Mission: Ice Is Back With A Brand New Invention

[overharrowed]

WHO: Julius, Sawbones, Amos, Holden and Wysteria
WHAT: Poking an artifact for science.
WHEN: A montage over Guardian/Drakonis
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: OOC post over here, no warnings for now.

Some initial groundwork has established that the pyramid is not going to turn on spontaneously, at least to the satisfaction of those who need to sign off on it being brought into Kirkwall proper after some out-of-town evaluation. The thing now has dedicated laboratory space, the room rearranged slightly to accommodate its size. The dark artifact rises roughly five feet high. Notes from those who found the thing indicate that parts of it were glowing before it was deactivated; these are added to the notes they found with the item (mostly in Trade, with several untranslated words surrounded by question marks and guesses).

Julius briefs those of them who weren’t there on the circumstances of its discovery, deferring to Sawbones when questions about those circumstances arise. His priorities for research, roughly in order, are as follows:

1. How does this artifact work?


2. Is there any red lyrium involved?


3. Does it seem newly constructed, or is it more likely an older artifact Corypheus’s forces turned to their advantage?


4. If the latter, who built it originally?

While he’s technically part of the Diplomacy division these days, Julius started out in Research, and it isn’t hard to see why. While the question does have strategic importance, it may be evident that the matter has captured his curiosity in its own right too. He's certainly in the laboratory as much as his other duties allow.

Comments

[innerharbor]

Amos squints, a momentary twitch running through him. Magic. Sure. Okay.

"That encouraging, Jules?" He's been calling Julius that since they met.

[overharrowed]

(He may have tried a correction the first time, but it doesn't truly bother him, and he's seemingly decided to live with it.)

"Well, in that it didn't curse any of us or freeze the room solid, it's not the worst outcome. But what was it doing, then?" He approaches a bit, and he himself seems to be considering the pros and cons of poking it (with his staff, rather than his hand). He makes no move yet to try, though.

[heirring]

Wysteria, halfway through her new string of notes, opens her mouth. Then closes it. Then does not glance about the room.

But after a moment, with uncharacteristic tentativeness, she says, "Perhaps— Well. There was a response to both. Perhaps you might... activate it as Mister Holden did and then see if casting on it in that state caused a similar reaction?"

Something had shifted. She had felt it, like the faintest of breezes.

[innerharbor]

"So magic happened and we don't know what it did." Just clarifying for all the rubes.

Amos squints, thinking. "Cap ain't wrong. Buttons are made to be pressed. We just gotta figure out which and when."

The look he shoots Holden seems to discourage trial and error.

[okayimin]

"We probably should get some barrier or something up if we're gonna try more." So yes, trial and error. "Reckon we might not get frozen to the ceiling just from poking one button at a time, but I don't wanna take too many chances."

[innerharbor]

Amos, who is many things but primarily a mechanic, feels an immediate rejection of the idea. "We do that, might break the fucking thing. Don't you guys have notes?"

Notes he's going to copy, at this point, or die trying.

[overharrowed]

"We do, though they appear to be in translation, so I have some questions about their accuracy. Still... the notes do suggest you're right that there's some correct sequence to press. Sadly, there's not an included diagram or sequence, as far as I can tell, though you're welcome to take a look."

He rests his staff on the floor, not immediately planning to cast again. "Miss Poppell," he adds. "What sort of response?"

[heirring]

From her side of the pyramid, Wysteria's hesitates. Her gaze flickers about them, mouth hanging slightly open and on the verge of saying something—

She clears her throat, makes a note in the margins of her own papers, and says simply, "Perhaps I was mistaken. But for a moment when you cast on the thing, I had the impressed that the pyramid was altered in some way." If she tips her head, magic lingers just there in her peripheral vision like the after image of a gauzy, filament thin curtain drifting about the artifact.

"The effect might be more obvious were we to—" She mimes pushing one of the buttons. "Activate it first. But perhaps you could first try simply magecrafting on it in a...more sustained fashion?"

Yeah cool totally not suspicious at all. Very scientific. No mage talent here. Nailed it, Wysteria.

[acreage]

Now a safe distance away from the pyramid, he comments, "I didn't see anything."

But his tone isn't contradictory, just thoughtful. With a shrug,

"It's worth a try, once we get a better idea of the order to push these things."

[overharrowed]

He considers, then suggests: "I could cast another glyph, perhaps? Or a wisp, that's essentially just focused arcane power that I could move closer or farther away as needed. I'm disinclined to cast anything that could damage it, we hardly want to send the Gallows into a deep freeze."

[heirring]

"Let us try a wisp, then," she says, nodding and making a brisk series of marks in her notes. "That seems the most easily regulated of the two."