"I dink dat's enough," Meredy told Cormac as she undid the pressure cuff a second time. "Kianan says he's better dan 90% confident dat we have de numbers down. Dey are using base 10 wid individual numbers but it seems to read right to left. Dat may play a part in understanding de actual language or it may be an oddity of de numbering system. Widout the bottom of de scale to work wid, we can't tell you if dey start counting from 0 or 1, so we may still get de count wrong even knowing de numbers."

Finishing folding up the pressure cuff, Meredy looks up and says "May I suggest we split up? Dere are 600 levels to check and on de elevator dey are highly repetitive. I would like to check on de J levels to ensure dat de systems are stable on all of dem. While I am doing dat, oder teams can finish checking this series and den confirm dat de next series is identical - if de Bs are in fact living quarters, we can eider focus on dem or skip dem depending on how we decide to approach understanding dem."

"While I understand the advantage of splitting up the team," Eric said, "and there are certainly times when that's a good idea, all I see to be gained here is time--which we have plenty of--and avoiding boredom."

"We don't think there is any threat here, but until we've confirmed that, I don't intend to break up the team."

"Kianan, if you feel it's necessary to visit the other J-Levels, then that's where we'll go next."

He pressed the next J-level button and held it down.

In reply to Eric Brooks (msg # 874):

"Dank you. I do not believe we will need to spend much time on de various levels. Dey appeared to be fairly straightforward monitors and it should be little more dan walking drough de level to see if any of de monitors show critical problems."

Lucky had to swallow a remark as the Major commented on avoiding boredom by looking away at the floor. Instead, he focused his attention on his banter with Kylie, "I'll let you try the magic arrow, I'll do what snipers do best. Find some cover and shoot from a long ways away." He smirked.

Up on the next J-level, Kianan quickly tours all the control panels and finds no other flashing red lights. In fact, there are no separate cylinders. All the aisles are full of cylinders.

However, Lucky, using his 'magic arrow' finds several panels that open. Rather than any storage space within them, though, there is just more stone. Using the ability to see into the high end of the spectrum, you can see symbols and numbers marked on the inner stone.


This is repeated for the rest of the J-levels: no red lights, and access panels into the control units.

"Based on de readouts, dere does not appear to be any oder stasis pods dat require attention. Also, de consistent dresholds on all of de levels indicate dat dere is only a single race involved on all of de levels. All of de levels still seem to have groupings, but widout understanding the language and actually looking at de individuals, we are no closer to understanding what dey indicate."

Kianan-Meredy's posture changed slightly, "Meredy forgot to dank you for indulging her specialty first. At dis time, we have no specific suggestions as to where to move to next."

"Just remember that I'm the military leader of this team, not the scientific leader," Eric answers.

"I wouldn't know a frammistat from a whatchamacallit. It's my job to get you there, and get you back in one piece with whatever you find."

"Since there's no longer any delay with the elevator, it doesn't really matter what level we go to next. I'd suggest just going down one level. We can then reassess the situation depending on what we find there."

"So, back to the elevator."

He led everyone back to the elevator once again, making sure everyone went, particularly Kylie.

He had to admit, if only to himself, that this was a rather strange mission. After meeting the Avians up top, and realizing that they were relatively primitive, they'd spotted the shrine, which was anything but primitive.

The natural assumption was that there was SOMETHING HERE. He didn't know if anything down below met their mandate, but there definitely was something here.

He pushed the buttons for the next level down.

Sarah, of course, joined Eric in the lift.   She was still gathering as much text as she could so she could begin to construct a linguistic database and she continued to scan her surroundings with the camera in the hope of catching sight of more 'invisible' text picked out by the camera's ability to visualise a broader light spectrum.

Catching a glimpse of what Sarah was doing, he smiled at the effort she was putting in.

"Does hammering out the written language help you with the spoken language at all?" he asked.

"Have you been able to get any grammatical structure yet? Verb first? Adjectives last? It always makes me smile when I hear one of those Pennsylvania Dutch phrases. You know, like: 'Throw the cow over the fence some hay.' And English is probably the weirdest, if not the hardest language to learn because we find a dozen ways to pronounce the same combinations of letters. Though, through, tough, thought... how'd we ever learn to speak it in the first place?"

"I read about the Harvard study where they demonstrated that you could leave half the letters out of words, and we could still read the sentence. But, that's the basis of briefhand anyway, isn't it?"

"Well.  Not exactly.  But if I'm able to pinpoint the roots of the language, I can make a good guess at what sounds the alphabet represents and from there work out the spoken form of language.  For now though, you're right.  I'm trying to build up the dictionary and effectively fill in those blanks."  She then smiles at the Major, "Major.  You do know that English isn't my first language?   German, Afrikaans, Dutch, English and French - I could speak all five fluently by the time I went to school in Toulouse.  Of course, not being truly native in any of them made my formative years a bit more difficult."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:42, Tue 30 Jan 2018.

"I'm sure I saw it in your file, Sarah," Eric replied, "but I had to look through a lot of folders in a very short time. Not all of it stuck."

"I suppose, once you hear them speak, you'll know what the language derivation is. If it sounds Norwegian, for instance, then you'll probably know what each symbol means. On the other hand, if it sounds like Mandarin Chinese, that could be a problem, right?"

"Kianan... have you seen any indications that these Dwarves might have the ability to record their voices? I haven't, but not sure I'd recognize a recording device if it fell on me. Anyway, just wondering."

"My question, Sarah, was really a way to find out how far along you were, and whether there was anything for me to do to help."

"Okay, so the designation as Kylie transcribed it puts us on G13-A. Let's see what's out there."

He made the last comment as the elevator doors opened.

She was going to correct the Major considering that she knew several dialects of Chinese but left it unsaid as the elevator arrived at their destination.  She peered out to see what she could see though she quite deliberately did not take the lead out into the unknown - she knew better than to step on the major and his men's proverbial toes!

Although everyone knew better than to get complacent, they weren't expecting what they saw when the doors opened.

Standing in front of a door across the circular hallway were two robots. They looked like the ones up on the top level. These two had mechanical arms that were bent at the elbows and extending forward. The claws, however, had nothing in them.

They are not moving, and don't appear to react to your presence.

The two robots are flanking the door, which has a glass panel in it with writing on the glass. There are also a narrow window in the wall to either side of the door.

Through the glass, you can see what appears to be an office, with three desks--one at the back facing the door, and the other two closer to the door, on either side, facing each other. On the wall behind the central desk is a large emblem, in the shape of a shield, with writing on it.

Not surprisingly, there is nothing on the desks.

Lucky stood near the back of the elevator as they went to the next floor, starting to relax a bit as he was starting to get a feel for his new team.

That was until the doors opened. He nearly dropped Sarah's tablet as he saw the robots, tucking it under his armpit immediately as his hands went for his rifle. He eased forward, "Sarah, you better take this before I bust it on you." He handed off her device while keeping his weapon shouldered. As he moved ahead to put himself between the elevator and the robots, he saw no signs of movement, but was not taking chances. "Major? Want me to probe while you keep the science team here?"

"Of course...." Sarah accepted the device from Lucky as he focused entirely on the possible threat.  Beyond that, she kept 'out of the way' while looking through the camera so as to see any writing on said robots or in the area beyond the lift.

"If I remember the report," Eric suggests, "these robots are controlled from up on the top floor... well, the one where the elevator stops."

"Since power was turned on, these robots should be active, right? Or is there a local override? Oh! They... are... getting... power! Beamed power! Tesla was trying to do that back in the 1800s."

"I'm getting a kind of vibe from this set-up, Sarah. How about you? Does this trip any cultural wires?"

"The robots appear to be on guard duty. I can't really think of any other reason for their positioning, can you?"

He then points to the shield on the wall.

"Can either you or Kianan read that yet?"

Sarah gave Eric a quizzical look, relaxing a little as she notes that the robots aren't actually reacting to their presence.  "A vibe?   Many cultures use guards... it's a pretty standard military tactic.   As for the panel...."  She turns the camera on it in the hope of both zooming in and reading the details in both the visual and extra-visual ranges.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:40, Wed 07 Feb 2018.

"Would I've got a bad feeling about this count as a vibe?" Lucky said as he inched further ahead while looking down the sights of his rifle

Noting that the situation seemed... stable... she tried to lighten the mood with a self-deprecating jibe, "That's just me, Lucky.  I tend to have that effect on guys."

In reply to Lucas Wheeler (msg # 890):

"From my understanding of your culture, that would be considered: 'a healthy dose of paranoia'. However, you may want to be careful about pointing weapons at them. If they are controlled by an AI, they may be programmed to respond to violence."

ooc: 20:38, Today: Kianan-Meredy rolled 23 using 1d20+6 ((17)).

"Let me take a closer look at the shield." Kianan-Meredy moves to the opening of the elevator.

Sannis cautiously slipped out of the elevator and moved against the inner wall around the perimeter. After a few minutes, he returns on the other side.

"Three more identical... offices, but without the robots on guard," he reported.

He kept watch back the way he'd come, just in case there was something he'd missed.

Most of the writing that the team has seen has been symbolic, such as using 'km' for kilometer, which is why they haven't been able to construct the language. This is the first full writing that you've seen, as the shield seems to have a motto on it.

It's only the mix that lets Sarah and Kianan figure out that these Hreidmar Dwarves use Elder Futhark for writing, mixed with a bit of Asgardian Futhark. This further indicates that the language they probably speak is Proto-Norse, possibly mixed with some Asgardian. Current theory is that the Scandinavian part of the Indo-Germanic languages may have been influenced if not outright derived from Asgardian.

There are still some tricky parts, no doubt due to linguistic drift. It doesn't look like they have had any contact with other races or languages.


The shield that Kianan is studying does not look like a functional shield that would be used in hand-to-hand combat but rather a heraldic shield used for identification.

The motto, after a few minutes of translating, appears to be: Truth, Justice, Compassion.

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 894):

"'Truth, Justice, Compassion' this is possibly the judicial level."

"Ahh, good point, Kianan," Eric adds. "I was thinking it was the police department."

"In either case, those are desks, desks normally have drawers, and drawers usually have stuff in them. Records maybe? Files? Paperclips, scissors, pens... the usual stuff."

"Lucky, you want to borrow Sarah's doohickey and see if you can find any drawers in those desks?"

He listened to Sannis' report, glanced through the room again, and then addressed Sarah.

"In your opinion, does this signify that there are criminals in their society? Do you think it might be a case of cabin fever? I mean, EXTREME cabin fever?"

"Truth, Justice... Compassion."  She purses her lips.   She could speak fluent Norse and Asgardian Futhark but there were certainly other influences that she'd have to study.  "I'd say, obviously a little on the biased side, that it does lend itself to the theory that the pods were in fact prison cells.   Truth and Justice being cornerstones of most legal systems.   Compassion on the other hand is generally not but for a prison service it makes sense - though Truth less so."   She hmms.  "Mottos can often be misleading as they hold no real context.  Let's see if there are any documents and go from there."

She'll hand the tablet back to Lucky when he's ready to lower his gun....