IC - 20 - Waystation - Everyone except Kiara

[Mr. Handy]

"Well, I guess with the low gravity, there's no harm from the drop," says Sam. "I'd want to descend more slowly myself, though. Don't want to breach our suits."

[Mephistophilis]

Sam and Isabella launch Moses's body off the side of the pit. It slowly arcs through the hazy orange atmosphere and into the strange blue glow. After maybe ten metres or so he disappears into the gloom. Peering over the edge there's that high-pitched throbbing noise again.

Isabella walks over to the nearest metal ladder hammered into the ice and taps it with the barrel of her shotgun. A tinny noise rings out. 'Anyone volunteering to go first? She looks over the edge. 'I don't really want to find out what's making that noise.'

[Mr. Handy]

"Not me," says Sam with a shudder.

[aine]

“Too late to shotgun holding the fort up here I suppose.” Nicole has no desire whatsoever to descend into that hole but there seems little choice in the matter.”
“Guess we need to retrieve the Android too.”
She stomps over to the ladder, making sure her electric zapper is ready to hand, and starts to descend.
“You’d better be hot on my heels.” She tells the others as her head lowers below the edge. “So to speak.”

[Mr. Handy]

"I'll go second, then," says Sam.

[Mephistophilis]

Nicole starts off climbing down the metal rungs, followed by Sam and finally Isabella. They have to stow all their weapons and tools in their backpacks and bags in order to grip the ladder properly. Sam looks down to see Nicole disappearing into the oppressive darkness. The throbbing noise is becoming louder and louder, and the blue glow brighter and brighter, the lower they go into the crater.

Nicole can feel that nagging, painful feeling at the back of her skull again. Not as sharp but still insistent. There's that image again. Something massive, falling out of the sky down towards the surface of Titan. It's there for a second and then gone. Just that same lingering sensation of being...unwelcome.

The throbbing is something Sam can more feel than hear. High-pitched, rhythmic, speeding up and rising in pitch until it reaches a crescendo and then starts over again. It's unpleasant, Sam feels like there are cavities in her skull that are resonating sympathetically. There's a sensation, nagging, painful, at the back of her skull. She gets a flash, an image, ice fields under an orange sky it looks like Titan but seen from high up, orbit maybe. And there's something in the sky, getting bigger, casting a shadow across the surface, bigger and bigger, falling maybe, blocking the red sun. Then it's gone. She looks up and the sky is clear, just that orange haze. Shaking her head she's sure that it was just an image. There's still a residual, nagging pain at the back of her skull. She doesn't know why but she has the strong sense that she's not welcome here.

From up above Isabella gives a cry. 'That damn throbbing noise, feels like someone's trying to tell us something. Get out of here while you can!'

It takes a few minutes of steady climbing to reach the bottom of the pit. As Nicole steps off the ladder she turns to take in the vista. Now that she's at the bottom she can see that there is a rim of sloping methane ice that has been dug out to expose a flat surface jutting out the centre of the pit at an oblique angle. It is smooth and black, like basalt, and the blue glow appears to be coming directly from the material itself. It is odd that she couldn't make all this out from the surface but now she can see power cables running down the side of the pit from the surface, there are strings of lights hanging from the bottom of the ladder to the middle of the glowing black structure. The centre of that black surface is covered with a white pressure dome.

As Sam and Isabella clamber down the remaining rungs of the ladder, Nicole slides down the methane ice slope towards the black structure. Around the pressure dome is a collection of heating elements, cutting equipment, and site worklights. Through the translucent material of the pressure dome, she can see that there seems to be some kind of opening in the black surface, an area where the blue glow is fainter.

[Mr. Handy]

"I feel it too," says Sam as she unpacks her equipment and follows Nicole. "I don't like being here either, but we have to check it out."

[aine]

“Merde, has Kiara and Jojo gone in there?” Nicole puts her hand on the surface of the dome. “Can you see a way in?” She walks slowly around it.

[Mr. Handy]

Sam inspects the dome, looking for an entrance.

[Mephistophilis]

Nicole places her hands on the translucent plastic covering of the pressure dome. It gives slightly at her touch but there is an evident push back. Something is maintaining pressure within the dome. Joined by Sam and Isabella they walk around the dome to inspect it, the dome is circular with a diameter of around five metres, it is taped down onto the smooth stone surface. Within the dome and visible through the transparent plastic there is a rectangular hole in the ground, at the centre of the dome, about three metres at its longest. The dome itself has a sort of short vestibule on one side, not quite an airlock since it probably only facilitates passive gas exchange. Isabella unzips the outer flap and climbs into the vestibule. There's just about enough room for the three of them inside. Closing the outer flap and unzipping the inner door they enter the pressure dome proper one at a time. Isabella seals the flap behind them, 'Don't want to vent the air.'

Roll Spot Hidden

[Mr. Handy]

Sam sees nothing else of interest.

Spot Hidden roll (55% skill) examining the dome:
d%

[aine]

Spot hidden: 60. Roll: 28

Nicole looks around warily.

[Mephistophilis]

As Sam is examining the dome, Nicole notices something flashing on the control panel of Sam's suit. Checking the same readout on her own suit she sees that it has detected sufficient oxygen levels for human respiration but hazardous levels of carbon dioxide. She looks around for signs of gas exchangers or whatever else is making the oxygen but there's nothing obvious inside the pressure dome.

Looking at what the dome is covering, they see the same smooth black stone surface that emits the faint blue glow. In the very centre of the dome there is a hole penetrating through the stone to a darkness below. There's no obvious door or anything else that indicates how it might be sealed, if indeed it is a door or hatch. Some sort of plastic-runged ladder is attached to the stone with ultrastrong tape and hangs inside the opening. Around the outside of the opening on the back stone surface are two concentric patterns. The inner one consists of several rows or columns of small hexagonal shapes etched into the stone. Many have arms coming off to make six-sided star-shapes, while some have only one or two arms, and others lack one or two arms from the star. The outer pattern is a series of sculpted scenes carved in bas relief. They depict strange six-limbed creatures with a disconcerting frog or squid-like appearance. It is not entirely clear what they're doing from the scenes depicted except that stars seem to be prominent in the background and the figures are carrying various rods and sceptres.

Take 1/1d6 SAN loss after a Sanity check for seeing an alien artefact up close.

Roll Art or Archaeology regarding the carvings, roll Science (Physics) or a hard Own Language for info on the hexagonal script, and roll regular Science (Planetary) or hard Science (Chemistry) to find out about the stone structure.

[Mr. Handy]

"Proof of alien life!" says Sam, more excited than afraid. "Intelligent alien life! And someone knew about it!" She begins examining the find.

Sanity roll (current level 51) finding the alien artifact:
d%
Art roll (5% base skill) about the carvings:
d%
Science(Physics) roll (41% skill) about the hexagonal script:
d%
Science(Planetary) roll (41% skill) about the stone structure:
d%

[aine]

• sanity roll: 96, san loss: 4
  Art roll: 89, own language roll: 92; science roll: 65

“No! What really? All those squiggles?”
Nicole frowns.

[Mephistophilis]

While Nicole can make neither head nor tail of what she is seeing, Sam can see that from the strata and depth of the surrounding rock, this structure could have been here for thousands, even millions of years. The stone of the structure itself is utterly unfamiliar to her and she cannot even hypothesise what it is made of or why it emits that blue glow. Certainly the stone is not indigenous to Titan. And the odd hexagonal shapes, they seem to represent some kind of alphabet or numerical system, maybe an alien form of writing. A base-six numeric system would make sense looking at the six-limbed form of the frog-like entities represented in the carvings. Isabella runs her hands over the reliefs. 'Look at these. They're completely smooth, no tool marks of any kind. I wonder what stage of development these creatures attained? Ancient Greek level perhaps? Or do you think they were space faring?'

[Mr. Handy]

Sam shares her findings. "They had to be spacefaring," says Sam. "The stone is thousands of years old, at least, and it's not from Titan. So unless you think humans made it to Titan in ancient times, someone else must have brought it here."

[Mephistophilis]

'So where are they now?' asks Isabella. 'We've never seen any signs of intelligent life before. Where did they come from, and what happened to them?'

[Mr. Handy]

Sam shrugs. "After all this time, who knows?" she says. "Maybe they wiped themselves out. It's a miracle we didn't. We might find out more information about them down below."

[aine]

“Let’s try the entrance.” Nicole leads the way. “We know something’s messing with us here, maybe this is it; aliens! And it looks like Richter Dynamics knew all about them too- this looks like their equipment here.”