Lunar Base



The Lunar Base (ルナサイドベース, Runasaidobēsu) is a location in Final Fantasy VIII. It is a space station created to watch over sorceress Adel sealed inside a suspension seal.

History and Profile
After Adel's capture the Lunar Base was constructed to keep her safely sealed in a location where she could never escape. Merely killing Adel would not have been enough, after all, she would have only passed on her powers to someone else. With Dr. Odine's technology capable of sealing a sorceress's powers, Adel was secured inside a suspension seal and launched off to space by three Ragnaroks. Due to the powerful sealing technology, Adel's Tomb began to interfere with the radio waves back on earth.

Full-time crews take turns spending half a year at the Base, and even the president sometimes comes over himself. In the game, the Lunar Base is shown to be entered in special capsules, whereupon a person in placed in a state of forced sleep, and launched off into the air. Giant green nets at the base receive the capsules, which are then taken to the boarding room.

Story
Squall Leonhart and his friends arrive at the base, bringing along Rinoa Heartilly, who has fallen comatose for unknown reasons. They meet up with the base's leader, Piet, who explains Adel's suspension seal. They talk to Ellone, and Squall tries to use her gift to go back into Rinoa's past to find out what happened to her. In the middle of the talk Rinoa wakes up, although she does not act like herself. She puts on a space suit and goes out into space, and breaks Adel's Seal.

Back on earth, Seifer performs the Lunar Cry, bringing monsters from the moon down to earth, together with Adel. Rinoa is left for dead after Ultimecia, who had possessed her, leaves her body in space in favor of Adel's. The Lunar Base is drawn near the moon, and Squall, Ellone, and Piet attempt to escape via an escape pod. The Lunar Base is destroyed and while aboard the pod, Squall begs Ellone to go back into Rinoa's past, and this time she succeeds. The truth about Ultimecia's possession of Rinoa is revealed, and Squall goes out into space to rescue Rinoa. He catches up with her, and they find the lone Ragnarok floating nearby, which takes them back to their planet.

Layout
The control room is the station's central hub. It controls all actions and mechanics and has supervision over all areas. Adel's seal has two locks: one in the control room, and one on the tomb itself.
 * Control Room:

The docking bay is used to dock ships launched from Esthar and to leave the Lunar Base back to the planet or out to Adel. One must wear a spacesuit, as the bay opens to space.
 * Docking Bay:

The prep room is a small antechamber used to suit up into a spacesuit in order to leave the base.
 * Prep Room:

A room in the recesses of the station where Ellone stays. Albeit small, it seems comfortable and adequate. It is the only living quarters shown, although there are most likely others.
 * Ellone's Suite:
 * Draw points: Meteor (hidden)

A smaller docking area; the boarding room is where boardees from the single-man pods fired from Lunar Gate emerge after their pods have docked.
 * Boarding Room:

The med lab is an on-board medical facility where Rinoa is kept until her trance brings her into space where she nearly dies. It seems to have some of the best technology known.
 * Med Lab:

The escape pods are small chambers used in times of emergency. They can fit up to four people, and are jettisoned from the Lunar Base back toward the planet. They appear to have the ability to pass through the atmosphere mostly undamaged. It is here that Ellone sends Squall to find out what happened to Rinoa, and also where that Squall leaves in a spacesuit to save Rinoa. The screen before the escape pods has a hidden draw point.
 * Escape Pods:
 * Draw points: Meltdown (hidden)

Adel's Tomb
As the name states, this huge object houses Adel's "dead" form. It floats in space near the moon, frozen. Adel has stayed in the tomb petrified since the end of the Sorceress War, and is awakened by Rinoa.

Interestingly, the tomb is shaped similarly to Esthar City's presidential palace - perhaps a final nod of unwilling respect to Esthar's once-tyrannical ruler.

Escape Pod Crash Site
The escape pod falls to the peninsula south of Tears Point and becomes a hidden location in the game. The location is not marked on the world map, but the player can access it by stepping on the correct spot on the world map while on foot. If the player visits the site they will find Piet, but if visited on disc 4, the player can find the Queen of Cards on the site.

People Associated with Lunar Base

 * Man in Spacesuit/President, aboard the base to check on Adel. It is implied this is Laguna Loire. When he says he "has a feeling" soldiers would not be needed to escort Squall's party, Controller A assigns a security team to escort Squall's party anyway. He complains, saying "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Why do you always play me like that?" hinting his hunches have either been debilitating unbalanced, or just flat out wrong.
 * Piet, the space station's overseer. Little is revealed about him, save for being the base's director. Whether his working relationship with the president is the same as with the Controllers is not revealed.
 * Controller A, one of the operators in the control room. When the president says he "has a feeling" a security detail would not be needed to escort Squall's party, Controller A sends them anyway by saying, "Then we'd better station them all the more." indicating the president has had a history of inaccurate, possibly devastating, hunches.
 * Controller B, the second operator in the control room, and the one to recommend assigning a security detail to escort Squall's team aboard the Lunar Base.
 * Ellone, Squall's elder stepsister. Her living quarters on the Lunar Base is small, but superbly comfortable with an adequate view of the cosmos.

Triple Triad

 * Ellone holds the Laguna card. If the player misses playing her, they will lose the chance to get the card unless they challenge the Card Club on disc 4.
 * Piet holds the Alexander card. If the player misses it, they can find the crashed escape pod on the worldmap and challenge him there.

Musical Themes
When first boarding the satellite the track "Dance with the Balamb Fish" plays and continues on as Squall explores the station. When Rinoa awakens possessed, the event is accompanied by the "A Sacrifice" theme until the Lunar Cry occurs and the soundtrack is replaced by the theme "Movin."

Trivia

 * The Full Motion Video showing the arrival at the Lunar Base is a homage to the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, reminiscent of the "Blue Danube" scene. In place of "The Blue Danube", "Dance with the Balamb Fish" is played, verifying the homage. The space station utilizes centrifugal force to simulate gravity as in 2001. Within the space station, unique camera angles are used, similar to the ones used on the Discovery One by Stanley Kubrick, to show the centrifugal rotation.
 * There exists a bonus FMV, not accessed in-game, which shows one of the Lunar Base's camera drones being destroyed by a monster during the beginning stages of the Lunar Cry.