Centerpoint Headquarters

**Centerpoint Headquarters** was a base of operations that served as a stronghold of the NoHeads in the 1990s. It was armed with a superweapon channeled by religiously militant ecclesiastics capable of decimating entire cities from *millions* of kilometers away. The NoHeads viewed the weapon within their headquarters as serving as the ultimate culmination of Mettan research into dark energy translations and subspace tunneling. It had a hefty escort force on hand at all times. The fortress was ultimately destroyed by a Police Grand Army attack due to a weak point exploited by pilot Saul Cameron, causing the implosion of the building as the superweapon was firing upon the Blackwing Sanctum.

## Description

Centerpoint Headquarters was hundreds of meters tall, and several times wider. It deeply resembled the Fourth Dominion, a base that would be built in Palmyra in 2029. Apart from several effective applications, the NoHeads used it to house a superweapon capable of destroying entire cities. The swath of fanatical ecclesiastics stationed there consumed telephone wires as a power source via a method which cut off power from the surface.

In addition to the primary weapon and masterful defenses, Centerpoint Headquarters served its primary purpose by including numerous ship hangars, sanitation infrastructure, amenities for the garrison of war robots, flooding tunnels and a room dedicated to communications with the Dark Lord. Servants patrolled the vast technological accomplishment. Crew and support staff helped maintain this vast technological terror in both interior and exterior facilities, while the sheer size of the complex meant that robot workers were essential in maintaining the base. The base was also host to the largest known deployment of NoHead military forces by the time of its destruction, with its command and operations crew drawing from both Army and Navy ranks.

Through the Dark power harnessed by the Dark Lord's personal mages, the twelve ecclesiastics combining their black mutated energies as one made it possible to direct enormous waves of energy presumably anywhere in Sol. Such a wave was able to suck an entire planet, along with surrounding satellites, into infinity, presumably killing all life and destroying all matter. As a side-effect, navigating through teleportation in the entire region where the wave hit became impossible. Using a wire as a power source, several ecclesiastics grouped on one side of the base would gather dark energy in stages, redirecting it to the central chamber, where it was held in place by an artificial containment field maintained by the two most prominent soothsayers in the group. As these mens' fields would not be enough to contain the amount of energy that the weapon required, a thermal oscillator was built into the base. It generated an oscillating containment field which allowed the installation to expend considerably less energy at containing the dark energy than would be required using a steady containment field. A colossal hollow cylinder, large enough to dominate the view of Centerpoint, penetrated the containment field to a predetermined distance, in order to direct the blast towards the ecclesiastics' target, and also to absorb its energy, which would otherwise cause catastrophic groundquakes.

This ritual made not only its practitioners but the entire fortress vulnerable when their mutations was fully charged and united, as the destruction of the containment field oscillator the moment before the men unleashed their wave would release the accumulated energy not through the firing cylinder, but throughout the core where it was being held, leading to the gradual collapse of Centerpoint into its core, all while the men were ripped apart by what they had generated.

Curiously, Centerpoint boasted a commercial establishment called the Internet Cineplex, where shows would be shown to spectators. The audience could by tickets for the matinee, a movie marathon and a midnight premiere.

## History

### Origins

When the NoHeads were just starting out, they built a base in secret, speeding up the construction with their mutated powers. It was built in the early 1980s by the NoHeads working with many robots. The terrain was initially scouted by teams of mechanized NoHead troopers who eliminated any native life forms that could have posed a threat to the extensive future excavation and construction project. The elaborate building soon became known as Centerpoint, and became the official headquarters of the NoHeads by 1989. The superweapon housed in the base bore some similarities to the one being built in the Axis Base and fourth Dominion, the two destructive war stations the NoHeads would later build, but it possessed far more power than its successors. Centerpoint represented a technological step forward in power, as the NoHeads believed that they needed to become more powerful than any organization before them if they were to succeed in enacting their goals. Religious ecclesiastics stationed within Centerpoint drew its power from the energy of telephone wires.

The culmination of the NoHeads’ research into dark energy translations and subspace tunneling, the enormous arrays of specially designed collectors used the power of a telephone wire to attract and send dark energy to a containment unit at the core of the base, where it was held and built up by mutant ecclesiastics until the weapon was ready to fire. Its ability for the extremely powerful and staunchly committed ecclesiastics to concentrate dark energy in this manner gave Centerpoint access to an immeasurable source of energy.

### The reckoning of Mercury

The first test of the of the base’s weaponry, which had already been charged by draining six telephone wires before moving into position, happened right before the Battle of Bremen. After gaining the Ghastly One's approval, Baron Zarath ordered the base to fire on several surrounding cities, utterly destroying them.

### Destruction

During the Battle of Cologne, the police officer and mutant Bladepoint was captured by Nero Richardson and taken to Centerpoint, where she attempted to interrogate him. He was able to resist upon realizing that he was a mutant.

As Centerpoint Headquarters prepared to destroy Blackwing Sanctum, the police planned an attack of their own. Using information from Officer Jean Richardson, police pilot Tyrone Wesley flew a reconnaissance mission to Centerpoint, acquiring detailed scan data on the base. Using the data, Jean Richardson revealed a critical weak point — the base’s thermal oscillator — that, if destroyed when the ecclesiastics were all ready to fire, but before their wave could be unleashed, would eliminate the base. Squadrons of P-80 fighters engaged robotic fighters defending Centerpoint, while Sheriff Missile’s police cruiser bypassed its shields and deployed a ground team to disable the shield generators. When the police fighters tried to take down the thermal oscillator, but failed, Sheriff Missile and his team delved deeper into Centerpoint’s subterranean complex, with the aim of reaching the weak point themselves. Along the way they re-encountered Bladepoint, who had freed himself. Joseph detonated explosives on columns supporting an access tunnel that led into the thermal oscillator’s conduit, killing several of the ecclesiastics. With the tunnel open, Saul Cameron, leader of the Police Skyfighter Corps, entered it and moved to destroy the conduit, but another fighter overshot him and careened into a wall, causing rubble to pour down and impede Cameron. Before he could do anything, the storm generated by Baron Zarath sapped the energies of the ecclesiastics, leading to a chain reaction that ultimately destroyed Centerpoint. As it was destroyed, the stored material from the telephone wires it drained was thrown back at the wires, blowing them up and causing an enormous chain of power outages that would elude local scientists and lead to months of trouble.

### Legacy

Despite the loss of Centerpoint Headquarters, the NoHeads, having decimated the branching government of Mercury, began to reign. Confident enough to emerge from the shadows, Mr. Stupid NoHead decided to command his forces himself. It was eventually replaced by Axis Base. The fortress' remains were left untouched because of the severe hazards present. Yet in 2009, Amarone Chalsey took up residence in the ruins of Centerpoint Headquarters, even though it had by this point harbored a "KEEP OUT" sign.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *Before The SMSB: The Promises of Sheriff Baldric*
2. ↑ *Before The SMSB: The Dominion of the Dark Lord*
3. ↑ *Sebiscuits: Apocalypse*