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

Group Thread (No Tag Order, Chaos Rules)

[overharrowed]

Julius has settled a bit to one side of the room, in eyeshot of but not interacting with the pyramid itself as they work. Instead, he’s sifting through the notes, making a separate set of his own notes on some clean paper to one side.

“If he was going to translate this so badly,” he complains to no one in particular, “he could have had least had the decency to include the original text as an appendix.” It’s not that his Tevene is so good, necessarily, but they have Riftwatch agents who could handle anything that eluded him. He glances up, and adds, “Any luck over there?”

Time For Some Da Vinci Code Shit (Wysteria, Sawbones, Julius)

[overharrowed]

When he comes over, Julius is frowning absently. “Take a look at this,” he says, putting a sketch on the table. “Do you think any of these symbols might make more sense rotated? Maybe we’ve been thinking of the top of the pyramid as the top of its writing surface when we shouldn’t.” A brief smile, and he adds, “Or maybe I’ve been staring at them too long.”