Base 11 is a top-secret Torchlight Society facility used for storing and researching the most powerful and dangerous artifacts the organization possesses. It is one of the most infamous sites among Torchlight agents and carries a fearsome reputation both for its secretiveness and extensive security measures and the rumored power of the items kept there. Located deep underground beneath the southern banks of Lake Sirione near the town of Robertsville, it employs a massive team of secrecy agents and armed personnel, both from Torchlight and the Aetherian military, to keep the site secure from both break-ins and break-outs, as well as a number of powerful psionic enchantments that keeps its existence hidden from the general public. Unlike most Torchlight bases, base 11 is not open to the general Torchlight population and its location is classified. Only agents employed at base 11 and the highest levels of Torchlight leadership are permitted to enter the site or even know its whereabouts.
The facility was originally built as a supplement to Base 08, but ultimately replaced it in its entirety after the former was destroyed in the Electroaetheric Transporter accident of 191.
Base 11's location is kept secret, with only agents stationed there permitted to enter it. The site is located deep underground, beneath the southern shore of Lake Sirione. Its main entrance is concealed inside a small warehouse on route 802 outside Robertsville. The warehouse is patrolled around the clock by highly-trained Torchlight guards and secrecy agents, and is protected by several enchantments that mask its existence from non-magic users. Inside the warehouse, vehicles travel through a long underground tunnel that leads beneath the lake into a parking and loading area surrounding the interior of the base. A secondary tunnel exits the loading area to the east, connecting to Base 12 in nearby Fleming. This second tunnel is used purely as a freight entrance and emergency exit, with the majority of staff at base 12 unaware of its existence.
The base consists of eight main floors, all underground, with the upper levels primarily consisting of office space and research laboratories, and the lower levels dedicated to storage and containment of magic items. The most powerful artifacts with the A4 and A5 designations are kept on the deepest levels, with access tightly controlled by electronic and magical access control systems. Many of these items require specialized procedures to keep secure, carried out by specially trained personnel with 24-hour surveillance.
For the first years of Torchlight's growth throughout the second century NE, Base 08 served as the society's most secure storage site for dangerous magical artifacts. Plans for the construction of a second such site started around 185. Torchlight's staff and the number of ancient sites it was recovering artifacts from had massively increased throughout the century and base 08's original design capacity had far been exceeded, leading to relaxations of safety protocols as large numbers of enchanted items were stored in close proximity to one another, prompting concerns from Torchlight officials about worker safety. Attempts to expand base 08 to further underground levels were complicated by the site's location beneath the city of Clearwater, which had grown from a small village to a burgeoning midsize town of 30,000 by the late 170's and would be sure to notice the sounds of such a major underground construction project. Instead, the society opted to construct a second underground facility, larger and far deeper below ground in the cold and sparsely-populated southern Sirione Taiga, several miles south of the Republic of Antius border.
The new base was originally planned to contain five stories of underground warehouse space, as well as research laboratories and offices for staff conducting experiments on the items kept there. The plans were changed in 191 after the explosion at Base 08 which heavily damaged existing containment units and destoyed numerous valuable artifacts. As Torchlight agents scrambled to recover surviving objects from the remains of base 08 and transport them to other nearby sites for safekeeping, the new site's plans had to be expanded to serve as a complete replacement of base 08 rather than a secondary location. The under-construction site was redesigned to include eight stories, with double the original amount of warehouse space. Safety protocols were also revised following the explosion, leading to a near-complete redesign of high-security containment chambers in lowest levels of the new facility. Although construction was not fully completed until 202, the facility was opened for operations in 194 and officially designated as Base 11. Throughout 194 and 195, Torchlight undertook several top-security transport missions to move stockpiles of artifacts that had been kept at other sites into the new base, as well as the final few artifacts that were recovered from the wreckage of base 08 before it was finally sealed in the early 200s.
Torchlight classifies magical artifacts they collect by the level of danger they pose to those interacting with them and to global society as a whole, on a ranked scale from A0 (Safe) to A6 (Apocalyptic). Although most Torchlight bases have facilities to store and experiment on lower-risk artifacts, the majority of artifacts classified A3 are kept only in base 11, with special approval from site directors required to transport them temporarily to other sites for purposes of conducting experiments. Artifacts classified A4 and higher are exclusively stored in base 11 and are not permitted to be moved for any reason, with all research and experimentation required to take place on-site.
Base 11 is also the only Torchlight facility equipped to handle sentient objects. Current torchlight protocol requires that any artifact capable of acting autonomously (either showing signs of sentience, or simply capable of producing potentially-harmful magical effects without manual activation) be classified no lower than A3, and such objects are generally required to be kept in base 11's special ASACU (Autonomous and Sentient Artifact Containment Unit.) Occasionally, Torchlight agents and outsiders will be housed in the ASACU as part of experiments or when affected by a dangerous artifact in a way that requires specialist intervention. Since the Chambers Reformation Act, whenever such cases arise in the ASACU, staff are required to notify the Curse Recovery Association within 72 hours.
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