Last night, February 25, The Cloak & Dagger opened its doors to the public for the first time. It was an event that was a long while in the making, beginning with me getting a house pre-Stormblood (for a price that was practically theft, natch). I kind of had an idea of what I wanted it to be from the outset: from where I was standing, it felt like there were a lot of kind of "trashy" sorts of establishments, the kind that are holes in the wall. So I wanted to take a different approach. A few weeks after I came to Balmung (almost a year and a half ago now!), there was an open event that, while I was too overwhelmed to participate in even with the small group I attended with, I came to love the concept of: the Sinner's Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, I wasn't an experienced roleplayer and the venue was small, operating out of a private chamber. The text scroll overwhelmed me and I quickly backed out of the event, going off to level my character instead.

Still, the vibe was great, and it stuck with me. After apartments were released, I even obtained permission from the owner to use the new Sinner's Sanctuary location for some Ebonguard meetups! While it doesn't seem like the venue's tumblr is up anymore, I still have the event flyers from that time along with a screencap from the meetup itself!

(Came for the crime, stayed for the Duskwights.)

I've always been attracted to classier joints, because I play a character who fancies himself to be a man of class. Leonnaux, who spends most of his time on the Ebonguard network playing up the image of his actually-nonexistent-employer, Crow (they're the same person, though he does his best to obscure this fact), dresses nice. He tends to stay away from rougher elements, as he's an information broker, not a fighter. In fact, prior to relatively recently, he looked down on mercenaries, and he still looks down on people who will jump to bloodshed as a first solution rather than the last one. This holds true even as he's ascended the ranks through his Free Company, the Artifice of Reason, which is a research institute... Though having people of loose morals and tight lips has always been a bit of a trend at the (IC) higher rungs of the organization.

Within the first year of Ebonguard's run, we were lucky enough to have one of our members (then-officer, though all of our officers are, in a similar manner to The Cloak & Dagger Staff, volunteers; when real life starts kicking in, I'm not about to hold it against anyone for stepping down into a role that they are more comfortable with), Itara designate their FC room as a space for Ebonguard use.

Although a little bit spookier than the Sinner's Sanctuary, it still gave off the kind of vibe I liked: it was classy, it was exclusive. There were zones sectioned off so that groups looking to do business could have a bit of privacy to their negotiations. Unfortunately, the Lucky #7 didn't last much longer past its grand opening, either; Itara's only one person and running a full-on venue on a regular basis is more than I think one person could begin to handle. That said, it was decorated nicely, and the overall 'feel' of the Lucky #7 was one that I attempted, unsuccessfully, to emulate in the first iteration of the Cloak & Dagger's basement.

(This cooler-colored, barless basement is what the Cloak & Dagger could have been, but two redecorations later and I found something that I liked a more. After some trial and error with personal RP and figuring out that having people's backs in the wall is a really bad idea for camera angles, the current iteration, pictured below, was born. Even so... I might revisit this particular concept. This was designed before they added blank partitions, so matching the wall was a huge pain in the ass and it was really cramping my style, hence why I changed it.)

(Unfortunately, blank partitions have an ugly border and can't be backed into the corner at an angle to hide it, so white partitions kind of continue to cramp my style.)

Fast forward to November, and I'm gathering up volunteers for a soft-opening, which surprisingly goes pretty quickly. Lots of people were interested, though only a few people stuck around. I schedule it for January, and it goes well enough with only a few staff members on hand. And then, a few weeks later... The grand opening. Last night!

I'll be completely honest, I was not expecting nearly as many people as showed up. if I'd known we'd get such a large group, I would have recruited a few more volunteer staff beforehand (or tried to, at least). Still, it was fun! It was fun to learn how these things are done, and I didn't freak out nearly as much as I thought I would. It was interesting forcing myself in the sort of position where I had to do a little bit of walk-up, although I left that mainly to the rest of the staff and have Leonnaux just help out where needed with taking orders and the like. 

At one point, every table except the ones at the veeery front had at least one person at them! It was wild! But again, a good learning experience, and now that we have a proof of concept, The Cloak & Dagger's staff and I are looking at ways to incorporate more of a criminal element into the events themselves.

While I thought, at first, about doing the "order this drink for Crime RP," I know that another group used that gimmick in the past and, while I enjoyed it, I didn't want to 'rip-off' that group. (I have since been notified that this is actually a relatively common trope, so in the future we will look at including this venue feature.) Meanwhile, the idea of a password was also appealing since it would open up the crime RP to people outside of the Ebonguard, where the usual schtick at past meet-ups was to show off the black linkpearl for a free drink. Unfortunately, the idea of a password is also a bit... Unwieldy, all things considered; the only character who would then be in a position to take said password would be my character, and although I consider myself an experienced DM at this point, I also still just one person, and also would like to not hog all the criminal RP action.

In the future, I'd also like to see some performers, although I'm not exactly sure about how one goes about attracting those in general, let alone the sorts of performers who would be likely to play on the stage of The Cloak & Dagger rather than, say, a pub or dive bar, for example. That, though, is a bridge to cross later; performances are a tertiary interest at best, since the main focus of the venue is and always will be on the criminal aspect! Unless people just really, really want to get drunk, in which case I'll gladly provide the recipe for the cocktail that a menu item is based on: the Gold Court! In real life, it's actually a pretty specific cocktail from a pretty specific restaurant. It's called The Great Gatsby, and it's actually delicious. The Lillet Blanc is a little bit expensive, but I don't hate it even on its own and I mean, I doubt that kind of thing expires?

The other menu parallels I think are obvious: the Cloak & Dagger is a Black Russian with vanilla vodka, the martini is a martini (I actually considered making it specifically the Vesper Martini, you know, the one from James Bond? But then I decided against it. I don't remember why. The Bond reference remained in the menu description though and earned an amusing reaction from Itara.) A Dark n Stormy is a Dark n Stormy and was included on the menu mostly for want of a better item to include. I've never had most of these cocktails, but I tried to spread their flavor profiles out dramatically, and technically the bar can make any cocktail your imagination can think up as long as you communicate with the barkeeps as to what it is. Food items were variously adapted from the CUL recipe list and just made up on the spot by making lore inferences; i.e. since fried popotoes are mentioned in the Battered Fish item description and Salt Cod Puffs are basically deep-fried, I decided that chicken tenders were probably alright to include.

The next opening of The Cloak & Dagger will be on March 11 at the same time: 8PM EST! We're looking for more volunteers for staff, mostly people who are willing to act as hosts/greeters and security (both to confiscate weapons AT THE DOOR THIS TIME! I'M A FOOL! and to make sure no fights break out... Rowdiness might be entertaining, but bar fights aren't in the spirit of the venue IC or OOC.) We hope to see you there!