THE MARK OF THE ATLAS
Into the heart of the city you go.Down below the lowest levels of the city, somewhere beyond the twisty maze of passages, several of the paths converge in a huge underground cavern. Here the air is blissfully cool compared to the desert above. A single shaft of light shines down from somewhere on the surface; motes of sand drift lazily as if suspended in the light. Elsewhere, the cave is lit by small clusters of glowing fungus that live off the moisture collected down here. Dim but navigable for most.
But perhaps the most striking items in the area are the
monoliths. Great fragments of stone over three meters long, too smooth to be natural but too jagged to be whole either. Several of them glow from the pulse of energy running through them. Others, while dark, have recessed notches large enough for a person’s hand. And still another group seems nearly shattered, a larger fragment surrounded by smaller ones. All of them react when the interlopers draw close enough...
LIGHT
Upon closer inspection, the lit monoliths have a curious pattern worked into the tone. The symbols are rather arcane, but perhaps they make sense if one tilts one’s head and squints. This one has strokes that resemble tongues of flame. That one is covered in cascading, fluid lines. Another … well, that look more like a
warning sign than anything else.
Interacting with these monoliths results in a warning crackle and the scent of ozone before the monolith
opens. Something comes pouring out of it in response. Gushing water is the most common, matching up with the cascade monoliths; others open to flame or greenery or other odd things. And one
definitely opens up into a vacuum. Careful with that unless you want to have something sucked out into space.
Whatever connection they make is brief and non-traversable, but whatever comes through stays on this side.
DARK
The unlit monoliths aren’t nearly as flashy as their glowing brethren, but they have their own stories to tell. With the help of a little light (and the suit), the interlopers will find that these monoliths are covered from top to bottom in alien script. Most have at least one solid crack or chunk in them - at the juiciest parts! - but there may be enough left to be intelligible, given a little luck.
VISION
The last set hum with an ominous energy that belies their dilapidated appearance. Interlopers who approach these monoliths trigger strange images that float in the air. No two visions are alike, though they all share common themes. Silhouettes descending to the surface of the planet and spreading out across it. Exploring and interacting with an alien environment. There’s something deeply familiar about these shadows despite the variety of body types represented by them. The shape of their clothing is reminiscent of your own suit...
Other snippets are set in space. Here the silhouettes are a darker patch of black against the darkness of space. The mood in these images is strangely pensive, somewhat tense. These figures are searching very desperately for something.
There is one, though, that’s different from all the others. No silhouettes, no searching, no space. Only a shaft of light starting from a point beyond this planet’s moon. At first it’s a too-bright star; then, a solid beam stretching down to the planet itself. The light increases in intensity and breadth exponentially until it impacts physically with the surface of the planet itself. The eruption kicks up huge clouds of dust that race towards the city with all the heat and speed of a pyroclastic explosion. It rises up like a wave...and then crashes down, burying the city.
Eventually, each of the images go dark once again.
BROKEN
Amidst the myriad of strange monoliths and now-flowing water? Is some sort of chassis. The ruined frame of an old robot of some kind, easily as large as a cement mixer's chamber and just as tall. Most of it lies buried beneath the sand, stuck near the far end of one particularly large chamber within the caves' network. It takes a bit of walking to get there, but there's a reward to be had for those who find it:
The room is not empty.Standing in the exact middle is a strange, hulking figure. It stands at eight feet at least, a massive frame encased in black. Whether it's carapace or suit is impossible to tell, and whether or not it's
alive is another story altogether. It stands perfectly motionless, skull-like face staring ahead at the robot's husk as water pools in through cracks and recesses, giving the ground a glass-like appearance through which
tiny grass-like eels can be seen rising from tiny holes in the sand.
For all intents and purposes the figure seems nothing more than a statue.
Eerie.
OOC
There will be an
24-hour event encounter which runs from
Nov 26th at 8:00am EST to
Nov 27th at 8:00am EST. Feel free to let characters toy around & thread in the innermost areas of the city before the main event! Sections will go up in this entry and will be linked here when they are ready.
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Allura | OTA
[ Caution is a wise approach, but Allura's headstrong and stubborn, given to ignoring safety. It means, when she reaches the room with the monoliths, all she wants to do is touch them and try to figure out what they mean.
Her hand hesitates over the one with the warning sign, but a slight nudge and she touches it anyway. Luckily, she knows enough about space to skip back hastily and move onto something else. Like the dark ones, which pose less of a risk. ]
Any chance of understanding this writing?
[ She'd ask, of anyone nearby. It's certainly not familiar to her. ]
VISIONS
[ It wasn't too long ago for Allura that her ship was haunted. Well, not exactly haunted, the AI went corrupt, but there was still enough eeriness to the entire thing that the first vision she gets is deeply unsettling, not only because it's so familiar. But that doesn't keep her from touching another, and yet another.
The vision of space, the feeling of tension and desperation to find something is the one that does her, teaches her the better part of caution for the moment. She jerks away from the monolith, face troubled, and doesn't attempt to touch another after that. ]
What were you searching for?
WILDCARD
[ tag allura with anything, if you have an idea ]
MONOLITHS
Maybe I could have once. Do you...actually remember how to read your first language, since you woke up here?
[She knows she's not speaking Radchaii - forms of address in this new common tongue aren't intuitive to her. She knows she was conversant in hundreds of languages from dozens of planets. But she can't access any of that. She finds that more terrifying than their physical environment, really.]
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But now.
She tries to recall the Altean script, and though she can vaguely picture the basic syllables, there's nothing. ]
No.
[ Whether she's responding to the question or to the fact that another part of her planet has been torn away from her is anyone's guess. But she squares her shoulders and turns to her companion. ]
This planet is very odd. No one seems to know anything about it, even people who have spent time in space.
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I have a very good memory, generally. I do remember star charts. None of them fit the sky here.
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Is it because our memories have been tampered with or because this planet is in a different place than anyone's encountered?
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That may be impossible to know, at least for as long as we are on this planet.
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[ And honestly, there's nothing she wants more. ]
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You're right. One foot in front the other, until we reach those goals. [Or die trying. ]
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And until we do get off this planet, it just means we have to keep looking for answers. [ And hope there is something, eventually. ] These monoliths look like they could provide something, if we could just figure it out. [ And she reaches out to touch the monolith, frowning at the words. ]
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I wish that I could. But it makes about as much sense as most of the other information we've found here.
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She peers at Clara when the woman approaches, then turns her attention back to the monoliths. ]
If we could only decipher one and start putting together an explanation.
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[He's the key to figuring out so much of this, but Clara wants to solve things in her own right. But it feels like dealing with the writings here have her mind in a jumble, like she's a child trying to learn something confusing in primary school.]
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[ There doesn't seem to be a consistent pattern that Allura can spot in the writing, but language was never her top skill, though she learned plenty of languages when dealing with other planets. ]
None of this makes any sense.
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[The fact that nothing here works the way it should and they never can settle for long before another disaster or new things to get used to pop up has her mind on edge. It feels like no matter how hard they work to come up with a solution for the language, it keeps everyone from figuring it out completely.]
I feel like we should be making more progress than we have.
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This is better than what we knew when we arrived, but you're right. I wonder if something is deliberately keeping us back.
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[Which was very concerning to her. But it feels like no matter how many steps forward their group takes, something happens to keep them from getting too far or feeling too comfortable.]
I'm still convinced someone's watching us. If we figure out who and where they might be, maybe we'll be able to get some of the answers we need.
[It's a ridiculous, silly idea. But it still makes her smile anyway, because it's something that's nice to hope for.]
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Silly and ridiculous is easy. Which is why she grins in return. ]
I've got a map, and we'll start filling it in, maybe that will help us figure this out.
[ ... which: ] Do you have the map, by any chance? If not, I can transfer a copy to you.
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monoliths
[Though he can't fault the girl for wanting to explore. He'd do the same himself, if only he had the tools for it at this very moment. There isn't even low tech he could retrofit to uncover the secrets of the monoliths.
What he wonders, more than anything is how these monoliths glow, and why they're here. He could say he knows nothing of strange occurrences, but...]
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[ And that's one of the most frustrating parts of this entire situation. Allura's had training and knows alien languages, but this seems beyond her ken. She glares at the monolith. ]
If they were left here for a reason, they certainly are not helpful.
[ Which isn't exactly fair of her and she knows that, but it feels an appropriate time to vent. ]
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[His tone is more casual than insulting or demeaning. Any foreigner wouldn't find use for this.]
Think of it a different way. You know what you can't do. Now look at what you can do. [Bruce puts his hands on his hips, observing the monoliths.] Let's start with the basics: why would anyone write on a wall?
[If he's going to fully investigate, he should might as well impart a little knowledge. They're all as much on the same page, and while he could feasibly do this alone, there wouldn't be any point to it when so many lives are possibly at stake.]
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So she tilts her head, looking at the monoliths again. ]
Lack of anything else to write on would be the first reason. Walls are a large expanse of blank space, useful if you lack anything else. Sturdier than paper, not likely to encounter mishaps as something electronic.
But carving words on a wall takes some amount of effort.
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So someone wanted to make a statement. In Roman times, back on my Earth, people would paint graffiti all over the city to express their anger or impatience. Statues and walls had carved words to commemorate something or someone. [Bruce glances upward, following the text to the top of the monolith.] This wasn't anything ordinary.
[He could easily finish the train of thought, but he lets it be. He wants to see what this young woman could figure out from context clues alone. Though he's assuming everything here operates the same as Earth, it's at least a better basis than simply guessing.]
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She picks up his thread, musing over the possibilities. ] Considering how many monoliths there are, it's unlikely they carved these out of anger. Too much effort went into them. So commemoration is likely, for important events. [ She pauses, frowning at the monolith, then peering around it to look at Bruce. ] It could be anything, but the fact that they are in caves and not in the city imply holding on to memories that might otherwise be forgotten or leaving messages for people to find.
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[He pauses briefly to think. Maybe they're not forgotten...]
Maybe we weren't supposed to find these stories. They didn't want to forget them, but they didn't want to remember them either. These could be old records.
[Records of war and loss, so he imagines. History is painful, but history needed to be written and remembered in some way. The hidden history of this place could very well be carved upon these monoliths.]
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So it's possibly old records. Still need to figure out what they say. It might explain what happened here, give us clues on why we're here. Any suggestions?
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