The Starlight Facility is an old building dating back to the XIII century, wanted, designed and created over the years by the powerful king magus Malik I of Iram, later expanded also thanks to the collaboration of some members of the first formation of the Star of Iram. Although Malik had a private laboratory inside the castle, after the first few years he felt the urge to have a more spacious and distant place where he could experiment with the sciences he was passionate about (mainly chemistry and magic) without putting anyone in danger with potentially unstable experiments.
Malik I was caring with his people, but prudent when it came to revealing his secrets and discoveries to the public, for fear that they might use them to harm others. That was why the Starlight Facility was forbidden to the public for a long time and was seen as a fascinating, mystery-shrouded place.
Other than his personal research, the facility was often also used for the Star of Iram's duty benefit, and as such to advance all the technology available to the city.
After Malik's disappearance, the building was used sometimes by descendants of Malik I and Queen Meera I, with or without a team, and sometimes teams of alchemists and scientists, selected by the owners of the Starlight Structure. The level of scientific advancement obtained by Malik was unheard of by most people at the time, so a big part of his research was simply preserved (and is still preserved today) without being understood.
Nowadays, like all of Iram, the Starlight Facility is under the Ministry of Light's jurisdiction, but now that Malik I has returned from his mysterious disappearance centuries ago, he is once again ironically the main user of the Facility.
Located in: Iram of the Pillars, Rubʿ al-Khālī, Arabic peninsula
| General informations | |
|---|---|
| Conditions | In use |
| Construction | 1200-1222 |
| Style | Industrial Art Decò |
| Usage | research and preservation |
| Creation | |
| Architect | King Malik I of Iram |
| Current owner | Thomas Wolf |
| Commissioner | King Malik I of Iram |
«Oh yes, the Starlight Facility is where I turn all your wishes to truths! And if I manage, I get to do a couple of mine too (the most adorable laugh in the world, our king is so cute)»
The Starlight Facility would look massive if it could be seen from the surface in all of its glory.
Interestingly enough, that's not the case. The only telling sign of its presence is a beautiful little building; its sleek and yet sturdy silhouette, stark white, almost seems to emit a faint glow against the sandy hues of earth and the starry sky that envelop the city of Iram at night.
It stands far from the sparkling beauty of The Glass Palace, far enough from the heart of the city that, should something go wrong, none except the researchers (how fortunate that it's usually only one the researcher experimenting there, a certain resourceful king) present to the accident would be involved.
If an individual of a more religious sort could see it, it could invoke in their mind the idea of a place of faith: a little isolated chapel where to pray one's worries away. But if they cared to go over the robust, rhomus-shaped sliding door (it's supposed to remind one of the light of faraway stars in a stylized manner, that much is obvious) on which a big glass window stares on like a giant eye, in that case, it's a place of science that they would see.
At the center of the foyer's pavement there's an opaque glass cicle, red tinted, through which one can guess the slow beating of a very big something. This something must certainly be linked to the rhytmic pulsing and flowing inside the big green tubes that perch on the walls like vines, which provide energy for the experiments going on in the depth of the facility's chambers.
The bulk of the facility is underground, and it can be reached through the wide, rocky stos that bring visitors and workers from the all white, intimate entrance, to the core of the tecnhical research facility. The buiders really did a wonderful job supplying the underground rooms with smooth, shiny metal for the furniture and to protect some of the walls: although the industrial art decò style of the whole building, typical of Iram, looks almost brutal with the adding of metal, it's not devoid of elegance.
Overall, there's no such other building like this in the whole Iram.
The huge facility, despite the scarcity of people inhabiting and working in it, has plenty of rooms guarded by other sliding doors, built to shield from view the various kind of test performed inside said rooms, from the chemical experiments operate on materials old and new with acids, cutting object, energy magic and not, and through the mean of a menacing oven-like supply encrusted in the wall like a precious bead, to the experimenting of protoypes for medicines, recording items, or vehicles. Much more rarely, weapons.
Most of the corridors are illuminated by a single row of lights, which always seem to have a slight green tint to them.
And if one was to indulge in curiosity and try to reach the beating... thing they saw through the glass in the foyer, well, they would (not too soon, seeing the size of the place) discover that simply there is no path bringing directly to it. Only those working in the facility have direct access to the thing (some refer to it as The Engine), even though someone that's trusted enough might ask and be granted to see it; but as far a simple visitor could know, it might be hiding behind any of those metallic walls and very well stay a mystery for the foreseeable future.
Oh yes... There really is no other place in Iram like the Starlight Facility.
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