Act I: Mercurian Underground

[Halbarad]

You wait several minutes, but static is your only answer - if Michael heard you, he's not responding.

Rowan finds that the corridor curves gently for a hundred meters or so before the pipes on the right-hand wall bend up and over a low doorway, although it has no visible handle.

[Ebiris]

Rowan tries to push the doorway (either sliding it in or pushing it open, whichever is appropriate), and if that fails, looks for a pressure plate or motion sensor or something.

[Halbarad]

It shifts a little when you try to slide it, but it doesn't move far. Pushing yields no result whatsoever. There's a small electronic eye mounted over the door, but you can't tell whether it's working or not - there are no lights on it.

[Ebiris]

Rowan grunts as the door gives slightly to her push. I could summon a Golem... but that means I'll have a bunch of forms to fill in...

"Arkian, Chris!" she calls, "Can you guys give me a hand with this door? It's really stiff."

[Carthrat]

Arkian glances around the door. "It's probably opened from the other side," he comments, moving over to help Rowan.

[Ebiris]

"Unless we can get to the other side, or someone here is a telekinetic, we have to do the brute force way," Rowan replies, bracing herself as she puts her back into sliding the door open.

[Halbarad]

Chris heads over to lend a hand, motioning Rowan out of the way - there's only room for two people to pull.

After a good deal of grunting and straining, the door finally begins to shift back into the wall, although you have to fight for every inch of it. After a long, tiring few minutes, though, the door slides the last of the way into the wall, revealing a large open space beyond.

[Carthrat]

Arkian, breathing heavily, moves beyond the door and looks around.

[Halbarad]

The room on the other side of the doorway is HUGE - the beams of your flashlights barely manage to illuminate the far wall. A few sweeps reveal some large, bulky shapes stacked against the near wall, as well as a few more irregularly shaped objects some ways off in the distance to your right.

A few steps out into the room reveals an enormous door set into the curved wall you just emerged from, about a hundred and fifty meters from your current position.

[Carthrat]

Arkian blinks. "I think we've found the docking bay," he comments, turning to face Chris and Rowan. "Pretty impressive, no? What a feat of construction.."

[Ebiris]

"Like I said earlier, the Mercurians didn't kid around with their construction..." Rowan replies looking around as she follows Arkian inside.

Seeing how little she can see from a single vantage point, she embarks on a circuit of the bay's perimeter, going towards the shapes on her right, first.

[Carthrat]

Arkian decides to go the other way, and looks in particular for a control panel of some kind.

[thepanda]

Christopher nods, following the tried but true method of simply following a wall until he comes to a door. He heads left to begin with, occasionally taking a closer look at this or that that catches his eye.

[Halbarad]

Rowan soon finds that the bulky objects she noticed earlier are some sort of packing crates, made of aluminum. One of them has been pulled away from the others a bit, and the side of it is has been pried open, revealing a spill of what look like computer parts? You're not sure. A crowbar lies on the ground nearby.

Arkian and Chris walk for a couple of minutes in the other direction, towards the large main door to the bay. Luck is with Chris, it seems; while Arkian is distracted by one of the large, odd objects that are a bit closer now, he finds a full-length panel computer, complete with Lunarian-scripted keyboard, inset into the wall. A very dim orange light glows above it; other than that, the device appears to be inactive.

[thepanda]

“Guys, I’ve found something,” Christopher announces, already casting his mind toward the terminal. “With any luck this will be hooked up to an outside system. One that works, preferably. Now let’s see what secrets you’ve been keeping all these years, eh?”