NationStates Jolt Archive

The polished surfaces of the great spire that rose out of the decayed and archaic looking city below it seemed a world apart from the dreary looking existence of the people inhabiting the confused jumble of buildings, both newer looking and otherwise. The people might call it an ivory tower if they possessed the will to gaze inside, for the ruler of this planet, Karia, the moderately selfish she is usually called, enjoyed nothing more than making this grey and crumbled landscape look even more so.

As her soldiers marched through the streets below, occupation forces in all but name, she glanced out a window at the deadly storms that have for longest memory blanketed this planet, and thought how it was so very unfair that she had to be effectively bound to this tower, for as strict a ruler as she is, she was still assigned government of a city and planet that made Taris look like a bright bundle of joy.

If one cares to look into the deeper levels of the city, it becomes obvious that what happiness the people possess is leeched away even more so, even the soldiers of their master being fewer in number. For here is closer to the reason this city was founded in the first place, with human construction giving way to cracked and broken ruins.

Bandits and other more garden variety scum may have plagued these parts in times past, but with the coming of the grey armoured soldiers and hooded priest-of-sorts, a more focused evil took possession of this lawless place.

For they had a purpose, a mission, even, and at the very end of this spiral of human misery lay their target, what appears to be the heart of the ruins, covered in a strange alien text, walls draped in almost worn away stories.

These first 'explorers' of the planet's new rulers are little more than the filth they replaced, scratching and digging away at what they believe to be objects of power with all the fervour of one possessed by greed and lust for new authority.

And so it is, mere weeks into their efforts that one particularly well placed explosive charge collapses a part of these ruins, ending the life of a few, and yet what this exposes brings only looks of new life, or rather, new opportunities to their superiors.

Few remain about their work, nor even care so much as to bury their fellow workers when they gaze upon this, a great metal circle, one so ancient as to look like stone. Stone with many a symbol upon it, symbols repeated in a pattern, a pattern echoed in a small now softly glowing pillar mere metres from the circle.

Garek, the taskmaster of this sad and sorry group ceases gawking long enough only to start fiddling with the pillar, then gesturing angrily at his followers, themselves keen on salvaging what looks like a very valuable piece of antiquity.

Mere minutes into this scene, seemingly out of a novel about tomb robbing, and the circle begins to glow, fiercely now, with a noise that seems as in response to Garek's poking.

Garek has but a moment to gaze at the great circle, his followers staring half in awe, and half in barely restrained greed, before a powerful, almost aquatic blue blast erupts from the centre of these people's immediate wants, lighting this newly exposed chamber up for the briefest of moments, and when it receeds, one sees only a shimmering pool of the same aquatic blue, and more disturbingly, a lack of the grey coated men and women in it's immediate location.

Garek may be many things, but to these people, he is one to be obeyed, and so is generally the first to react to half of his expedition being disappeared in the most grisly of senses. Already not the most gentle looking of men, his face turns decidedly harsher, as he barks orders to his men both to investigate-and to avoid wholesale looting when they do.

A smarter person might have called for help, might have sent for new equipment, yet these small minded ones are possessed by a sudden need to do more than gaze, indeed, follow their masters orders, only partly because of a learned avoidance of punishment for disobedience.

Six men, and two women venture into this shimmering pool, not knowing if it was going to kill them, some maybe silently wishing for it to do so, if only out of a wish to avoid a more grisly death at the hands of their superiors.

~~~~

And yet it doesn't, for as these men and women disappear to their comrades, they appear on the other side of this seemingly mystical portal, worlds apart, even, for as they open their eyes they gaze upon green, lush green, so very different from the filthy ruins they were in mere moments ago.

Lura and Guron, the only two among them with any real intelligence, immediately assert their authority, proper or not, by barking orders for their new minions to follow them.

Lura is dressed in nothing more than typical Fleet uniform, believing herself to be of some importance, grubby from work though it is. Guron is more of a social leech, and so wears the same uniform, only with a possibly unjustly earned mark of rank on it's shoulders.

Guron growls at the sorry few here, attempting to get them to gather and get into line to follow his master's orders. Or, at least, his words are, his thoughts are only of the gain of power, as always.

Lura is more down to earth for one of her kind, and so gathers her wits enough to peer at their new surroundings, content to let her new apparent equal do all the work of disciplining this rabble..

The stargate stood at the rough centre – along with its dialling device – of a wooden henge, a flat area of earth with a ditch around it, with elaborately carved wooden posts. These were arranged in concentric circles, the first, as high as the stargate, with a pair of its pillars acting as support, and at lower levels, a plinth with steps and a ramp up to the gate to aid passage through it. Beyond, in the centre of the inner circle, a raised dais, perhaps with some ritual purpose, supported another stone/metal ring. Around that wooden dais, more steps led down onto the earth below, and a worn path.

Another dialling device stood on another extension of the platform, near the opposite side from the stargate. The script all around, on both the high immediate pillars, and the two lower rings, all capped with a polished redwood at the top level.

If any of them had any skill in recognising ancient earth languages, they’d possibly grasp that the strange cuts decorating the squared off sides of the pillars to be ogham. And if they’d been sufficiently erudite enough to translate, they would have found it spelling out the praises of one called ‘Tem’ whose power and might were gratuitously described along with the vast size of his domain.

They would have been more likely to look around at the sights around them. Rolling green hills, variously covered in trees and grasslands, and several villages and towns, linked by a set of paved roads, one of which led to the henge itself.

These towns had an unusual architecture, somewhere between early medieval European – thatched, pointed rooves – and Mediterranean – white plaster walls, often adorned with murals, which, if one had decent binoculars, could be seen to be depictions of various figures in roles of benevolence.

Of course, there wasn’t much time to do anything, as, a few minutes after, as, in the dead centre of the circle, metal rings suddenly propelled themselves up into the air, and a searing flash appeared between the five heavy rings.

Standing there were five hefty, very large, men in gleaming metal armour, with hefty breast plates that made them look almost feminine. Each seemingly had no hair, wearing a steel skullcap on their heads instead, that conformed closely to their heads. They carried long staves, and some kind of pistol. They seemed to be from several earth ethnicities, all bearing oval tattoos with a rising sun inside on their foreheads.

“Identify yourselves and your business in the name of Atum…” one said, the largest and burliest, whose loincloth, over his kilt, looked more elaborate, indicating rank, in surprisingly perfect English, and then stopped, looking at the olive uniforms of the intruders, “Jaffa! Kree!” the leader snapped, and as one, the newcomers pulled blue-steel devices from their belts, which snapped into an ‘open’ position with an electronic whine.

“Aliens, drop your weapons! Who are you? What do you want?” the leader demanded, pointing his pistol at whoever looked most important, this being Guron, he discounted the other ‘leader’ on account of her gender. Paranoia about alien invasion was hardly limited to humans, after all…

Lura, as obsessively self important as she is, had enough of a spark of reason to let Guron take the lead here, for indeed she thought that if this went awry, she could finally assert control over what Guron possessed. For it had been the two's constant and bitter feuding that had prevented them from rising above the position of bootlick to an expedition leader in the first place!

Guron, being the more..direct of the two, ignores or rather, fails to notice entirely Lura's shuffling of the others over to her side of the field, as he's more preoccupied with forming a response to these men, who look to Guron as if they've worn out what little patience he had, not the greatest of feats, obviously. Not only failing to head these creatures commands, rather doing the opposite, he unholsters a particularly brutal looking flechette gun, swiftly enough that one wonders how he simply hasn't shot his superiors in times past.

"Thick witted creatures! Bow to me!"

One doesn't need to guess the response of their aggressors, though Lura is already making her best attempts to make it seem as if Guron's even more of a lowlife than he quite visibily is. Attempts that mostly involve using what limited abilities she possesses to cause an air of increased hostility to hover about Guron's person-one he would certainly notice if he were doing much other than thinking how he would cause Lura to clean up the corpses of these men!

For the most part the infantry of Lord Atum were universally regarded as ‘sucking.’ This was not unjustified, indeed, most jaffa warriors were simply embarrassing in their ineptitude, whenever encountering foreigners.

Fortunately, Atum had at least a few thousand who could be relied upon not to trip over their staff weapons when confronted with something new. A thousand-strong battalion of those rather better guards, administered as a detachment of the Palace Guard (who looked radically different) was informally known as the Gate Guard, These were the jaffa with the rather superior armour who were now confronting the intruders.

The Academy of Edfu was where most of Atum’s armies trained (and a place that ejected or killed over seventy percent of applicants) and it generally did a good job of instilling loyalty to the jaffa. Which meant that none of these – superior specimens – felt particularly impressed by Guron’s claim.

“Jaffa,” the leader said, quietly, seeming to be wavering in indecision, “hol mel!”

Then he shot Guron in the eye.

The goa’uld Zat’nik’tel was arguably the most common weapon in the domain of Lord Atum, extensively used by both military jaffa particularly those assigned to starships and urban areas, and the clergy alike. It was favoured by official decree as a weapon because of its reduced lethality. The clergy could shoot blasphemers with it, without killing them, and engendering the same kind of resentment as they would with other weapons.

It worked by sending a pulse of energy understood by no jaffa that took a wavering, lightning like form, into the target. As a rule, it was nearly impossible to kill a human with one shot. But that one shot usually caused the victim to black out from the sheer pain of it, if not, usually crippling them for a time with spasms of pain and disorientation.

Of course this jaffa, Mad’rak, had never shot anyone in the eyeball with the weapon before, and was curious about the effect. He supposed it would have to wait until later, though.

This was because he’d been shot. A sometimes forgotten limit of all but the most advanced hand weapons (which, oddly enough, Mad’rak had seen used, in the form of the goa’uld 'ribbon device') was that the recoil limited the momentum of projectiles, so when Madrak was shot in the chest, he wasn’t hurled from his feet, nor tipped backwards, thanks to rather impressive balance.

Which didn’t mean that a bunch of wide angle pieces of finned metal hurtling into him didn’t hurt. He had armour, of course, far better than most jaffa did, a lightweight trinium composite material second only to the shield projecting armour of the Palace Guard and the Kull Warriors in durability (and rather easier to maintain). The chest plate was hard, and thick, able to absorb the force in its foam like middle layers.

Of course, the rest of his armour wasn’t so effective. His arms sizzled from slashes of flechettes breaching the chainmail there, and he was sure he had several cuts in his face from shots deflected up over the breastplate and the collar.

Still, he was no mere human. The jaffa prided themselves on being tough and hardy, and Mad’rak was no exception, quite the opposite. He put his pistol away, seeming to take no heed of the injury that ought to have immobilised that arm, and leaned his head back, thinking meaningfully for a moment.

The impression of invulnerability was important to Jaffa, so, even though he was actually in rather immense pain, it didn’t show as, in response to his thoughts, the slightly dented collar snapped outward, sheets of metal seeming to appear as if by magic, lacing together and then seeming welded in place, forming a forward-leaning hawk-headed helmet, that turned to stare at Lura.

Mad’rak’s voice was radically different, not only emerging from the glistening beak of the Horus helm, but electronically processed, anonymous and impersonal. “Tar, Kree! Drop your weapons and surrender...” he said, pointing the staff in the general direction of the intruders and thumbing a key that made its head split into quarters, revealing a crackling gun barrel between them, “Or die!”

Despite the fact that he was in a rather astonishing amount of pain, he was greatly reassured by the fact that these intruders reacted normally when shot… Confident, even.

Guron collapsed to the ground in a crumpled heap, and if one paid enough attention, one would've noticed Lura step behind one of her decidedly unfortunate companions. Guron's form lay on the ground barely moving, clutching his face, almost frozen in an agonized and angered look, only producing a grin of sadistic glee from most of the unlucky few here, except for the one man standing in front of Lura, a knife to his back, and a smile on her face.

Lura waves a little at Mad'Rak, even, while gesturing with the knife for her poor minion to do the actual work of surrendering. He responds by dropping his rifle and kneeling just slow enough for Lura to hide the knife behind her back and mutter a curse at the doomed one. The others follow suit, with Lura notably being the last to do so, a murderous grin evident. All in all, one gathers that for an archaeological expedition group, they're carrying an unusually large amount of firepower, compensating in offensive force for some other percieved lack in character. A lack in character most obvious, for some of them are looking decidedly cowardly, like trapped rabbits, trapped, grey uniformed, intellectually lacking rabbits.

The hawk head nodded once, then turned to regard the four other jaffa that were with it. “March the prisoners to the town,” it swivelled back to look at the Sith again, “Take your Ha’shak,” Mad’rac gave Guron a hard kick in the flank as he spat the pejorative, “and walk on the road!”

He returned his look to the other jaffa again, “Leave their weapons here. I will send reinforcements. Jaffa Kree!” he snapped, and walked over to the rings in the floor again as the other jaffa spread out, waving sternly at the ‘archaeologists’ and gesturing with their pistols for them to take to the path, keeping a respectable distance from their prisoners at all times, ready to fire at the slightest provocation.

Mad’rac stepped back to the rings, his staff closing back to the storage position again, and he pushed a stud on the armour on the back of his left hand. The rings shot up around him once more, and he was gone in a flash.


Another set of rings flashed down from the ceiling of a white room that sloped as though it was a blunted off cone, and he reappeared. The walls of this room were filled with murals of great jaffa heroes in battle, slaying enemies of Atum with thunderbolts and sun-bolts. One part of the wall had a depiction of Atum emerging from a stargate and trampling his enemies, so that jaffa using the rings to get to the stargate would know which way to face.

He switched the hawk helmet off, having it retreat into his collar, and dropped his weapon. Then he gritted his teeth loudly and limped across the room, tossing his staff weapon haphazardly aside and leaning on the wall, before collapsing into the open-air ready room of his unit. It actually looked out onto one of the streets, having the ambiance of some sort of open air café, rather than a military base. Uphill, it had a fine view of the stargate, just in case the automatic detection system failed.

He collapsed into a deeply padded seat, and began to remove his armour, first taking the collar and its attached breastplate off, over his head…


The walk, as forced marches go, would be quite pleasant. Birds singing in the trees, the occasional ferret-like creature diving across the path with a skitter of little claws and agitation. Of course, aside form their guards, the Sith were most likely to be watching the guards, who marched in lock step, three wide across the path, with another bringing up the rear, three paces behind the humans, their weapons constantly trained at the backs of their prisoners. The jaffa took no chances, made no mistakes – aside from leaving the sith’s weapons behind and unguarded back at the stargate, but Mad’rac’s first order of business when he sat was, aside from sending for someone to attend to his wounds, to dispatch more troops to secure the gate. If the Sith looked back a few minutes into their walk they would see more jaffa, more lightly armoured, appearing from the rings, spreading out around the henge, about twenty in all. Some wore the same hawk helmets as Mad’rac had, those looking in the direction of the prisoners especially used their helmets, which included means to bring distant objects into view. Shortly thereafter curving, vaguely falconiform fighters shrieked overhead, apparently to keep an eye on the Sith.

At a glance, it might be easily thought that Lura and the others were having quite the joyful time, except for the poor unfortunate that Lura had made carry Guron, who she quite absent mindedly pinched every now and then, mind still somewhere else, indeed, focused on just what she was going to do when she slit Guron's throat and stole everything he possessed. Compared to their usual daily activities this was almost literally a walk in the park, and they struck up a tune as they went, with Lura looking back to smile distractedly at one of the Jaffa.

One of the grey suited ones here, a man by the name of Kurak, cast annoyed looks at his captor, Lura, not the armoured ones, for in truth all here feared the one above them, feared, and despised, for Kurak had grown up on the desert planet of Nuri, stark opposite to this foul green that now surrounded them. For because of Glorious Leader's recruitment policies, few remained that originally hailed from a planet in the Fleet's home galaxy, and the few that did had usually aqquired a position of power by now, causing the ones that failed no end of jealousy and spite, only adding to that typical of their kind.

Life isn't clear or clean for most that serve in the Fleet, and even Dear Leader's destruction of the practice of slavery was beginning to lose ground, because even one of his abilities can only focus on so many things, and with various less than above board industries beginning to flare to life among ship Captain and minion alike, bothering to notice the suffering and rare joys of ones as low as the poor souls on this distant planet is far down on the list....

The town they marched into was a sprawling enough place, with a prosperous look, and a mix of technologies. The were a number of beasts of burden about, ranging from what appeared to be plough horses, to a breed of white lissom ponies with silken coats and expressive, and strangely blue, eyes, trotting about harnessed to traps. The population of the town appeared to not only be prosperous, but very much so.

It was a curious mix of looks and periods. The European-Egyptian look blended somewhere along the line with ‘wild west’ with open doorways with saloon doors and shining glass fronts to shops.

The ends of many buildings were decorated with devotional paintings that depicted a tall figure that radiated sunlight trampling dark figures before him. Here and there, another figure appeared, apparently the local devil, a figure of evil and wanton destruction, of children, apparently. This figure was typically chief amongst those shown being crushed underfoot.

The crossroads in the middle of the town had a huge statue in white gold of a hooded figure, whose face radiated light. With him was a woman of exceptional, exaggerated beauty, dressed in a similar cloak and hood, but with a more visible, arrogant tilt to her chin, and a faint pattern of long hair through her presumably delicate hood. Several locals lounged on benches around that statue, and, like almost everyone else, stared at the interlopers as they were marched past.

Mad’rak was sitting waiting, being attended by a lightly dressed jaffa priestess – anyone glancing at her would notice a strange pouch in her belly, about where her navel was – in crimson and gold. She was waving a palm sized device that emitted an orange glow at Mad’rac’s face. He wore several loosely woven plasters over small cuts on his face, and his arms were bandaged. The healing device used here was evidently rather primitive.

“Ah,” he said, “good. Take them to the cells.”

There was little further to travel, before reaching a building that resembled nothing so much as a lockup on a side-street. Complete with old fashioned iron bars, wooden bunks, and foul smelling buckets. “Inside!” one of the guards snapped, while another armoured jaffa warrior stood inside the building, guarding the door…

There were enough bunks for everyone but one. Guron, presumably, would be dumped on the floor…

The next few moments for the poor little group here generally consisted of Lura giving idle kicks to Guron's side, with the others cowering on the bunks, more afraid of Lura than being imprisoned, for to them this was turning out to be a particularly bright and happy day already, despite the circumstances. And they'd be right to be afraid, as Guron was unconcious and suffering ever greater bruises, Lura was the only one left with the presence of mind to think of an escape. Not that she was, her thoughts in that direction being a happy smile in the one guard's direction.

The fact that their future lay in the hands of, god forbid, aliens, would no doubt concern them later, yet for now, the architecture and people of this place were the last things on their small, feeble and frightened minds.

Meals were four a day; food in the realm of Atum was kept plentiful by a process of regulation and transfer occasionally personally overseen by the god himself, and involving hundreds of ships and containers, as well as the use of the stargate network. They consisted, in this cell, of bowls of something that could best be described as something between rice and soup, with pieces of a particularly flavourful local brown bread and occasionally diced potato-like root vegetables, in a dark, spicey sauce, this mostly served up as the third meal at sunset.

Occasionally, the soup would vary wildly, evidently the cook liked a little variety. It was handed to a scowling jaffa warrior who sat behind a desk, wiling his hours of guard duty away (they changed the guard every few hours) playing with one of the pistols that had been used to shoot Guron in the eye, who then slid it under the bars.

The meals didn’t even come with spoons, though, let alone knives or any other potentially dangerous cutlery, but rather, with lightly ornamented baked clay crockery in a whitish-grey, on narrow wooden trays.

This was pretty much the routine, being guarded by a jaffa who studiously ignored any efforts to engage him in conversation that might be made, for three days. The cell even had sewerage, in the form of a toilet; not partitioned off of course, which might irritate some, that was deliberately designed to be too narrow to pass a human head down, even if one wanted to.

Eventually, on the third day, the door opened and half a dozen jaffa warriors in their heavy grey armour filed in, pistols at the ready, as another, taller and broader, yet unarmed, warrior in a helmet in the form of a long-beaked bird.

“I am Jadan, First Prime of Sheshat, the most revered Wife of Thoth. Who speaks for you, prisoners?” he demanded.

Mumbled words of discontent were all that could be heard from the huddled few near Lura, resembling rats on the proverbial sinking ship, as their tormentor took a few moments out from gleefully delivering kicks to Guron's side in order to respond to Jadan. Her response is oddly direct for her kind.

"Certainly not you." She points accusingly at her 'fellow' prisoners. "And as I recall, my friends here wish replacements for their knives. They miss them a little, couldn't take all of them here, thanks to your hospitality."
Guron, surprisingly enough, appears to stir enough that his murderous wishes towards Lura become apparent. That is, if he could move sufficiently, Lura's assault seems, how odd, to have broken both his legs in exactly the same places.

Lura waves dismissively at Jaden, a typically bored look on her face. "And while you're standing there, would you mind disposing of this one?" Pointing to Guron, obviously, an unintelligible insult the only reply.

The jaffa warrior shook his head in derision at the demand for knives, “Bring her!” he said, pointing through the bars, the other jaffa stepped forwards, holding their pistols at the ready, as one of them opened the door of the jail cell part way, and another two, even burlier than the rest, marched in with loud footfalls, holding their staff weapons at the ready, to use them as clubs to apply beatings as required in the cell…

They whacked out fairly randomly, though not initially hitting Lura, whom they did after all, want to be able to walk, cracking heads and elbows and knees with weighted staves.

One of the 'unfortunates' is heard to mention that this treatment is certainly a step up from their previous existence toiling in a Sith excavation site, immediately before club meets face, a distinct crack of bone is noticed.
A crack repeated as the guards go swinging, Lura even failing to kick Guron once more, which will prove a great annoyance to her. The Jaffa would be treated to a particularly self righteous rant from her if she were able, being disappointed at their lack of subtlety. At least her master bothered to insult her first. Even for a lot of Sith acolytes and minions, the few unfortunates left have the worst luck of them all, being stuck on a hostile world with decidedly hostile hosts, as well as enduring the usual beatings and further abuse from Lura.

It is lucky none of them own a 'saber, as in all probability they would have got themselves killed in it's use by now, and the only fate for a dead Sith minion here is a painful death and a swiftly looted corpse. For after all, the clothes and other possessions of a fallen rival are easily traded for some status, being the most likely reason for any further..expedition, rather than the oddly remote chance of a rescue operation...

Lura was dragged away from the lockup and through the streets, past the vast statue of Atum, once again, and into the gate-guards’ room. The first prime roughly pushed her into the centre of the circle of rings, and the burly jaffa warriors crowded around. The rings shot down, encircling them and having them disappear in a flash of light.

The golden chamber where they appeared when the transport was complete was crowded with several guards, who prodded Lura along with their staff weapons, through golden corridors that were heavily buttressed and braced. Dark brown stone made up some parts of the walls, and more helmet-less guards stood at every few paces, holding weapons and glowering.

Jaden led the way, kneeling before an almond skinned woman, whose long hair cascaded over her shoulders, and whose linen and white leather costume accentuated her looks. She stood within a ring of computer terminals, surrounded by assistants, with holographic screens all around. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the screens, and turned to regard the prisoner being forced to kneel before her.

“I am Sheshat. You are the leader of interlopers who dared to trespass upon my world? Who are you, where do you come from?” she said, “Who sent you? The Tok’ra? The Asgard?”

Sheshat waved curtly and an ibis-guard came over with a silver plate, upon which four foot-long slivers of a dark brown leather-like material lay.

"The Asgard. They wanted your delightful taste in interior decoration."
Of course, being as Lura doesn't know who the Asgard are, she is outright lying, and seems to be impatient with her present situation.
"Can't afford any chains for your prisoners? You are soft, weak."
Sith prisoners aren't treated nearly this well, though Lura may be pressing her luck. Not that she cares, she has been impatient with her captors ever since she signed up to the Fleet, she just considers herself worthy of a better reception than this gathering of poorly dressed peasants.

The others aren't faring nearly as well, having descended into open warfare, or what passes for a war among a few scared and beaten Sith minions, fighting over whether they should kill Guron to take his place among their Masters, or simply steal the rest of his possessions..