Sanctuary Fortress

Sanctuary Fortress
The entrance to The Sanctuary Fortress.
Planet	Aether
Environment	Industrialised / Mechanized
Sub-Areas	3 Sub-areas: Lower Level Upper Level Aerie Area
Bosses	Spider Guardian, Dark Samus 2
Upgrades	Spider Ball, Echo Visor, Screw Attack
Connected areas	By elevators: Temple Grounds, Torvus Bog and Agon Wastes By portals: Ing Hive
Distinctfeatures	Completly mechanical area, 3 floors
Map	[1]

An ancient place of Luminoth study, the Sanctuary Fortress is the vast, technologically-advanced stronghold that makes up Sanctuary Sector in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It is built high on the cliffs of Temple Mountain, overlooking what appears to be an enormous city. In scans, the Luminoth refer to it as the "Holy Fortress". When the Ing attacked, the Luminoth used the Fortress as a defense against the Ing. Only mechanoids such as the Quad MB, Quad CM, Rezbit, Octopede, Serenity Class Drones, and the Ingsmashers remain in the Fortress. Now serving the Ing, the mechanoids see Samus Aran as a foe they must terminate immediately (save for the Serenity Class Drones, whom the Ing do not possess.). The Fortress' Dark Aetherian counterpart is the Ing Hive.

Areas and main rooms

The Sanctuary Fortress is clearly divided into two main areas:

Lower level

Its rooms form a "T" shape. Its tips contain the elevators to all the other Aether areas (excluding the Great Temple, which can only be acessed via Temple Grounds.)

Main rooms

Sanctuary Entrance

• Sanctuary Entrance
• Reactor Core
• Hall of Combat Mastery
• Main Research

Upper level

The Upper Level is only accessible through two elevators from the Lower Level. It contains the main gyro and the rooms where the Screw Attack is obtained.

Main rooms

• Sanctuary Temple
• Main Gyro Chamber
• Watch Station

Aerie area

It can be considered that the rooms that only lead to the Aerie are part of a separated area. In this case, only four rooms are part of this area.

Main Rooms

• Checkpoint Station
• Aerie

Glitch

• One room in the Sanctuary Fortress has perhaps the most fatal glitch in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. In Main Research, there are three sonic locks to deactivate. If for whatever reason Samus leaves and re-enters the room without deactivating all three locks, Samus will not be able to open the door, thus Samus cannot continue, except for restarting the entire game or perform what is known as a Kip Dash. [2] However, if the game has not been saved after executing the glitch, it can just be started over from the last save point.

See also

• List of rooms in the Sanctuary Fortress

Trivia

• Pieces of another Quadraxis can be seen in the Sanctuary Temple.
• The advanced technology that this area presents is found nowhere else on the rest of Aether. It may be odd to some when they first find out that the Luminoth constructed this technological marvel.
• Interesting enough, when Samus rides the elevator from the Temple Grounds to Sanctuary Fortress, she'll travel downwards, yet when she looks over the elevator side of the Fortress from Sanctuary Entrance, there is no structure leading upwards, suggesting that the developers overlooked this small flaw, or the elevator somehow warped, seeing the Fortress is in the sky, not underground. The elevator controls also call the area "Sanctuary Cliffs" and the Temple Grounds the "Luminoth Temple", further hinting that this was an error that was overlooked. This could also mean that the Sanctuary was built into the sides of the cliffs seen in the room before the elevator.
• According to artwork, its original name may have been the "Digital World".
• This area may be one of the first places on Aether that the Luminoth colonized, because it is stated that when the Luminoth first came to Aether, they lived on the cliff sides, and the elevator controls call the areas "Sanctuary Cliffs".
• This is the only area of Aether to have 3 previous sentinels, likely because this was the first area settled in by the Luminoth.
• The Luminoth Language color for Sanctuary is blue/cobalt.
• A Space Pirate Log seems to imply that this area's energy was only recently stolen by the Ing (after the arrival of the Space Pirates, but before the arrival of Samus Aran), as the Pirates detected an attack to the fortress simultaneously with an increase in planetary instability.

Gallery

Sanctuary Fortress' Temple.

U-Mos' hologram.