NationStates Jolt Archive

[OOC: Invited are archaeologists from The Most Glorious Hack, Gehenna Tartarus, Tsaraine and Treznor]

All in all, it was a beautiful day to have a picnic; the sun warmed the grass up perfectly, without making thinks unpleasant or muggy. Sarah giggled, chasing the dog, Barkley, around the field while her father read the newspaper, her mother and sister Kathy curled up on the blanket they're bought with them.

Kathy blinked as she heard a little yelp from where Sarah was playing, running over, not seeing her sister anywhere. After a while, she started hearing Sarah crying out faintly, 'Mom! Dad! Help!'

Searching around led to a large, new-looking hole in the field that seemed to go down quite a way. Kathy blinked, shouting down 'Sis?'

Sarah blinked as she looked around the cavern she'd fallen into, thankful for the carpet of moss that had broken her fall. It was...Strange. The shaft of light from the hole in the roof was all she really needed to see by with her night vision, and what she saw was a large cave with a flat floor covered in moss, with occasional stalagmites piercing it and rising up towards the stalactites that covered the ceiling. There were odd pools of water on the floor that glowed very slightly, and as her eyes got more used to the darkness, she could pick out a group of odd structures in the middle of the cave. She stepped towards it warily, the only sounds she could hear the faint drip of water in the cave or down one of the unpleasantly-shaped tunnels that snaked off into darkness, and the occasional chitter of an insect somewhere.

Sarah stepped over a fallen stone, glancing around. The ruin was vaguely circular, a group of arches and intricately-carved stones mostly collapsed and lying on the ground. In the centre stood a large statue, it's features long rendered indistinguishable by the passage of time.

Her sister finally managed to climb down, running over and hugging her, 'Sis, you're ok!' she smiled. She glanced around, 'Um, we should probably tell someone about this place...'

[Everyone sending someone, now's your time to arrive at an airport or however, next post is meeting with my team at a hotel. It's summery, not that cold but not that warm, either]

[tag!]

GMC Military Arms Airspace, Coming in to Land

A good thirty years ago, Researchers from the then-Commonwealth of Tsaraine had landed in GMC to conduct joint research into the X-001 fightercraft (OOC: Which goes to show how outdated by fighters are, but oh well). Now, Researchers from the Greater Ascendancy were again landing in GMC, this time for a much different purpose.

The Invincible People's Federation had asked for archaeologists, and archaeologists it had got, in the form of Researcher Commandants Kiranz Sche'daya and Riane Telhyazi. Both had prior experience in excavating eldritch ruins - Sche'daya in the Shogunate of Reploid Productions and Telhyazi in Anhierarch (OOC: The Arpean thing flopped halfway, but we got a nice summary of what would have happened, and in it Kiranz got to shoot at an ancient mad god thing. The Anhierarchean thing flopped sooner than that, so I don't know what the overall outcome was. Both of them, however, have seen Things Man Was Not Meant to Know).

Kiranz was, to be honest, looking forward to this rather less than Riane - after his experiences in the Shogunate, the older Researcher had retired to a post in Nova Reio cataloguing Early Sche pottery, and had only been moved from his seat at the insistence of Sukhoi ralQuera, the Archaeology Corps Commandant.

Riane, however, was looking forward to the Marshall Island dig - despite seeing things which defied rational explanation in Anhierarch (and crazy foreigners who supplied irrational theories to begin with), the young Hyazinari Researcher had, after that, gone on to digs in wilder and more colourful nations, and thoroughly enjoyed every second of it (well, almost every second ... being held up at gunpoint by looters in Sh*tholeistan was something she hadn't enjoyed much), and GMC was said, by the people who'd been there and the small Marshall Islander expat community in Tsaraine, to be a fun and reasonably safe place to visit. All told, Riane expected a nicely interesting, non-dangerous stretch of work (or play, depending on how you looked at it ... time goes fast when you're having fun, after all).

Having taken an Aesi Airlines (OOC: the Tsaraine-based major airline of Tsaraine and the Border States) plane from Scheighu Aerodrome to Rakenno in Ekatori, and thence an Aes-Arik Skylanes (OOC: the Ekatori-based airline of the Border States, and Aesi's major competitor) flight from Rakenno to Marshall Island (with stops in half a dozen interestingly third-world nations along the way), they came down at (OOC: forgive me, but I can't recall the name of GMC's capital, or that city's airport) without a hitch, and went to find their luggage.

(OOC: And apologies for all those OOC interruptions, too)

[Using the miracle of Fluid Time(TM), Prof. Moran will be involved here before 'To The Ends of The Earth' (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=348004). That is all.]

Prof. Daniel Moran and his assistant, Svetlana Rumiantsev, were sent pretty much as soon as word filtered down from the Dean that "something" had been found over in GMC. While Moran's specialty tended more towards things of a more sinister nature, his anthropological skills where without peer in the hallowed halls of Chiba City University. Svetlana, on the other hand, was nearing her Doctorate in Ancient Languages, her focus in non-human linguistics. This trip worked out nicely, as it would not only give her field experience (hopefully safer field experience than Moran's usual expeditions), but it would fulfill one of her few remaining requirements, and give her plenty of fodder for her dissertation.

The ride on the bullet train connecting the Hack to GMC under the ocean had been quite an experience; it was recently completed and opened to the public, and neither Moran nor Rumiantsev had used it before. In all honesty, it was what one might expect from a joint Hack-GMC project with no third party to inject a sense of 'reason' into it. The Tunnel was a vacuum with a Mach 1 train suspended inside. It allowed for exceptionally rapid, non-stop travel between GMC and the Hack; and only involved tunneling through rock and under roughly two hundred miles of ocean. Moran and Rumiantsev left the train station once they had arrived in GMC, quickly getting into a waiting car and heading to where they'd meet the rest of their team members.

Dr. Miriam Saltwell adjusted the shoulder strap for her carry-on and grimaced. I knew I should have left that journal home, but I couldn't resist. She looked around the lobby of the hotel and admired the architecture briefly before glancing at her travel companions. Dr. Howard Isen and Dr. Carol Banning were chatting quietly together, leaving her to her thoughts. She suppressed a flash of irritation at being left out; she was normally irritable after a long flight, and the storm they passed through didn't help matters any. The only relief was the fact that for once, no one had lost their luggage.

We're supposed to have fantastic, futuristic technology that makes things like flying through thunderstorms obsolete. So why did I just spend ten hours in the air? Her mind naturally shifted to thoughts of mass to energy ratios and the comparative differences between staying aloft for ten hours as compared to a forty-minute suborbital jump. By the time she comes out of her fugue, she becomes aware that the others are standing quietly, waiting for her. "What did I miss?"

"We've got the keys to our rooms, Ma'am." Howard offered her a plastic card with the hotel's name inscribed in gold lettering. "We're all on the sixteenth floor. I don't know about you two, but I plan to have a long, hot shower!"

Carol nodded her assent, and Miriam found herself relishing the thought of a bath. "Good idea. Thank you, I hadn't gotten that far yet. Let's go see what we're getting."

Professor Tasmin Barton looked up from the relic she was examining, and sighed slightly as she still felt no closer to unlocking its secrets than she had three days ago. She had been slowly sifting her way through the artefacts that had been bought back from her latest expedition, and had managed, with the help of her assistant, to log and break the code for many of the items that were slowly being unpacked a few at a time so as not to overwhelm the team. Putting the elaborately scribed box shaped curio on the desk, she turned as the younger man approached her.

“Guy, can you pop open the next crate, this is giving me a headache…” She stopped suddenly, a puzzled look coming over her face as she saw the excited expression on his. “What is it?” Hopefully some clue to the mystery of the box.

Guy Renshaw, seven years younger than the thirty-four year old professor, handed her a piece of paper, with a nod to indicate she read. “From GMC, seems they have uncovered something interesting…literally.”

Running her eyes over the paper, Tasmin smiled. “I’ll arrange the details with Morgan, hopefully we can be there within two days.” She looked at the cube sitting on the counter. “Get the team working on that.” Without another word she left, her mind whirling with plans for the trip ahead.

* * * * *

As planned, less than two days later, Tasmin arrived with Guy in GMC, accompanied by two field staff, who would be joining the expedition depending on what they learnt after the meeting with representatives. She lowered her sunglasses to cover her eyes as the stepped from the airport into transport that would take them to their hotel. Making herself comfortable, she began making notes, and read some reports relating to her last expedition. Without seeing too much of her surroundings, she and her team found themselves at their destination.

Imperial Square Hotel, Marshall City

Ruby Harrison checked her bags for the umpteenth time, frowning at Professor Ford's stare, 'When you find you've forgotten one of your notebooks or guides, don't you come crying to me' the young Naga said indignantly. To those who had never seen a Naga before, the most striking feature of Ruby would be her tail; instead of legs she had a long snake tail covered in scales that shone under the hotel lights. The main colours were pale green and light brown with black bands and odd white 'V' shaped markings; the pale brown matched her hair. As far as clothes, Ruby wore a loose tan jacket with numerous pouches and pockets, which turned into a rather complex skirt-thing at the bottom. She carried a backpack and a smaller bag slung over her shoulder.

Professor Jack Ford sighed, 'Too much organisation is the same as not enough, girl. Gets you nowhere fast. Sometimes you just have to strike out, and bugger your notes.' Ruby coughed theatrically as he lit his pipe; he ignored her. Ford was a middle-aged man on the verge of being old; a little heavier than he'd like to be and his hair and beard rapidly greying. Like Ruby, his clothes were mostly tan, with a white shirt under his jacket, and he had about half the number of bags and notepads with him.

Ruby smiled brightly as the other teams arrived, 'Heya! I hope you had a nice trip here?'

Professor Ford sighed, 'Professionalism, Ruby...I'm sorry. Welcome to the Federation, all of you...I'm sure you know why you're here. A few days ago a fairly complete and previously unknown ruin of some kind of holy site was discovered. Obviously my government requested the best to document and explore it, and here you are.' He grinned, 'Now, there's a train departing for the site tomorrow, in the meantime I suggest you get your gear in order and study up on the other sites of this type. Any questions?'

Daniel Moran was in good shape, the rumors were that when you spend half your time on expeditions running from demons, the options are to be fit or be dead. His age was hard to determine, as his face was quite weathered, his hair shock white, and his eyes ancient, but he carried himself almost like a twenty year old. When asked, he usually muttered something about having forgotten. The 'official' assumption was that he was in his forties.

Svetlana Rumiantsev was far more quiet than Prof. Moran, who tended to have no concept of (modern) social graces, usually prefering to be with her books and notes. Her method of organization probably paralleled Ruby's, except that most of her notes were electronic. Her raven hair was pulled back in a pony-tail as she smiled at Ruby and Prof Ford, "Nice to meet you too!"

Moran glanced sideways at Svetlana before turning to Prof Ford, "I've looked at the notes you provided, and I'm a little curious as to why you need all of us here. Holy artifacts, while quite fascinating, don't usually require an international team of this sort." He smiled slightly, "Or have I been mucking around in jungles so long that SOP* has changed?"

[* Standard Operating Procedure]

"Oh, you'd be suprised," Kiranz says morosely, interrupting. He seems to twitch slightly every time the words "holy site" come up. "They send international teams these days so that they can call up bigger emergency strike forces when eldritch horrors burst ravening from the ground." He doesn't seem to be joking.

"I must say that may not be quite correct," Riane adds, "I've been on several international digs where nothing has "burst ravening from the ground" and where nobody had to detonate any nukes.

"Riane Telhyazi," she says, extending a hand. "This is Kiranz Sche'daya - don't mind him, he got stuck in a firefight with a mad dragon-thing a few years back."

Carol nods sagely, the wisdom of one who has never actually met a dragon. "We've found most dragons to be quite mad. Most of the environmentalists in the Empire believe it's because we've been steadily pushing them toward extinction, but they don't dare breath a word of it where the Emperor could hear. Frankly, I think it's nonsense. That behaviour denotes sentience, and we've had no evidence to suggest such a thing."

Howard smirks and shakes his head. "Sentience, Carol's favourite subject. What time tomorrow do we meet for the train?"

Moran smiles at Riane, accepting her hand, "Professor Daniel Moran, and I've seen more than my fair share of 'eldritch horrors', but I get the feeling that isn't the case here," he glances at Ruby, "Is it?"

Svetlana blinks at the Imperial team, "I didn't know the Empire had dragons." She ponders a moment, "Odd, really. The Grand Dragons here don't seem mad at all. Aloof always seemed more accurate."

Moran cleared his throat softly, "Yes, well, dragon sentience and nonsentience is nice and all, but perhaps we can get back on subject here."

Tasmin was not a talker; she would speak when it was necessary but found that you could discover so much more by listening, although once she started on a subject, she tended to forget to stop. She greeted everyone with a smile, and an acknowledgement, as she introduced herself, then fell into her usual stance of listening.

While behind her, having also greeted everyone, Guy took out a notepad and made hand written notes, he was not good with electronics. On several occasions back in the labs, he had shut down the system on more then one occasion, earning himself the nickname ‘Jinx’. Fortunately, he made up for his technical short fallings by his knowledge and aid in the field, making him indispensable to Tasmin.