Bullets and power-cells
- Intent: Create a manufacturing location for The High Republic and Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing.
- Image Credit: Image Source
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: Niki Priddy, Priddy General Engineering And Manufacturing, The High Republic
- Factory Name: Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing ARCHON-Production Facility-0001
- Classification: Manufacturing Facility
- Location: Affa
- Affiliation: Niki Priddy, Priddy General Engineering And Manufacturing, The High Republic in a cooperative contract.
- Size: Massive
- Population: Heavily Automated with Sparse Staffing
- Profit: Medium
- Accessibility: While not open to the public, the site is highly visible and makes no attempt to hide the buildings given how quickly they are erected and torn down within days. Essentially making each visit a potentially new site with key features remaining present.
- Description: Low, wide, heat-dissipating buildings clustered around a central “nucleus” where the AI core known as ARCHON (Architectural and Resource Control Heuristic Optimized Network) and workshop plaza is located. Sited on a terraced industrial plain outside a medium-sized Affan settlement. All highly visible even from a distance on the ground or from low orbit.
Featuring a General Manufacturing Construct Industrial AI paired with a Self-constructing Armament Factory system, the facility is able to produce items from the Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing catalog with great precision and integrity without fail.
- Production: Droids, Ground Personnel Equipment and Munitions, Starship Components
- Specialty: Output is the specialty of this facility when in standard production mode. Using heavy automation, most generalized items can be produced at an alarming speed in ridiculous volume.
- Output: Able to produce an exorbitant amount of items at a steady yet speedy rate. Almost at an oversupplied number of both personnel equipment, munitions, and starship components of varying size due to generalized automation. Dedicated lines of production however are capable of producing wonders of engineering that can be meticulously crafted at request of the buyers with the select staff present.
- Market: This location produces ground personnel equipment and starship components almost exclusively for The High Republic as part of a contractual agreement between Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing, and The High Republic, with a handful of production lines being maintained for PGEM use for things such as droids, components, and equipment.
Alloy Refinery & Materials Processing: turn incoming ores, scrap, and feedstock into standardized PGEM alloys, composite powders, and prefabricated substrate cartridges used across the plant.
Vertically tiered furnaces and smelters in blast-resistant cells; vacuum casting chambers; plasma sintering bays; high-throughput pelletizers and powdered-composite mixers. A precision metrology ring downstream for alloy verification including spectrometers, X-ray diffraction arrays, mass calorimeters. Closed-loop chemical handling trenches and solvent reclamation tanks to further recycle materials for alternate utilization.
ARCHON schedules melt cycles to match downstream demands, balancing energy peaks with other site loads. It uses the digital twin to choose alloy recipes that satisfy mechanical property constraints and supply stresses. If unusual impurity profiles are detected, ARCHON throttles production and signals metallurgists for manual sampling of affected batches.
Fewer than a dozen metallurgists oversee large autoclaves; maintenance crews perform scheduled crucible swaps and calibrations. Only certified technicians may change alloy recipes; such changes require an auditable digital signature and a High Republic review if the alloy properties are outside predefined envelopes.
Multiple fail-safes prevent the release of hazardous gases with alloy stock kept in tamper-evident canisters. In resource-short situations, ARCHON will prioritize critical alloy grades for defense or life-support components.
The air around this site is thick with industrial heat, the metallic tang of warm air, distant thrum of resonant furnaces. Light plays odd angles off the polished inspection windows.
Additive Fabrication Array: large-format, adaptable production of structural frames, armor and armor shells, and modular tooling using directed-deposition, laser sintering, and multi-material printing.
Long halls of gantry-mounted deposition heads, each over a segmented build platen that can tilt and rotate. Utility busses beneath floors supply power, gas mixes, and coolant modules to each platform. Automated pallet changers and a robotics cell are utilized to move completed prints to post-processing systems such as stress-relief ovens or finishing mills.
ARCHON stages build queues based on demand forecasts. It optimizes part orientation, nesting patterns, and layer strategies to minimize material use and thermal distortion. When surge capacity is needed, ARCHON dispatches construction swarm kits from the Self-Construction Depot to add temporary deposition rigs that physically plug into the array’s utility bus. Print technicians monitor builds, intervene on failed prints, and perform post-process machining. A small finishing crew polishes and inspects surface tolerances. Access is controlled; calibration and nozzle-swapping are logged.
Build recipes are encrypted; a copy of each print job is logged to the manufacturing ledger. If sabotage is suspected including but not limited to anomalous geometric patterns, ARCHON quarantines affected parts and runs a rollback.
The faint aroma of molten polymers and burnt flux hang in the air around these areas, the staccato tick of deposition heads, and a low electric hum. Completed parts slide on conveyor belts with a dry, metallic whisper.
Precision Subassembly Cells: Manufacture and test precision components such as actuators, servo guts, optical sensors, micro-weapon mounts, along with power couplings while under strict particulate and thermal controls.
Multi-stage cleanroom suites with ISO classes separated by buffer airlocks, feature laminar flow benches, micro-welders, laser alignment rigs, and robotically controlled micro-manipulators. Embedded test beds include vibration tables, interferometers, thermal chambers for life-cycle cycling.
ARCHON only authorizes component serials into assembly chains after passing cleanroom QA signatures. It dynamically allocates sensor test slots based on failure-rate analytics. For any novel component geometry, ARCHON runs accelerated fatigue simulations before permitting mid-volume ramp. Highly trained technicians and optics engineers work in full clean-suit protocol. Human presence is minimized; most repetitive assembly is performed by enclosed micro-robots to reduce contamination risk. High Republic QA teams perform spot checks and technical interviews with lead engineers.
Contamination events trigger cascade protocols: airlock lockdowns, HEPA purge cycles, and full sterilization. Critical components are stored in vacuum-sealed lockers pending re-certification.
Overwhelming sterile cool air in these areas, the whisper of filtered circulation, faint electrostatic crackles from active test rigs, the clean, clinical smell of solvent wipes.
Assembly Rings: Where the disparate components such as chassis, locomotion, and control cores all come together into functioning droid frames or modular ship components. Circular, reconfigurable assembly lines with radial tooling arms, overhead utility rails, and configurable jigs. Each ring has segmented stations for power insertion, behavioral stack installs, sensor calibration, and armor mounting. Mobile staging platforms allow completed units to be rolled into ranges or storage vaults.
ARCHON choreographs the timing of each station to reduce idle time. It can change station tasks by swapping tool pallets and reprogramming robotic sequences in minutes for small runs, hours for large-scale reconfigurations. The ring runs in “waves”: a production wave for assembly, a verification wave for software and hardware tests, and finally a staging wave for packaging and manifesting. ARCHON enforces the wave integrity.
Line supervisors, calibration engineers, and behavior trainers are stationed around the ring during sensitive integrations. Humans handle exception cases such as non-standard frames, field-modified chassis, or bespoke customer orders. Access control ensures no single human can substitute firmware without cross-check signatures.
If a unit’s behavioral profile deviates during integration tests, the ring isolates and seals the unit while notifying QA. For urgent military requisitions, ARCHON may authorize partial acceptance with strict field monitoring tags.
These areas are filled with audible rhythmic mechanical clacks as arms pivot, slow hydraulic breaths of large actuators settling into place, the faint smell of lubricants and fresh polymer seals.
AI Core & Data Hub: “ARCHON” Chamber the hardened locus of the factory’s control intelligence and the point of intersection for PGEM operations and High Republic oversight. It is housed inside an EMP-hardened, Faraday-isolated vault buried in the nucleus. Redundant neural racks, quantum-clocked timing cores, cold storage vaults, and a visible audit console for High Republic officers are present. Offline safes and mechanical kill-switches exist under joint custody in a physically separate sub-vault.
ARCHON’s core runs the facility-wide digital twin, schedules, and the cryptographic manufacturing ledger. It maintains a tiered permission model: operational control for PGEM, policy and audit hooks for the High Republic. There is a human-in-the-loop console for proposed structural changes, certain equipment-class production ramps, and any activity that crosses ethical or treaty-defined thresholds. A small team of AI systems engineers and security custodians have rotating custody shifts. High Republic auditors have continuous read-access and periodic write-access limited to enforced policy flags.
Physical access is multi-key: biometric, positional token, and a rotating physical key held in escrow. If ARCHON detects a policy breach or unexplained drift, it self-quarantines the affected submodules, initiates a forensic snapshot, and notifies both PGEM and High Republic operators. A manual kill-switch allows complete shutdown; its activation requires presence of both PGEM and High Republic delegates.
The AI chamber itself is quiet with only cooling fans and the faint pulse of status LEDs. Outside, ARCHON’s presence is felt in the cadence of production as machines pause and shift at its signal.
Calibration & Simulation Vaults: the behavioral and combat-performance proving grounds, physical and virtual, where droid droid stacks and hardware are stress-tested.
Multi-environment ranges: urban mockups, low-grav bays, confined-structure arrays, and variable-sensor environments. Several hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) rigs connect real components to virtual opponents running inside the digital twin. Isolated neural training servers with dedicated GPU/molten-silicon arrays for reinforcement learning trials.
ARCHON runs thousands of simulated engagements for each variant, feeding back micro-adjustments to motion profiles and threat heuristics. Archived runs are stored with timestamps and linked to unit serials for accountability. Live trials include supervised autonomous runs where human trainers may interpose an override if metrics cross safety thresholds.
Behaviorists, test engineers, and live-range safety officers supervise. High Republic ethicists sometimes observe live training sessions to ensure compliance with use-of-force limits. During sensitive runs, the vault is physically isolated and network-segmented.
Test anomalies cause immediate rollback of software updates in the ledger. If a behavioral drift is detected in deployed units correlated to a vault run, an investigative hold can be placed on all units sharing the update.
Smells vary by range including but not limited to stale rubber in urban mockups, mineral tang in low-grav chambers, the sharp scent of ozone from simulated energy weapons. Test ranges echo with clanks, impact thuds, and the muffled beep of diagnostics.
Self-Construction Depot: the plant-within-a-plant that stores, fabricates, and stages modular production nodes, robotic swarm kits, and emergency tooling for the factory to build or reconfigure itself.
Rows of compact module presses, connector nests, standardized interface jigs, and a “kit staging ring” where prefabricated frames rest on quick-connect utility plates. An internal inventory database with cartridge-fed nanomaterial spools and a small satellite fabrication cell for emergency parts.
ARCHON holds the master blueprint library and commands the depot to assemble kit-sets for surge builds. Kits are designed to plug seamlessly into the plant’s power/data busses and mechanical fasteners. When a new module is required, ARCHON drafts the build plan, queues printers and deposition rigs in the depot, and schedules the construction swarm to perform installation.
Depot crew handle manual cartridge swaps, module QA, and rapid repairs. They also maintain the depot’s spare keys and ensure kit compatibility with legacy interfaces. High Republic oversight applies to any kit that materially alters production capacity of restricted items.
The depot is a potential high-value target; modules are individually serialized and monitored. If modules go missing or are activated outside ARCHON’s plan, security lockdowns and audit trails trigger.
The depot smells faintly of lubricants and polymer adhesives, punctuated by the metallic clink of module cradles and R2-like whirs of loader bots.
Security & Oversight Suites: command, control, audits, and the joint governance interfaces where PGEM operations and High Republic oversight intersect.
Overwatch consoles with panoramic views of key production bays, secure conference chambers, an evidence vault, detention bays for contraband samples, and cyber-defence operations centers. An ethics chamber used by High Republic liaisons for formal deliberations, complete with video recorders and immutable discussion logs.
Security consoles receive alerts from ARCHON: unauthorized access, ledger anomalies, or suspicious production changes. A formalized escalation tree defines when security actions require PGEM-only authority, joint authority, or High Republic veto. Cyber teams run continuous penetration tests and verify cryptographic seal integrity.
Staff & access is a mixed roster: PGEM security commanders, High Republic inspectors, cyber-defence squads, and legal counsel. The watch rotates 24/7. Only joint-authorized personnel can place the facility under an interdict.
Containment protocols for internal civil unrest or sabotage include controlled depressurization of select cells, secure transfer of keys to off-site escrow, and time-stamped lockdowns audited by both parties.
The command floor is dimly lit; soft, constant chatter of status streams and the faint hiss of communications relays. Tension often registers in terse, clipped voices during audits.
Staff Campus: house, sustain, and maintain the biological workforce that keeps the facility ethical, creative, and operational.
Living quarters range from modular pods to two-person suites depending on needs. The campus contains an onsite med bay with surgical and quarantine capability, with hydroponic terraces that recycle waste heat, and a training complex. There are also communal spaces such as mess halls, recreation rooms, as well as quiet reflection rooms. Education suites exist where engineers and ethics officers are able to hold seminars with clean-certified examples being pulled from the facility itself as seminar materials.
ARCHON manages environmental systems such as air circulation, food production, power allotment to residential areas, as well as scheduling maintenance windows that minimize disruption to on-shift personnel. The AI also coordinates workforce deployment to match production waves and alerts crews to system anomalies requiring human attention.
Residents include systems engineers, metallurgists, QA specialists, medics, and security personnel. On-site presence is kept intentionally minimal to limit footprint and political risk. Visitors and non-essential personnel are tightly screened and hosted in guest quarters.
In emergencies, campus life-support can operate in autonomous mode for extended durations. Evacuation routes link to secure shuttles and a local Republic municipal armory for last-resort defense.
Smells of fresh bread waft from the communal kitchen, the damp green of hydroponics, and the low murmur of evening conversations.
Inbound Logistics & Raw Intake: the facility’s first contact with the outside world, where ores, salvaged components, subsystems, and consumables are received, validated, and staged.
Long, segmented quays and sealed airlocks for freighters and orbital lifts; covered conveyors run from docks into the intake hangar. A set of pre-sort bays with automated scanners, density sorters, magnetometers, and a radiological screening ring make up the first sections of the facility in this area. Large modular storage silos and climate-stable vaults sit behind the scanners. A reagent and hazardous-materials locker, with secondary containment berms and a neutralization scrubber system reside behind the initial set of storage silos.
ARCHON controls manifest validation: every incoming crate is scanned, hashed, and entered into the cryptographic ledger. It runs material provenance checks against vetted supplier fingerprints and flags anomalies for human review. Lightweight logistics bots shift pallets to quarantine if a mismatch or contamination is detected; quarantine integrates directly with the alloy refinery’s feed schedule.
Logistics officers, customs engineers, and material scientists work rotating shifts at the intake. High Republic auditors have read-access to manifests and can insert watch flags. Physical access is restricted to personnel with multi-factor biometric clearance and time-limited passcodes.
Redundant seals and blast shutters isolate the intake in case of contamination or attack. Automated inerting systems flood bays with non-flammable gas if extreme thermal events are detected. Counterfeit or tampered items are diverted to an evidence vault; the ledger records chain-of-custody.
The smell of warmed alloy dust and cold vacuum seal plastics; the constant thump of container transfers; the staccato chirp of scanners moving data to the archive.
Personnel Equipment & Munition Production
The facility runs a parallel, tightly controlled production lane for personal equipment such as small arms, body armor, comms, life-support packs, and related field kit along with munitions ranging from projectile rounds, casings, energy-cell stacks, and specialized payloads. These lines are structured to reuse many of the plant’s common subassemblies such as actuators, sensors, power couplings but are segregated physically, electronically, and procedurally from core droid production to satisfy legal, ethical, and High Republic oversight constraints. ARCHON can reconfigure modular tooling to pivot between droid and personnel kit runs, but is blocked from performing high-volume weaponization without joint authorization. This allows speed without unchecked proliferation.
ARCHON maintains hard policy constraints that prevent unsanctioned scale-up. Any deviation from predetermined production profiles requires an auditable human authorization token recorded in the ledger. Fill orders for munitions are cryptographically signed; any unsigned or altered job is automatically quarantined and flagged for joint review. If supply chain or internal logs indicate potential diversion, ARCHON isolates affected batches and seals the magazines pending investigation.
These parallel lines feature an ammunition forming and assembly line operated by largely automated presses, cartridge/casing formation modules, inert fill stations for non-active testing, and encapsulation vaults. All filled ordnance moves through a hardened transit corridor to storage magazines under strict chain-of-custody. Dedicated munitions wings are equipped with a blast-resistant cluster of cells separated from main assembly rings by multiple airlocks, pressure buffers, and EMP dampers. Designed for safe handling and secure storage of energetic material and ordnance without contaminating the rest of the plant.
Personnel gear bays are adjacent, with more human-friendly suites where armor plating, comms modules, breathing units, and modular load-carrying frames are finished. These bays include fitting surfaces and live-test rigs for ergonomics and wearable integration.
An Energy-cell fabrication cell is a segregated microfabrication line for sealed power packs, closely monitored by ARCHON’s ledger and physically isolated to prevent unauthorized tapping or reconfiguration.
Finally a secure magazines & armory staging area with temperature- and humidity-controlled vaults, each serial-logged and geofenced with independent power and manual audit keys held jointly by PGEM and The High Republic. These vault wings are built with blast-mitigation geometry; magazines are modular in design so that munitions can be shipped in small, tightly controlled increments.
Security Rating: High
- GPO-11 "Gildenwall" DRM System | "Greedshield DRM" paired with a GPO-12 "Ironmaze" Threat-Prevention Suite to secure not only their payment systems but also their holonet connection and internal security.
- X13 Paladin-series Synthmarines - Patrol interior of the facility with an organic partner, others await summons from the security area for conflict resolution. Serve as a backup for the organic security teams against intrusions.
- Holocam's - Both interior and exterior, holocams are present to keep a watchful eye on everyone and everything happening within the facility.
- Blaster Neutralizers - Assist in keeping accidental misfires from happening, and incidents inside the main building from taking place.
- LS-1 'Ordinator' Security Pylons - Set on the perimeter of the facility for security purposes.
- Priddy Hypervelocity Cannons - Eight sit atop the platforms to ward off unsavory characters but are also largely to keep unauthorized vessels from landing. Housed in blister style canopies to hide them from observation.
- Laser Point Defense Cannons - A great many of these point defense cannons are stationed atop platforms to aid in protecting the facility from attacks as dedicated anti-starfighter and anti-ordinance protection.
- DSS-02 Shield Generators - Used to protect the entire facility from any type of outside threat.
- Gravity Locks - Are present on the staging area decks to keep starships from being taken for joyrides.
With the added need to mass produce equipment and droids for their subsidiary company along with the need to bolster production operations, PGEM purchased land for a production facility on a world that was already optimized for such purposes. Seeking area on the developed planet of Affa to expand on the network of facilities to cooperate not only for PGEM, but The High Republic as well. Finding such a tract of land took some time, but ultimately came into their possession as they laid the groundwork before allowing the inbuilt AI system designated ARCHON to take the lead and expand the site to what it is now.
Being backed by The High Republic once more, and tying her own interests into the facility, it was brought into the fold of joint Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing with The High Republic ownership with a familiar caveat of Priddy General Engineering and Manufacturing being able to maintain ownership of the facility. Moving in what had become almost standardized equipment and procedures for the company to the location, production was able to begin within a shorter than expected amount of time with the aid of the industrial AI system utilizing the self-constructing armament factory systems to begin construction and tooling orders.
Sharing the workload of the other production facilities while opening up new lines of production, the ARCHON production facility is still able to supply combat droids, equipment, and munitions of all varieties to Priddy General Security Contractor company along with producing starship components and other equipment for The High Republic in tandem.
