Girvan Offshore Science Facility
The Girvan Offshore Science Facility (GOSF) was an experimental facility built by Nevrin below The Island (Ailsa Craig), and the most secretive of the company's three underground cities. It was used to conduct Nevrin's most dangerous and controversial scientific experiments. Up until its destruction, it remained one of the largest underground installations on Earth, spanning an area of more than 200,000 acres. In 1995, a catastrophic containment breach occurred that resulted in its abandonment. It is named after the nearby harbour town of Girvan which acted as a staging point for construction operations.
| Motto | Scientia in tenebris tuta est. |
|---|---|
| Established | January 1, 1940 |
| Research type | Secret |
| Budget | £21 billion (1995) |
Field of research | Exophysics |
| Director | Benjamin Chambers |
| Staff | 110,000 (1995) |
| Location | Ailsa Craig, Scotland 55°15′07″N 05°06′59″W / 55.25194°N 5.11639°W |
| Nickname | The Facility |
Operating agency | Nevrin |
| Map | |
  Location in South Ayrshire | |
The facility was built into an artificially expanded natural cavern network below the island, which was accessed by experimental drilling technology that was pioneered by the company in the decades before its construction. This network of caverns, one of the largest in Europe, was another reason why Ailsa Craig was selected as the site for the project. Construction of the facility began in 1940 under the guise of a mining operation conducted by Richardson & Sons; and took 35 years to complete, with the facility officially opening to personnel in 1975. It was by far the most expensive of Nevrin's operations, with over 110,000 employees and a yearly budget of more than £37 billion.
Levels
The facility was split into three main levels, each of which contained a number of sublevels, decreasing with depth. Exertus sat at the top, with nearly 100 sublevels, providing accommodation for staff and control facilities, while Arctarus was in the middle, and housed experimental laboratories. Reactus, which was at the bottom, was both the deepest and smallest, and housed both the facility's geothermal power generation infrastructure and the later-built Avernus Cavity Reactor (ACR).
All levels were linked by a complex train network, and massive seal doors were used to block off each sector in an effort to prevent containment breaches. The only access point to and from the facility was a huge pit known as The Abyss, an extension of the original iron mineshaft with vertical train tracks fitted to it. This was also used to carry cabling and ventilation pipes, as well as a pumped water supply from the island's surface which would be filtered by desalination systems below.
Power
The GOSF sourced its power from a combination of collapse reactors, fluid-uranium reactors, and a massive underground geothermal heat source. The combination of these power sources were required in order to generate enough energy to run the Avernus Cavity Reactor. Ocean water was drawn in and circulated to cool the reactors and the geothermal systems.
Legacy
Nevrin abandoned the facility in 1995 after the Island Containment Breach that caused the failure of the project, and after the company’s later collapse, several of its employees founded Küiser Laboratories, with the intention of intentionally returning to the facility as part of the Island Resurrection Project. After the expedition team and its leader Alan Clayton met a fateful end in Exertus, Küiser cancelled the project, and its history was swept over during Küiser’s bankruptcy and acquisition by Helios.
Due to the extreme hazards posed by the facility, in 2220, Raven initiated Operation Lighthouse in order to render the site safe and neutralise any threats from sapient anomalies and the still-active Avernus Cavity Reactor. The project concluded in 2260, when Raven detonated an annihilation warhead in Reactus, obliterating both the facility and the entire island.