Sarah does recognize the symbols on the keyboard. As she's seen elsewhere, there's some slight variance on a few symbols from what she's used to, but she can see it's the same symbol. And Kylie was right--it's not a QWERTY keyboard. If there's some rhyme or reason to the layout, she can't see it. But, then, a QWERTY has no apparent rhyme or reason for it either.

There are fewer keys. No specialized punctuation marks. There are a few that she doesn't recognize, possibly the evolved question mark and exclamation mark (confirmed after reading the screen). There are no function keys, and since there is no capitalized letters, no shift key. Oddly, there is a way to indicate a 'capital' letter, though--one key is an underscore. If you type that first, the next letter is placed atop it. This is, apparently, used only for names.

The information on the screen is apparently a story... a novel maybe? ...about the great Dwarven hero Manannan Mac Lir.

"Interesting...."  She taps away at the keyboard for a bit before finding her stride and then focusing on the story.  "Manannan Mac Lir.   It's a story as far as I can tell.    About the ferrier of souls to the afterlife.   Whether that has any linkage to our bodies isn't clear."

"Do you guys have any way that we could interface with this computer?   I could download the images screen by screen but it would take quite some time...."

"Alynita was able to get our comms working with this facility's own communications," Kylie offered.

"Kianan... do you think you could do the same with the computers? Do they have a wifi function? Or can they connect with the base's comms? That would be a round-about way to do it, but it could work."

"I don't see any data ports on the computer, so we probably can't do a hard wire. Oh! But what if it's magnetic... um, induction?"

No data ports....  Something tickles Sarah's brain and she speaks, loudly and clearly in Futhark, "What is the weather like today?"

When the major ignored his question about him and Vektor roaming off, Lucky assumed there was reason to stay close by. So for the time being, he simply waited by the door after giving Sannis a shrug for not knowing what was up, while staying out of the way.

((OOC: Oops. Sorry. I either missed your question, Lucky, or forgot it.))


Noticing Lucky trying to stay out of the way, Eric says, "What? You're still here? Why don't you and Sannis make yourselves useful and see what trouble you can get into?"

"Check out the rest of this level. At least let us know if it's more of the same or there's anything different... like a dead body or a lollipop store."

"See? I told you," Sannis said to Lucky as he moved down the hallway.

"Let's make a quick circuit against the inner wall just to make sure there are 3 more doors and none of them open. Then we can backtrack trying to open each door one at a time."

"You mean, outside this facility?" Kylie asks Sarah. "Up with the Avians?"

She looks at the Major. Since they all had comms, anyone of them could have contacted the surface team, but it was the Major's decision to do so.

"Ha-ha. Yeah, it's not like we can just look out a window. Ohhh. Why'd you have to mention that? Now I'm starting to feel a bit claustrophobic!"

"Hey! Do you think these Dwarves get agoraphobic? Fear of wide-open spaces?"

"No local weather report, either. What are you thinking, Sarah?"

“Make ourselves useful? Why start now?” Lucky replied with a smirk and a poor semblance of a quick salute. He turned to Sannis and followed him. “Sounds good. You check the inside wall and I’ll check the outer wall too. Starting to think the locals like to hide stuff where ever they can.” He suggested as they started to walk their curcuit

"True, true... cannon fodder is only useful when someone is shooting cannons at you," Sannis replies.


"I don't know that they hide things so much as they don't want them intruding on their everyday lifestyle... whatever that may be. My folks, for instance, have a Murphy bed in their office-slash-guest room. If they don't have guests, it's tucked up out of the way."

"Now, if you're hiding something... my great grandad had a speakeasy during Prohibition. It had a convoluted path to get to it. It seemed annoying to customers at first, but once they got used to it, it was part of the mystique."

"This stuff is only hidden to us. Heck, to the Dwarves here, it may stand out like a neon sign!"

“You keep talking like that and I’m gonna start thinking you’ve been spending too much time around the smart people back there.” Lucky replied with a mocking tone, even though he agreed what Sannis was suggesting.

Sarah hadn't actually been talking to Kylie though she does ask in reply to her question, "You speak Futhark?" She's isn't being mean - she does in fact appear pleasantly impressed.  "No.  I was asking the computer what the weather was like in the hope that it had more than a simple keyboard interface.   I guess it does not."

Kianan-Meredy sat on the bed staring at the keyboard displayed on the desk. "The text up at the shrine was in all 4 of the ancient races languages, perhaps it isn't Futhark at all, but rather a dialect closer to Asguardian? If so, this rune would roughly translate to 'begin' or 'start'.

Tapping the 'key', an image became visible on the screen when viewed  through the thermal camera. "I think we may have been thrown by the use of Ancient technology in the boring machine. Sarah, can you do anything with that?"

OOC: Sorry for the confusion here.  You replied to my question that I spoke in Futhark.  Which is why I asked if you spoke Futhark.   As for using the computer - waiting on the ST's input :-)
This message was last edited by the player at 12:12, Wed 23 May 2018.

There's no response from the computer to Sarah's question. It does not appear to have a voice interface. In fact, there does  not appear to be any sound capability at all. The keys are not mechanical, so there's no sound when tapping them. There's no sign of a speaker.

"No sound at all?   Where these dwarves deaf?  Most societies use auditory feedback as a subliminal confirmation process when not...."  She continues to consider the interface and trying out various key combinations in a bid to trigger action.

"Yeah, it does seem odd," Kylie agreed with Sarah. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that makes them really alien, but maybe they have other reasons. Living inside a mountain like this, for instance, maybe they are dependent on hearing the creaks and cracking of the stone. Or maybe they are just used to it, and the sounds from a computer would be distracting."

"Or maybe they are a much more sociable people... talking to each other all the time, singing to themselves, humming, whistling... that sort of thing."

"Although... you could be right. Maybe they are deaf."

Lucky and Sannis made a quick circle of the hallway just to make sure nothing had changed, stopping at the last door. Like the first one, it doesn't open automatically, but tapping the frame next to the door causes it to open, indicating it wasn't locked either.

The layout appears identical to the other living quarters... except, where the other one was neat and spotless, this one has a lot of personal belongings scattered all over the place.

One of the first things that you notice is the keg sitting on one corner of the desk.

"Or maybe they just don't talk as much as you do," Cormac replies to Kylie.

It's unclear if he's being facetious or serious.

"I think it's safe to assume that these Dwarves don't think quite the same way as we do. Remember, according to our myths, a Dwarf never gets claustrophobic. I'm sure there's no such think as 'cabin fever' among them."

"On the other hand, they could easily have a problem with wide open spaces."

"One concern that I do have, though, is: how long have they been sleeping? As far as we've determined, they have had no dealings with the Avians above. Does that mean that they are extremely isolationist? Or perhaps the Avian settlement didn't exist when they went to sleep. We do know that the Avians branch out and form a new village once their population gets large enough. The anthropology team up top is probably delving into that even as we explore down here."

"I have two questions for you, Major: what do we hope to get from the Dwarves, and what do we hope to find in their computers? In the first instance, we have yet to see any technology that we haven't already mastered; they just do it differently. While the ability to form circuits in stone is certainly of interest, since it means that we wouldn't have to be overly concerned about taking a lot of resources with us to other worlds, we don't know what it takes to do that."

"Will the computer give us that answer? I'm thinking that the computer might give us some information on the creatures that scared them into hibernation. What were they called? The Degra? You'll have noticed the ending of the word. Is that significant? Or is it just coincidence?"

"Also, since we turned this facility back on, might that call attention to the Degra that something still lives here? Will turning it back off fix it?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:12, Mon 18 June 2018.

Lucky looked at Sannis and smirked, "They keep the beer fridge in their bedroom. Classy guys." He continued looking around. "Kinda reminds me of my quarters. Practical instead of immaculate."

"Most definitely different from the last room," Sannis responds. "I wonder what it signifies? Did a neat-freak live in the other room and a slob live in this one? Or, maybe, the person in the other room had time to straighten up, but this one didn't."

"If the others were farther away, I'd say gather up anything that looked significant. As it is, I think maybe we should leave it all where it is. The others may find some significance in the location of each item."

"Okay, let's check out the last apartment."

He steps out into the hallway and after Lucky joins him, he waits to see if the door closes automatically. If it doesn't, he leaves it open.

Then he continues down to the final door.

"Was that what it was, Sarah? Futhark?" Kylie answers Sarah. "It sounded like Old Norse. I thought Futhark was just the written language used by druids."

"Just out of curiosity, are you looking for anything particular?"

Having established--apparently--that the computer does not have a voice interface, Sarah starts trying to interpret the various symbols... mostly by trial and error.

She soon discovers that the computer was used by someone named Thorok, and that there are only 3 functions on the computer... 3 programs, apparently.

One is simply a reading program. There are around 200 readable files. About half of them are 'technical' files; the other half are 'fiction'. As near as Sarah can tell, the technical files are more like training manuals for various 'jobs' in the habitat. The fiction is always about some Dwarf having heroic adventures.

The second program is something like Notepad. It lets someone make notes that are stored in the computer. There are around 10,000 notes, though most of them are only 3-4 sentences. The last entry is dated 163 years ago!

The third program is a drawing program... it has a number of techniques usable, but the only one that Thorok seems to have used was a doodle one. He's only kept a dozen doodles.

Having fiddled with the computer for a bit and distractedly replying to Kylie with a: "Futhark... yes."  She finally finds something of interest, "Hmmm.  Looks like the owner called himself Thorok.   He seems to have used the computer to read books - training manuals: quite a few of those, and stories.  He's also kept notes, maybe some diary entries if we're lucky.   And if my translation of the numbering system is right, the last entry was some 163 years ago."

Sarah brings up the list of most recently opened files - what was he reading before he stopped using the computer?  It might give a clue as to what happened on what area of the environment failed (or needed repaired) before they left.   Similarly, she looks back over the last 30 or so notes and doodles to see if anything catches her eye about 'recent' events.  And finally, do any of the manuals or notes refer to this place by name as that too could give a clue as to its function or even a hint as to mythological significance as she's learnt in the Stargate programme that this too could very much be useful in unpicking mysteries!

"Unless we hit something of real significance, I think we should let things be until the brainiac have their look around. Last thing we need is pissing them off because we touched something of cultural importance."  Lucas replied with a mocking tone. He followed Sannis out into the corridor and waited for him to close the door before heading to the last room, "This certainly isn't what I was expecting when they pulled me out of retirement."