Armory: research forge of the terran war machine

The armory was a terran research structure, the facility where researchers and test groups worked to develop improved materials for the weapons and armor carried by terran vehicles and starships. Wherever terran armies made war across the Koprulu sector, from the campaigns of the Terran Confederacy to the field armies of the Terran Dominion, the squat building with its cluster of round cooling turbines followed close behind the fighting. Its work touched every armored machine in the terran arsenal, from the siege tanks that could be stored within its walls to the warships that carried the fight between worlds, and Dominion doctrine ranked it among the first structures any field base was expected to raise.

Design and function#

The armory was built around several round turbines set at the center of its structure. These turbines kept the building within temperature specifications while the researchers worked inside, a necessity for a facility whose business was the testing of weapons and armor materials under field conditions. A secure entrance was set into the building's side, controlling access to the work within.

That work was carried out by researchers and test groups whose task was to develop improved materials for the weapons and armor used by terran vehicles and starships. Where the infantry of a terran army looked to other facilities for their equipment, the crews of goliaths, siege tanks, and warships depended on the armory's laboratories to keep their machines competitive against enemies that ranged from rival terran factions to the zerg and the protoss. The building served a practical second purpose as well. Its interior was large enough that vehicles, including siege tanks, could be stored inside it, making the armory a garage and depot as much as a laboratory.

Doctrine of the Dominion Armed Forces#

Within the Dominion Armed Forces, the armory held a fixed place in the order of battle. Whenever a strike force was deployed planetside, the armory was one of two key research facilities to be established in a field base as soon as possible. The other was the engineering bay, which improved the quality of infantry weapons. Between them the two structures divided the whole of terran materiel: the engineering bay looked after the soldier, and the armory looked after the machines that fought beside him.

The two facilities worked in tandem rather than in isolation. The most advanced improvements to infantry equipment pursued in an engineering bay depended on materials work conducted in an armory, so a field base that lacked one found the ceiling of its infantry research lowered along with its vehicles. The armory's presence also decided which machines a base could field at all. The manufacture of goliath combat walkers and valkyrie frigates relied on armory support in the era of the Great War, and in the Dominion era the massive thor could not be produced without one. Armory retooling likewise made possible the conversion of hellions into their armored hellbat configuration, another case of the facility turning an existing machine into something harder to kill.

The armory raid at Fort Howe#

The most infamous incident involving a Confederate armory took place at Fort Howe on Turaxis II during the Guild Wars, when the 321st Colonial Rangers Battalion was posted there under Lieutenant Colonel Javier Vanderspool during the campaign to retake the world from the Kel-Morian Combine. When a Kel-Morian attack on the base was announced, a six man squad led by Sergeant Tychus Findlay and Lance Corporal Jim Raynor moved to respond, and Raynor suggested heading to the armory. On the way the squad ran into Confederate marines locked in combat with heavily armored Kel-Morian rippers, and Private Connor Ward blew one of the rippers to pieces with his rocket launcher, then repeated the feat to the jubilation of his comrades.

At the armory proper the squad discovered something worse than the enemy. Confederate marines were loading two trucks with loot, for Vanderspool had secretly made a deal with the Kel-Morians to strip the Confederate armory and sell the profits. Findlay's squad repelled the looters and only then realized the thieves were Confederate soldiers. Seeing the theft for what it was, Findlay ordered his people to hijack the vehicles and drive them to Whitford, an empty town, taking the plunder out of the colonel's reach. Vanderspool later discovered what he regarded as the treachery of Findlay's squad in stealing his trucks during the battle at Fort Howe, and he plotted his revenge, a grudge that would follow Raynor and Findlay through the rest of their Confederate service.

Armories beyond the field base#

The armory as an institution extended well past the prefabricated research structure of the field armies. Capital ships carried armories of their own. Aboard the Hyperion, the flagship of Raynor's Raiders during the Second Great War, the ship's armory handled improvements to the rebels' equipment, including the neosteel frames fitted to the Raiders' bunkers. Aboard the Griffin, the vessel that carried Nova Terra's covert ops crew, the ship's armory figured in the pursuit of the rogue agent Stone: after Stone escaped confinement and was tracked to Deck 3 by the analyst Delta Emblock, the crewman Reigel bluffed that the deck would be decompressed in an attempt to lure Stone toward the armory, though he had no intention of carrying out the threat.

Hostile factions kept armories as well, and they could betray their owners' secrets. During the insurgency of the Defenders of Man, Nova Terra infiltrated one of the organization's bases and descended into its interior. In the Defenders' armory she discovered a monomolecular blade, and she tested the weapon against the Defenders' own guards before pressing deeper into the base. From Confederate depots stripped by their own officers to rebel flagships and insurgent strongholds, the armory remained what it had always been for the terrans: the place where the tools of war were kept sharp, and the first place worth fighting over when war arrived.