Outpost Refinery

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by Bill Logan

The first map in the Locations article is a remote refinery on a distant world. It can be used as-is, or can be modified to be used as a cross-section of a small town or unusual outpost. It consists of a few main technical buildings and a several support buildings and warehouses. Use it multiple times, having the player’s characters approach from a different angle.

Each hex on the Outpost Refinery map spans a distance of 5 meters.

The Outpost Refinery might be found on a moon where atmospheric conditions aren’t sufficient for a colony, yet whose mineral resources are so prevalent that they cannot be ignored.

This could be a dumping ground for broken technology. In a Frontier where programs are hard wired into circuitboards, troubleshooting often includes swapping modular subroutine cards while searching for a fault. When a facility gains a large number of broken components, they might sell the parts for scrap. The parts are then sent to a facility similar in appearance to the Outpost Refinery map, where robotic technicians spend all their time repairing parts with parts from other... um... parts.

Or it could be an abandoned mining outpost on a world where the residents suddenly disappeared – and the characters are hired to figure out why. Perhaps they dug deep and unearthed some horrific creature or race of creatures that have devoured the entire colony. Or perhaps they unleashed a vile plague, a cancer, into the air that they have all fallen victim to. Maybe it even evades the sensors of the group’s environmentalist, and the characters have been infected too, and have only a day to figure out a cure before they too fall victim to its deadly effects.

Or finally, this may be a military outpost (perhaps even the very one located on the rock world of Histran (Scree Fron, see Star Systems, this issue). The roadways are where you might see personnel carriers and equipment transports ferrying manpower and technology from barrack to base and back. The buildings might include munitions storage, technology centers, research and development labs, and strategy briefing rooms, not to mention all the bureaucratic offices that such a military outpost seems to generate.