The General Staff Office

Fortress Of Arms

As musty and dated of a place as this is, I suppose I'll always have a place in my heart for this grand old palace.
A facade almost as old as the Army itself, rooms far to small in size and number for its modern usage, and light fixtures that predate any significant understanding of the nature of electricity, may define this place. Yet, in my heart I'll always associate this building with the brilliant people and great accomplishments that filled its halls, the soldiers I have the pride and privilege to call my colleagues, my fellow soldiers, and my comrades.

— From the retirement address of Field Marshal Franz K. Lange, Chief of the General Staff

The General Staff Office, a vast complex sprawling across the coastal countryside of southern Weslich, is the headquarters building of the Directorate of the Army and the General Staff of the United Commonwealth, housing the bulk of the administrative and bureaucratic institutions of the Army.
With the central office building constructed in 25 A.S., it is among the oldest continually used offices of the United Commonwealth government, serving for over a hundred years as the central point for the administration of an armed force that spanned a dozen worlds and marched millions strong.

The Old Fort

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The main building of the GSO, the Central Staff Bureau Building, is currently utilised as the location of the offices of the Chief, Vice Chief, and Deputy Chiefs of the General Staff. The building, affectionately named "Old Bureau" by those who work in it, first saw use by the Weslich Army as a regional headquarters under the title "Armeeoberkommando Sud", or Army Command South, before being absorbed into the UC Army along with the rest of the old imperial Army when the United Powers Act was signed in 40 A.S.
From then, in stayed in a sort of bureaucratic limbo for a few months, unofficially but effectively still the HQ for the now UC Army forces in the region. Eventually, its sheer size,room for expansion, and proximity to the island city of Sudenbandar, which housed the majority of UC Government offices, led to it being selected as the headquarters for the still newly formed General Staff.
The building would serve the Army continuously for over a hundred years, seeing dozens of Chiefs come and go with the times, and wars kick up, burn, and slowly die to embers. Aside from a brief scare in the 1st Great War, when a carrier task force sent out by the Ocrisian Empire almost reached striking distance of the Wesluch Empire, the building itself has been untouched by the violence of warring powers, instead the battleground for institutional combat over the politics of the armed service it houses.

Type

Government complex