The Endless Tower

In the middle of a cluster of hills on the far side of the Titan's Fist Mountains stands a strange structure. A complex of buildings spread out from a central tower, wide at the base, which tapers off into a central spire that seems to go up forever. Strange swarms of buzzing creatures flit around the area and scuttle along the ground, and bizarre metal beasts roam through what looks otherwise like a very strange and very empty town.

Purpose / Function

The endless tower is an ancient space elevator. It has survived as long as it has because of its robotic maintenance and security systems. Maintenance robots and automated, robotic factories in the complex around the tower make replacement parts and swap them in. The AI that runs the whole complex runs on a multiply-redundant super computer. Everything that wears out, from part of the space elevator's tether is replaced with new parts as it does so and the materials are recycled. The sophistication of the systems in play are breathtaking to behold, and had such automation been more widespread, the history of the prior world may have gone differently.

Denizens

The Endless Tower is "inhabited" by several different types of robot.
At the top of the hierarchy is ARCHON (Artificial Robotic Command Hierarchy Overseer Node), a benevolent, if somewhat cold AI. As part of its directives, ARCHON was constrained to a five-mile radius around the tower, but over time, its awareness, if not its influence, has reached far beyond that radius. ARCHON has a "child," uncreatively known as "Two" that is based in the space station that makes the elevator's counterweight and functions as ARCHON's second-in-command.
The next tier down is made up of the security robots. These come in four basic varieties:

• A tank-like ground-based weapons platform with heavy armor and devastating weaponry.
• A gunship-like flying counterpart that is more lightly-armored but much faster.
• A small, multi-purpose reconnaissance drone that can fly, climb like a spider, and turn itself invisible. It's very lightly-armed but loaded with sensors.
• Security nanobot swarms. These flying swarms can repair other drones, attack enemies in a variety of lethal and nonlethal ways, and also function as signal boosters for the network controls of the other types

At the bottom of the hierarchy is a medium-sized force of maintenance drones and nanobots. These perform maintenance and repairs, extract new raw materials from the surrounding environment (including the mountains and ocean) and perform new construction. The space station in the counterweight has its own force of these robots which have, over the centuries, collected all of the floating debris in orbit, stripped it down to its component materials and sent it back planetside via the ascender.

Type

Refinery / Industrial complex