GuidanceOfficer » Hibernal Den » Cobe

Cobe

(#36112934)

Level 1 Pearlcatcher

Familiar

Serthis Potionmaster

Energy: 50/50

Personal Style

Apparel

Skin

Scene

Physical Attributes

Battle Stats

Measurements

Length

4.31 m

Wingspan

6.98 m

Weight

653.08 kg

Genetics

Plum
Poison

Raspberry
Toxin

Dust
Underbelly

Hatchday

Sep 22, 2017
(6 years)

Breed

Adult
Pearlcatcher

Eye Type

Lightning
Common

Level 1 Pearlcatcher

EXP: 0 / 245

STR

AGI

DEF

QCK

INT

VIT

MND

Lineage

Parents

Offspring

Biography

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Clan locations:

Sheltered from the raging storms out east by a jagged cliff face, a constant drizzle pours on a series of stone structures built into the side of the Canyon. Though externally it looks as grim as the Stormcatcher's imperial prisons, it's within these walls that dragons from all over Sonrieth gather to innovate dragonkind's technology and transform their species's place in the universe.

The Baikonur Agency Headquarters are the agency's home of operations. Dragons from all sorts of disciplines make a living here, from business to engineering, from astrophysics to history, and from software to education! Most of the development for new technologies and research takes place in the tunnels of BAHQ.

BAHQ is located on a Lightning Imperial Air Force base, and takes up about 30% of the tunnel space. The rest is dedicated to the base, which is similar in some respects to those underground Swiss air force bases you read about sometimes. BAHQ is mostly at the lower, southern end of the system. The median levels are apartments, food courts, and a couple of gyms, most shared by LIAF personnel and BA employees. The top half is technically somewhat classified, but it's no secret to locals that planes regularly leave through an underground hangar somewhere up there!

Since it's open to the public, the Lightning Imperial Aerospace Heritage Library is operated by the Baikonur Agency. It's not Lightning-specific, but it does boast a collection of declassified LIAF documents in preservation, all in the process of digitization. Students and scholars migrate from all over Sornieth to access these records.

Officially, there's nothing odd going on, but the further you go back into the tunnels, the weirder things get. There's a strange artifact in the back of these tunnels that seems to emit an eerie tune in the ears of anyone who gets near it. Clearly, it drove the original diggers mad, because the tunnels around it get more and more convoluted the closer you get to the artifact. If you must venture back there, take a map... Or just stay out of there in the first place.

The howl of jet engines harmonizes with the roar of supersonic wind tunnels. It echoes through the canyon, and rattles the windows of whatever scattered dragons have made their lairs there. Far from civilization, Energia has served Lightning as a flight test base for over a century.

It's a back-breakingly hot day, and at this altitude, the sky isn't just clear - it's close enough to touch, and it's only the limit if you let it be.

The Energia Airbase operated as a flight test base for almost 80 years before Lightning entered the space age. Its primary operator is the Lightning Imperial Air Force. It has a long tradition of combining engineering and flight test disciplines to produce some of Lightning's finest aircraft, mostly for defense, but for civilian purposes too. Since it started sharing space with the Baikonur Space Agency, it saw a new influx of activity, much of which benefited the civilian sector, since treaties prevent the BSA from becoming a military wing.

The base consists of two runways (well, four, if you count the different directions as different runways like pilots do). It originally operated with one; a second one was eventually added which was long enough for cargo aircraft to bring large pieces of equipment to the base. It also contains five wind tunnels, two water tunnels, a manufacturing facility (with both traditional and additive manufacturing methods), and a hangar dedicated to jet propulsion testing.

Although it's in the Lightning flight, Energia Airbase lies in a patch of desert that's untouched by storm for most of the year (but has a nasty monsoon season during the early summer). It's also in an extremely isolated location, for security reasons; there isn't even a road to the base, with access being provided by a single rail line which connects to the civilian railway at a station ~150 miles/250 kilometers away. These factors combined mean the Energia Airbase must operate its own power, and the flight has set up an array of nuclear reactors to provide electric power to the base. The engineers who run the powerplant are largely civilians, some of whom hail from the Water flight, where nuclear and other forms of steam power are much more common.

Surrounded by an array of radio antennas, a rain-stained concrete building, imposing and brutalist, stands beneath the towering rods around it. Completely windowless, the building is marked only with a washed-out sign reading BMC. A single lightning rod extending from the roof doubles as a flagpole, with the underlit banner of the Lightning Flight flying boldly no matter the time of day. Only few are allowed to enter, but even from outside, the smell of coffee, cold pizza, and progress drifts from the heavily-secured front doors.

The Baikonur Mission Operations Center is, essentially, a very buff Mission Control. Contrary to popular belief, it has not one, but a number of "Mission Control" rooms, each equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The Mission Control, which oversees crewed operations, is by far the most robust. The others are mostly rooms with a number of computer displays. Each active room has its own unique responsibilities, handling the data flowing from a multitude of scientific, security, positioning, and communications satellites

BMOC also houses the cosmonautics office, and, deep underground, the center of a radar system that keeps Lightning dragons safe from impending threat of war. It's connected through tunnels and an underground rail system to BAHQ, letting Baikonur employees sleep in the same apartments as their BAHQ coworkers if they please.

The Storm's Eye Missile Detection System (SEMDS) is a relic of a war from 70-80 years ago. Mostly, it's still in place because it's been grandfathered into a bunch of aviation safety laws; in the absence of missiles pointed at the Shifting Expanse, the most adrenaline radar operators have to cope with comes from helping airliners land safely with a busted engine. Most airports in the Expanse can also relocate to a SEMDS radar station if their own setups get busted due to natural disasters or security issues. The whole network runs through BMOC. In fact, BMOC officially operates on the SEMDS headquarters, but SEMDS is pretty hush-hush out of flight, so... They don't advertise that.

Thus, BMOC gets its information not just from the equipment around the site, but a network of radar beacons all over Lightning. Since Lightning isn't at war anymore, a few old SEMDS stations have been dedicated exclusively to communicating with a network of satellites, which relay information to and from other spacecraft in orbit (and a few in deep space).

Back in the old days of Baikonur's Mission Operations, they didn't have enough satellites to track spacecraft wherever they went. To ensure near-constant radar coverage, they'd work with the Lightning Imperial Navy to deploy tracking ships underneath the spacecraft's ground track. These ships would communicate with each other and eventually back to either a satellite or a ground-based radar station, so that BMOC could listen in on their conversations with the cosmonauts. These days, the satellites do most of the work, but when they go out of service, a tracking ship is sent to help the network limp until a replacement can be launched. There's usually one or two out in place, and they're essential to Mission Operations.

Alone in the desert, an impressive structure towers into the arid sky. It appears to be a lone lightning rod, but upon closer inspection, it is perched atop a massive slab of concrete at the foot of a sandy rail line. Once every few months, dragons gather to fight the sky and earth in a pillar of steel and fire, proving their final conquest against the planet which imprisons them all.

Name: Gagarin Launchpad
Population: 1-30, depending on launch schedules
IRL comparison: The Baikonur launch center

A rusty railway leads to a defunct observatory, but a switch near the end of the line intercepts the cargo trains that still use the tracks today and guides them to a remote launch complex. The massive structure of steel and concrete looks out of place among the glowing island, isolated in the southwest waters from much of Arcane proper. But it's here that dreamers and innovators alike come together to launch dragonkind's legacy into the stars.

Name: Tereshkova Launch Complex
Population: 1
IRL comparison: JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center

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