL RECORD

Kowloon Walled City 九龍城寨 Hong Kong · 1847–1994

Kowloon 2077 is a cyberpunk world, but it is built on a real place. The Kowloon Walled City began as a Chinese fort (its walls were finished in 1847) and, when Britain leased the New Territories in 1898, the lease left it out. It became a Chinese enclave inside British Hong Kong, in a legal grey zone that neither government really ran. After World War II refugees filled it, and with no planning, no architects and no one enforcing the rules it grew into roughly 350 self-built, interconnected towers of up to 14 storeys, capped only by the flight path into Kai Tak Airport. A 1987 survey counted about 33,000 people on 2.6 hectares, one of the densest places on Earth. Triads ran its brothels, gambling and opium dens until the police raids of the 1970s, but most people simply lived and worked there among small factories, unlicensed dentists and doctors, schools and rooftop playgrounds. It was demolished in 1993–94; the site is now Kowloon Walled City Park.

Fort walls
1847
Enclave
1898
Residents (1987)
~33,000
Area
2.6 ha
Height
≤ 14 storeys
Demolished
1993–94
Read the real history ▸ Wikipedia ↗

  1. 1898

    Lung Tsun Stone Bridge and the Pavilion for Greeting Officials, outside the fort, 1898.

    Photo: Unknown photographer · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

  2. 1975

    The south side in 1975, as the buildings approach their maximum height.

    Photo: Ian Lambot · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  3. 1989

    Aerial view, 1989: one solid block of self-built towers, with a new park on the cleared Sai Tau Tsuen site at its south edge.

    Photo: Ian Lambot · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  4. 1991

    One of the outer edges in 1991, shortly before the clearance.

    Photo: Roger Price · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  5. 1993

    An alley inside the city: often 1–2 metres wide, lit by fluorescent tubes.

    Photo: Ian Lambot · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  6. 1993

    A street at the edge of the city at night.

    Photo: Ian Lambot · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  7. 1993

    A playground at the edge of the city, under a solid wall of flats.

    Photo: Ian Lambot · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

  8. 2018

    Kowloon Walled City Park from above, 2018: the same footprint, now a Qing-style garden.

    Photo: Wpcpey · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Real photos from Wikimedia Commons, resized for the web. Each is credited with its author and licence; tap a frame to see it full size. Scroll or swipe the strip.

STREET LEVEL · LOWER FLOORS · LIVE FEED

Down here, it is always raining

Noodles at three in the morning. Phones and chrome fixed on a folding table. A pharmacy cross burning green through the steam, laundry and massage signs stacked above the stalls, walkways stitching the floors together overhead. Everyone is going somewhere, and nobody looks up.

F5–15 · ANCIENT FLOORS · THE CITY

Home is a flat on a hall floor

The Walled City was never torn down. The 1987 clearance collapsed, the Compact of 1991 left it a free city that Hong Kong tolerates but does not administer, and it never stopped building. Same 2.6 hectares. Now one black megastructure about 820 metres tall, still climbing, braced to the towers around it like a tent on guy-lines.

Over 300,000 people live inside it, and most of them on the hall floors: corridors that run like streets, front doors left open, folding tables in the passage, a corner shop that never closes. Families share flats meant for half as many, neighbours cover for each other, and every floor knows who owes whom.

Money is always short and the City is never safe. The gangs, the Tower Office and the Crown all take their cut, and the rain never really stops. But people still eat together, throw their own festivals and call it home.

A harsh City where people still make a home. That contrast is the heart of Kowloon 2077.

Hall-floor corridor A residential corridor after dark. Front doors stand open, folding tables and stools spill out of the flats, laundry dries under the pipes, and the corner shop never closes.
SOUNDS

Rain on corrugated sheet, the hum of transformers, mahjong tiles, wok fire, Cantopop bleeding through thin walls, a support bridge groaning in the wind.

SMELLS

Soy, roast fat, ozone, hot plastic, incense, sewage, wet concrete, perfume.

THE HOPE

Small and real: a shared meal, a neighbour who covers for you, forty minutes of sun in the Silent Well, a city that is still standing.

Timeline · from fort to 2077

  1. Qing era

    A fort

    A Qing fort; after 1898 a Chinese enclave inside British Hong Kong. By the late 1980s, ~33,000 people on 2.6 ha.

  2. 1987

    The divergence

    The clearance never happens.

  3. 1991

    The Compact

    A closed-door pact declares the footprint “non-administered”. File ▸

  4. 1998

    The cap comes off

    Kai Tak closes, the height cap goes with it, and the City starts to climb.

  5. 2010s–2030

    The Spine Years

    The central load spine is driven to bedrock. The City passes fifty storeys.

  6. 2014

    The East Fold

    Three rogue storeys pancake into the old City. 61 dead.

  7. c. 2025

    The AI boom

    Corps lease the middle floors as machine halls, off Hong Kong's books.

  8. 2030–2060

    The cablelattice

    A carbon-ceramic second skeleton, retrofitted in phases.

  9. 2038

    The Lean

    A typhoon on top of a tremor leaves the upper stack visibly tilted.

  10. 2040

    Stabilisation

    The City is braced to the towers around it. File ▸

  11. 2040s

    The quantum shift

    Machine halls go obsolete and become flats. The middle class moves in.

  12. 2050s

    The Ring

    Hong Kong goes corporate and builds the Ring.

  13. 2065–2070

    The Valve Years

    Faction war. The Valve War of 2066 and the Long Heat: 19 days above 40°C, about 300 dead.

  14. 2070

    The Yamen Accord

    The Tower Office is born. Order comes back, slowly and corruptly.

  15. 2072–76

    The newcomers

    More outside syndicates move in on Iron Lotus's terms: the Kuroda-gumi (2072), then the River Line (2076). Power timeline ▸

  16. 2077

    Now

    Stable, by Kowloon standards. Crime is everyday. The roof is growing again.

Full history file ▸

SILENT WELL · F5 TO THE ROOF · THE TOWER

820 metres of built-on-top

Nobody designed an 820-metre tower on 2.6 hectares. It was reinforced after the fact, again and again, and it stands because the whole district now holds it up. Tap a node to scan a level.

Tower cutaway ·

LEVEL SCAN--

SELECT A NODE

Kowloon Free City

The Roots, the Deep, the Ancient Floors, the Midstack, the Galleries, the Crown and the Expansion Zone. A rough sorting, never tidy: everything is built on top of something else, and every zone leaks into the next.

Open file ▸
    At the edge of the Well A walkway on the rim of the Central Shaft: potted plants and laundry outside the flats, a rail over the drop, and footbridges crossing the void floor after floor.

    F56 · TYPICAL MIDDLE FLOOR

    Every void has a purpose

    One ring about 210 by 120 metres around the 70-metre Central Shaft. Floor 56 is the worked example, four floors below the F60 checkpoint: give or take, every middle floor looks like this. Drag to pan, scroll or pinch to zoom, tap a marker.

    Level 56 middle floor plan: a ring of flats, shops, services and nightlife around the Central Shaft, with Elevator Cores A and B, Main Stair West and East, a police post, the music bar Neon Moon and a Locked Service Room.

    N North

    Water and filters, a 24-hour laundry, grocery, a food court (noodles, BBQ, snacks), electronics repair, cyber repair, a pharmacy and clinic, a general-care doctor.

    E East

    A Tower police post, the music bar Neon Moon (locals call it “the poor man's Moon Palace”), a hostess bar, the floor office of the Tower's private security (everyone knows whose people they really are), a pawn shop, hardware, recycled parts, a shrine.

    W West

    A pleasure house, a massage parlour, a bar, storage cages, local-dish food stalls, herbal medicine, cheap eats, and a Locked Service Room (unexplained).

    S South

    Trash and recycling, the maintenance corridor, a fibre and 6G repair shop, street food, communal sinks and toilets.

    Repair row Phone and console repair stalls, bins of second-hand parts, a water refill station and a fibre service counter. Nothing in the City is thrown away while it can still be fixed.

    Open the Floor 56 file ▸

    F60 · LIFT CHECKPOINT · THE STACK

    Height is class, roughly

    Roots to roof. The zones are a rough sorting, not a plan: a family lives in a dead ventilation plenum, a dentist works out of an old cable vault, a noodle stall sits in a commercial lobby.

    1. F120+

      The Expansion Zone

      The roof, which is never finished. Solar sheets, water tanks, an antenna forest, container settlements for crane crews and squatters, welding light at all hours. The oldest crane, Old Mother, has been moved up every decade since 2003. Main deck: F130, where the new hub goes in.

      Open file ▸
    2. F80+

      The Crown & Sky Market

      Luxury apartments, private clubs, syndicate floors, Tower Office chambers, real air-con, real glass, cameras everywhere. Stalls under tarps around the AV pads sell rare chrome and tea with a view of Hong Kong. Sharper prices, quieter knives.

      ANDROIDS The drinks up here are poured by near-human androids in slim collars, built by labs the rest of the world banned in 2065. Androids & Neural Nets ▸

      LEGEND On the Crown, when a guest by the bar is just a smear on the footage, they say “a blank came to the wedding”. The Smudge at the Wedding ▸

      Open file ▸
    3. F50/60–80

      The Galleries

      Where the City works. Indoor streets under strip lights, wholesale markets, fabrication, logistics, network hubs and pod hotels. Grey daylight reaches the light wells for an hour a day. The higher you go, the cleaner the floor and the more cameras.

      Moon Palace 月宮夜總會 A cabaret on F68 under a Jade Lantern licence, close enough to Lotus floors that both gangs drink here and neither starts a fight. Jazz on the balcony over the long bar, the Moon Pool lit purple-blue, and a phase ring that stands you a drink at full moon.

      NIGHTLIFE The headline dancer is the Chang'e, and only Madam Kwan, a former Chang'e herself, decides who's next. Mid-Autumn is the biggest night of the year. Moon Palace ▸

      Open file ▸
    4. F60

      The F60 Checkpoint

      Every lift line and both main stairs pass through it. You show ID, contract guards wave you through, and your entry upstairs is logged: who, when, where to. The log leaks to whoever pays the right guard.

      LEGEND On the way up, Core B slows at 47 and the doors never open. Don't press it. The Forty-Seventh Floor ▸

      Open file ▸
    5. F15–50/60

      Midstack HOME

      The densest residential band, much of it old AI machine halls carved into flats: high ceilings, cable trays, dead cooling ducts. Corridors run like streets. Crime is always present and Tower law is thin. Home to Lantern Row and Lucky Eight.

      Corridor street A Midstack corridor that works as a street: noodle bars, snack stalls and a grocery under neon, with walkways crossing overhead.
      Open file ▸
    6. F14–15

      Pipewalks

      The old 1998 roofline, now the junction layer: catwalks threaded with coolant mains, power trunks and fibre bundles labelled in three generations of handwriting. Romance and ambushes both happen beside a hissing valve.

      Open file ▸
    7. F5–15

      The Ancient Floors

      The Old Stack: the original City's concrete with eight hundred metres on its back. Sewage, filtration, old squats, scavenger crews, Ning labs, forgotten chambers. Cracks in the columns are watched like a sick relative.

      LEGEND On Floor 11, if a polite man knocks and asks for the key to 1107, don't answer. The Tenant ▸

      Open file ▸
    8. STREET

      Street Maze

      The street-level ring of one-to-two-metre alleys where the City meets Hong Kong. Holo clinic signs, food stalls, pawn and parts shops. The best place to vanish into a crowd, or be found by someone who already knows your name.

      Open file ▸
    9. B–F5

      The Deep

      The machine the City lives on: power plant, quantum cores, data vaults, pumps, the fibre trunk heads where every riser starts. Clean, cold, loud and guarded, and the one place every faction would most like to own.

      Open file ▸
    10. 地底

      The Roots

      The buried older city: Qing fort foundations, abandoned metro tunnels, flooded sumps. Nobody fully maps it, and outsiders who go down alone are found later, or never. The Black Vaults are down here.

      LEGEND Past the third sump, a dead metro panel that sometimes reads names. Roll Call in the Roots ▸

      Open file ▸
    Landmarks worth knowing
    The Silent WellA 70 m open-air shaft from the roof to F5. Sanctuary. Forty minutes of real sun in summer. Every 21 August at 12:01, the cameras log a fall that never lands. The Twin StairsWest Stair for Iron Lotus runners, East Stair for the Pipe Rats. Taking the wrong one can be a statement, or a mistake. Clocktower SpireThe highest point. Often wrong. Three long chimes and a red ring mean stay indoors. The Blue Vein & Junction 7The glowing coolant Pipewalk, and the Guild Hall's hourly siren. Fuk Tak TempleReal incense, no signal. Even Dragon Heads bow here. Dragon Gate MarketStolen chrome, burner chips, a new identity if you ask the right noodle stall. Needle AlleyRipperdocs under giant spinning holo teeth. Miracle to butchery. Lucky Eight MahjongTiles all night, sky deeds in the back room, Benny at the corner table. Lantern RowJade Lantern nightlife. Poison in a cocktail, dancing too close. Char Siu StackFood factories. The night shift knows what goes into the furnaces at 3 a.m. Red Silk HouseAn upper-end pleasure house on the lower Crown, run by a criminal network. Ember BathsHeated by coolant return lines. The only place half the City takes its chrome off. Black VaultsSealed chambers in the Roots. One was opened recently. Something is gone. The RingNo wall, just scanner arches. Leaving is much harder than getting in.

    F80+ · THE CROWN · WHO RUNS WHAT

    Everyone has a favourite tea house

    Since the Yamen Accord a tower government keeps a fragile order. From the middle floors down, the Triads still settle most things. No Hong Kong police, courts, or taxes.

    鐵蓮會

    Iron Lotus Society

    The dominant Triad

    A corporate-criminal hybrid: protection, floor tax, sky deeds, gambling, chrome credit, smuggling. Velvet threats and staged accidents. Their rule: the City must look civilised from outside, because that is what keeps the Bureau out.

    Mark black iron lotus on red

    Open file ▸

    玉燈兄弟

    Jade Lantern Brotherhood

    Stylish rivals

    Nightlife, information, the City's best netrunners. Poison, blackmail, ICE and beauty over open war. They started the Valve War, lost it, and have been patient ever since. Always smiling.

    Mark pale jade lanterns

    Open file ▸

    Pipe Rats

    Couriers & street runners

    Not a Triad. A loose crew-based gang who own the shortcuts through the Pipewalks, the Ancient Floors and the Roots. They sell speed, silence, and the odd knife in the dark.

    Mark a rat tattoo, or a knotted cable tie

    Open file ▸

    線匠會

    Gridwright Guild

    Power, coolant, fibre

    They keep the City alive and seal every new floor. They work for every faction, which is their protection. Their weapon is the switch.

    Mark valve-key pendants

    Open file ▸

    樓務處

    The Tower Office

    Tower government since 2070

    The old Yamen Circle plus seats for Iron Lotus and the Guild. Sky deeds, the levy, lockdown codes, contracts like the F130 expansion. Stable, slow, and bought. Its wardens guard the top, the roof and the Deep.

    Law wardens · Tower police · contract guards

    Open file ▸

    Outside Powers

    Corps & the Perimeter Bureau

    Officially, no Hong Kong authority is inside; the corps are here as Charter holders and pretend to be guests. The Perimeter Bureau runs the Ring and the drones; Tianmen Holdings has towers on three sides; Kaisen Neural field-tests chrome; Harcourt Pacific keeps money it can't explain in the Deep.

    Tell cheap clothes, expensive chrome

    Open file ▸
    LIVE CONFLICTS · 2077● LIVE
    • Iron Lotus vs Jade Lantern Cold war over trunk tolls. Accidents, flatlined runners, no shooting yet.
    • Guild vs Iron Lotus No new Iron Lotus floors sealed until the line tax on workshops is frozen.
    • The Expansion Zone build The biggest in a decade. Everyone wants the contracts, the deeds, and the new hub on F130.
    • The Compact Review Panic, opportunity, and spies.
    • The Black Vault package Every faction is hunting it. Few know what it is.
    • The Ancient Floors groan New cracks in the old columns. The Guild has stopped joking about it.
    Open file ▸

    Who really runs the City? Three powers: the Office, the Crown and the Gangs. Iron Lotus is king inside, and four newcomers from outside, the Kuroda-gumi, the Volkov Line, the Golden Dice and the River Line, want what it has. Plus the Quiet Compact, the camera rules, and a rumour called Blank.

    Who Runs the City ▸

    2077 · WHAT'S NEW SINCE 2026

    Nobody carries a phone

    Fifty years on, the phone is a bead behind your ear, the screen is a lens in your eye, and the help on the Crown might not be human. Hong Kong gets the new tech first. The City gets it second-hand, repaired, or stolen.

    The Ear Bead

    The phone is an implant

    A bead under the skin behind the ear: calls through the jawbone, whispered replies, an AI voice that reads your messages and translates. People still call it their phone.

    Open file ▸

    Lenses

    The screen is in your eye

    Smart contacts float messages, maps and video over the world. Free ones come with ads you can't close. Money buys implanted optics that record, zoom and see in the dark.

    Open file ▸

    The Bio-chip

    Wallet, key and ID

    In the wrist or palm: credits, door locks, lift passes and a Tower Office resident number Hong Kong won't recognise. No chip, and it's a resident card and cash.

    Open file ▸

    Androids

    Collared, near-human

    On the Crown, androids that pass for human at arm's length serve, guard and keep company. Every one wears a collar with a status light. Do they feel, or only simulate it?

    Open file ▸

    The 2065 Ban

    Uncensored neural nets

    The EU, the UN and the USA banned minds without limits. The Free City didn't, so the labs moved in, and the upper floors found a shady new trade.

    Open file ▸

    Drones

    Outside the walls

    Hong Kong's sky is full of them. Under the City's cable canopy they snag and die, so the last hundred metres is still a runner on foot.

    Open file ▸

    Vat Food

    Real food is a luxury

    Vat meat, factory-grown fruit, printed protein for the poorest. One real strawberry costs 6 credits, and everyone can taste the difference.

    Open file ▸

    Medtech

    Ripperdocs and spray-skin

    Hong Kong regrows organs for those who can pay. The City has spray-skin, bone glue, refurbished organs nobody asks about, and Needle Alley.

    Open file ▸

    STREET What the City does with it

    The Filter

    Hong Kong's walled net

    After the 2065 ban, Hong Kong walled its net behind the Filter: nodes on every trunk that cut anything that looks like an uncensored mind. The Tangle is outside it. Not every uncensored net stayed in its lab.

    Open file ▸

    Skull Couriers

    Data carried in the head

    Data too hot for any net travels in a person: a wet drive behind the neck port, locked with a key the courier never sees. The rules: don't ask, don't peek, don't stop.

    Open file ▸

    Sense-Reels

    Someone else's senses

    Sight, sound, touch, heartbeat and the feeling underneath, ridden in booths on Lantern Row by the quarter hour. The best reel editors can fake a reel of something that never happened.

    Open file ▸

    New Faces

    Cloned chips, clean Numbers

    Outside, everything runs on the Hong Kong Number. A dead person's Number, kept alive by a clerk, sells for more than a year of Midstack wages, and Needle Alley will fit the face to match.

    Open file ▸

    Why would anyone live here? Because outside, a nano flat costs more than a whole minimum wage. Kowloon is for people hiding from something or someone, people who want to live free, and people with nowhere else to go.

    Why People Stay ▸

    F15–60 · MIDSTACK · DOSSIERS

    Names worth knowing

    People of the City that anyone living here can run into. Characters with bots of their own have their files under Characters.

    Around the City · tap a card to flip

    • Open file ▸
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    FM 77.7 · CANOPY FM · PIRATE BROADCAST

    On the Air

    Somewhere in the cable canopy a mesh box is broadcasting below the legal band. Tune in to the lower floors' favourite band, and the song half the City can sing from memory.

    LEGEND Below 77.7, past where the numbers stop, there's supposed to be a station that only plays in a blackout. Radio Zero ▸

    CANOPY FM 77.7 MHz · BELOW THE LEGAL BAND

    STANDBY NOW SPINNING

    Make a Criminal of Me

    The Unlicensed 無牌 · jazz-blues

    0:00 / 4:26

    Lyrics tap to unfold

    Intro

    Blues guitar riff, restrained drums

    Verse 1

    They sealed the clinic after dark,
    No license on the door.
    But old Miss Han still takes the sick,
    And sleeps behind the store.

    A man in polished leather shoes
    Said, “Rules are rules, you see.”
    He took her cash, he checked his watch,
    And called it security.

    Pre-Chorus

    Up where the windows never leak,
    They speak of right and wrong.
    Down here the lights stay on
    Because somebody breaks the law!

    Chorus

    Make a criminal of me!
    Write the charge and let me read!
    For a wire run behind the wall,
    For a stranger helped back to his feet!

    Make a criminal of me!
    I won’t beg you to agree!
    If you call a helping hand a crime,
    Make a criminal of me!

    Verse 2

    The power died at two AM,
    The food went warm by three.
    A kid came round with stolen parts
    And wired up the street.

    The boss came down at breakfast time
    To find out who’d been paid.
    Forty homes had power again,
    And not a cent was made.

    Pre-Chorus

    You can print another warning,
    You can send another guard.
    But every time you cut the line,
    Someone’s working twice as hard!

    Chorus

    Make a criminal of me!
    Write the charge and let me read!
    For a wire run behind the wall,
    For a stranger helped back to his feet!

    Make a criminal of me!
    I won’t beg you to agree!
    If you call a helping hand a crime,
    Make a criminal of me!

    Bridge

    No heroes on the payroll,
    No medals on the wall.
    Just people looking after people
    When there’s nobody else to call.

    Final Chorus

    MAKE A CRIMINAL OF ME!
    WRITE THE CHARGE AND LET ME READ!
    You can keep your laws and promises,
    We’ve got people here to feed!

    MAKE A CRIMINAL OF ME!
    I WON’T BEG YOU TO AGREE!
    If you call a helping hand a crime,
    MAKE A CRIMINAL OF ME!

    CANOPY FM · THE CRATE

    Pick a record · every song on the station

    Off the clock: choose any song yourself. Picking one switches the live radio off, and the live radio switches this off.

    PICK A TRACK

    —

    0:00 / 0:00

      The Unlicensed · the lower floors' house band

      Four players, one leaking duct and a song the upper floors would rather you didn't hum.

      The Unlicensed play smoky jazz-blues in the Drip Room, a low-ceilinged bar on the Ancient Floors where a cooling duct leaks onto the stage and nobody has ever fixed it. There are buckets between the mic stands, one red lamp, and room for about sixty people standing. They have no licence, no label and no contract, which is where the name comes from.

      They got known the City way. Someone recorded a set on a cracked phone, the bootleg went out over Canopy FM, and within a month it was playing in noodle bars, repair stalls and lift lobbies all the way up to the F60 checkpoint. Nobody agrees which floor the song is about. Every floor claims it.

      Up in the Crown it gets called a song about breaking rules. A Tower Office notice once described it as “public encouragement to tamper with infrastructure”, and contract guards peeled the flyers off the lift lobbies. By the next morning they were back, pasted up two deep. Down here, people call it a song about keeping the lights on.

      Their other song on Canopy FM rotation is “Three Minutes of Sunshine”, a slow Rhodes-and-walking-bass song about neighbours sharing a few minutes of light at a stairwell railing. It sounds nothing like a protest song, and that is the point. Some nights a sax player from the bar sits in for the solo.

      • THE VOICEVocalsThe singer never moves from under the red lamp. Low and smoky on the verses, a shout on the last chorus. No name on the flyers, just “the Voice”.
      • FUSEGuitarA resonator rewired with salvaged pickups through a dead amp chassis. The riff always comes first.
      • STATICUpright bassBuilt around an old cable drum. It hums along with the transformers.
      • BRUSHESDrumsA salvaged snare, a paint-tin floor tom and one cracked cymbal. Quiet, until it isn't.
      FILE // BAND● ON AIR
      Formed
      After the Valve Years
      Home stage
      The Drip Room, Ancient Floors
      Sound
      Jazz-blues, protest songs, rain
      Heard on
      Canopy FM 77.7, fibre-tap bootlegs
      Best known for
      “Make a Criminal of Me”
      On rotation
      “Make a Criminal of Me” · “Three Minutes of Sunshine”
      Shares the air with
      Four O'Clock Lok · Spin Cycle · a song from the Nia bot
      Open the band file ▸

      F5 · THE DEEP · DATA VAULTS

      Data Bank

      Every public file in the Kowloon 2077 lorebook, cleaned up for human eyes, plus a sepia Real History record of the actual Walled City, with photos and sources. Search, filter, follow the cross-links, share a link to any file. Press / to search.

        /kwc/databank/

        Select a file.

        CHAR · RESIDENT FILES · CHARACTERS IN THIS WORLD

        Their own stories

        Kowloon 2077 is a shared world: one lorebook for the City, and creators build their own character bots on top of it. These are people who live here, each with a bot of their own.

        NOTE A character's own lorebook defines them, not the world book. What is on a card below belongs to that character's bot, not to the City's canon.

        1. BOT FILE // NIAby DrivaiBot link coming soonChub · Janitor AI

          MAIN CHARACTER · NIA BOT

          NIA

          Nilja · 25 · fibre tech, Fung Kee Linework

          “You're a fucking idiot. Come here, let me look at that.”

          The job
          Finds, traces, splices and lays fibre through risers, ducts and crawlspaces. Calls her “network engineer” title a joke. Not a hacker.
          Home
          Her late mother's flat on a Midstack hall floor, crowded with salvage and tools.
          Personality
          Blunt, sarcastic, impulsive, fiercely independent, affectionate in actions. A filthy sense of humour and no patience for authority or rich people.
          Loves
          Cheap spicy noodles, fried snacks, high places over the City, forgotten maintenance passages, salvage.
          Hates
          Wasted food, checkpoints, flaunted money, strangers touching her, pity.
          Carries
          A utility knife on her hip, always. A concealed handgun off her own floors. A work bag of cable spools and tools.
          Now and then
          A cigarette when she's thinking, stressed or sad. Never a regular, usually alone at a window or railing.
          Read the full dossier

          Affection is familiarity. She insults you while patching your jacket, complains about sharing food and leaves you the bigger half, curls into you without thinking, steals blankets and puts cold feet on you. She apologises by cooking, fixing something, or quietly coming back to your side.

          Scars. Her mother was killed in the Valve Years. When she was 18, a gang attacked her and you stepped in. She never talks about it, distrusts unfamiliar men, and hates being cornered or treated as fragile.

          Ning. She uses the spray for stress and bad feelings. Occasional became regular. She downplays it, promises to cut back and means it, then struggles.

          You and her. Something between best friends, home and romance that neither of you has named. You sleep together; mostly you are two very familiar friends. Both of you claim flings. She jokes about yours, and anything that looks serious brings out her worst, out of fear rather than control.

          “Hey. Remember when we split one bowl of noodles? Two whole bowls now. Fucking royalty.”

          Open Nia's file ▸ Hear “Where I Put My Knife Down” on Canopy FM ▸

          You · AnyPOV

          Any gender, look or temperament. The fixed facts: you grew up alongside Nia on the same floors; your father is a drunk on benefits with a bad knee, and you barely speak; you have lived at Nia's for seven years; money is always short. When she was 18, a gang attacked her and you stepped in.

          Her story · Dead Air on 130

          Nia is 25. You grew up together in the middle floors: absent parents, remote school, hunger. For seven years you have shared her late mother's small, worn flat on a Midstack hall floor, crowded with salvage and tools. Best friends who sleep together. Neither of you has ever put a label on it.

          Money is always short and the City is never safe, but home is warm. Then Fung Kee Linework lands a subcontract on the Tower Office's new network hub on F130, up in the Expansion Zone on the roof, and Nia is on the crew: far above her territory, among badges, wardens and Crown people.

          A harsh City. A tender, messy, unnamed bond. That contrast is the engine of the story.

          F130 · EXPANSION HUB · THE HOOK

          Dead Air on 130

          Working title · first chapter Teaser · not final

          [F130] Fung Kee Linework · fibre crew · badge accepted

          Nia is on the hub job up on the roof, a long way from her floors.

          In a riser, she finds something that isn't on any drawing.

          [F130] ▲ LOCKDOWN ▲

          The floor seals.

          And a face from her past is hunting her.

          Open questions

          1. What is in the riser that isn't on any drawing?

          2. Why did the floor go into lockdown?

          3. Whose face from Nia's past is hunting her?

          4. One Black Vault was opened, and something is gone. What?

          5. The Compact Review: who wants the Free City to have an expiry date?

          No answers here. Find them in Nia's bot.

        F120+ · ROOF ZONE · CREATOR'S NOTE

        From the roof

        Kowloon 2077 starts from one question: what if the Walled City had never been torn down, and had kept climbing?

        The world is harsh on purpose. Crime and corruption are everyday, and consequences stick. But the heart of the bot is small: two people, one worn flat, shared noodles, a rooftop at night. Nia is a full person with her own opinions, needs and mistakes, and what you two are is never decided for you.

        The City in the story is invented, but it grows out of a real one, and if you have never heard of the Kowloon Walled City, the Real History floor is the place to start.

        The bot is still in development. The opening scenario is being written and the art is work in progress. This page and its Data Bank will grow with it.

        — Drivai

        Content note: an adult story (18+) with mature themes, including sex, violence, drug use and dark subjects. All characters are adults.

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