What was all this? (LM, D19)

[Nora Crossette]

The facilities around the Gate of Tartarus had been secured, and after word came down that there was a lot of old machinery and some half-built mechs, Nora came to take a look.

Stepping down from the APC ramp, dressed in the Fortunate Ones jacket, steel-toe boots, and with a coffee thermos tucked under one arm, a noteputer under the other, she was ready to have a look.

[Dr. Reinhardt]

Reinhardt makes a point to come along, at the very least to get some footage and to try to identify what all is at the facilitiy.

[James Hall]

James and Mata stepped out after her. James was dressed in uniform. Mata held his noteputer. She walked in between him and Nora.

[Comstar]

The facility was fairly massive, though a decent amount of it, especially as you headed south, consisted of pipelines, pumps, and storage tanks. At the northern end, however, were two buildings. The first was some sort of refinery, mostly automated, that seemed to produce a variety of materials, though it was in desperate need of overhaul and maintenance after this long without proper care.

The second was the building they now stood outside, a somewhat squat but sprawling structure on the hillside, across a long overpass which had been somewhat mangled in the fighting.

The structure featured large bay doors, and Nora was pondering hitting the 'open' button, perhaps savoring the moment, or simply being dramatic.

Eventually, she tapped it, and the doors slid open.

Inside, was a mech.

Or... most of one. It was clearly only partially completed, and past it were more, a half dozen in various stages of construction, and stretching back to the right with the curve of the building were more open bay doors holding massive machinery, presses, drills, foundries... it was a factory.

It seemed tooled to create mechs like the mystery mech they had discovered in the battle - Marauder-like skirmishers. On the roof was an office overlooking the construction lines, and through the entire space ran gantries on several floors, allowing access to the mechs at different heights inside the 50'ft tall construction hangar.

Nora just whistled.

[James Hall]

"Amazing. With this..." James considers the possibilities. "We'll need a thorough search. It's possible there are plans the pirates didn't find. I doubt they knew how to do anything more than basic work. If we can reproduce SLDF tech here and keep our mechs up standards...." Maybe it was too much to hope, but after everything else they have found, he would let himself hope a little.

[Felicity]

"Eehm, wow. Instead of keeping our mechs working, could we produce more of these things? How many could we make? There's a lot of money to be made with mech production." Felicity observes, having followed behind James, Nora and Reinhardt. "This could be worth a lot of money."

[James Hall]

"Oh. We could. We just need workers. Human Edge or maybe even find settlers who would want to come here if there's not enough people who want to come work from the planet. What we can produce is the question."

[Dr. Reinhardt]

"This is almost as big of a find as the other two" He whistles low "Lucy is going to have a conniption"

[Comstar]

The facility, like most mech factories, was likely equipped to make a specific model - altering that production line would be a fairly massive undertaking in itself - but it did seem that there were two models being made, if the weapons loadouts were any indication - one seemed to favor energy weapons, the other missiles.

While there was definitely working equipment here, there was also the clear signs of equipment used without maintenance and damaged in the process. It would take some new equipment or a lot of work to get the entire facility running again. Still... with time and effort, it might be possible to produce whatever these mechs were.

[Nora Crossette]

Nora glanced around. "You think they have blueprints or something anywhere? I would think they would - but I've never actually been to a mech factory before. My friends never did come through with that invitation to the Luthien armorworks."