"There is machinery in the mine, but it does not run by itself," Bar'tok replied. "Men were brought along to run the equipment. I was not one of them, though, so I don't know much about it."

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 144):

"Cholera!" Kaspar whispers harshly in Polish, after Bar'toks  response.

"No people at the mine, no automation, means there is no ready ore available for immediate conversion to fuel." Kaspar adds for everyone else, "We still have to check, maybe some small amount of ore got left behind, last visit. If not, we may have to do some mining ourselves."

Kaspar turns slightly to fully address the floating Asgard, "Freyda - first, do you know how to process naquada ore into fuel for this Ha'tak?  I'd really like to activate its defenses, if we should need them.  But, if you don't, do you have that info in your Asgard Database?  Then, if do know the process, do you think you can find the equipment you need here aboard the Ha'tak to do it with?"

Kaspar turns back towards Vasandra ... "Capt--" ... only to almost bump into Bar'tok, whom Kaspar had forgotten was standing there.

"Uh, please forgive my lack of attention, Jaffa." Kaspar apologizes, then looks over at Vasandra/Angrboda, "Ah, Supreme Mistress, perhaps you would care to take full possession of this Ha'tak, and maintain your omniscient observation of all things around us, while your ... technical? ... slaves? ... continue working for your glory?" Kaspar asks the Captain, casually resting his right hand on the pel'tak's sensor panel.

"Or working for a plate of lamb and gorgonzola pierogis." Kaspar adds sotto voce.

Kaspar draws himself to attention before Vasandra,

"Supreme One, it is the opinion of this one, your Senior Technical Slave, that, with your blessing, myself and Technical Slave Gavin should go to the mine and assess all materials and equipment found there. We would require escort by your new Jaffa Prime and the new Jaffa." Kaspar indicates Hilda and Bar'tok with a gesture of his left hand.

Hilda grimaced at the idea of having to mine like a thrall for this ore. She was not afraid of hard work, but she didn't have to like it, not when they had better things to be doing. 'How much of this ore would we need?'
This message was last edited by the player at 02:39, Mon 23 Apr 2018.

In reply to Hilda (msg # 146):

"Haven't the foggiest clue, my dear." Kaspar replied, "I'm hoping we don't have to do any digging, myself. But we won't know until we check out the mine.  Hopefully we don't need much; it's not like we're trying to refuel for an extended hyper-trip.  We just need enough to keep the lights on around here. Heh - I suppose Technical Slave Freyda would probably know."

"I will need two buckets of liquid naquadah," Vasandra states. "Depending on the quality of the ore, it should take about 20 buckets of ore to produce the necessary naquadah."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:25, Sun 29 Apr 2018.

In reply to Vasandra Tourmaline (msg # 148):

"Buckets." Kaspar responded, holding his hands up in front of himself and gesturing, "You talking water bucket sized, or something the size of a Skoda commercial lorry?"

'We don't have buckets.' Hilda pointed out wearily. She was starting to see herself living here, building a house, running a farm, and didn't like the idea at all. 'Or shovels or picks or even entrenching tools. Let us go back to Earth. Earl Hammond can send back a team with the right tools for this mining.'

Vasandra gives Kaspar an odd look.

"A water bucket. What a person can carry," she explains. "I could have given you an amount in kilograms or pounds or trins but half of you would not have understood that. So I used a common term."

"According to Bar'tok, the right tools are here. The only thing missing is manpower. Or woman-power, if you prefer. Depending on what type of tools there are, it should only take you about an hour to mine the required ore."

"Who do you think should do this mining, Hilda, if not you and the others?"

Once Vasandra explained it, the mining effort didn't seem so hard or time-consuming after all, and Hilda was the strongest one here. Moreover, Hilda remembered they were still playing at being servants of a goddess for Bar'tok's benefit. 'I will do it, your greatness.' she conceded with a bow.

She hadn't really been trying to criticize Hilda, but, for the moment, she was still playing a role... for Bar'tok's sake. The Jaffa did not appear to be stupid or particularly ignorant, but the Goa'uld kept their servants uneducated and in the dark as a matter of policy.

She tried to catch Hilda's eye when Bar'tok was looking elsewhere, and gave Hilda a wink. It had taken the Netjerian a long time to learn how to do that.

Following Hilda as she led the way out of the ha'tak, with Kaspar and Gavan, just behind him, upon reaching the rocks where he'd said the entrance to the mine is, Bar'tok walks over to the rocks and lifts a huge boulder and casually sets it aside.

"See? I told you they were fake," he says.

He moves the rest of them aside, being careful not to pile them in an odd way.

Thus revealed is a tunnel heading into the mountain.

"I've never been inside, so I have no idea what we'll find."

Noticing the wink from Vasandra, Hilda's heart skipped a beat. She had a chance with her after all!

*

Hilda was surprised and somewhat jealous to see Bar'tok lift the heavy boulder, declaring 'I can do that.' before he said it was fake and she realised it was probably plastic or something. She stepped in to help move fake boulders too, as well as some real ones.

She peered into the darkness of the tunnel, expecting dwarves and dragons to come crawling out. 'Well, let's go in and see.' Steeling herself, she ventured into the tunnel...

Some distance in, she realised the Tau'ri had invented flashlights for a reason.

About the time that Hilda realized a flashlight would be helpful, Kaspar moved up holding one. Shining it onto the walls, it can be seen that the tunnel had been cut with something akin to a laser as the walls were perfectly flat and smooth and straight. The flashlight also revealed that there was a switch for the overhead lights tucked into the upper corners.

Neither the walls nor the ceiling seemed to be braced or reinforced in any way, but it was clear that it was just the natural stone of the mountain.

The lights were triangular boxes stuck up into the corners. Each was about 6 feet long, staggered every 6 feet.

Flicking the switch turned the lights on down the whole length of the tunnel. It went about 200 feet into the mountain.

Continuing down the tunnel, it opens into a large chamber, nearly 100 feet across and 40 feet high. This is where the mining equipment is. Unlike the tunnel, the chamber looks like it was blasted out, and there are still small piles of rubble scattered along the base of the walls.

There is a rack in the middle of the chamber that has large 'coal' shovels hanging on it, with square plastic buckets underneath them.

There are only two pieces of machinery visible--a blaster and a smelter.

Hilda had led the way into the heart of the mountain, on the alert for slime-beasts and dwarves, dragons, or even the terrifying draugr, but was to find nothing as she finally made it to the mine-site. She surveyed the chamber, from basic equipment she understood, like shovels and buckets, to more complex machinery that must be part of the smith's magic.

'How will we know this ore?' she wondered as she sighed and went to get a bucket.

Gavan walks in and over to the equipment.

"I suppose this is better than jackhammers and pickaxes," he says as he examines the blaster, "but only slightly better than dynamite."

"It's essentially a staff weapon mounted on a carriage. I'm guessing it allows for better accuracy. Once a section of wall is reduced to rubble, the buckets are used to carry the raw ore over to the smelter. One of the benefits of fusion--the smelter doesn't have to be big and bulky."

He walks over to one of the walls where there is rubble on the floor of the cave, bends over and picks up a rock.

"It's hard to spot... depending on the richness of the ore... but this looks to be low-grade."

He shows the rock to Hilda.

"See this greenish shine here? That's the actual naquadah ore, called muv'ak. This is just a trace amount. Oh. See here? On the wall? That green shine is more. Unlike some metals, naquadah doesn't occur in veins. It tends to occur in large lumps, although there are usually several such lumps in a deposit."

"It looks like they were mining in that direction. I hope they knew there was another lump that way."

"Anyway, you'd better use the blaster on that wall," he added, taking the bucket from her with a sideways glance at Bar'tok.

"Grab a bucket, Bar'tok. We'll have to haul the ore to the smelter the old-fashioned way. I've seen mines with a scoop-loader and conveyor belt that picks up the ore, transports it on the belt to the smelter and then dumps it in. That's good for large-scale operations. This wasn't one of those, though."

"Hmmmm. I wonder why that is? Dragonlord competition?"

In reply to Gavan (msg # 158):

"Ah...I though that Naquada was a, wait, I have to think think of the English...." Kaspar taps the side of his head as he thinks, "Ah, yes!  I thought that Naquada was a 'power amplifying' material? That it increased the amount of energy directed at it, sometimes explosively?  I can see that it's obvious they were shattering the wall with this blaster -- with success, so far!  But, um, is it safe?"

"You are thinking of the refined mineral, Kaspar," Gavan replies. "What you would call 'weapons-grade naquadah'. In its raw form, it is mostly inert, and the plasma energy of a staff weapon is not amplified."

"It functions much like one of your nuclear warheads. It requires a small chemical explosion to trigger the much larger nuclear explosion. Because of its density, naquadah energy is unleashed from a small amount of stimulating energy. It's why the naquadah runs out as it's consumed while releasing all that stored energy."

"You'd be surprised at how much energy the ha'tak uses just to fly, let alone provide all the other aspects of its operation: shields, weapons, life support, sensors. Like your automobiles, the faster it goes, the more of its fuel it consumes."

"Blasting the wall is perfectly safe. I would not recommend doing it to a vial of liquid naquadah, though."
This message was last edited by the player at 15:45, Fri 04 May 2018.

Following Gavan's explanations, Hilda looked closely over the greenish bits in the rocks and in the wall, making sure she knew what to look for. Despite his promises, she began to share Kaspar's doubts that this was safe. She knew from her time as a thrall to Heru'ur that the Goa'uld did not particularly care for the safety of those who did the work. Regardless, there was no other choice.

She went over to the blaster, finding it to be just a staff cannon, essentially a larger form of staff weapon, like those mounted on Death Gliders. She knew how to operate a staff weapon, and guessed this own was already set to function properly. 'You might want to move out of the way.' she warned her companions before she would off a blast.

After everyone else steps back, Hilda tentatively lets a blast go at the wall. The result is both expected and strange. The blast slams into the wall and causes a rather large hole due to the brittleness of the stone. At the same time, it sends a lot of shards flying back at Hilda.

Not surprisingly, there is no protection for the user from the shrapnel-like stone fragments. The Goa'uld saw no reason to protect the user. They were supposed to be tough enough to take it.

Or to wear Jaffa armour and helms. Hilda ducked the blast-back of debris, covering her face and thankful for her own steel helm and kevlar vest. Next time, she would work behind her shield. Raising her head, she peered into settling cloud of dust. 'Is that enough?'


OOC: Any damage?

No, Hilda doesn't take any damage except maybe a few scratches. She isn't expected to take it if she doesn't have to.

Oddly, there's not a lot of dust. Apparently the ore does't produce a lot of dust when it's mined.

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 164):

As Hilda experiments with using a plasma cannon as a mining tool, Kaspar breaks out his pipe and tobacco.  As the bits of ore fall on the ground, Kaspar puffs his pipe to life.

"Ah, memories." Kaspar says around the stem of his pipe, clenched in his teeth, as he grabs up a shovel and a bucket, "Reminds me of being back in the Soviet Army.  Scut-work, scut-work, scut-work."

Humming a tune and puffing on his pipe, Kaspar starts shoveling up naquada ore and putting it in the bucket.

Once she'd made a big enough hole, Hilda stepped away from the blaster and joined the others at the excavation. Fetching a bucket for herself, she began picking up bits of rock bearing the greenish shine. 'Skutr – hard work?' she tried. 'Reminds me of building pyramids for the Goa'uld, but I didn't have to cut the rock.'

In reply to Hilda (msg # 166):

"Scut is a Middle English word of unknown origin." Kaspar said, Pausing in his work to lean upon his shovel, "I suppose it could have come to English from the Scandinavian language, by way of either the Angles or the Saxon peoples.  It means something worthless or menial. But in the late nineteenth century, in Ireland, the word was adapted to mean a foolish person or someone of little usefulness.  Thus 'scut-work' were those jobs given to 'scuts' to keep them busy and out of the way, as well as being the menial jobs that nobody else wanted to do."

Kaspar reached up for his pipe, took a puff, then removed the pipe and grinned at everyone.

"Sorry.  I am a Professor and a Linguist, after all."

---

OOC: do you know that the closest thing I could come to finding a translation for your "Skutr" was the Czech word "Skútr"?  Yup, which means exactly what you think it means - "Scooter" ^_^

OOC: I was working on a joke, but the possibilities were too rude. ;)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scut


Hilda, meanwhile, was learning English from the basis of Old Norse, and the process had a fair bit in common. 'Ah, no, skutr has another meaning. I was being polite.' she added with a grin.