Console Cowgirl
Intent: To provide in-depth information of a club used in Darkwire stories.
Image Credit: Giulia Avalli [x] | Michal Lisowski [x] | James Daly [x] | Alicja Uzarowska [x] | Benedykt Szneider [x]
Canon: N/A
Permissions: N/A
Links: N/A
Structure Name: Iridium
Classification: Club
Location: Denon [x]
Affiliation: Independent
Accessibility: Iridium is a secreted, word-of-mouth club, exclusive to slicers. The club is tucked away in a neglected neighbourhood of Seven Corners along the Twilight Belt, it's entrance at the far end of a dimly lit, trash-bloated alleyway. Unsuspecting warehouse doors hide from public view the underground club, serving as the first of several layers one must proceed through to gain entrance.
Description: From outside Iridium is nothing more than one of countless condemned and abandoned warehouses, situated at the end of a narrow alleyway with overflowing dumpsters and the huddling homeless of Denons populace. The plain durasteel double doors of the decrepit warehouse gave no hints of the club behind it, rust leeching at its hinges. Dents pockmarked the frame. Once opened blue-green neon lights flooded the hallway beyond, bouncers stand before another set of doors, checking identification and status to the club. Like preying spiders, automated turrets and CCTV cameras cling to the corners of the ceiling.
Members entering the club have their senses flooded with pounding music, and a sparse crowd mingling within. Chrome flashing on enhanced bodies, others glimmered with an oil-like sheen from exotic plastoid synthskin. Slicers sit in booths, virtual reality headsets over their eyes as they were transfixed in Netspace. Some twitched, physical reactions from the consequences of streams of pure, fluid data beamed directly into cybernetically enhanced brains. Elsewhere infobrokers hassled rogue datasurfers for the latest intel, deckheads clinging to the bar as they downed their tenth drink of the night.
Iridium has no associations to Darkwire or the Corpos, existing beyond the influence of either organisation. Creds were meaningless in the underground club with only one currency ruling supreme. Data. Whether buying drinks, booking a private booth or getting the latest info from a broker by the bar, the only way to pay was by offering data, usually stored on chips or otherwise exchanged by datapad. This mode of currency made the club nigh inaccessible to those who don't dabble in information dealing or slicing. Servers below the club store the vast wealth of data collected over decades of operation. It is rumoured to be the largest databases of criminally-obtained information on Denon.
Entrance: The entry to the club is deceptively simple. Nestled between towering cloudcutters that hide any possible sunlight from gracing the Twilight Belt. An alleyway in the depths of the city for which human detritus huddles in darkened corners, enjoying spice imported from the Smugglers Room. Dumpsters long forgotten by local waste management overflows with trash, spreading out along the path. An unlit door at the end of this alley, seemingly for a condemned warehouse, is the unsuspecting entrance, guarded within by muscle and cameras.
Bar: While the least interesting part of Iridium, it still serves as a focus point for patrons. Often saddling up at the bar to talk to the bartender, a former slicer who still goes by his handle Catch-22, or Catch for short. At any given hour while the club is open, whether its late evening or early morning, there will be slicers, deckheads, borgs, fixers and brokers conversing in a fog of cigarra smoke, minds diluted by stims and intoxicants. Data exchanging hands, contracts taken and fulfilled.
Private Booths: The booths at Iridium are most often used for discreet communication between clients, middlemen and contractors. Utilizing low-power shield technology to envelop the booth in a golden shield that protects those within from prying eyes and attentive ears. Masking sound and visual into the booth. The booths come with their own drinks kept in the central table, a control module enables users to command plates to pull aside and a small dias rise from the table with pre-made refrigerated drinks. Holoprojectors in the ceiling allow patrons to upload holo-plans or visuals that will then be displayed in the centre of the room.
High: Iridium is a digital fortress. As the go-to club for the underworlds most elite and highly sought slicers, it's network protections are beyond competition. It's physical defences are subpar comparatively, relying on its secretive nature to keep it out of sight from the general public and would-be enemies in the underworld. Hired muscle monitors the entrance, verifying those that come and go have the right to do so, backed up by the ever-watchful eyes of security cams and two automated turrets. Local Corporate Security forces are paid off by the clubs associates to maintain their distance from the venue.
The true origins of Iridium is, like many things, lost in the four-hundred year darkness. Its word-of-mouth and elite membership has kept much of its history shadowed in secrecy. It is said to have started in the waning years of the great darkness, a union of underworld slicers who desired a place for their own kind, away from the keen eyes and ears of the cartels and governments. At the time the neighbourhood had been prosperous, the warehouse which houses the club in its basement was a durasteel mill, providing premium ship plates for luxury space yachts.
The names of the slicers forgotten to history in the darkness. The current proprietor Catch-22 is distantly related to one of the originating members, but his connection to them is ultimately unknown. Catch-22 has run Iridium on his own for the last five years when the previous owner, Pr0ph3cy, was flatlined by a CorpSec slicer in the opening years of CADs control of the planet. Despite this murder Iridium continues to hold neutral status between the syndicates and corporations. Acting as a platform for fixers to hand out jobs between corporate clientele and underworld figures.
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