SG-X4:

"You've been skipping too many meetings, Major!" Brayce chided the major good naturedlly.

"Not that I'm one of the rocket scientists... but, as I understand it, nearly all human-type species are descended from these Ancients. They seeded humans all over the galaxy... perhaps even beyond. They are the ones that created the gates."

"So, yeah, their technology is pretty much the equivalent of magic. Anything really useful we might find will probably take years to unravel. Still, we might find something minor that we could use."

"Also, unless you were told something different by Hammond, we're merely supposed to find the bottom of the complex. They've got a tunnel borer in there that will be able to bore its way out to make a second exit. We don't have those kinds of resources. It'd take something like building the Hoover dam for us to bore in from out here. Not sure if we could even launch such a feat without destroying the Avians' home up top."

"Best guess for this structure is that it's made of metal, but what metal we have no idea. It's probably not even trinium. It's probably made of the same material as the stargates... which means we won't get in by using force."

"So, put your thinking cap on. There'll probably be some test for us to gain access... some way to prove we are... 'worthy'... mostly meaning 'smart enough'."

"Yeah, me, too. I'd rather be up top shooting down pterodactyls."

SG-X3:

Once everyone is back in the elevator, the Major pushes the 'up' button and keeps pressing it--the equivalent of holding it down, as it didn't actually move. The elevator doors close, and the elevator zips up to the next level--taking about three seconds!

As the elevator doors open again, everyone seems to be half-expecting... something to happen. But nothing does. Nothing leaps in after them, and nothing shoots at them.

Looking out, you see more or less the same layout as the other levels: a circular hallway wrapping around the central elevator shaft. There, though, the similarity ends.

First of all, the hallway is almost twice as wide as the previous ones.

Secondly, the outer wall of hallway has a large curved plate glass window in it, and a solid door right next to it. There is writing on the glass and the door.

Thirdly, the stone of the wall itself is rather fancily carved. It's not spectacular, but it is clearly ornamental.

Just inside the glass window is a shelf with an assortment of bells on it--metal bells. They range in size from small 2-inch high bells to larger 12-inch bells. They are of different colors, but appear to be made out of brass.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:19, Thu 23 Mar 2017.

Eric couldn't help but chuckle at the response he got.  "No I haven't skipped too many meetings...truth be told I'm fairly new to this Stargate program.  Any jokes or questions aside I'm not new to following orders and you're right.  We've been given the task of trying to determine where the bottom of the facility inside this mountain is so let's get to it.  Move on to another location and blast again once you're ready to do so."

Without waiting for a response he calls out on the radio again.  "SGX-3 and SGX-5, this is SGX-4 we're moving to another location to attempt to find the bottom of the facility inside the mountain.  On another note first blast located a second possiblly different in origin structure, marking it on my map and will wait until we've returned home to get more orders on what to do about it."  He then turned back to help if need be with moving the equipment to the next blast location.

It takes about 20 minutes to pack up all the gear again, and another hour to drop down the mountainside another 1,000 feet.

There, the equipment is set up again, and the procedure is repeated. When the charge is set off, looking at the seismograph screen does not show the other facility, which would now be above them.

You can still see the ventilation shafts, but not where they come out--only where they enter the complex.

The central shaft of the complex is 8,076 feet in the mountain. The absolute bottom, based on information and readings, should be the tunnel borer, which is 53 above your current position.

One of the engineers uses a laser designator for Brayce to fire an anchor bolt into the spot. The team now has to pack up, climb up a bit, and blast a small hole into which they insert a beacon marker. It's an electronic device with an attached solar-collector. It emits a sound pulse into the rock. Unless it gets damaged by rocks, weather, or raptors, it should function for about 3 years.

The premise is that once the team goes inside the mountain and descends to the tunnel borer level, the engineers will be able to detect the sound and know in exactly which direction to point the tunnel borer... assuming they can somehow activate it.

"Okay, part one is done. Now we have to climb back up and then go inside the mountain," Sgt. Brayce comments. "Ready when you are, Major."

Eric looks back up the path they took down and with a slight chuckle he looks at his team.  "Alright then, once everything packed up again we move out."  He then moved to help pack up the tools figuring haste might be better this time around realizing he hadn't heard a response from either of the other teams.

"You know if it wasn't for the freeze dried tenants downstairs, this would almost make a decent..., whatchamacolit, uh, Bata site?" Lucky said as the elevator opened again. "I'm guessing wider walkways means they are meant for heavier usage. I mean this look like more of a common use area than the hospital level."

"You know if you guys would stop your blabbering we would be done here by now, besides what the hell difference does it make who hits who right, as long as we all do our duty." He takes another few shots...

Michael Thomas rolled 31 using 3d20+4 ((2,12,13)).
This message was last edited by the player at 13:36, Fri 31 Mar 2017.

SG-X4

It's much harder and time-consuming to climb back up the mountain, so it'll take the team about 3 hours to get back up to the top.

As long as your guide, Winterwind, keeps an aerial watch, there's no chance of anything attacking you by surprise. Clearly, though, he's anxious to get back up to see how the battle goes.


SG-X5

The last volley of shots at the raptors seems to have done the trick, as the remaining creatures turn back and fly away. All in all, nearly 100 raptors were injured, with maybe 25 of them actually dropping out of the sky. One of them, pretty much out of control with an injured wing, crashes amid the nests. The Avians immediately approach it to kill it, but the team's cultural anthropologists stop them.

With effort, they are able to subdue the raptor and examine it for injury. As near as they can tell, the wing muscle was hit by a rubber bullet and is merely numb. It should pass within 30 minutes. The team attaches a transponder to the raptor, using superglue to fasten it to the back of the raptor's neck. This way, they can track where it goes.

They then carry it away from the nests to a clear area of the mountain top, wait awhile, and then release it. With angry squawks, it takes wing and flies off.

"This section is a foundry and molder," Alynita spoke up. "My host is from a more primitive culture, and she was familiar with these types of operations."

"A molder is a bell maker, since they have to make molds to cast the bells."

"These bells are displayed as if they were available for... purchase, perhaps?"

"Makes me wonder, though, how they got the metal down here."

"Oh, look! There is a large door at the back! We should see where it goes. Remember, the tunnel borer at the bottom was huge! We actually haven't seen any indication on the other levels... except the power generating levels... that they extended that far out. Maybe we should confirm that?"

As she talked, she went over to the door to this 'shop'. It didn't have any sort of doorknob or handle, and she couldn't see anything that looked like a lock. On the other hand, it was a stone door. She tentatively reached out a hand and pushed on the door, as it clearly had to open inward--else it would have interfered with people walking along the hallway.

For no particular reason, Cormac decides to exit the elevator and head down the hallway to the left. He passes a second window just like the first, except that what is displayed beyond is different. There are small stone jars and stone boxes on the shelves, more intricately carved than the bells were. And there are fewer of them. Farther in, there are stone cylinders on the floor arranged in five rows of six each. In front of them... that is, farther in... is a dais.

At the back of the room are two doors, and then Cormac notices the two windows on the left wall with another door between them. On the other side of the windows is a hallway that connects a half dozen corridors, perhaps more that are out of sight.

After the main window, there is a door that looks a lot like the first one, but the symbols on it are different. It's the wall beyond that door that catches Cormac's interest.

While there are intricately carved borders around the wall, and it is separated into sections, the first section appears to be covered in columns of names. The second section has columns of names in only about half of it.

"Hey!" he calls back to the others. "You need to see this. I think it's a mortuary and crypts."

Ehm... Mortuary?  Sarah had followed Alynita forward towards the 'shop'.  She still didn't trust Tawaret but at least she was sharing what appeared to be 'useful' information.  She considers the bells and shop itself and wondered if she could intuit anything about the culture they were dealing with from the various clues to add to Alynita's discussion.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:49, Sun 02 Apr 2017.

Randall knew he was going to regret letting everyone go off on their own, but, considering the limited area, how much trouble could they get into?

Alynita and Sarah went mostly straight ahead to the bell shop, Cormac went off to the left, so he figured he might as well go to the right.

"Lucky, keep an eye on Cormac, will you? Sannis, you and Kylie and me will escort Tawaret to the right... and see what we can see," he told the team.

"Now that you are on a habitation level," Tawaret said, "you might be able to piggyback your communication system onto the Ancient's system."

"I'm not really sure how you would do that, but the shrine above functions as an... ummm, what would the word be? Antenna?"

As Randall and his group move down the hallway, they come to another door with another narrow window next to it. Through the window, another window can be seen and through that window a hallway and a tunnel!

The hallway part starts just past the narrow window--it goes off to the left. After about 140 feet, it turns into a rough-hewn stone tunnel that heads into the mountain.

"I don't know what the rest of you found, but I've got a tunnel that heads off into the mountain," Randall says to the others over the radio.

"Also, Tawaret says we can adapt our radios to use the Ancient comm system in these walls. Any of you want to take a stab at figuring that out? It'd be nice to communicate with the others up top."

He stares down the tunnel. It's dark. The light strip in the upper corners of the hallways doesn't appear to extend into the tunnel. It also looks like it goes a loooong way.

"Whaddaya think, Sannis? Should we explore the tunnel? Or continue upward?"

Sannis ponders the major's question for a moment, though he'd already been thinking the same thing.

"The Scout in me says don't leave anything behind you," he finally replied. "If some alien creature lives down this tunnel, can it get up to any other level?"

"I don't see any doors or way to seal off the tunnel, so I'm guessing that there's nothing dangerous down there. At least, there wasn't when it was built. Now... that's anybody's guess."

"Once Lucky joins us, he and I can scout down the tunnel. I've got a feeling, though, that we won't be able to go too far before our radios lose contact. I've yet to see any indication that these Dwarves had a long-range communication system."

As expected, the door pushed inward. Alynita examined the door's edge and the door frame, trying to determine what had kept it closed. She didn't see anything.

"Probably some sort of magnetic attraction," she told Sarah. "Some stones are magnetic, so the Dwarves would know about magnetism."

She walked in to shop cum foundry. The room was petty large, 40 feet to the back wall where the double doors were. It had a 20-foot high ceiling, too!

She didn't think there was any threat here, but she kept her hand on her zat just in case. She studied all the apparatus as she walked to the back door. She couldn't help thinking it would be so funny if the 'back door' opened to the outside... onto some sort of balcony on the side of the mountain!

Since it was a set of double doors, both had a latch-type handle on them.

"Oh, what the hey," she said to herself as she grabbed both handles and pushed the doors open.

Not really surprisingly, both doors swung open. There was another room almost the same size... perhaps wider though as it formed the outer part of the arc.

There were two piles of rocks in the room! To the right, there was a pile of ore. At least, it looked like it was ore. Technically, there were probably four separate piles, but they were kind of cascaded together. To the left was... more rocks. But a cursory glance showed her these were slag from the smelting process.

About then, she heard the radio call from the Major.

She looked back at Sarah, who'd been following her like a shadow.

"What do you think? Anything else here we need to look at?"

"I'm guessing the tunnel leads to the mine where all this ore came from. That would explain why the smelter is down here at the bottom. Well, one reason."

"I might be able to tap into the Ancient's comm system. I know a bit about electronics and computers, plus I know Ancient. Shall I go give it a try?"

"Magnetism?  I guess so."  She smiles.  "That makes sense." Science wasn't her forte but she enjoyed hearing the theories of those more attuned to the subjects.

Then, following Alynita into the mining chamber, she looked around, "Well... I can't say that I could make use of any of this right now so I'm good to go, but if you think you could hook into the comms, I'd be up to helping you.   I could handle any translations if you like?"

"Yessir" Lucky replied and followed the team archeologist as he headed off to the left. "Mortuary? Great place to hang out." He grumbled as he followed along, glancing around. It was not his first choice of places to explore, and likely was not even on his top thousand. He did however follow Cormac along.  "You know we should probably stick with the others, and not wander off on our own too much."

"There's nowhere to wander off to," Cormac replied to Lucky. "Except for the tunnel they just discovered."

"If we find another one down here, I promise we won't go down it. Besides, they're calling you back for that one anyway."

"Don't get all semantical on me, you know what I meant." Lucky replied, scowling at Cormac. "Come on, you shouldn't be alone. Maybe we can stop and look once we finish with the tunnel. Maybe you'll get lucky and this is where they keep their Balrog." He chuckled.

"I thought you were the 'lucky' one," Cormac replied to Lucky as they walked back to the rest of the group.

"Tunnels are your thing. Mines and creepy things. I prefer cultures. Well, the remnants of them. It's like a puzzle... I find the pieces and try to put them together to get a bigger picture."

"Don't expect me to have too many insights on this tunnel."

Alynita studies the wall a bit.

"I think I'll need to borrow Kylie's computer," she said, looking around for the other woman.

"I don't see any seams in the walls. I wasn't seeing any down below either... no tailings from the tunnel borer. I think the technology of the borer turned the stone to liquid and it was then sprayed or otherwise formed into the walls. Really: how else could the borer have dug all the way down leaving all these rooms behind it?"

"Given that, the same technology was probably used to create the circuitry in the stone. If Tawaret is correct, then something similar was put into the stone to transmit... well, maybe transfer... communications signals up to the surface. That's my guess, anyway. I suppose, though, there might be a transmitter in the wall that can reach the surface."

"Well, either way, they didn't cut into the walls to install them. Even if I could, I'm not sure I'd see anything I'd recognize except stone. That means wifi."

"Ah, there you are, Kylie. Can I borrow your computer? I think I can use the wifi on your laptop to access the comm circuitry in the walls... that Tawaret seems to think the Ancients built in."

"Thanks."

Alynita didn't think she needed to ruin the computer to get it to work. She took off the bottom panel, though, as she was going to need to tweak the wifi. She had no idea what frequency the Ancients used, so she'd have to do it by trial and error.

"Okay, Sarah, you're up! Watch the screen while I adjust the wifi. When I find the right frequency, something should show up on it... either in Ancient or the language of the Dwarves... whatever that is. Just let me know when you see something."

"Sure thing!"  Sarah considered the screen waiting and hoping for a response.  "Nothing sofar...."

SG-X4/X5

SG-X5 continues to stay on alert. Although they've driven off the Raptors, more than the Avians have ever seen before, you still don't know anything about their habits. Probably classified as semi-intelligent (akin to dogs or chimpanzees maybe), they may have fallen back just to regroup and try again.

The cultural anthropologists on the team are asking the Avians about them, but the Avians know little more than what the team has observed. The Avians are grateful for the assist, but also a bit disappointed that they did not get in on the action. There was some, as a Raptor was hit in the wing and crashed somewhere in the village; the nearby watching Avians made short work of it, killing it to 'put it out of its misery'. They merely perceived it as injured, and, as such, killed it so that it would not suffer. Apparently, that is not something the Raptors would do.

The number of Raptors that showed up have caused some fear among the Avians; had the Tau'ri not been there, the Avians would have been exterminated. That, at any rate, is their belief. They are now concerned about the next attack, particularly if the Tau'ri aren't around.

While SG-X5 continues to wait, SG-X4 is able to finish their climb back up to the top.

There is still no communication with SG-X3. Considering that they are deep inside the mountain, that is not particularly worrisome, just... inconvenient.

Given the description of the place, Eric and Michael have a reasonable expectation of being able to enter the Undermountain and use the elevator to reach the various levels. But, with 600+ levels, it could be a bit difficult to determine just which level SG-X3 was on.