Vault

Vaults are massive subterranean Remnant installations that have the power to terraform entire worlds. They are found in numerous planets and moons within the Heleus Cluster.

Overview

A vault is a complex control center for the atmospheric processors and other related tech installed on a world. While no two vaults are alike, they typically have a system of external monoliths that, when activated, reveal the primary entrance and allow entry. Vaults are so far underground that gravity wells are employed to ferry visitors to and from the surface. Conduits converge at a central location, its "heart", where massive amounts of energy are routed. Reservoirs of ferrofluid are prevalent and help the terraforming process through unknown means. Swarms of Remnant machines, serviced or manufactured from bays within the facility, patrol the interior and are hostile even to people who can interface with their tech.

A vault needs to be constantly active in order to render a world habitable: if they go into lockdown, planetary conditions deteriorate. At the heart of a vault is a console that allows it to go online, which shuts down the constant energy stream. A purification procedure starts that scrubs the interior of organic material as part of the process. Another console near the vault entrance prevents the purification cloud from fully consuming the installation.

Following activation or reactivation, conditions on the surface immediately improve, although longer-term changes take more time. The speed of habitability improvement is something beyond the Andromeda Initiative's current understanding of planetary science.

There are limits to a vault's mastery of environmental controls. It cannot change a world's orbit, or bring back to life a world that was physically destroyed. However, it can evaluate other means of improving viability and tailor solutions to the best of its ability.

All vaults in the Heleus Cluster are networked to a central controlling location: Meridian. Losing connection to Meridian causes vaults to go dormant or malfunction.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

Due to the deleterious effects of the Scourge on Remnant technology, most vaults in the cluster have gone dormant. Golden worlds surveyed by the Initiative before their departure from the Milky Way have gone to ruin: Eos has become an irradiated wasteland, Kadara with its water potability crisis, Elaaden a hellhole desert, Voeld on permanent ice age. Havarl has a malfunctioning vault, as incomplete activation of the monoliths messed with the ecosystem and drove the world to the verge of ecological collapse.

Pathfinder Ryder's reset of the Eos vault improves planetary conditions enough for the third attempt on resettling the planet to become successful, and also uncovers a lead to an active vault elsewhere on Heleus. Aya, home to the angara, has a vault that keeps the world a paradise compared to the rest of the cluster. The vault there, as well as the Eos vault, is connected to Meridian, which leads to it being deduced as a means to control the entire vault network and restore the rest of Heleus. Following this, Ryder has the opportunity to individually improve livability on worlds with dormant vaults by reactivating them.

A fight between the Initiative and the hostile kett ensues for control over Meridian, revealed to be an artificial hollow world made by the Remnant's creators the Jardaan. Ryder wins this fight for the Initiative, and humans stake a claim on Meridian by virtue of ark Hyperion crashing there and being renamed Port Meridian. Despite this though, it is still up to the Pathfinder to manually reactivate the dormant vaults to ensure full viability across the cluster.

Initiative scientists have speculated on whether the purification cloud in a vault reactivation can be weaponized to encompass an entire world, although no evidence of that capability has been discovered thus far.