UK location idea
Hi everyone. Long time lurker and newly joined member here!
Many moons ago when I ran my UK based campaigns, I located my main base under a motorway service station. I chose Maidstone services on the M20 in Kent because it is nearby, I knew it quite well and it needed only very slight modification. Physically it is located on a triangular patch of land that sits on the opposite side of the motorway from any large habitation, it isn’t overlooked being both slightly higher and behind a large embankment and the access roads are high level, crossing the motorway and adjacent embankments to reach the site. One side is bordered by a railway line. With the 6 lane motorway and embankment one side, the straight open rail line another and woods and then open fields on the third it was defensible and fairly secret for a public place! Small hides could be located on each side to keep watch on the perimeter and the access road blocked quite easily. The surrounding countryside, whilst hardly mountainous or even truly hilly, is rolling and I felt it could provide a degree of shielding from any bombs targeted on Maidstone (rail links and County town), which was about the only nearby target likely in a general war. In various campaigns it served for The Morrow Project, where at different times it provided both a project base akin to Prime and a government one, and in Twilight 2000 where it also became a government bunker. Being basically a lazy gamer it suited me that the design would also have served for a more general WWIII game where it becomes a modern RSG (Regional Seat of Government), as a base in a superhero campaign, in a spy game for any form of secret organisations that needs a base (UNIT, THRUSH etc). As such it was a bit of a hybrid, having features less likely for Morrow, but they could be easily removed/ignored/modified.
In my world I modified the services at the building stage, having my version of the Morrow Project build a secret base underneath as the groundworks for the topside work was done, using a proxy construction firm that they owned. They then ran the motel through shadow companies. The main base is underneath the motel (which was unobtrusively strengthened anyway and for the government version could have provided barracks for extra personnel) and an ancillary base (a secret additional area, open to all sorts of uses as required; lab, prison, command centre etc) was built under the adjacent shops and fast food outlets. Access was via the motel basement storage area – I’ve no idea if the real one has a basement but mine did - and an outside grounds keepers hut, as well as an emergency exit or two. The ancillary base had an access point hidden in the shopping area and a secret tunnel into the main base. The service station fuel tanks were larger and slightly deeper than normal for such places and in the government version I fudged the old WWII oil pipelines that linked many airfields in the South and East to allow a spur to run here too. I put a staff stop on the railway line (basically just a narrow concrete platform similar to those seen in rail yards over here) so a train could stop and offload personnel there too; this allowed government personnel to be evacuated from London in an emergency. Being located on a busy main road (also part of the UK’s Essential Services Route/Military Road Route – codenamed STAG) vehicle access is going to be kept clear for emergency use as long as possible in any situation, which suits the idea of using it as a government site. During peacetime it is easy for duty staff to arrive, mingling with the regular traffic. In the same way, supplies and equipment could be bought in amongst the large number of trucks that stop there each day. I toyed with the idea of making the motorway serve double duty as a landing strip but decided against, although helicopters could always use the lorry park.
For use as a secret government bunker, I added a small police traffic division control room with a tower that overlooked the motorway because that added justification for a good camera and communications network to the site that could then become the hub of base/region security and I also poached an asset from another local services on the M2 motorway, which had a small yard for highways maintenance gear, which I thought would be a good thing for an official base to have on hand and could quickly be taken over by a detachment of the Royal Engineers.
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