The Horizon Arc Project
Rhine Lab’s most consequential and most secret undertaking.
A collaboration between Rhine Labs (Kristen Wright) and The Al’ar family, with logistics support from Dragon Logistics. Officially, the goal is to “conquer the sky.” The actual goal is to break through what Kristen believes is an artificial barrier enclosing Terra.
Public name: Rhine Lab Pioneer Project
Internal/classified name: Horizon Arc Project
Construction site: Highland Plateau, near the geometric portal (see Geometry)
Key components:
- S.H.A.F.T — Synergistic Hyperbeam Amplifying and Focusing Tube
- H.A.M.H.R.R — High-Altitude (Arrayed/Maneuverable) Hyperbeam Receiver-Redirector
- Vivarium Lab — a laboratory aboard the vessel, powered by a Sarcophagus
The Al’ar’s price for their support: refined originium from the deepest veins, in exchange for a promise that H.A.M.H.R.R will double as an orbital weapons platform capable of holding the surface hostage. Whether Kristen has fully reckoned with this trade is an open question — and an opening for betrayal in Act 3 of Ad Astra.
Followers of Asmodeus have also taken an interest in the project, planning to plant a symbol of their god — carved from active originium — aboard the structure as a kind of sabotage-by-proxy.
Cover contracts used to mask the project’s true nature:
- The Wright Commission — the initial briefing document Saria hands to contracted parties, framing the work as securing a “Structural Integrity Site” within the volcanic tunnels and protecting on-site data extraction from a Sarcophagus relic.
- The Deep-Earth Tunneling Logistics Contract — offered to PCs/property owners in Malachite, requesting warehouse space for “inert pressurized canisters” and “aerodynamic shielding plates,” with a pointed non-disclosure clause about the “peculiar lack of drill bits.”
- Mission Briefing: “Punching the Sky Hole” (Project Cracked Mirror) — the Clearance Level 5 document describing the attempt to physically breach the upper atmosphere’s crystalline barrier at the volcano’s caldera. See Ad Astra Punching The Sky Hole.