Character
Rampart is a right nasty place, and that is not by chance. Most of you are from backwater worlds yourself, destined for nothing more than going about ordinary lives while others born into better lives earn glory and renown for themselves. Here at Rampart, Success Speaks, not birth. Each of you is here because you earned a spot in this hell hole. You are smart, clever and ferocious, the tough bastards that build an empire. We can train you to become proper officers, but we can't train you to be smart or clever. We have given you a chance, you had best show that you deserve it.
-Admiral Tion, 57th Class Admittance Speech
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To create a new military academy for use by the Empire and writers to use when fleshing out backstories
- Image Credit: Original Source, Artstation [x]
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links:
- Cathar [x]
- Military Base Name: Rampart Imperial Naval Academy
- Classification: Naval Academy, Military Installation, Listening Station
- Location: Cathar [x]
- Affiliation: The Empire [x]
- Population: Moderate
- Demographics: Human, Cathar, Rodian, Twi'lek, Mandalorian
- Accessibility: The Rampart Imperial Naval Academy is located in a sunken valley surrounded by mountains on all sides. Direct approach from the ground is limited to either travel over the mountains, a perilous and unstable terrain at the best of times, or through three narrow choke points carved through the mountains. Each of these choke points is guarded by Imperial Stormtroopers at all times, and only authorized travel by Academy administration can get you through the checkpoints. Approach by air is the most common and safest route, though extensive anti-air defense emplacements situated throughout the mountains in blast resistant bunkers makes such approaches by hostile aircraft a lethal exercise.
- Description: The Rampart Imperial Naval Academy is a sprawling, city like series of structures located in a desert valley with mountains surrounding it. Once A fortress city of the Cathar people, it has been repurposed to serve as one of the premiere institutions of military learning in Imperial space. Three main clusters of buildings make up the academy, though several outlining buildings are also present. The three clusters are separated by half a kilometer, with a large open space between them. Walkways cross between the three clusters, and several more lead to the outlining buildings. Little in the way of vegetation is present on academy grounds, and beside the well kept walkways and structures, the landscape has been surrendered to the desert.
- Castle Terminus: Castle Terminus is the largest structure on the Rampart academy grounds. Situated at the north side of the valley, Castle Terminus serves as the primary gathering hall for students. The dining hall, amphitheater, and zero gravity exercise centers are located in Castle Terminus, as well as the offices of all academy staff. A large staircase leads up to the entrance of the structure; a sphere shaped chamber decorated with murals and banners of the Empire. The Admirals officer sits at the top of Castle Terminus and has a vantage point of the entire academies grounds.
- Dining Hall: Encompassing the west wing of Castle Terminus, the dining hall is capable of holding one thousand students at any given time. Data screen are spread out on the massive pillars spaced out across the dining hall, and large windows let in natural light. Most food is served from a kitchen set underground, though an officers dining hall and kitchen serving higher quality food for instructors and returning graduates sits above the main dining hall.
- Amphitheater: Located at the center of Castle Terminus, the Amphitheater serves as the main meeting point for students when they join the academy, important speeches from the Admiral or other guest instructors, or where students are released from the academy, either through failing out of their classes or dropping out. Shaped as a half circle with the back rows of benches at the top and descending down to the large stage, all within the amphitheater are able to easily hear and see whoever is on the stage no matter their sitting position. A massive screen is placed just behind the speakers podium, allowing transmissions or digital lessons to be displayed to large numbers of students.
- ZGE: The Zero Gravity Exercise center is the pride of the Rampart academy. Here, in a massive, underground chamber a half kilometer in size, students are able to command holographic representations of ships in real time simulated battles. The ZGE has two settings; tactical command and strategic overview. Tactical command allows for students to enter a simulated bridge setting of an Imperial warship, and engage in a combat scenario. Strategic overview shrinks these vessels down to miniscule sizes, allowing students to engage in wargames across hundreds of kilometers of space. The zero gravity setting allows of the students to keep pace with their warships, and see from a top down view what their orders do, and helps foster an understanding of three dimensional combat.
- Fort Yularen: Situated to the east of Castle Terminus, Fort Yularen serves as the barracks and living quarters for both the garrison and students at Rampart. Students for their first year live in communal bunk houses, but by the end of their first year, when a vast majority of their peers have either dropped out or failed out of the academy, they are moved into squad bunks. These squad bunks serve as the organizational structure for how students will undergo ZGE training courses. They will fight alongside their squad mates, and their final tactical assessment at the end of each year will be in these groups. The few squads that survive through all four years at Rampart are often deployed together across the Empire.
- Thrawn Learning Center: The learning center is the primary location for classes on both naval and standard subjects. A large, rectangular building, twenty classrooms cover the interior, each capable of housing two hundred students at a time, though only first year classes tend to be this full. Here, military history, mathematics, science and every other curriculum focus are studied and perfected by the students. The Rampart education system is aggressive in its methodology, and any student who fails more than a single test in their four years at the academy will be immediately washed out. It has become a term of pride among students to be 'One of the Eights', the few students who pass all eight major written exams at Rampart academy.
- Rurik Instructional Combat Yard: The Rurik Instruction Combat Yard is the primary location for physical activity and combat training for Rampart. Here, students engage in hand to hand combat drills overseen by hired Mandalorian mercenaries, and are schooled in proper fire arm maintenance and firing under the supervision of veteran Stormtroopers from the garrison. Students must pass four end of the year performance reviews by these instructors on what they have learned, or face the risk of washing out. At Rampart, a students body is honed and perfected just as their mind, and students become the fittest they have ever been in their lives at Rampart. A large tower dominates the center of the combat yard, from where visiting guests or instructors can watch large group exercises and war games.
- Old Tinny/Live Danger Exercise Center: The Live Danger Exercise Center, nicknamed Old Tinny by the students, is an old Imperial frigate that has been permanently landed within the valley Rampart is in. Here, students are shown real life situations and dangers on a starship during both routine patrols and combat operations. Exploding terminals, flash fires and depressurization can all be simulated in Old Tinny, and students are required to learn how ships work and operate so that they can oversee and direct repairs during high pressure situations without faltering, or do it themselves should not other option present itself.
- Listening Station Echo: Listening Station Echo is not technically part of Rampart, but it is under the supervision and protection of the school. Built long before the school itself was founded, Listening Station Echo is a series of long range sensor towers that are geared towards detecting transmissions for the mid rim and core. Such transmissions are far from clear or precise, but the academy uses this as a learning opportunity. Students undergo a semester of Information decryption and analyzation, attempting to make sense of what they pick up. Any data deemed relevant or important is then passed along to the Admiral of Rampart, who may then either dismiss the information, or pass it on to Starfleet Command.
SECURITY
Maximum: The Rampart Imperial Naval Academy is defended by three full companies of Imperial Stormtroopers, with each company assigned to the permanent protection of one chokepoint leading into the academy. While only a portion of each company mans the checkpoints, the rest of the detachments operate around the clock patrols of the academy grounds and surrounding terrain, and act as the first line of defense should the academy come under assault. Six capital ship grade deflector shield emitters are positioned around the academy to provide protection against orbital or ground based weapon fire, and twenty turbolaser batteries are situated along the rock walls at the very edge of the valley to offer some planetary weapon deterrence. Spread out through the mountains surrounding the academy are scores of blast resistant bunkers manned by Imperial Army soldiers and operating anti-air and anti-infantry weaponry. These bunkers are set up at irregular intervals and distance from one another, making it difficult for potential enemy forces to properly plan and predict there locations.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Rampart Imperial Naval Academy was founded after the fall of the Sith Empire. The collapse of the Sith Empire opened up large swathes of the galaxy to the then New Imperial Order, and as more worlds were added to the fold, the need for new officers in the rapidly growing navy grew. While the academies at Prefsbelt and Bastion turned out graduates as fast as they could, it was deemed more were needed. To found this new academy, Admiral Galios Tion was given charge and told to select a location and have this new academy up and running within two years time. He picked the world of Cathar, and an abandoned city in a desert surrounded by mountains. At the end of the sixth month of renovations, Rampart was open and accepting its first class of students.
It has long been practice within the navies of the Empires of the past to cater to the important and wealthy of Imperial society, and excluding those of lesser birth or station from the naval academies. While the new Empire is not as mired in this stigma as its predecessors, the inclination for Prefsbelt and Bastion to come from the higher rungs of Imperial society led Admiral Tion to radically alter the methodology of Rampart. Named after the Vice Admiral of the first Galactic Empire who helped usher in the era of the citizen military, so too would Rampart Imperial Naval Academy usher in the less fortunate, and give them a chance to become officers in the Imperial Navy. It is at Rampart that a large majority of aliens go to try and become Imperial naval officers.
Large numbers of students are accepted into Rampart every year, far more than other more well known academies, but the failure rate of students is astronomically high. Each year, ninety percent of students fail or drop out, and in the following years, six percent in the following years, and two percent will die during their time at Rampart. The remaining two percent of graduates are seen as some of the fiercest and most capable naval officers in the Empire, and the harsh treatment and brutal lifestyle at Rampart lends to them a disdain for the 'soft' core world academies. Despite their ability though, Rampart graduates continue to face struggles to advance as quickly as their better off peers, and this further develops a rivalry between Rampart graduates, and those from Bastion and Prefsbelt.
A secondary operation for Rampart is the maintenance of a long range sensor station built near the school. This listening station was placed on Cathar for its strategic location near the galactic core, and part of a students education is to analyze and study signals that the listening tower picks up.
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