Terminus, Exclusive Dance/Night Club

Exclusivity, done properly, is its own form of advertising.  Some companies manage to thrive on the idea of restricting their customer base, making people willing to pay more for the privilege of ownership or membership.  The trick is that you have to maintain that exclusivity while continuing to attract customers.  Not an easy balance but some brands have managed it.  One of those is the Terminus in Seattle.

The Space:
Terminus is located in Downtown Seattle, an expensive neighborhood.  It takes up the basement and the lower two floors of a custom-built twelve-story building adjacent to an eight-level parking structure.  The signage for Terminus is understated, no blaring AR or holograms, just a tasteful sign replicated in AR that reads TERMINUS and, in small letters beneath, Members Only.  The ten floors above the club are equally expensive and exclusive condominiums accessed through a bridge from the parking structure, only the emergency escapes descend from the upper levels to the club.

Terminus is all about understated luxury and exclusivity; it maintains a cloakroom staffed by real people.  Guests are required to check any weapons they are carrying as well, unless they have approval from the club management.  The club’s doors are ringed with a variety of sensors and scanners to ensure that the patrons do not forget to declare their weapons.

The interior is train and train station inspired art deco in metal and dark wood.  It is very much as though stepping into another world.  There are no current news broadcasts, no holographic screens, everything appears to be from the last century.  There are even wired telephones, with dails, on the booth tables.  Naturally, patrons are not prevented from using their devices, but they have to sign up for the Matrix connection, which involves talking to a living (if onscreen) telephone operator.

The dance floor sinks into the basement, circling around the dance floor are standing tables and two bars to deliver drinks promptly to the patrons.  A stage with a modular DJ station that can be folded away for live acts.  The rest of the basement level is storage and staff offices.

The ground floor has the entrance, cloakroom, and primary bar along with a dual ring of booths, the back row elevated, that overlook the dance floor.  The upper level has an overlook of the lower levels with a counter.  Circling the upper level are private rooms, they are the one exception to the no holography rule, having an entire wall that can project views of the dance floor from various angles.  The rooms are named after artistic movements of the Twentieth century, Cubist, Constructivist, Futurist, and so on, and are decorated appropriately

The waitstaff uniforms are reminiscent of the first half of the Twentieth Century, even the security staff.

The Food and Drink:

Terminus has an amazing cellar of wines and high-end liquors, and its bartenders are all extremely competent, though rarely rise to the level of artists.  The management is much more concerned with consistency than flashes of brilliance.

While Terminus has bar snacks, it does not have a kitchen, but it has arrangements with local restaurants for the delivery of food for people in the private rooms.

Entertainment:

The Terminus is famous for its dance floor and its house DJs.  It occasionally hosts live acts, many slow Mondays are enlivened by the garage bands of corporate scions attempting to make it big.

Occasionally, they have guest DJs in and it is a great honor, and a good paycheck, to be invited to DJ at Terminus.  The only restriction is that Terminus owns the recording of the set.

Staff and Regulars:

Regulars divide neatly by floor: the younger crowd, mostly corporate scion and junior management, is found on the dance floor.  Mature people, middle management, are in the booths.  And older people, executives, are found in the private rooms.

The manager is Sapphire Sophia, who was headhunted from the top club in Rome in 2074 to replace the retiring manager, Z Marcone, who had run the club since its founding.  Rumor says that Sapphire was Shadowrunner and a fixer before becoming a club manager.  She has sapphire blue hair and eyes and wears updated versions of Twentieth-century fashion when working.  Sapphire runs the club with cool efficiency and moves to handle glitches before they become serious problems.

The primary house DJ is DJ Charon who opened the club and has vowed to be there when it closed.  DJ Charon always appears in full robes, gloves, and mask.  Using a voice modulator, no one knows who is behind the name.  There are several site devoted to trying to work out who DJ Charon is.  But what is known is that their ability to read the club and provide just the right music is amazing.

Toby “Tapper” McCallum is the head of club security, a Scottish troll who served in the British Army before becoming a mercenary and then working private security.  He spends a lot of time on the front line of club security, working with the bouncers, talking down people who are reluctant to hand over their personal weapons, and so on.  He is unfailingly polite until he explodes into physical action.

Club security has Knight Errant on contract for serious emergencies but the club has only had to call for aid twice in the thirty-plus years they have been open.

Campaign uses:

If you need to get someone who is going to Terminus, you may want to hit them on the way in or out.  There are no stories of successful extrations from within the club, but maybe they are just good at hushing it up.

Meeting someone for an exchange in Terminus might be tricky but at least no one is likely to shoot you, right?

If you can get a membership, it is a good place to cultivate contracts, especially among the corporate types.

Notes: Terminus has been in my campaign since almost the beginning but it has not shown up recently, I will have to change that.

Images art deco piece from PublicDomainPictures.net and phone from pxhere and both are in the Public Domain.