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| Institute City | |
| General information | |
| Real world information | |
| Appearances | ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON |
Institute City is a location on the planet Rubicon 3.
History[]
Before the Fires of Ibis, Institute City was the headquarters of the Rubicon Research Institute and the nexus of all Coral research on Rubicon 3. It was built in Rubicon 3's Central Ice Field, above a large, subterranean reservoir of Coral that had been discovered underneath a glacier. The Vascular Plant, an enormous machine designed to extract and store the Coral from the reservoir for study and distribution, towered over the city's center.
When RRI head Professor Nagai observed signs that the amassed Coral had reached a critical mass that portended a theoretical, potentially devastating phenomenon called Coral Collapse, he activated the RRI's failsafe, IB-01: CEL 240, which halted the impending disaster by igniting another: the Fires of Ibis. The Coral reservoir was consumed by an inferno that swept across Rubicon and the surrounding star system. Almost no RRI personnel survived the blaze, and the RRI effectively ceased to exist, leaving behind a legacy of autonomous, Coral-powered war machines known as C-Weapons. Institute City and the Vascular Plant partially sank into the sinkhole left by the burned Coral, and since the city remained concealed by the glacier, its location was lost.
When the Planetary Closure Administration began sealing off Rubicon 3 to ensure another event like the Fires of Ibis never again occurred, it rediscovered a passage to Institute City from Watchpoint Alpha, a major Coral flow monitoring facility, then promptly seized any C-Weapons it could repurpose for its own military and constructed a formidable series of defense mechanisms to keep all non-PCA personnel out. Years later, the PCA realized that the Fires of Ibis had not consumed all of Rubicon 3's Coral, and more was pooling beneath Institute City in great quantities. The PCA attempted to keep the information secret, but fifty years after the Fires of Ibis, the hacktivist group Branch leaked the continued existence of Coral to the outside and drew the attention of the megacorporations Balam Industries and Arquebus Corporation, leading to the Coral War. The corps' Coral survey tracked the Coral flows to the Central Ice Field, and after defeating the PCA's suppression fleet, Arquebus uncovered Institute City with the help of the independent mercenary Raven, emerging as the most powerful faction on the planet and sole holder of its largest supply of Coral. The Vascular Plant was quickly extended through the glacier above the city into Rubicon 3's orbit, then used to drain the planet of its Coral, which Arquebus intended to ship off-world. Arquebus continued to occupy Institute City until Raven brought the Coral War to a conclusion.
Gameplay[]
In ARMORED CORE VI FIRES OF RUBICON, Institute City is a stage in the missions "Reach the Coral Convergence" from the end of Chapter 4 and the first in Chapter 5, "Escape."
Gallery[]
