Scenario/Setting Idea - The Abandoned(?) NSA Spy Station
Apr 14, 2016 16:57:04 GMT
Marnal, Catsmate, and 1 more like this
Post by starkllr on Apr 14, 2016 16:57:04 GMT
I had written an article about this years ago, and this is as good a time as any to ressurect it. So I give you the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute:
It’s a former National Security Agency listening post, the Rosman Satellite Tracking Station. It was abandoned by the NSA in 1995 and turned over to a group of astronomers, and it’s now called the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. There’s an interesting news article about it from way back in 2001.
What is inside that giant geodesic dome that looks like a golf ball? Where do the tunnels snaking beneath the 202-acre site lead? Why are the rugs welded to the floors of the windowless buildings?
All good questions!
When (the Pigash Astronomical Research Institute) arrived in January 1999, they expected a basic, albeit large, government facility, but as the weeks passed they realized little about the site was what it appeared.
As they began to install their computers, they found hundreds of miles of top-of-the-line cabling running under every floor. They discovered that the self-contained water and sewer treatment plant could handle tens of thousands of gallons of water at a time and the generator could produce 235 kilowatts of energy – powerful enough to light up a small city.
For a Torchwood or UNIT game, this facility might make a good headquarters for the PC's. The first seesion could be devoted to exploring the facility, newly handed over to the players from the NSA (or GCHQ, if you want to transplant it to the UK). What ELSE is hidden in the facility that the former owners might have forgotten to remove when they left? Were all the computers properly wiped? Was every reel of magnetic tape really demagnetized? If not, what secrets might be hidden there?
But there is much on the site that the astronomers don’t know what to do with, such as the paper-shredding building up on one hill, the large helicopter pad on top of another, and down in a valley of well-manicured grass, that giant golf ball, similar to those seen at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
Close up from the outside, the ball is a circle of triangles, no two identical, that feel like Gore-Tex to the touch. When one triangle at the bottom is pushed, several triangles around it gyrate, letting off a low grumbling sound of bending metal echoing throughout the ball.
Inside, past a small door less than 4 feet tall, the ball glows white, lighted by the sunlight outside reflecting and bouncing inside from one triangle to another.
In its center is a 40-foot satellite dish, cleaner and smoother than any of the others. It looks new, though it has been there for years. There are unusual numbered patterns on the dish’s white panels, laid out like a cheat sheet to a jigsaw puzzle. The astronomers believe that the triangles vary in size as a clever way to minimize the effect of interference that comes from patterns.
Enclosing the dish under such a surface, they speculate, would protect it from the weather, and prevent anyone else from seeing it or reading the direction it is pointed.
Yes, that's the logical, mundane explanation for the antenna inside the giant golf ball with the weird numbered triangular panels inside. But surely there are more interesting Whovian explanations for it...?
If this isn't the HQ for the players and their organization, it could be a facility that's been mysteriosuly abandoned, and they are called upon to investigate. Why has there been no contact for the last two weeks? What was the meaning of the last cryptic message sent out before radio silence fell? What happened to the several hundred people who work there?
It could be an active enemy facility that the players must infiltrate, too. Who knows who might be running the place now, or what signals they're receiving from deep space?
It’s a former National Security Agency listening post, the Rosman Satellite Tracking Station. It was abandoned by the NSA in 1995 and turned over to a group of astronomers, and it’s now called the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute. There’s an interesting news article about it from way back in 2001.
What is inside that giant geodesic dome that looks like a golf ball? Where do the tunnels snaking beneath the 202-acre site lead? Why are the rugs welded to the floors of the windowless buildings?
All good questions!
When (the Pigash Astronomical Research Institute) arrived in January 1999, they expected a basic, albeit large, government facility, but as the weeks passed they realized little about the site was what it appeared.
As they began to install their computers, they found hundreds of miles of top-of-the-line cabling running under every floor. They discovered that the self-contained water and sewer treatment plant could handle tens of thousands of gallons of water at a time and the generator could produce 235 kilowatts of energy – powerful enough to light up a small city.
For a Torchwood or UNIT game, this facility might make a good headquarters for the PC's. The first seesion could be devoted to exploring the facility, newly handed over to the players from the NSA (or GCHQ, if you want to transplant it to the UK). What ELSE is hidden in the facility that the former owners might have forgotten to remove when they left? Were all the computers properly wiped? Was every reel of magnetic tape really demagnetized? If not, what secrets might be hidden there?
But there is much on the site that the astronomers don’t know what to do with, such as the paper-shredding building up on one hill, the large helicopter pad on top of another, and down in a valley of well-manicured grass, that giant golf ball, similar to those seen at NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.
Close up from the outside, the ball is a circle of triangles, no two identical, that feel like Gore-Tex to the touch. When one triangle at the bottom is pushed, several triangles around it gyrate, letting off a low grumbling sound of bending metal echoing throughout the ball.
Inside, past a small door less than 4 feet tall, the ball glows white, lighted by the sunlight outside reflecting and bouncing inside from one triangle to another.
In its center is a 40-foot satellite dish, cleaner and smoother than any of the others. It looks new, though it has been there for years. There are unusual numbered patterns on the dish’s white panels, laid out like a cheat sheet to a jigsaw puzzle. The astronomers believe that the triangles vary in size as a clever way to minimize the effect of interference that comes from patterns.
Enclosing the dish under such a surface, they speculate, would protect it from the weather, and prevent anyone else from seeing it or reading the direction it is pointed.
Yes, that's the logical, mundane explanation for the antenna inside the giant golf ball with the weird numbered triangular panels inside. But surely there are more interesting Whovian explanations for it...?
If this isn't the HQ for the players and their organization, it could be a facility that's been mysteriosuly abandoned, and they are called upon to investigate. Why has there been no contact for the last two weeks? What was the meaning of the last cryptic message sent out before radio silence fell? What happened to the several hundred people who work there?
It could be an active enemy facility that the players must infiltrate, too. Who knows who might be running the place now, or what signals they're receiving from deep space?
