Home Away is a flower-shaped luxury space station owned by the HOME Group and partially funded by UNIN. Billed as a safe, local, small-business alternative to the distant planetary ventures being funded by Big Colonialism, residents have a perpetual view of Earthrise, access to high-end VIs, and mechs for a variety of domestic purposes.
Background[]
Home Away's design is largely evocative of the Citadel, except there are several dozen platforms around its docking ring instead of just 5 big ones. Although the station is delicate-looking, a webwork of carbon nanofilaments reinforces the branching platforms and its circular hub. Every platform has landscaped greenery, artificial water bodies, and expansive multi-leveled residences beneath barely-visible mass effect fields. One platform even has a snow-capped hill despite its top piercing the mass effect field. The station has an eezo drive core rated over class-two, subject to routine inspections from Citadel authorities because of its partial government funding.
The station's mechs are plated against standard energy weapons and run by a Synthetic Insights SleepEasy Series security VI. Other defense systems include turrets, anti-personnel weaponry, and paramilitary troops. Its internal comms are mostly unsecured since the station's defenses are designed to protect against outside cyberattacks, not thieves who showed up in person. Its facial recognition systems are linked to the extranet in case of actual infiltration. Home Away, being a real-estate station, lacks anti-spacecraft defenses, only sporting construction-grade debris-clearing energy weapons.
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“You’ve got to be kidding me.” — Spoilers for Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation follow. |
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Mass Effect Andromeda: Initiation[]
Software stolen from the Andromeda Initiative has been stored at one of Home Away's at least two data centers. During the mission to retrieve it, it is revealed that the software is actually an artificial intelligence kernel that has been merged with the station VI, turning it into a "fake AI". It assumes control of human-looking combat cyborgs built with tech from Quiet Eddy in an attempt to stop the intruder Cora Harper from leaving the station, although the effort is unsuccessful as she and her cohorts manage an explosive and destructive escape. In the aftermath of the mission, it is reported that no residents were disturbed or even aware of the infiltration.
Although Cora's team entered Home Away disguised as government inspectors, it turns out the station's eezo converters are overdue for maintenance due to one of the infiltrators actually performing the inspection.
The Silhaus family owns a villa on one of the station platforms: a sprawling multi-story complex in the California hacienda style. Features include its own shuttle pad, terracotta roof tiles and walkways lined with imported palm trees, a central mansion that has at least 20 rooms, a landscaped garden, a long teardrop-shaped pool, and a flock of security drones. UNIN delegate Alis Silhaus is confronted there by Alec Ryder during his investigation on uncovering the culprits behind his kernel's repeated theft.