"Uh, yeah. I can do that sir." Lucky replied, as he lowered his weapon "Guess I'm going to have to recce one of these for myself." He smiled as he accepted the tablet and got to work.

Lucky starts with the desk on the left, and has instant success with his device, springing open three drawers--one on the left, one on the right, and one in the center.

Not surprisingly, the drawers are considerably narrow than a wooden or metal desk would have allowed. Both the side drawers are large deep ones, with an array of files standing on end. They aren't made of paper, however; they are made of mica. Markings on the sheets of mica appear to be made with some kind of marker, which Lucky finds in the center drawer.

The center drawer has three items: what appears to be the marker (though it's shorter and thicker than ones Lucky is used to), another similar device, and something that looks like it might be the equivalent of a paper clip made of stone.

He finds nearly the same things in the other two desks, except the center desk has more files in the drawers and more paper clips, a few of which are on sheets of mica in the file drawers.

Sarah follows behind Lucky and continues to film his discovery while using the device to try and view anything that might be written on either the desks or the discoveries. Said softly to no one in particular, "Mica for Stretch, Marble for Strength...."

"What was that?" Lucky asked as he pulled out one of the sheets and offered it to Sarah to read, "Surprised they use markers. I was expecting chisel and hammer like the Flintstones."

Even as he kidded a bit, he kept watch on the two robots, just to be safe.

Sitting at one of the desks, Kianan opens the first drawer and examines the filing system - checking to determine what type of records are being kept and how they are being sorted rather than the specific information in any individual record.

Having identified the runes that these people used, it only partially helped to understand the language because it still wasn't clear if the runes stood for the same sounds and/or words. Sarah was able to find a few words that seemed to use the same construction as Old Norse, but still could only guess whether it had the same meaning.

Sarah and Kianan were able to identify the numbering system. That, at least, seemed to be consistent.

Looking through the files, Kianan could see that the files were organized by number, as each file seemed to have a number assigned to it. This made sense, since these people probably didn't have an alphabet yet, just runes that could be strung together to form words.

One of the peculiarities that Kianan noticed, though, was that the writing went from right to left. At least it did so in the files. She guessed that the number was followed by a name, address(?), occupation, and then 1-4 entries.

Checking the files carefully, Kianan tried to piece together if the reference number on the file or the address related to the residential rooms, the stasis chambers, or the occupation of the person the file was about.

"Thanks Lucky...."  Sarah continues to peruse the various bits of paper and such but other than learning a little more about the language, she doesn't appear to learn anything new.   Sighing - the first sign of frustration, "Nope.  Nothing here for me.  A few words with no real context.  More numbers - nothing we haven't already seen in the lift.
 Having a linguist along is really paying off, neh?"

"Think it's worth risking getting the robots attention to check in passed them?" Lucky asked as he kept scanning with the the tablet, looking for less likely sources. He did not want anything to to with the robots, but knew they had to be guarding something worthwhile. "Or do we just keep moving on up?"

"It is a bit difficult for a linguist to learn a language just from writing," Eric replied.

"Reminds me of the old Tarzan story. As a kid, he found his parents' diaries and figured out a language just from the squiggles. Don't remember the details, but Burroughs made it sound completely reasonable."

"You'll be working overtime if we revive anyone."

He'd been watching everyone work, keeping an eye on the robots. Lucky and Kianan had already gone past them to enter the room.

"I don't think the robots are active. They're not even on stand-by any more. I admit that it seems odd that they wouldn't have been moved to the hibernation levels as guardians. I suspect there's still something going on here that we just aren't aware of yet."

"Maybe the robots are just an honor guard."

ooc:
Have I come to any conclusion about any relationship between the addresses, occupations, or any other information on the files?

Lucky nodded to Major Brooks, "Worth you think it's worth the risk taking a look past the robots then? Or have we got enough here to move?"

Lucky already entered the room and thereby passed the robots. Likewise, Sannis moved all the way around the corridor, so passed one robot going and the other coming back.


Kianan was able to partially match the scrawlings on the mica to similar elevator markings, which would indicate a floor other than the hibernation levels.

There does not appear to be any correlation between the occupations and anything else. However, after matching a dozen written words with known Old Norse words for occupations, it seems reasonable that the written words mean the same thing. Whether or not they are pronounced the same way remains to be seen.

One equates to 'carpenter', another seems to be 'bard', and a third is 'baker'. Kianan still can't see any correlation between names and addresses.

"Well, I think we've gotten just about all we can... knowledge-wise... from this level," Eric says, "unless someone else has further thoughts on the matter."

"So, as I understand it, this is the top level of a block. It would appear to be a security level. I don't think it has anything to do with the hibernation levels, so it's not a prison. There's clearly not enough files in here to account for all the hibernation units in this block, so unless there is more than one security level, I think we should go down to the next level and see what we find there."

He re-entered the elevator, and once everyone was back in the elevator, pushed the button for the next level. He didn't keep it pressed, though, which would have make the short descent even faster.

"I'm sure I'll ask this again, but has anyone come up with any ideas about what we can do to fulfill our mission mandate?"

"Any thoughts on whether we should proceed in a different manner?"

"With each new level we explore, we expand our knowledge even if it's only by a little bit. My thought is that we now finish exploring the levels in this block, identifying each of them. Then we can randomly select a level from the other blocks and see if they correspond to this one."

Taking a picture of some of the files, Kianan-Meredy addresses the Major, " These documents show locations and professions, all of which appear to be in the zones above the hibernation levels. However, there doesn't seem to be any direct correlation. Rather than hitting each floor individually, I would like to hit the floors that correlate to the documents, that should give us a better understanding of the documents and therefor better enable us to plan a survey of the entire facility."

"If you're looking for something a little riskier, you could also try and activate one of the robots?   If they had speech processors, we could certainly gain something there - and if they don't, maybe they hold some useful data?"

"Well, we found 37 documents, which isn't really very many for the population size," Kylie suggested. She'd been studying the data as well.

"And 7 of them had the same name and address to other files. Repeat offenders, I'd guess. But there are addresses for only 9 levels."

"Look here. The file indicates that something happened on the C or D levels. Okay, there are a few on B levels."

"There are blocks and then there are super blocks, and then there are mega-blocks. Each mega-block is comprised of 3 super blocks, and each super block has it's own hibernation levels, but only the mega-block has the hibernation control level."

"Are you following me?"

"And we've already discovered that the bottom level of a block... the E level... is a medical level. If A is security, then what are the others?"

"Also, 5 of the addresses apparently refer to a different block. All the addresses are B levels anyway. So we can still descend one level at a time."

"That's brilliant, Sarah!" Eric said.

"Well... maybe. That was my first thought anyway. But, we'd have to activate the robot first. Considering where it's at, I'm thinking it's a security robot. Not sure we want to activate it."

"Well, we can come back to it. It does not seem like it's going anywhere soon. And, this way, we can give it some more thought... figure out what we can and want to ask it... assuming it will answer."

"So, down to the next level."

The elevator descends one more level, and the elevator doors open to reveal another circular hallway. There is no door immediately opposite the elevator doors, but you can see one off to the left about 10 feet just before it disappears behind the curve of the elevator shaft.

It takes a minute to think about it, but this is the first indication that the elevator might actually rotate as it moves. There was certainly no sensation of that rotation, but, in this case, it was only a rotation of 10 feet and probably wouldn't have been noticeable anyway.

On the other hand, maybe the doors on this level are just offset. As the team discovered the first time, this should be a habitation level, so maybe there's a reason for the door not to be directly across from the elevator doors.

It may not be the only difference, though. You can't quite put your finger on it, but this level has a different 'feel' to it.

A minor complement... but still one.  She smiled.   She had said it was riskier.

Then, down to the next level and the odd... 'feel' to the place, "Guys.... Are you feeling that?  Something odd...."

"Everything about this feels odd to me. This is my first offworld mission" Lucky replied, easing towards the door, his rifle once again at the ready. "Maybe it's a washroom and the dwarves like a little privacy just like us."

"Feel?" Cormac says. "Maybe it's a feel, but it just looks different somehow. I suppose that it could be emitting some kind of radiation that's affecting us, giving us that creepy feeling or stimulating our retinas in some way without actually producing an image."

"Or maybe there really is something different that we can't quite see?"

"Well, I'm not feeling anything different, or seeing anything different, other than the obvious," Eric replies. "That's why we bring you non-military types along. Our military training tends to dull our... well, I guess you'd call them 'artistic senses'. It takes a lot of experience to recover them. Unless I wanted to sit in some mountain cabin and spend my time painting trees."

"Sannis, you take the left. Lucky, you take the right. Circle all the way around until you get back here. You should pass each other at the opposite point from the elevator doors. That way, you'll both get a perspective of this level."

"I don't see any immediate discoloration of the walls, or the door for that matter, but could there be images or something painted on these walls like we saw up top?"

"How about it, Kianan? Can you see anything different?"

She'd been doing this off and on for the first few levels, but didn't see anything through the camera lens for most of the places, so she'd stopped checking the walls.

Now, she pulled out her camera again and viewed the walls through the IR lens.

"That's it!" she exclaimed excitedly as images appeared.

"Look!" she said as she showed the camera image to the others.

The first thing that became obvious was that there were words on the doors, which Sarah and Kianan quickly identified as a name: [Language unknown: Hoet Eeplplcawand], which translated as Rolf Thunderbanger.

Having struggled to look through the lens by itself, Kylie had finally realized that she could patch the older camera into her cell phone via cable and use the cell phone to see what the camera's IR lens picked up.

There was also a 'letter' designation on the door. If Sarah's interpretation was correct, it was 'A'. That meant that these Dwarves actually used an 'alphabet', not just a bunch of symbols.

The third thing revealed was pictures. There seemed to be a section to either side of the door that was set aside as or designated as a 'bulletin board'. Each section was about 3 feet wide, and ran from the floor up to the ceiling.

As near as Kylie could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to the pictures. Some seemed to be people... other Dwarves, some were images of objects, some were of activities. One even showed the sky!

What intrigued her the most, though, was that the pictures weren't 'painted'... at least, they didn't look like that to her. It was almost as if these were photographs that had been somehow transferred onto the stone wall.

"Is that what you were sensing, Kianan? Sarah?"
This message was last edited by the player at 16:04, Wed 21 Mar 2018.

"Yessir." Lucky acknowledged as he stopped heading towards the open door and doubled back to head to the right of the team. He took his time, with his rifle shouldered but the barrel down while he looked for anything of interest. As he went he could not help flinch at Kylie's outburst, pausing the glance back before continuing his prowl.