How a karma mission gets assigned
You never choose a karma mission and the game never announces one. It watches the way your karma has been trending and quietly drops a case on you. The only way to learn which one you drew is to read what sits on the first computer.
1
Karma shifts with ordinary work
Illegal hackshop jobs (deleting or stealing files, forging credentials, wrecking a computer, doctoring academic or police records) each cost 15 karma. Legal police-station jobs (tracking down a hacker, recovering evidence) each grant 15.
2
A trend gets noticed
The game keeps your last four karma readings. Once three of the four sit in the same bracket as your current reading (Black below -50, Grey between -50 and 50, White above 50), a mission is queued. A coin flip then picks between Grey and the bracket you're trending into, so even a deep-black or bright-white streak can produce a Grey case.
3
It arrives with your next email
The next time you send any mail at all, an anonymous tip lands in your inbox. Every one of the nine cases arrives through the same tip.
4
The variant is a blind roll
Which of the three cases inside that color you receive is a straight random pick. Your play decides the color and nothing else.
FROM: unknown@noreply.com · SUBJECT: "something strange"The sender claims to have heard about your skills, points you at a computer on a specific public network and LAN address, suggests you may find something of interest there, and asks you not to reply.
All nine cases send this identical mail, and the wording never hints at which one you drew. Connect to the address it gives you, read the first thing you find, and match it against the table below.
Resolving whatever you find
Each case is a chain of two to five computers. Hop between them using the IP addresses dropped in chat logs, mail, and files until you reach the piece the game counts as evidence, always a final chat log or document. From there you have up to three ways to close the case, each one a mail with the evidence file attached:
Payouts before level scaling: Tier 6 pays 2175¢ and 330 exp, Tier 7 pays 2350¢ and 375 exp, Tier 8 pays 2900¢ and 420 exp, Tier 9 pays 3075¢ and 465 exp. The reward shrinks as your character level climbs past the case's tier, so resolve these while your level is still close for the full amount.
Grey karma · 3 cases
These arrive while your karma sits in the middle band. Morally this is the murkiest of the three pools; nobody involved comes out clean.
Case 1: The Hotel Darkroad Kidnapping
Tier 8 · 6 computers across 2 networks
Identifying tellA hotel named "Hotel Darkroad" and a reservation confirmation carrying the code RF578JTY.
Walkthrough
- The tip points you at a home computer holding a chat between two accomplices finishing their plan, plus a forwarded hotel booking confirmation with the code
RF578JTY and the hotel network's IP.
- Connect to that IP on port 80. The site belongs to Hotel Darkroad, currently closed to new bookings, and the same server hides a
Booking.pdf that maps five reservation codes to guest-room LAN addresses.
- Look up
RF578JTY in that table and connect to the matching room's local address inside the hotel network.
- The room's computer holds the evidence: a final chat where the pair coordinate balaclavas, a gag, and restraints for a target due to arrive within the half hour.
Resolution options
Of all nine cases, this is the only one where warning the victim works.
Lore
Two accomplices plan a kidnapping timed around a hotel stay. One of them is jittery and wants the whole thing over with, while the other keeps insisting the plan will hold if they follow it carefully. Who the target is, and why anyone wants him, never comes up. The final log reads like a checklist: park nearby, approach from behind, get him gagged and tied in the back seat before the car pulls away.
Case 2: Sentinel
Tier 8 · 4 computers
Identifying tellAn organization called Sentinel, and later a folder titled Energy Plan.
Walkthrough
- You land in an office chat where coworkers gossip about a colleague who vanished without notice. His computer is still on at his desk, and they mention its LAN address.
- Connect there. A handler is congratulating the missing man for gathering data and granting him SSH access to a private server. When he asks whether that makes him part of Sentinel, he gets told to follow instructions and stop asking questions.
- The private server holds two documents.
welcome.pdf is a point-of-no-return recruitment letter: quit your job, leave your family without goodbyes, board a specific bus, follow a woman with a chess-knight tattoo to a waiting car. instructions.pdf is a burglary brief: enter a house through its digital lock and take a folder titled Energy Plan from a first-floor desk drawer.
- The last computer sits on a private home network and holds the closing chat, which doubles as the evidence. The burglary went wrong. A bodyguard nobody expected was struck fatally in the dark, the folder was never taken, and the handler ends the relationship in a single line.
Resolution options
Lore
Sentinel comes across as a cult wearing vigilante clothes. Recruitment demands the total surrender of a recruit's old life, the Energy Plan folder goes unexplained, and the handler drops the operative the moment a job produces a body. The recruitment letter is a genuinely bizarre read: step-by-step instructions for disappearing from your own life, down to which bus seat to take.
Case 3: Neurobox Corp
Tier 9 (highest of all nine) · 5 computers
Identifying tellA confidential contract from Neurobox Corp, and instructions to work only on kernel_module.so.
Walkthrough
- The opening chat has a friend celebrating a new job at one of the largest software companies around. Attached is
server_details.pdf, a Neurobox Corp confidential contract for a Security Expert Level 1 position, with SSH access to the computer in room 58.
- On that machine, a manager insists the new hire audit
kernel_module.so and nothing else. The hire mentions finding vulnerabilities in other libraries and gets waved off; entire teams supposedly handle those. The strict compartmentalization is the first red flag.
- Curiosity wins. The hire sneaks into level 2 of the building and photographs chemical labs, hospital beds, and surgical supplies (
lab01.jpg, lab02.jpg, beds.jpg) inside a building that supposedly writes software, then decides to publish everything on an anonymous blog.
- Follow the trail to the blog's host network and load the site. All that remains is an archive notice saying the blog has closed.
- The final computer holds the closing chat and the evidence: a company fixer admits to using private information, intimidation, and at least one beating to keep the blogger quiet, while his superior worries about what happens if any of it gets out.
Resolution options
Lore
This is the case that reaches into the game's central mystery. Neurobox is the secretive company behind Ellipse, the operating system running on nearly every computer in the game world, and this case puts you inside its walls: a hidden medical wing behind an internal clearance barrier, a new hire boxed into auditing a single kernel library, and a whistleblower strong-armed into silence. What the labs are for never gets answered, which leaves the case sitting alongside the game's other Neurobox lore as an open question.
Black karma · 3 cases
These arrive when your karma trends deep negative. This pool carries the most open criminality, and one of its cases gives you nobody to bargain with at all.
Case 1: Project Ellipse
Tier 6 (lowest of all nine) · 3 computers
Identifying tellA leaked incident report headed Project: Ellipse, naming an employee called Mitchell Gamble.
Walkthrough
- The opening chat catches a hacker mid-celebration after four days of work finally cracked a target system. He steps away because someone knocked on his door, and he never comes back to the conversation.
- The next computer belongs to his buyers. They confirm the stolen file checks out and mention, in passing, that his computer was too well protected, so they paid him a visit at home and nobody will find him. They order the file moved to a safer server.
- Follow the move to that server. In
/root sits report.pdf, the evidence: a confidential laboratory incident report filed under Project: Ellipse. A network system manager named Mitchell Gamble attacked coworkers and tried to flee with classified documents before security tasered him. The log records two dead and four wounded.
Resolution options
Lore
A hacker celebrates a breach, steps out to answer his door, and dies without ever opening the file he stole. The document itself describes an unexplained outbreak of violence inside a laboratory, written in the flat tone of a security log. Ellipse is the name of the operating system nearly everyone in the game world runs, published by Neurobox, which ties this incident report to the same company at the center of the Grey pool's third case and much of the game's hidden backstory.
Case 2: Five Million, Buried
Tier 7 · 3 computers
Identifying tellA backpack holding exactly 5 million, dug up by a dog named Seymour.
Walkthrough
- Opening chat: a hiker tells a friend that his dog Seymour dug up a backpack near a river during a weekend walk. Inside was money, counted several times over, exactly five million. A photo named
mine_now.jpg sits alongside. The friend warns him the money must have an owner and begs him to take it to the police. He says he'll think about it.
- A second thread shows the friend's follow-up messages going unanswered, each one a little more worried than the last.
- Then a third voice appears: the money's owner, contacting the hiker directly. The tone stays courteous while the threat underneath it is unmistakable. A car will be at his door in two minutes, and he shouldn't forget the money.
- The final computer holds the closing exchange between the owner and the man sent to collect, which is the evidence. The hiker spent the whole ride begging to work for them, offering his experience as an accountant who could launder money. The owner's reply opens with a rebuke for failing to kill him the moment the money was recovered, then allows that he might be useful after all.
Resolution options
Lore
It's a found-money daydream, and it sours exactly the way the hiker's friend predicted. The unanswered messages carry most of the dread; by the time the owner makes contact, you already fear the worst. The hiker survives by talking his way into a job with the people whose money he took, and the case closes with his fate still hanging on the owner's whim.
Case 3: The Calculator Exercise
Tier 7 · 4 computers
Identifying tellA trojanized school assignment called calculator_exercise.
Walkthrough
- Opening chat: two students, days before a test, hatch a plan. One has hidden a trojan inside the calculator programming exercise they're due to hand in. When the teacher runs it to grade it, every exam file on his machine will be sent to a rented server. The other student can pay for his copy in installments.
- The planted
calculator_exercise script sits on the teacher's computer on the school network. It genuinely works as a calculator, with the exfiltration call tucked inside.
- A later chat shows the teacher discovering the intrusion. He deletes the stolen files from the remote server and then, strangely, talks a colleague out of calling the police.
- The last computer explains his hesitation. What the students actually received was
semester_payment.pdf, a ledger of failing students who paid him for passing grades, with prices next to each name. The closing chat, the evidence, has the students realizing what they're holding and floating a deal with the teacher in exchange for their silence.
Resolution options
Lore
The students set out to steal a test and came away holding proof their teacher sells grades, and their first instinct is to cut themselves in. By the end of the chain, every named person in the story has something to hide.
White karma · 3 cases
These arrive when your karma trends strongly positive. This is the gentlest pool by far, and it includes the one case in the game that contains no crime at all.
Case 1: The nmap Favor
Tier 6 · 3 computers
Identifying tellA partner asking for help downloading nmap "to see if my computer is safe."
Walkthrough
- The opening chat is a warm exchange between partners. One of them is hopeless with computers and asks for help downloading nmap from a website to check whether their machine is safe. The site's address sits right in the chat.
- The site lives on a computer-store network and holds exactly what the chat said it would. Nothing incriminating turns up here.
- Alongside it sits a friendly catch-up mail between two old friends planning drinks and gossip. One of them mentions being happy with their partner and hints at exciting short-term plans.
- The final computer has the couple texting about tickets for tonight, with
Plane_tickets.pdf attached: a booking for two adults, seats 1G and 2G, destination Bora Bora. That PDF is the evidence.
Resolution options
Lore
This one is a red herring played straight. The anonymous tip is worded exactly like the other eight, and what it leads to is a couple keeping a surprise trip quiet. Filing a formal crime report about somebody's vacation plans, and getting paid for it, has to rank among the odder things you can do in Grey Hack.
Case 2: The Katana
Tier 6 · 3 computers
Identifying tellAn image file named katana.jpg.
Walkthrough
- Opening chat: a friend browsing CPU prices pivots to showing off a newly bought collector's katana, with
katana.jpg attached and an invitation to come see it over dinner.
- The CPU shopping link leads to a hardware-store network. It's a dead end placed there for flavor.
- The final computer carries the same photo and a panicked follow-up chat, which is the evidence. While taking the sword down from its wall mount to show it off, the owner slipped and struck his visiting friend in the face. He believes the man is dead, he wants help burying the body, and he refuses to call the police because he's sure nobody would believe him.
Resolution options
Lore
The whole thing comes down to a loose grip on a wall mount, a slip, and a friend dead on the floor. The chain ends on the owner's plea for help with a burial, and what you do with that conversation decides how the case closes.
Case 3: The Shareholders' Meeting
Tier 7 (highest of the White trio) · 4 computers
Identifying tellA document titled "Semestral shareholders meeting."
Walkthrough
- Opening chat: coworkers compare notes on their boss, who has turned withdrawn, keeps his office door shut, and recently shut down the chat server the team used for meetups. Its LAN address comes up in passing.
- Connect to the dead chat server's network and find
meeting_private.pdf, the approved resolutions of a semestral shareholders meeting: buy up empty buildings near the city center, monitor key employees at competitors and lure them away with better offers, and promote the withdrawn boss to Chief Coordinator of the North Zone. A warehouse layoff and an R&D investment were both voted down.
- The same document turns up again on a second network, relayed through an FTP server.
- The final computer holds the closing chat between the boss and an outside buyer, which is the evidence. He's selling the minutes, calls the haul small but valuable, and points out that his new promotion will make it easier to leak more without getting caught. The buyer promises a bank deposit within days.
Resolution options
Lore
Nobody gets hurt in this one: a manager sells his company's plans on the side while the same company rewards him with a promotion, and the promotion doubles as cover for the next leak. His coworkers, meanwhile, only notice that he stopped coming to dinner.