3 Facility N01

Facility N01 is a huge abandoned metal structure, perched atop a glacier valley, deep in the mountains. The original purpose of the facility is not exactly clear, and it’s protected by an ancient defence network generally deemed “to much hassle” by corporations to scour.

There’s an Invoke Arms corporate arcology at the base of the valley, and an Opus Institute research base nestled up in the mountains.

Mission Report

En-Route

During downtime, the crew is following the path of AGLA, who is also making their way from Scamander to Facility N01.

They meet up with another crawler, the Exploitable Loophole, en-route to trade information. They then ask me, the GM, if they can add this crawler to their own like they did last time with the Quality Control. I point out that, yes actually, you can afford to go up another tier this downtime.¹ The Exploitable Loophole is fitted into the Vengeance Control, forming the Vengeance Control Loophole.

They also spend some time decoding more of the meld communications, and get a pretty reasonable vocabulary going, now also including:

• Control
• Question mark, interrogative
• Freedom
• Affirmative/negative
• Leader

Libraries are Fun and Cool

Disembarking the Vengeance Control into heavy snows, the crew decides (as the weather is textbook inclement) that a mountain ascent may not be the best idea. Let’s go see whats going on at the arcology, perhaps we can gather some information about the Argent Republic and AGLA.

As they approach, Steve cooks up a false identity to get them inside. They enter the facility through the main loading bays without issue, and smuggle all their weapons inside.

Hope everybody brought their library card, we’re off to learn. Making their way to the central vertical shaft, over gantry ways and suspended promenades, they find a small public library and gather round a terminal.

They learn a great deal about the history of the Argent Republic, basically as noted in The Argent Republic, and A Galactic History. This is pretty much a lore-dump, which I tend not to want to do unless players explicitly go seek it out. Which they did!

Jack and Steve reckon they could probably steal some Invoke Arms secrets, now they’re all inside. The rest of the gang talks them down, there are guards everywhere!

Ice To Meet You

Now the snowstorm is breaking, they leave Invoke behind to make their way up the glacier. Ruined mechs litter the ground here, and the party makes note of vicious energy weapon marks all over them. The hulks get more dense further up the glacier, so the party decides to move on to the mountain pass.

Here, trudging up through the snowstorms, Gert spots a disturbance burrowing under the thick snowdrifts. A group of 3 N01-DS003 Machines burst from cover, and the fight is on.

Swift violence, meted out thoroughly, the crew has even more bio-salvage.

Onward to the Opus Research lab, and here they are welcomed by Abalone, the science chief here. Abalone explains that there’s been weird readings coming from the main N01 facility recently, and a group of large mechs moved up there not too long ago. Typically it’s avoided by salvagers, because of the DS003 guardians. They also explain that Johnny, one of the other scientists was adamant they were going to investigate. They’ve now lost contact, and are pretty worried.

“Hey Abalone, you don’t want a load of bio-salvage do you?”

The crew offers to trade in bio-salvage with the institute, and they’re always interested. Abalone says they’ll certainly take it off the crew’s hands, and in return they’ll send some experimental mech part schematics back to their crawler.

Poor Johnny

Continuing up through the mountains, the crew make it to the base of the Facility N01. Athena’s mech can hover (it’s an INRI chassis), and I misunderstood the mech carrying another mech rules, so she gives Jack a lift to the top of the facility for a brief scout.

Sure enough, there stands AGLA, along with their retinue, around a strange sphere of silver mounted into a big bracket. He’s up to something.

Back down on the ground, the party groups back up and starts to move up into the underside of the facility. They open up comms, trying to lock on to signals that seem meld-like, seen as they know AGLA scooped up a load of meld. They find a strong signal that seems to be coming from up where AGLA currently is, and a weaker one from somewhere in the underside of the N01 dome.

Creeping up the columns, and then into the facility underside, they eventually find the source of the signal. It looks like a wrecked Opus Gopher, which does not bode well for Johnny.

Creeping forward, and tentatively opening the chassis cockpit, they reveal Johnny’s corpse, partially consumed by a small meld shard. Slightly horrified by the alien entity’s seeming complete disregard for human life they initiate contact. After a complex conversation they gather that this shard of the meld is currently severely weakened and attempting to reconstitute itself and the meld above, under the control of AGLA is no longer really recognised by this shard as actually being meld.

Upwards now, to face the ancient imperial warrior.

Argent Reunion

At the surface, they discuss briefly with AGLA his purpose and reason here. He has awoken to a galaxy greatly changed since his time, and now seeks to rebuild the old empire he knew. He’s an old creature, and while it will take time, there’s no reason not to start the work.

Battle is joined! And swiftly decided. Jack’s grapple and Laz0rbrn’s control enemy mech’s hack is a brutal combo, completely preventing AGLA moving and making him vulnerable the whole time.²

In the wreckage, the party look to determine just what the hell this big contraption he’s built is. Hacking in, it becomes clear this is some kind of gate portal, which would connect this location to a huge Argent Republic facility abandoned and sleeping in the swirling storms of the Ash - the Gas Giant lazily moving across the sky above. The gate will activate in one hours time, and remain open for a scant few minutes before closing again. This one, at least, was a one-way trip.

The crew eventually decides not to jump through now, being unprepared. But they know the facility is there, and is presumably waking up. They set their sights on acquiring travel off the planet, and finding some way to shut down the facility to prevent the resurgence of the Republic!

Outcomes

• AGLA is defeated.
• The Argent Republic facility in the clouds of Ash is waking up.
• Lots of scrap and loot, including the AGLA chassis.
• Opus institute experimental tech blueprints.

Adventure Setup

The Facility N01 adventure setup was pretty messy. I wasn’t feeling at my most creative and enthusiastic to prep at this point, which is how it goes. The adventure ended up running great, so it’s all no worries.

It was originally supposed to be a laboratory site for Adamant Arch Planetary‘s meld technology research, and the destination of the Atychos. It sort of ended up not really being that because of the release of AGLA in the last mission, but hey.

Main feature

Large abandoned manufactury. This was my initial plan because I had this mostly prepped before AGLA was released in the last adventure. I was originally intending this to be a focused mini-area map, but I changed it to be a lot simpler to facilitate a showdown with AGLA.

Threats

• Tyrant: Local Invoke Arms Magister - Olinia Prow.
• Brute: N01-DS003 - Facility N01’s automated defence network.
• Environmental: Vicious freezing weather, snow storms.

Weather

Roll
20	Clear skies, warm in the sun.
11-19	Light snow, high winds.
6-10	Heavy snow - obscured vision, hard to see long range.
2-5	Snowstorm - heavily obscured vision, hard to see medium range, hard to move and act out of mech.
1	Blizzard - heavily obscured vision, hard to see medium range, take 1HP every ten minutes unprotected, mechs take 1SP per hour of activity, but lose 1 HEAT per hour.

Random Encounters

Roll
20	One Last Dance crew, out salvaging.
16-19	Opus Institute Research crew, repairing monitoring equipment, shadowed by Regalia Agent.
11-15	Mining Surveyors from IACA.
6-10	Icewracks out hunting.
2-5	N01-DS003 scout patrol.
1	Regalia Tactical Squad make their move.

Locations

Map

Some friends of mine brought me cat face stamp as a gift from their holiday in Japan. It’s so fun.

SP Starting Point

At the base of the mountain valley, a wide open snow field leads up the base of the glacier. The corporate arcology sits at the base of the valley, off to the west. This is the only place the crawler can get to on the map.

IACA Invoke Arms Corporate Arcology

An Invoke Arms corporate arcology sits here, in the snowfields. It’s a mining concern, with most of the base of the arcology given over to the mineral processing industrial plant. There’s also maintenance and service areas towards the lower region.

In the central part of the arcology, the general living quarters and amenities are found. The living quarters are mostly built into the walls, with a huge open area strung with walkways in the centre. Natural light filters down into this central space, which is filled with shops, restaurants and other general locations. It’s not a great location for those with a fear of heights, this open area is about 150 metres wide, and 300 metres tall. The width of the living quarters ring around this is a further 70 metres, for a total width of around 300 metres wide. The total height is about 500 metres.

The overall appearance of the living areas and central concourse is reminiscent of a cruise ship. It’s lived in, but clean and well appointed. There are plants dotted around, and the environment is pleasant.

M1 Mining fields

Large, open, mining fields run from the IACA. They don’t really want anyone poking around, and the Security Detail will ask anyone not authorised to be here to move along. In close proximity to the arcology, reinforcements could arrive quickly.

Facility AN01

Just up from the mining fields is the exposed entrance to the ancillary N01 facility. This is an underground facility, that leads into N01.

I intended to flesh this out with some detailed areas underground, but I never got round to it in initial setup, and the party ended up not moving towards it.

G2 Glacier Lower Region

Littering the bottom of the glacier are a number of ruined mechs. They appear to have been hit with a very large energy weapon.

Area salvage: TL 2 // Supply 2

G1 Glacier Upper Region

The glacier here is dotted with even more ruined mechs. There is a large static laser cannon mounted up on the mountain pass, which fires upon any large objects moving through the area.

Area salvage: TL 2 // Supply 6

MP1 Mountain Pass Lower

The lower mountain pass goes up from the glacier into the eastern-side mountains. It’s a snow-bound, steep-sided chasm.

Roll an encounter in this region.

Up through the mountain pass, there is a small Opus institute science station. They work mostly on materials science, in particular practical cold-weather application, and some weather forecasting.

Abalone is one of the scientists here, and the de-facto head of operations. Johnny recently left in an old Gopher mech to investigate strange goings on at the main facility, despite the danger. No-ones heard from him in a couple of days, which is pretty worrying.

MP2 Mountain Pass Upper

The upper mountain pass leads to the back of the N01 facility. Nothing in particular happening here otherwise.

Facility N01

The N01 facility is a huge construction of metal, its original purpose lost to time. It sits like a great flattish dome³, elevated up on 4 huge pillars, over the source of the glacier. The outside of the dome is a large flat area, covered in greebles. The underside is full of huge rusted walkways and passageways. There’s a large reactor core (currently unpowered) in the centre of the underside region.

Atop the facility, AGLA and his retinue are doing something. They’ve constructed some kind of strange spinning silver orb, with iron bands spinning around it.

In actuality, this construct is a portal, connecting them to the ancient Argent Republic facility in the gas giant Ash, which Ashkar (the moon we’re on right now) orbits. It was constructed using reclaimed and transmuted meld, which AGLA gathered from Scamander Point.

Area salvage: TL 4 // Supply 5

Groups

I didn’t end up fleshing these groups out loads, but that’s ok. In the last adventure setup I put a lot into all the NPCs, and I didn’t end up using whole piles of them.

Invoke Arms

Invoke Arms have a corporate arcology here nestled at the base of the mountain pass. There’s obviously a lot of them inside, but these are the groups you might encounter outside the arcology.

Security Detail

• Rifleman Brawler
• Stefanus Mantis
• Beam Forge
• Missile Squad
• Machine Gun Squad

Reconnaissance

• Drontek Little Sestra
• Rifle Squad

Opus Research Lab

• Sifter Terra
• Opus Gopher
• Maggie Magpie

There’s a scientist called Abalone (they/them) working here, they have a modified face, which is a mother-of-pearl style mask. There’s also a scientist called Johnny, Abalone’s friend.

Regalia Infiltration Clade

They’re back! Some changes from their incarnation in the first adventure. Still trying to further the interests of Regalia Luxe.

• Scion Anastasia//SAPPHIRE (she/her) - Modified Needler Photon//PRIVATE PARTY⁴ Severe features, bloodthirsty cold blue eyes, long black hair. Her mech is painted bubblegum pink. “Infiltration”.
• Handmaiden Juliana//GRANITE (she/her) - Sakura Solo//GRAVESTONE Black suit, brown hair, bangs over her eyes, gloomy.
• Butler Julius//STOIC (he/him) - Custom Jackhammer//IN DEFIANCE Black suit, close-cropped hair, bright face.
• Medic Melio//PATCH (he/him) I clearly forgot to finish Melio, but whatever, he gets cut by next time.

One Last Dance Salvage Crew

• Bastion Atlas
• Ironmonger Magpie
• Rigger Scrapper
• Blackbeard Kraken

Critters

Not super happy with these creatures, we didn’t really end up using them, but they’re really lacking spice.

Ice worms

Ice worms are basically a mole-bear statblock. They’re exactly what they sound like.

Icewracks

Huge Ice-Lizards, HP 18 Damage 3SP Melee Multi-attack.

N01-DS003 Machines

The main N01-DS003 machines are modified Scylla statblocks (I keep using this profile, but the players have never encountered them before, so I don’t really feel bad making use of it again here). They have lowered health and only 1 titanic action each, there are 4 machines total in the defence network. They can appear in groups of D3.

AGLA

AGLA, having been released and gathering a large quantity of meld in the last adventure, has now moved up to the top of Facility N01 to construct a gate portal to an abandoned Argent Republic facility hidden in the gas giant Ash.

AGLA and retinue is now:

• AGLA, war pattern automata
• INRI, tactical support pattern automata
• NOX, executor pattern automata
• ABRAXAS, shard pattern automata (frame built from meld, soul reformed from INRI’s memory banks)

Footnotes

1. I’m not 100% sure if this is allowed in the rules, they’re technically going up 2 tech levels in one downtime, seen as the T1 → 2 upgrade when they bring the Quality Control in is technically also happening as part of this downtime. But whatever, I couldn’t find in the rules somewhere so I decided it was fine. ↩

2. I really undercooked this fight, it was pretty underwhelming. Ah well. ↩

3. “It’s a giant boob!” - My irrepressible players. ↩

4. This is a much better name than HALBERDIER. ↩