Private Into the Slicer’s Den

[Saroyan Dovryn]

Objective: Recruit new talent
Location: Slicer’s Den, Nebula Grid, Aurelios, Alliance Quarter, Mokk IX
Attire: Club Attire
Tag: @Aren D’Shade

Sanoyra Dovryn was a powerful woman. Member of the High Council of the Mokkan Directorate, head of House Dovryn, CEO of Dovryn Systems. She remained powerful in two ways, she made sure that she had her hands on as much as possible and in doing so she figured out what needed to be added to her organization and from where. Having grown up on an isolated Mokk IX, the idea of the Alliance Quarter was scary to Sanoyra. Inviting outsiders into the inner sanctum of what had made Mokkan data and financial securities the envy of the galaxy, was a recipe for disaster. There was little comfort for her that the outsiders were sequestered in the Alliance Quarter. The legend of Mokkan data security had brought slicers from throughout the galaxy. Once on planet there were ways to get through even Dovryn firewalls if you had enough talent, patience and time.

Enough offworld slicers had gathered that a new night club had popped up catering to them. Nebula Grid, was half bar/dance club and half slicers’ battle arena. As much as Sanoyra would vocally protest the idea of visiting the Slicer’s Den inside Nebula Grid, she knew that the best way to defend her companies data from these offworld slicers was to identify the best amongst them and recruit them, if possible, or observe them in action to take some of their tactics and put them into practice.

The vocal protests were a bit of Sanoyra keeping up the Mokkan elite persona. In truth she was curious about these outsiders. How talented they were, what it was like to let go of some of the rigidity that drove daily life on Mokk IX. Sanoyra had worked for a long time to focus her curiosity to data innovation and coding. She had built up her public persona so well that when she took over for her father following health concerns everyone thought she was the peak of stability.

Inside her head Sanoyra yearned to spread her wings. Behind closed doors she explored indulgences that most Mokken would find obscene, though happened in broad daylight in the rest of the galaxy. The opening Alliance Quarter had created the opportunity to see some of these things first hand. So this “night” she dressed in an outfit that would have seen her disowned if her father had seen it, put a coat on over top and informed her driver that she would be visiting the Alliance Quarter.

Once inside Nebula Grid, Sanoyra’s senses were overloaded as she had not expected. The club was lit in neon, the music was not the classical, refined and controlled tones of Mokkan music. The alcohol…well…Sanoyra had managed to smuggle some of that into her private home and had partaken in private. The sounds were chaotic compared to every gathering Sanoyra had ever attended. There were dozens of slicing competitions going on in the Slicer’s Den, with status being displayed overhead. Occasional cheers were heard. Sanoyra moved to the bar, trying to move in sync with the music as the others were. It was a learned skill that Sanoyra did not have yet. She ordered a Corellian Brandy and once it was in hand she moved to the edge of the Slicer’s Den to seek out the best.

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[Aren D'Shade]

Aren had been in the Nebula Grid long before Sanoyra arrived.

From the outside, the club looked like chaos, neon bleeding through smoked transparisteel while bass vibrated through the street, and a constant churn of slicers, drifters, and opportunists drifted in and out of the doors. Inside the Slicer's Den, the air carried the faint hum of overworked processors and the quiet tension of people trying very hard not to lose.

Aren preferred the edges.

She sat at a small console station near the back rail, where the glow from the holoscreens washed everything in shifting blues and violet. A half‑finished drink rested near her elbow, forgotten hours ago. Her attention stayed on the scrolling streams of code and the shifting match brackets floating overhead, her fingers moving with unhurried precision across the interface.

Unlike most of the competitors, she was not performing for the room.

Many slicers in Nebula Grid treated the competitions like a gladiator arena, pushing aggressive exploits and flashy breach tactics meant to earn cheers from the onlookers. Aren did none of that. Her approach was quiet and methodical, almost patient, as though she were having a private conversation with the system rather than trying to conquer it.

Which made the result far more unsettling.

One of the current competitors had been throwing increasingly elaborate attack routines at a Directorate training firewall, clearly hoping to overwhelm it. Aren leaned back slightly in her chair and watched the attempt fail in a cascade of red warnings across the overhead display.

Then she leaned forward again.

Her fingers moved once across the console.

There was no dramatic flourish and no visible exploit. Instead, the screen above flickered, the defensive architecture shifted for half a second, and the match timer ended abruptly as the system quietly accepted her access key.

A beat of silence followed.

Then the room reacted with a mixture of cheers and irritated groans as the scoreboard updated again, her alias sliding another notch higher in the rankings.

Aren barely looked up.

Only after a moment did her gaze drift across the room toward the bar, where Saroyan stood with her drink near the edge of the arena floor. Their eyes met briefly. There was nothing overt in the glance, no challenge, and an invitation. It lingered just long enough to make it clear that Aren had noticed her watching. Then she turned back to the console and entered the next queue as if the match had been nothing more than a warm‑up.

Saroyan Dovryn

 

[Saroyan Dovryn]

Objective: Recruit new talent
Location: Slicer's Den, Nebula Grid, Aurelios, Alliance Quarter, Mokk IX
Attire: Club Attire
Tag: Aren D'Shade

The Slicer's Den was a cacophony of sights and sounds. It was the one part about the new recruiting task that Saroyan didn't care for. The slicers who were loud and boisterous themselves, she quickly discounted. They might have the skills, but their mannerisms told Saroyan that they were looking for attention.

Dorvyn Systems didn't need showoffs. The family and company had thrived for generations because they were talented and steady. They were focused on the job in front of them. The fact that Saroyan created a bit of space to have her own interests didn't change the fact that she wanted agents that knew the goals of the company and while they were working. The fact that Mokkan society was needing to open up to more of the galaxy, didn't change the type of agent Saroyan would seek out.

Unfortunately, it was not only the slicers participating in the competitions that were creating the raucous atmosphere. For every competent and focused slicer, there seemed to usually be a gathering of hangers-on that cheered them on. So, as the competition continued, Saroyan sipped at her drink and eyed the standings. She hoped the drink would dull out the sound so that she could concentrate on the competitors and who would be a good target.

Eyes of course gravitated to the center of the "Den". That was where most of the whooping was happening. She saw the look of frustration on one of the competitors as his screen flashed red. Saroyan smirked as she took another sip of her brandy as her eyes moved off the formerly high-ranking slicer as his entourage groaned in disappointment. As eyes shifted there was a click in her ear alerting her to a competitor on the rise.

Saroyan had compensated the proprietor of the Nebula Grid well enough that she had access to what terminal was linked to what alias on the leaderboard. Saroyan looked towards the terminal that held the competitor that was noted to her just as Aren looked in her direction. Saroyan smirked as their eyes met. It was highly unlikely that the purple-haired girl knew that Saroyan was tipped to her ascension on the leaderboard. But there was still intrigue enough that Saroyan's feet started to move.

There was no gathered mass of cheering fanboys around this one. Which was a bit more shocking considering that there was a certain appeal to her, besides just her slicing prowess. That didn't matter to Saroyan, but it was quite usual for the cute young girl slicers to have a large following. Maybe that was only true in some networks though. This one was new. And based on where she was sitting and the lack of fanfare, she was a serious slicer.

Saroyan made her way to the terminal next to Aren and placed her drink down. "That last match was impressive," Saroyan hummed with a smile on her face. "If you can do as well on this next one I may have a real challenge for you…"

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[Aren D'Shade]

The terminal in front of Aren pulsed softly with shifting lines of code, the glow of the display reflecting faintly across her face as the next match initialized. Around her, the Slicer's Den remained as chaotic as ever, voices rising and falling in uneven waves of excitement, frustration, and the occasional triumphant shout, yet none of it seemed to touch her. Her posture stayed relaxed but intent, shoulders angled slightly forward, fingers resting with practiced ease against the input pad like someone waiting for the exact moment a machine decided it was ready to speak.

When Saroyan set her drink down beside the neighboring terminal and offered her comment, Aren's eyes flicked toward her for only the briefest moment, just long enough to acknowledge the presence, to register that the remark carried weight and intention rather than idle conversation before the match began in earnest.

A new firewall architecture unfolded across the screen, its layered defenses sliding into place with the cold precision of a mechanical puzzle designed to punish even a moment's hesitation. Aren's focus sharpened immediately. Her hands moved with quiet, deliberate precision across the controls, inputting commands in measured bursts rather than the frantic streams favored by many of the competitors around her. The first probe slipped through the outer layer in seconds, threading past a trap that had already claimed two other slicers only moments earlier.

Behind her, someone cheered loudly, the sound cutting through the Den like an object thrown.

Aren didn't react.

Instead, she shifted vectors with the same calm certainty she brought to every match, rerouting through a quieter seam in the system lattice and collapsing a secondary defense from the inside out. The board above the Den flickered as her alias climbed another position, and somewhere nearby, a disappointed spectator groaned as their chosen slicer dropped in rank.

Only then did Aren glance sideways again. Not at the screen. At Saroyan.

The look lasted barely a second, calm, assessing, and quietly aware before her attention returned to the terminal just as the final security layer attempted to lock down the node. Her fingers moved again, one last sequence sliding into place with the inevitability of someone who had already seen the solution before the system realized it was vulnerable.

The architecture cracked open.

The terminal chimed softly as the match ended, the leaderboard above shifting once more as her position rose again. Only after the result registered did Aren lean back slightly in her chair, the tension leaving her posture as naturally as it had arrived, her breathing settling into its usual steady rhythm. Her gaze drifted back to Saroyan, thoughtful rather than triumphant, as though the victory were simply another completed task rather than something to celebrate.

"You were saying something about a challenge," she said, her voice even and unhurried.

A faint thread of curiosity touched her expression now that the match no longer demanded her attention.

"I assume you meant something more interesting than the last one."

Saroyan Dovryn

 

[Saroyan Dovryn]

Objective: Recruit new talent
Location: Slicer's Den, Nebula Grid, Aurelios, Alliance Quarter, Mokk IX
Attire: Club Attire
Tag: Aren D'Shade

The fact that the purple-haired young woman maintained focus on the next challenge in the face of groans and cheer was of little surprise to Saroyan. Despite what came from Denon a decade ago, the truth was that data mining and security was something that was much easier to do with calm precision. The flash and flamboyance that seemed to permeate the slicing profession was vapid and unreliable. Those flashy slicers tended to reach an apex of usefulness quite quickly and fall equally quickly afterwards.

The flashy types never got job offers from Dovryn Systems. More often than not those that burned brightly in the Slicer's Den were bound for no good upon Mokk IX. Saroyan tended to concoct fun little traps for those slicers. She would always have the most pleasant time taking them down and watching them be sent to prison or expelled from the system. None of the slicers competing today fit that mold and seemed to be a big enough threat for Saroyan to personally invest time in their demise. This one who was quickly rising up the leaderboard however might be worth an investment of time.

A brief glance was made from the slicer to Saroyan. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement of the challenge put forward, or perhaps she just didn't like being watched. Either way the distraction was brief, and the Aren continued her dominance of the "games" that were being played. Saroyan could only guess that the names above this one on the leaderboard had a significant headstart when she sat down. It was the only thing that made sense to Saroyan.

"These are just games my dear," Saroyan answered the question of how her challenge would stack up against the scenarios set out in the Slicer's Den. "Interest I suppose depends on whether you find fighting someone getting into a system as much as you thrive at breaking in yourself. I'm Saroyan Dovryn. My company keeps the information on this planet and many others safe. I do admit that on the side I do a little breaking in myself, so no judgment. But I have a scenario that far exceeds the difficulty of these games."

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