- Security in Club Apocalypse
- Setting Information for
Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green
From: Morrigan (aj_hide11@hotmail.com)
Date: Sunday, December 21st , 2003
-
-
- With little better to do, I glanced through
Countdown this morning, and I came across the floor plan for
Club Apocalypse contained therein. The club itself would be a
nightmare to secure, with a parking garage, the two entrances
off 99th street, two alley way entrances, four large licensed
areas (main dance floor, Neophyte bar, Green bar, and main bar),
and two long hallways between the patron area (those four licensed
areas) and the parking garage, surrounding the climate control
plant and storage areas.
-
- Those long hallways, with all their nooks
and crannies, would be bad areas, the sorts of places where assaults
could take place and crimes be committed. The security staff
at most clubs have a designated area to beat someone down in,
somewhere where a lot of people don't go, and which is not easily
seen
from the security cameras. At Club Apocalypse, this would probably
be in the hallway leading off the parking garage, opposite the
ramp up and heading eastwards. One of the building storage rooms
in that part of the club could also be used. A concrete room
with a stack of phone books in the corner and a drain in the
floor...
-
- There is no reason to think that the mundane
portions of Club Apocalypse would be any different from any other
night club, and, in places like that, the mix of alcohol and
people is a dangerous one. To secure just the dance floor and
interior of the club, a minimum of twelve bouncers would be needed,
and that's just to work the doors and stationary positions. You'd
probably want four to six more personnel just walking around
and maybe another guy or two to work the parking garage (this
is where you'd put the animals - the bouncers who really get
off on hurting people). The club does have a security monitoring
room off Lexington Avenue, but security cameras don't prevent
things from happening - they tell you when they have happened,
and usually allow weasels to attach blame without knowledge of
circumstances.
-
- Of course, the owners of Club Apocalypse
are anything but mundane people, but would the likes of Robert
Hubert or Stephen Alzis employ preternatural forces to provide
club security? It seems unlikely to me. I wonder who does provide
security for the Club? Probably not the Adepts, I have heard
that many bouncers in New York City have connections to organized
crime, but I doubt that the security personnel at Club Apocalypse
would have mafia ties...not in a Fate establishment. An interesting
possibility would be ghouls, either ones that could still pass
for human, or whose true appearances are camouflaged. Ghouls
are strong and tough enough to be bouncers, and a "hard
bounce" or "fighting bounce" could end very poorly
for a trouble maker indeed. If the security staff at Club Apocalypse
is some sort of high wattage private army, they would probably
draw some extra duty as enforcers for Robert Hubert. These are
trained fighters anyway, who are already on the payroll. If Belial
ever needed to punish someone, or to make an example, the logical
choice would be his bouncers at Club Apocalypse. After all, he
doesn't even have to go to a lot of trouble to pay them for the
service. They just get to log more hours of work that week.
-
- The head of security - the head boucner -
at Club Apocalypse would be someone to be feared. Such personnel
are usually dreaded anyway, and the "extra magical bits"
that such a person at a Fate club would have would be terrifying.
The head of security at any establishment is usually also your
cooler - the toughest guy on staff - who makes sure that bar
personnel always win any fights that happen, and they do happen.
Even in the most tame clubs. The head of security at Club Apocalypse
would be the security staffer most likely to be a ghoul. He would
also have to be a leader of men and have a considerable degree
of formal fighting training.
-
- If you wanted to do the security staff of
Club Apocalypse with a high degree of realism (perhaps your PCs
have finally worked up enough courage, or you want to start the
adventure there) - at least, the public part of the club that
is the largest illustration on the fold out pages in Countdown
- there would be about twenty guys, including the head of security.
They'd be fairly outgoing and diplomatic, because even the animals
don't want to fight all the time. Bouncers tend to be slightly
bigger and stronger than the club's average patron, but not giants,
because they can be too intimidating. They will typically have
some form of formal fighting training (off duty soldiers and
policemen are popular choices). Bouncers are especially protective
of any women on staff or who are in the club as patrons, and
the surest way to have a close encounter is to menace a waitress
or female bartender. Male bartenders, on the other hand, have
usually started out as bouncers and been promoted to bartender,
so you really don't want to mess with experienced head crackers
like them.
-
- This is the important part: a bouncer cannot
be intimidated. You are there in their environment, where they,
not the police, are law. This would go doubly for Club Apocalypse.
Credentials don't mean a pinch of piss in the wind to nightclub
security. You could be a special forces soldier on active duty,
but to the guys who do night club security, you're one more drunk
asshole that they have to deal with. Since most of them have
been trained how to deal with armed assailants, weapons do not
intimidate either. In fact, pulling a knife or a gun on a bouncer
will likely get you beaten worse, because security will get that
weapon away from you, and it does not matter how big and bad
you are, when five guys are pummelling you, the will to fight
vanishes pretty fast. In a Fate club, bouncers are likely to
have some exposure to magic, so even spells might not intimidate
in Club Apocalypse. You never fight one bouncer alone. Even if
its just one guy you happen to be trading punches with at any
one time, his co-workers will be watching, ready to jump in it
if you start to win.
-
- You would have:
-
- Two on each of the entrances off 99th Street
(these look like the main public access entrances on the illustration).
This is a prestige position, and also requires higher than average
diplomatic and conversational abilities.
- Two each in the main bar and the Green bar
(is it really green?). These bouncers must be clean cut and presentable,
since, even if they're not interacting with patrons, the patrons
can see them, and they are a living, breathing advertisement
for the club. The head of security would spend the bulk of his
time in these bars and at the front door.
- One in the Neophyte bar (a smaller space,
and this guy can get help from one or both of the guys in the
Green bar). Like main and Green bar bouncers, this guy should
look good.
- At least four on the main dance floor (one
in every corner, probably on elevated positions to see the entire
room; a big square room like that, even with two thousand people
in it, can be easily watched). Strong powers of observation and
quick reaction time are critical here.
- One in the parking garage (this would be
a tough guy, since he's there by himself) and one on the alley
way entrance on the west side of the building (this guy wuld
have lots of chances to make extra money as people pay a few
bucks to come in the back door and beat the line up)
- Three to five more guys who walk around all
night, circulating among the patrons. These bouncers, because
they interact with the patrons more, have to have the highest
diplomatic and conversational abilities on the security staff.
This position, called the roamer, carries a certain prestige,
and would go to the more senior guys on staff as their reward.
In Club Apocalypse, these roamers would pay extra attention to
the long hallway parallel to 99th Street, and the two hallways
heading south at right angles to 99th Street. For some arcane
reason, nightclub patrons like hallways.
-
- Trouble will happen anywhere that people
are in close proximity for too long: the line up at the front
door, in front of the bars, and the quieter corners of the dance
floor. The witching hour, when trouble breaks out, will be around
1:00 in the morning, when people have had time to get drunk,
but not enough to drink to pass out. Contrary to urban legend,
nights of the full moon are not more dangerous or more violent
than any other night, and the more people in a club, the less
likely it is that a fight will break out, because there isn't
enough room for pin heads to square off. Women will fight just
as often as men, and they will be more energetic and violent
in a bar fight than men will be.
-
- Irregardless of the policies of the management
of Club Apocalypse, the security staff will not want to deal
with pot heads and dope fiends, so they will be on the look out
for evidence of drug use, including the odor of marijuana. The
bathrooms will have blue lights, which both calm patrons down
and prevent intravenous drug users from finding an artery to
shoot into. The second best way to receive a profound beating
from the security staff, after pulling a weapon on someone, is
to try to deal drugs on the premises, or close enough to the
premises for the trafficking and the club to be connected.
-
- And a final note on the Hell's Angels. Provided
that their reputation in known to a preponderance of the patrons
and staff at a night club, a Hell's Angel never causes trouble
inside the club. In fact, they are the patrons you want: they
have lots of money to spend, and have been known to back up security
if the mood strikes them. This is not to apologize for the HA,
or excuse their behavior, but only to say that, in a night club,
they are not the ones security has to worry about.
|