[Away Mission:] Arrivals Post, Alemar III (Party Post!)

[ten_fwd_npcs]

"Welcome, everyone, to geothermal field two-nine-one," Dr. Johanna Sk'Amor says, once everyone has gathered in the entryway.

The shuttlebay the group has just left is behind them, while the large entrance to the facility is directly ahead. The building is quite spacious, and despite the high volume of visitors no one is cramped for space while standing here. It's like a museum lobby, with fixtures in the center of the room and wings on either side. While the design is not as bright and clean as the Enterprise, the high ceilings and white walls give a feeling of spaciousness. To the right is the main observation room, where the convex wall making up one full corner of the drilling facility is primarily floor-to-ceiling windows. The vistas beyond are stunning: tall, grey mountains and low valleys, all covered with snow. To the left is a winding staircase that leads to an upper level, and beyond that are several labs.

"This is one of five scientific outposts located on Alemar III," the doctor continues. "At one time we had seven, but two have been destroyed by earthquakes. Alemar III is highly geologically active, so our remaining facilities have been reinforced to withstand even the most devastating natural disasters. There's nothing to worry about, our engineers are some of the best in the quadrant, but if you feel some tremors while you look around just keep in mind that this is normal.

"Two of our outposts are at the polar north and south of the planet, while the other three, this one included, are evenly spread across the globe. Our staff is small, only about ten scientists and five archaeologists, and enough engineers to keep everything in working order. In all, the entire planet only has about ninety occupants at any given time. It's rare that we're able to entertain guests.

"If you'll follow me, I'll show you some of the work we accomplish here."


[ooc: This post is open to those who signed up for our game plot only! As it's being run party post style, all characters are encouraged to tag in and mingle; since teams have not been divided yet, any participating character can tag anyone else, you don't have to stick only to those on your teams. You may also tag in as many top level threads as you choose if you're doing the full tour, just be sure your character ends up in the room where their team will be positioned for the rest of the plot (for those who will be divided in the mines due to cave-ins, the main mine connects to many other rooms and alcoves, so simply tag in under the Main Mine subheading and have your characters move around the different passageways to explore. Wherever rocks fall, that's where the rooms will be divided). Threadhopping and backtagging are encouraged! This post will remain open for as long as it takes all characters to tag in.]

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Down the Elevators: Main Mine, Underground Facilities

[ten_fwd_npcs]

As the tour continues on past the living quarters and back to the main area of the aboveground facilities, guests are loaded into the elevators in manageable groups. Once everyone, for the most part, has congregated in the large open room underground, the tour can continue.

This area of the mine is the most complete. The walls are practically straight up and down, with lights installed casting everything in a nice, pure glow. Right beside the elevators is a communications panel -- nothing very advanced, just a simple handheld receiver and an intercom system, connected to similar panels scattered throughout the mines as well as aboveground. Behind them and to the right is a finished room with a door, behind which bunks are lined up. Many of the archeologists' living quarters are down in this area of the facility, and right next door is a small clean room with controlled atmospheric settings, so they can examine artifacts that are too frail to move upstairs. Branching out in all directions are passageways, some broad and well-lit, others more cramped and dark.

"We have determined that this area was once a rather large city," Dr. Sk'Amor begins. "Everything that once stood on Alemar III has been buried under rock and solidified lava, which makes the process of finding each settlement a real challenge. Sensors don't work well here, due to the strange composition of the rock on this planet, as well as the atmospheric conditions that disrupt your ship's 'transporters' and communications systems. As we find artifacts, we must mine around them very carefully to be sure we don't destroy what's hidden underground.

"As we've been mining, we've been uncovering more and more of these interesting crystals you'll see scattered around all of the caves. Their composition is quite baffling, and they’re a mineral that is only found here on Alemar III, not on any of the other planets in this star system. They seem to conduct energy remarkably well. Our scientists have begun harvesting them for study; it may be that we can use them as a natural source of power for our equipment, with a little modification. At any rate, they're pretty to look at."

As visitors move throughout the caves, they'll see more of these crystals protruding from the walls, ceiling, and floors throughout. Some of the more natural passages are covered with cave paintings, remnants of natural caves that existed when the first settlements were built here. These paintings depict a number of flora and fauna that were once indigenous to Alemar III, as well as some depictions of daily life for the Almarians who once lived here. There are a number of miners working throughout the caves, some in the clean room, others operating excavation tools in the newer caves. For some it is delicate work -- small picks, brushes, and spades -- for others, heavier equipment is digging out passageways and clearing away large rocks.

"Please, be careful," Dr. Sk'Amor says, as the group begins to fracture; "but do enjoy some careful exploration. Just be sure you return here in twenty minutes; we'll continue upstairs in the main lobby where some refreshments will be served, and I'll happily answer any questions you may have."

Aeryn Sun (OTA)

[do_your_duty]

Aeryn has been following along. Somewhere dutifully in the line. Nowhere near the front, but not exactly taking up the rear either. Definitely not one of those people oohing over the library, and definitely she's so far from the people cooing about the crystals in the walls.


If she turns to make some comment to John, about how some people shouldn't be allowed to live or be taken out of their rooms, and then realizes, facing a wall that he isn't there, hasn't been there all day, again? Well, Aeryn giving that new wall an annoyed frown, like it personally slighted her, isn't entirely unlike the way she's looked at everything else so far.

Billy Cranston

[morphitudinous]

Billy is enamored with everything he's hearing and seeing. It's a wonder merely to be off the Enterprise, and to learn more about this era to boot? He's devouring every bit of information he can. He's had to jog to catch up with the group more than once due to his tendency to linger.

He longs to explore, but his desire to hear everything he can keeps him rooted to the main area.

"Isn't it absolutely amazing?" he gushes, gazing at the crystal. "Harnessed properly, you could really speed things along. And if terraforming was successful...wow. There's so much untapped potential."

He eagerly thinks back on everything he's picked up, licking the taste of the strange fruit from his lips. This is one of the best trips ever.

[immafrog]

"Careful, Billy," Adam laughed softly. "Your nerd is showing."

Obviously, being a nerd was hardly a bad thing. But it was always kind of hilarious when Billy really gushed and nerded over something because it was like he was at a comic book convention. But with crystals and energy readings.

[morphitudinous]

"How often do we have opportunities like this, though?" Billy questioned, still smiling as brightly as ever. "There's so much to potentially study here...and it isn't exactly fresh air, but isn't it a nice change of pace to be off the Enterprise?"

Nothing could bring him down. Well...almost nothing, but that wouldn't be happening quite yet. For now, he looked like a kid on Christmas morning and everything was just fine.

He watched Adam expectantly.

yeah so I switched to gmail and forgot to confirm the address and didn't know you tagged D:

[immafrog]

"It is," He laughed and nodded. Billy just made him smile brightly with his mannerisms right now though. He wasn't sure why, maybe because he never saw Billy so excited like this. "I just hope we can study enough before these earthquakes get too strong."

He lived in California long enough to know that earthquakes didn't always die down after the first and this whole planet was full of the activity.

no worries!

[morphitudinous]

Billy crouched to study a crystal, taking it in, then slid over to the wall. He wasn't going to slow down when there was so much to see! Come on, Adam. Smile with him.

"I don't think we're meant to be here long. A few more minutes, perhaps...and then we leave the studying to the experts, and continue aboard the Enterprise."

He didn't sound entirely happy about that. "But that leaves the possibility we'll visit other planets later, right? Maybe we'll see something even bigger."

Sinthia Schmidt

[abyssum_invocat]

The thing about Sinthia is that she's used to being underground, so she's wandering around without the slightest problem with the tremors, little hands reaching out to touch the crystals glittering in the walls. (She's still getting used to the clothes the replicator gave her for the trip, because while they're quite...lovely, she imagines, they're very not her. But the mint-colored leather jacket is nice. That she'll keep.)

"It's much nicer in here than you'd think," she murmurs half to herself.

Re: Sinthia Schmidt

[tanteiotaku]

Shotaro didn't like that there were kids wrapped up in this Q business. Not one bit. So he at least wanted to say hi. Even if he was terrible with children.

"Ah, yeah. The air feels nicer too." There was actually some circulating air underground. Philip probably had some kind of explanation for it but he was too distracted by all the computers upstairs to come underground. He didn't know what to expect from a hi-tech mine hundreds of years in the future, but hand pickaxes definitely wasn't it.

[abyssum_invocat]

"It's not at all like my home," she says, fingertips exploring a protruding crystal stub. "It's warmer down here than where I live, though it's underground too. I live in the mountains, though, so it's very cold everywhere. Above and below."

[tanteiotaku]

"Haaah?" Inside mountains? So she was like a cave girl? "I've only been underground a couple times. It was nothing like this at all..."

But a hole in the ground was a hole in the ground, right? He'd still rather be in the wind somewhere. He ran his fingers over a few of the crystals and inspected his fingers to see if they left anything behind. "Even light years from home and centuries in the future some things don't change..."

[abyssum_invocat]

"Not like a cave," she says, shaking her head. "It's a base, like an army base. It's just underground, where it's safer. And hidden."

[magicsprice]

Gold has mixed feelings about the mines, a number of bad memories associated with his previous visits within them. But these are nothing like those mines, thus the memories are easily squashed and put away where they can't interfere with his observation and enjoyment of actually being on a new world that was reached by means that had nothing to do with magic.

"It is. Far nicer than most mines." He wondered idly about the crystals in the walls, while they weren't the diamonds of the mines from Storybrooke, he was curious on if they had any magical properties of their own.

[abyssum_invocat]

"Do you go into very many of them?" she asks, feeling utterly comfortable in the low-ceiling-ed place, with the glittering crystals. This far underground, telepathy is dampened meaning she can't very easily hear more than a rumbling murmur from those up above her. And she likes that, it means less headaches for her.

[magicsprice]

"I've been in a few, none of them quite as well lit or nice as this one." he replied, carefully moving forward to get a better look at the crystals before them. If he had been confident in how his magic might work and how possibly the crystals themselves would react with said magic, he might have been tempted to see about gaining possession of a few to examine at his leisure.

For now however, he kept his hands to himself magically speaking. He didn't necessarily need any magic currently, thus he had no real need to experiment and find out just how well or badly his magic worked here.

[abyssum_invocat]

"You don't like them?" Sinthia questions, brows raising. "It feels like I might run into one of those dwarves you told me about. The ones that work in mines?"

Irian t'Aumne

[aehallh]

Irian is used to shipboard life; being on board Enterprise is not all that much different from being on board Bloodwing, when one gets down to the heart of it. But at the same time, she's beginning to grow bored, and she knows it's best to go and do something before she gets too restless.

She's followed along behind the tour group this whole time, examining things with interest but little comment; that hasn't changed much down here. The crystals are beautiful, and she almost reaches out to touch one, but hesitates before putting out her hand — she wouldn't want to disturb anything, and though she is no scientist, she has enough respect for the work being done here not to want to disrupt these people's efforts. The sparkling patterns the crystals throw across the walls reminds her a little of a system of caves in what used to be one of her people's colonies, the world of Ysail, out on the very edges of Romulan territory; she'd never been there, but they had been famous throughout the Empire for their beauty.

The thought makes her frown, just a little. This isn't really the time to be thinking of home, or what used to be home.

Re: Irian t'Aumne

[dreams_dont_die]

There's a woman in the tour group from a race Dylan doesn't recognize. He's seen a fair few of them. Not that it's all that unusual for him to come across peoples he's never met before; the Commonwealth spanned a million worlds, and though many of them were populated with races Dylan knew, there were still plenty of peoples known to the Commonwealth that Dylan had never met.

Plenty of places out there the Commonwealth didn't know, as well.

That's before you add the weirdness of the alternate timelines and universes going on here.

The woman doesn't speak much, but she does look around her with attention and interest. Pretty much what Dylan's been doing from the back of the group, so he gives her a smile, shoving his hands into the pockets of his coat.

"Nice caves." Certainly more welcoming than some he's been in.

For one, these caves aren't full of Magog.

[aehallh]

Irian turns to face him, and while she doesn't quite smile, she does regard him with something a little like curiosity. Human, but not Starfleet. Military? Perhaps. There's something in his demeanor that comes across to her like confidence, competence, but it could be anything. She's good at reading humans, but not expert.

"They are certainly interesting to look at," she says; the part of her that's interested in history is a little curious about the drawings on the walls, and she certainly has enough of an aesthetic sense to see beauty in the crystalline structures growing untouched by the hand of civilization.

"And this was better than staying on the ship." Her brows arch slightly: the Rihannsu version of a suppressed smile.

[dreams_dont_die]

She's very collected, and she stands with the straight, tall confidence he's used to seeing in his fellow High Guard officers, though he has no way to tell what, if any, military she belongs to. None he's familiar with, he's certain. But he notes to himself to treat with the caution a fellow warrior deserves.

She could just be very self-assured and confident in herself, but in his experience, that usually comes with some sort of training.

"Prettier than the last caves I was in." Though, of course, those were more tunnels than caves, courtesy of the Argosy Corps of Engineers that built the facility he and Tyr had been attacking. And that's aside from the Magog World Ship.

He shrugs.

"I'm used to shipboard life," he replies, his eyebrows lifting in response to the look on her face, which ... seems to warrant it, though he's not familiar with her species. "But I may as well see some of this world while I'm here."

This planet is completely unfamiliar to him. Of course, that's not to say that it or its system wasn't part of the Commonwealth before the Fall, because there's no learning the names and natures of a million member worlds, but he may as well see a few of the sights of this universe.

Since he's here.

"Captain Dylan Hunt of the starship Andromeda Ascendant." The edges of his smile go wry. "At least, in my world, I am."

[aehallh]

"As am I," Irian comments, in response to his words about being used to shipboard life. "But one still grows restless, when one is in a place not one's own. Sometimes a momentary diversion has its uses."

This is never the sort of diversion she'd allow herself the leisure for back home, either. Irian has spent some time on occasional information-gathering for the anthropological and archaeological groups working on behalf of Command to uncover more of the history of New Romulus, but those are missions, not what essentially amounts to shore leave. As her chief surgeon could attest, were she here, Irian hasn't taken leave in quite some time.

Perhaps someone, somewhere, has decided she hasn't taken enough of it.

She bows, at his introduction; just a slight inclination of her head and upper body, for a breath's worth or so, no more than what she owes to someone who (she presumes) is her equal in rank and not familiar to her one way or the other. Courtesy costs her nothing, and it would be profoundly improper not to show him at least that much respect. "Commander Irian t'Aumne of the Romulan warbird Bloodwing," she responds, her introduction as formal as his though her rank and command are meaningless here. "Well met, Captain."

Angeal Hewley

[wear_tear_rust]

Oddly enough, Angeal wasn't too interested in what was above the surface of the planet but rather what they were mining below in the tunnels. The branching tunnels that reminded him of ant hill passages on a large scale was something of a wonder to him. Below the surface of his town in Banora was something similar only with an energy called mako instead of the crystals that were jutting out and greeting any passers-by to gaze at them.

He didn't reach out to touch them even though he was curious enough to try. His senses picked up a faint pulsing and his eyes averted to look at Genesis from the faint glow. The cascading lights then revealed their secrets of delicate ancient paintings that told a story of a time long passed. He stepped forward again looking only with his eyes without touching lest he disturbed the ancient past.

"Memories are like dust. They settle and every touch removes just a little more to be swept away to another place." Angeal mused through his own way of fascination. He looked to the doctor then back to Genesis and then to the others in the tour group. Nothing entranced him more than a little mystery.

[rhapsoidein]

Genesis' already glowing eyes seemed to pick up the faint luminescence, turning her gray-blue eyes into a bright, almost royal blue. She smiled a little at Angeal's words as she reached out to gently trace the crystals.

"Ripples form on the water's surface
The wandering soul knows no rest."

Her voice was but a murmur as she looked over to Angeal once more.

"I do hope the doctor isn't using this Planet's natural energy source for selfish gain. Planet's only have a finite amount of energy and to use it all up would mean the very death of the Planet itself," She said, glancing at the doctor. "Be glad these crystals don't house the very souls of your inhabitants."

[wear_tear_rust]

"Hm?" Angeal looked over his shoulder, his once transfixed gaze blinked to reveal his customary appearance. He was almost in a hypnotic state until Genesis broke his trailing thoughts with a soft smile and a nod.

"Indeed." His smile faded just a bit at the thoughts through memory to ShinRa and their exploits. "I would be worried if it did. How can a world survive?"

Then he thought of the earthquakes. A what-if cycle of thoughts coursed through his head. What if the earthquakes were caused by over mining? What would happen if all the crystals were mined and there was nothing left to sustain the planet? These thoughts disturbed him and his frown deepened.

[rhapsoidein]

Genesis saw the deepening frown and shook her head with a sigh, reaching over to poke Angeal's hard bicep. "Don't think too hard on it. This isn't our world, we aren't even staying here."

If the residences of this Planet wanted to learn the hard way what it was like to strip their Planet's resources, then so be it. Besides, for all she knew, they weren't using these crystals as energy sources. Or perhaps the Planet had a way of regenerating. It wasn't her call, after all.