Pendola Pass Lore: The Frozen Trail Story in ARC Raiders

The signal that led to Pendola Pass

The signal was building for a long time before Frozen Trail. Celeste's A Bad Feeling warns that the signal Raiders picked up is like nothing Speranza has heard before. In Mixed Signals, Surveyors seem to be transmitting data back into orbit, and the quest giver suspects a link. By Movie Night, rumors of the signal have the whole city on edge, and Apollo's Safe Passage treats it as ARC's latest warning sign.

Embark's content preview gives the payoff. With the Raiders' help, Celeste and Shani triangulated the source, and all signs pointed to Pendola Pass. The September developer first look connects the trail to the downed Emperor itself, while the written preview only says the fallen Emperor is the reason Raiders are called there. The Celeste and Shani pages cover the two people who made that call.

What Pendola Pass was: an Exodus transport hub

Icy air has kept Pendola Pass preserved, according to the preview. Old-world life survives in a supermarket and a lifeless town square, and the Exodus Project looms over both in an observatory and a buried train depot that once served as a major transit hub.

The Codex is more specific. Pendola Pass sits in a summit basin and is the site of the Exodus-era Cielo Sereno Observatory. The map's description calls it a man-made eyrie of advanced instruments and lofty ideals, a summit observatory that now finds itself at the center of orbital attention.

Celeste's opening quest, Exploring Pendola Pass, names the first places Raiders reach. You search the control room at the Cielo Sereno Observatory for power, patch a Wire into the antenna on the tallest tower in the Railyard and search containers in the Commissary Supermarket. Tracks of the Beast adds the Northern Tracks and a destroyed station at their end. Our Exodus page explains what the Exodus Project was.

Getting there: beyond the Tubes

The Codex says Pendola Pass is beyond the reach of Toledo's Tubes, and Speranza had to invent the Ballistic Gondolas before Raiders could reliably climb the mountain. The gondolas' own entry calls them a recklessly untested way up and down, repurposed from crashed ARC Probes, and the entry on Ferrovia, Speranza's nearest neighbors in Toledo, says Ferrovian engineers were key to building them.

The launch announcement calls the first Raiders here a pioneering group, the first to go beyond the Rust Belt, and admits that hard facts about what lies past the ridge are hard to come by. The Rust Belt page shows how far this is from home.

The fallen Emperor

The Codex sums Pendola Pass up in six words: "Where a giant was brought low." The Emperor collapsed in the basin, and that drew attention from ARC both inside the Rust Belt and beyond it. Embark calls a fallen Emperor unprecedented. Rare technology lies inside the husk, and the job, as the preview puts it, is simple: get there and find a way in.

The quest text adds the tension. Celeste's Sizing Things Up says the Emperors were imposing enough from a distance, and getting this close calls for care. Belly of the Beast describes ARC swarming the fallen giant while signals keep coming from far beyond the Rust Belt, and Tracks of the Beast warns that unfamiliar ARC crowd the route to it before anyone can even begin a breach.

One quest rules out an accident. In Ruins and Reverberations, the speaker says the Emperor did not just trip and fall. It was brought down, and they have a leading theory about how. The quest description stops there.

A related find points back at ARC. In Wires Crossed, a contraption found at the Observatory carries a signature that is undeniably ARC's, and the quest has Raiders attach ARC parts to antennas at Pilgrim's Peak on the Blue Gate, on top of the Spaceport's Launch Towers and on the roof of the Grandioso Apartments in Buried City.

The Frigate

ARC's answer to the fallen Emperor came fast. The preview says ARC sent one of their largest vessels to patrol the area, and Raiders started calling it the Frigate. The launch announcement says it has arrived to patrol the Rust Belt with rare tech inside, and that the Hydra, a turret split into three autonomous sections, protects both the Emperor and the Frigate.

The Codex adds a surprising detail: the Frigate is a long-time legend of Nomad songs. It was first spotted in the Rust Belt coming out of storm clouds that would not let up, and it has since settled in the region, clearing an indiscriminate path with its cannon.

Speranza's quests treat it as an emergency. In Boarding the Frigate, Celeste says none of the old tactics work: Raiders cannot run, hide or wait it out. So you get on top of it, establish a foothold and damage a Hydra, a Vaporizer and a Rocketeer. Disrupting the Frigate warns that if Frigates roam freely they will hit Toledo sooner or later. In Celeste's Teenage Rebellion, the Frigates looming in the sky bring back shivers the speaker has not felt since girlhood, and the Codex says Celeste was nine when the First Wave hit.

The new machines fit the same picture. The Codex says the Bully is believed to guard valuable ARC infrastructure, the Hydra seemingly guards major ARC operations, and the Skulker is thought to work closely with the Frigate and the ARC Turbine. Our ARC machines guide covers how they fight.

Conditions that carry the story

Brutal flash freezes cut through the valley, as the preview puts it, and the developers' first look says you need to get indoors or reach shelter when one hits. Redirection, a condition exclusive to Pendola Pass, says Emperor Beacons are activating across the area, and Raiders can loot and deploy them to redirect valuable payloads to themselves. What those payloads are, the game does not explain.

Embark is also testing Dynamic Loot Zones here. A zone keeps its loot type, so a Residential area stays Residential, but its value can rise or fall from one raid to the next. Our Frozen Trail 2.0 breakdown covers these and the Frigate condition.

The Outpost

Celeste offers Raiders who answer her call a home away from home: the Outpost, set between the Rust Belt and the mountain range. Embark calls it the first step to reclaiming parts of the surface, a big statement for a people who went underground to survive.

The project that unlocks it opens with the Frigate looming in the skies and Speranza wanting to revisit the lost art of a more durable Topside presence. Its first step is to photograph a surviving farmland house so Raiders can borrow from what still stands, which is why the patch notes remind you to bring a camera.

Inside, the Research Workstation lets Raiders investigate new elements of the world, and a fully upgraded station opens weapon amplification. Embark calls the Outpost the start of a feature it hopes to develop much further, and our first look covers the research side.

What Frozen Trail leaves open

The update delivers places and clues and holds the answers back. As of October 10, 2026, these threads are still open:

• Nobody has said who or what brought the Emperor down, only that Ruins and Reverberations calls it deliberate.
• Celeste and Shani found where the signal comes from, but the game has not said what it carries or who it is for.
• Exploring Pendola Pass says ARC have never converged on a place the way they have here, and the reason is still unknown.
• Tracks of the Beast talks about breaching the Emperor, and so far Embark only promises rare tech inside.
• Clean Hands has an unnamed group admit that a matter at Pendola Pass should have been settled by their own hands.
• Disrupting the Frigate warns that Frigates will hit Toledo sooner or later if left alone.

Theories: the Nomads, the observatory and ARC origins (theory)

Everything here is interpretation built from the clues above. None of it is confirmed.

The Nomads keep turning up at the edges of this story. The Codex says the Frigate was a legend in their songs long before Speranza saw it. The Blue Gate Nomads have already brought down ARC Deforesters with methods that left the husks intact. Clean Hands is written in the same "we" voice as Taking Stock, a quest that ends with a delivery to the Nomadic Envoy. That makes them an obvious suspect for whoever brought down the Emperor. No quest confirms it.

The observatory is the other thread. An Exodus-era station built to watch the sky sits at the center of orbital attention, a contraption found there carries an ARC signature, and ARC answers from far beyond the Rust Belt. Some players read that as the first real hint that ARC's origin is tied to the Exodus and the people who left Earth. Our ARC origin page and theories page lay out how far that idea goes and where the evidence runs out.

What is Pendola Pass in ARC Raiders?

Pendola Pass is the map added in the Frozen Trail update on October 8, 2026. Embark describes it as an old Italian village and Exodus transport hub beyond the peaks around the Rust Belt, with an observatory, a buried train depot and a fallen Emperor.

Who brought down the Emperor at Pendola Pass?

The game has not said. The quest Ruins and Reverberations states that the Emperor was brought down rather than falling on its own, and its speaker has a leading theory, but the answer is not in the quest description.

What is the Frigate in ARC Raiders?

The Frigate is one of ARC's largest vessels, sent to patrol the area after the Emperor fell. The Codex calls it a long-time legend of Nomad songs, first spotted coming out of storm clouds, and Celeste's quests treat it as a threat to Toledo itself.

How do Raiders get to Pendola Pass?

Pendola Pass is beyond the reach of Toledo's Tubes, so Speranza built the Ballistic Gondolas, an improvised ride up the mountain made from crashed ARC Probes with help from engineers in Ferrovia.

Where is the Outpost in Frozen Trail?

Embark places the Outpost between the Rust Belt and the mountain range, as a home away from home for Raiders exploring Pendola Pass. You unlock it through a project that starts with photographing a surviving farmland house.