[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.]

Comments

Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[ten_fwd_npcs]

Ascending a low, spiral staircase, the group enters one of several laboratories housed in the facilities here on Alemar III. This lab (and the adjoining library below), are dedicated to the work of the five archeologists mining the mountains behind the drilling operations. There are computer terminals lining the wall to the right of the door, and directly in front of the group is a large, round object. This is a sophisticated cataloging machine, which can take and produce holographic images of any artifact, determine its carbon date, and provide other scientific details about it. As such, it stores all info on every artifact uncovered and logged to date. Currently, an archeologist is placing a clay pot on top of the flat sensor, and a line of blue energy begins to travel up the pot, taking in every dimension. Soon, a perfect hologram of the pot appears directly overhead.

"As you can see, this lab is being used to clean and catalog the artifacts we are uncovering during our work here. Despite being related to the original settlers of Alemar III, we don't know much about them. Most of what you see was excavated from a cave a few kilometers north, which we've determined held some significance for the colonists who settled here in the mountains. We've found remnants of food offerings and precious metals, which suggest they used the cave for some form of religious ceremony. Please, feel free to have a look around at some of the artifacts, but do not touch anything."

All empty tables and flat surfaces are covered with artifacts and the necessary tools to study, clean, and log them. There are old paper volumes, painted jars, utensils for eating and working, musical instruments, eve some paintings on canvas as well as rock that has been carefully removed for study. The bookshelves on the lower level of the room contain a number of books and data pads, as well as glass cases protecting some of their more precious finds. Behind one glass case is a particularly beautiful geode, the clear crystals within sparkling brilliantly. All around the room, archeologists are busily at work. They are not all Almarian, some are human and others simply humanoid.

While members of the tour look around at all the artifacts, a particularly beleaguered engineer comes up to Dr. Sk'Amor with a report for her. The seismic equipment is acting up -- some are registering tremors and others aren't, in patterns that don't make much sense. They don't follow typical geologic activity. While she must agree this is curious, her first priority is their visitors, so she tells him to keep an eye on the readings and let her know if there are more changes.

"If you'll follow me, I'll show you to where we are currently excavating," she calls, smiling like the immaculate tour guide she is.

Loki

[scarred_grin]

Sigyn hadn't wanted to come along. He can't blame her, really--twelve thousand years underground can leave a person less than enthusiastic about a bit of spelunking, and anyway someone had to stay behind to babysit the whiskey. But he wishes she were here, not because she'd enjoy it, but because then he'd have something to do with his hands besides don't touch anything.

So he's got his hands clasped firmly behind his back as he leans close to look at things. It's interesting to see other people's offerings, a window into what they hold dear and what they're willing to give in order to ensure it.

For his brother's people, it was blood for blood, suffering (preferably other people's) for power. For Loki himself, he'd never wanted blood; instead, people had cast their children's baby teeth into the hearth-fire, a token both worthless and priceless, endearingly precious yet something even his people could afford. Loki, watch over my child. Make her clever. Make him strong of heart. And he'd made their offerings into a necklace, baby teeth strung like beads, and he resists the urge to touch that now too.

Hands still clasped firmly behind him as he leans in to watch the scanning of the pottery. What would the people who'd left these gifts think about their offerings being disturbed? If they were still alive, that is.

[queenofmay]

"It's quite beautiful, isn't it?" Marian said, quietly, hoping she wasn't disturbing the man's intense study.

She wonders a lot this last half of the year, spent across different worlds and universe, what is left the world she left behind. Her first, if not her only, and the only one that was truly hers. What was left aside from being in a million storybooks. It's not as simple as opening a different book and being told Sherwood still stood somewhere, and England still existed well into the far future.

In the same way she looks at the scanning and wonders, who carried this pot and what it might have meant to them.

[scarred_grin]

"I've always been fascinated by objects," he says. "What people hold dear, what they want to bring with them to the next life. What they think will buy the affection or ward off the wrath of whatever forces they believe in."

Peaceful offerings. No human or Almarian sacrifices have been found, so far as he knows.

"It must've been nice here--but I wish we could see some of their cities. I wonder if they're buried like Pompeii. The entire planet an archaeological picnic."

[queenofmay]

It's an odd idea. But then Marian has lived an odd life.

She hadn't ever supposed on taking anything with her to heaven, on that off chance the sword that pushed straight through her body was the end. That God would want anything seemed strange. So was the idea she was positive Aslan would not, but her thought about God was more slippery and uncertain. It was what happened, she supposed, when you spent the better half of a decade sipping tea and running security with other Gods.

"Pompeii?" Marian looked at him a touch curious. Even though the same could be said of most of what he said.

[scarred_grin]

"It was a Roman town," he says. "Nice place, prosperous--but they built it too close to a volcano, and it erupted and buried the whole area in ash. Which was great for archaeologists; here they've got a Roman town frozen in time, dirty graffiti and all. They can see how the people really lived."

Books leave things out. They record what people want to record, and that rarely includes the everyday life of ordinary people.

"But it wasn't so great for the people who used to live there. There were these empty spaces in the ash layer, and the archaeologists poured plaster into them, dug the ash away, and there they had the forms of the victims, frozen in their last moments. It's harder to stay detached when you're looking at exactly how some long-dead people huddled together, terrified."

All this pottery? Made by people who suffered a similar fate. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. They wouldn't be here looking at it if not for that tragedy.

[queenofmay]

Marian listened to him, wonder turning toward something darker. Something that looked like a mix of sadness and horror. Even if neither of them were her master, because she'd made the choice to walk through them, through her own worst versions of them, with her eyes wide open. Even into death. Twice.

"That sounds horrible." People frozen in their deaths for an incredible length of time until discovered.

Like dying, on and on and on, buried under a mountain, for an endless round of years.

Aibous and OTA

[tanteiotaku]

To be honest, most of this was completely over Shotaro's head. He kept his hands to himself for the most part, but he did occasionally poke or prod at things around him. Never with any intensity, really. Until he accidentally knocked over a small stack of books. He brought his hand up to adjust his hat, trying to look like he hadn't had anything to do with it.

All the same, he was glad to be off the ship. Now if only they hadn't traded one technologically controlled atmosphere for another, and get somewhere with a proper amount of breeze. Ah, well, beggars can't be choosers.

Watching Philip get so excited about all the science brought a fond smile to his face, though. Even if the content was beyond him, hearing the excited chatter of his partner made it worth it. While at home, he might have a bit less patience, here he didn't have any cases he was trying to work on, so it wasn't as though he had anything to distract him from.

But he gave that interruption a bit of a curious look. Something didn't feel right. Someone would only consider interrupting the good doctor if they thought it was important. He filed that away for later, though. The doctor didn't seem concerned, so he didn't get too worried about it.

He draped his arm across Philip's shoulders. He flipped his hat off and attached it to his belt in the usual way. "Helluva setup they've got here."

[decideformyself]

They'd been on the Enterprise for so long that the novelty had started to wear off, and Philip had just grown bored and restless. This was a wonderful change of pace.

Though he tried to keep his ears open for whatever information Dr. Sk'Amor might have to impart, Philip also stopped to stare at basically every little thing they passed. The technology in the science lab was of particular interest. He rambled at Shotaro about how advanced everything was, here.

He shot Shotaro a fondly skeptical look at that arm drape, but he didn't shrug away from it. Instead he just gestured to the cataloguing machine's holographic display. "Do you see this? It's a far cry from the novelty holographic imaging of Earth in 2011."

[tanteiotaku]

He really couldn't resist reaching his hand out to prod at the image. But his hand passed right through it. He dropped his arm from around Philip. "Haaah?" Yeah, totally over his head. "This is all pretty crazy..."

But the actual physical artifacts he could understand better than all the technology around him. It was weird how a people that were once similar could end up so disparate that they were such a mystery. Well, maybe they had it figured out, anyway.

[decideformyself]

Shotaro's bafflement was kind of endearing. Not as endearing as it had been a few weeks ago, when Philip was freshly restored and everything about Shotaro was endearing, but still somewhat so.

He leaned in closer to get a better look at the holographic image. "It's a simple progression of technology. I'm sure that our world will develop something similar in time. In fact, with my increase in knowledge after viewing everything this time period has to offer, it's inevitable."

[tanteiotaku]

He chuckled a little bit. "Are you saying you might try to build some of this stuff when we get home?" He really wasn't surprised. He'd probably found some room in that brain of his for all kinds of Starfleet tech. But then, having a replicator in the office might be kind of handy. Akiko wouldn't complain at all, it would reduce most of their expenses to nil.

[decideformyself]

"I very well might." He grinned. "It would revolutionize everything!"

Jonas

[a_quick_study]

If Major Carter or Colonel O'Neill were here, they'd almost certainly be commenting on the grin that sparks to life across Jonas' face as soon as he enters the laboratory.

It's amazing.

There are so many things here that Jonas lags behind from the tour group, leaning down to stare into the cabinets, first at the geode then, moving on, to some of the examples of metals.

"Offerings to their gods," he murmurs. There's nothing there that looks anything like the Goa'uld artefacts he's used to cataloging, and that's of as much interest to Jonas as the things themselves. This is a world that wasn't settled by Stargate, that didn't suffer from the ravages of slavery to the Goa'uld.

He's checked what seem to be the most notable history texts he can access in the Enterprise's computers, and none of them make any mention of the Goa'uld. Or the Stargate. Or the Ancients. Some of the stories are there, in their mythological forms, but none of the historical facts he know to be true.

And that makes this archaeology even more interesting to him.

Re: Jonas

[psychowolf]

Clay hears the other man comment and looks over at him. The professor smiles at him, at the enjoyment he is getting.

Walking over to the table the other man is studying. "Most civilization's have offering to gods at their roots. I'm curious about which gods they are giving the offerings to. How they choose their gods." It's rare for him to meet another like him, someone that seems that passionate.

Re: Jonas

[a_quick_study]

"Yeah," Jonas agrees, looking up from reading the caption on one of the offerings. "I've studied a lot of the archaeology they leave behind."

He shrugs as he straightens. "But, uh, I'm more used to cultures where their gods were really aliens who enslaved them, not ones where the religion just developed naturally out of the culture."

Jonas' head tilts to one side, curious. He gives an easygoing smile.

"I don't think we've met. I'm Jonas Quinn. You, uh, sound like you know a bit about archaeology."

Re: Jonas

[psychowolf]

"Clayton Danvers" he offers. "I'm an anthropologist." he frowns, "I was about to start teaching for a couple of months when I found myself here."

Now Jonas has Clay's attention, "Aliens as gods" the look on his face shows that he is considering it. "I theorize that many of the animal gods who demonstrate intelligence were perhaps shapeshifters." which he can understand why they would be worshiped.

"Where were these aliens from?" because he wants to know more about these aliens, and the religions that they raised.

Re: Jonas

[a_quick_study]

He can't help it. He grins.

"I didn't know there was an anthropologist around. I've done a little anthropology, too." He shrugs. "I've dabbled in a lot of social science." That's understating it, with his academic record back on Kelowna, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that what he'd learned back on his homeworld prepared him for his work with SG-1, and prepared him to be fascinated by this world.

"Shapeshifters?" Jonas' head tilts to one side with interest. "I don't know so much about animal gods. The Goa'uld are parasites, they take human hosts and enslave humans to serve them. They're all over the Milky Way, but they come from a planet we call P3X-888 originally. That was a long time ago, though."

Re: Jonas

[psychowolf]

"Anthropomorphic religion's are my specialty."

"How long have they been in power? These Goa'uld. How do they control so many people on so many worlds? At least on Earth few cultures built on enslavement tend to end with bloody battles." his eyes are gleaming as he asks these questions, he is very interested.

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[psychowolf]

Now this room is the reason Clay got into that horrifying contraption and came down to the surface of this dead planet. He walks over to the cataloging machine and starts to 'play' with the controls. He is not as technologically proficient as many of the other newcomers but he is a quick study.

The academic is studying the artifacts for himself. Particularly anything that has to do with that cave. After all religion is his specialty. In fact he wonders if they anthropomorphised any creatures on this planet. If they worshiped them. How did they pick their gods? Some are obvious, most cultures tend to worship the sun and moon, the rain. He wonders if these settlers were like that as well. Though if they arrived by spacecraft did that mean that their religion was further evolved? Though according to these archaeologists these people provided offerings...

The werewolf is wrapped up in academic queries as he studies the artifacts. For the first time since he has arrived that tweed jacket and slacks seem to suit him. He actually looks like he is professor, or could be.

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[do_your_duty]

"Didn't they just ask you not to touch anything?"

That would be the question of the woman standing not far too back of group.

She's all hard lines, from her expression to her posture to the black leather of her outfit and the severe tight braid of her long dark hair. It's not even that she very specifically cares. But she knows how these kinds of place run, and the tour lady who still hadn't run out of explanations and things to tell them did just say.

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[psychowolf]

Clay doesn't dignify that with an answer, mostly because he knows what he is doing so there is no reason for him not to touch. He does turn towards her because he doesn't like someone behind him. When he turns he can tell by her stance that she is a warrior.

Instinctively he stands a little taller, but not in a threatening manner, just recognizing that she isn't to be taken lightly. A sign of respect. Whether she takes it that way or not is another story, but that is what is his intent.

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[do_your_duty]

Even if he doesn't move from the controls, she watches the posturing change right before her eyes after he looks at her. Life as a soldier, since before memory, and generally from conception back and back and back, it's hardly the first or even hundredth time she's watched it happen.

He doesn't defend or apologize, and she doesn't shift. Not to call anyone, to step close or to step away. It makes her think of a standoff, but one that doesn't involve firearms. She always liked those ones better. But even though she has her pulse pistol, her hand isn't on it. This isn't that.

Evenly, she asked, "What are you doing?"

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[psychowolf]

Not that he feels any compulsion to explain himself he calmly assess the situation and reminds himself this is a social affair. He gives a sigh that would be inaudible to human ears, as he thinks about how much he misses the others, the others would do the talking for him so he could just stand there and glare. But the others aren't here so he must do it. He must ... socialize. At least she is blunt, he respects that.

"I am studying the artifacts that they have cataloged. Learning about the people that once lived here."

Re: Science Lab & Library: Aboveground Facilities, Upper Level

[do_your_duty]

It's the kind of answer that would interest John, she's sure. Or that tech. Or the other people in this room. It's the kind of answer that slides right over Aeryn's head, rather uninterestingly. The looking, and the reason. But science and history bored her. Especially, random and unattached, no part in taking her home or needing her attention. "Why."