Act I: Mercurian Underground

[Halbarad]

Everyone else:

At first, you don't see much activity from either Chris or the terminal he's working at; the first sign that something is happening is a flashing light on the screen, followed by a button appearing on the terminal's screen: 'Playback Ready'.

Moments afterward, though, a bright red light turns on above the terminal, and loud klaxons sound throughout the bay, echoing among the vast open space. A female voice announces in Lunarian "Unauthorized system access detected in main docking bay." Chris' body jerks spasmodically a couple of times in rapid succession, but the hacker remains standing.

It's only a few seconds before the klaxons quiet, although the red light remains on above the terminal. Shortly afterwards, Chris speaks aloud: "Sweet Queen of Luna, I've hit the jackpot!" Soon thereafter, you see a highly detailed map display itself on the screen, although the labeling is too tiny to read at the moment. And seconds later, Chris himself shakes his head a bit. "Man, what a rush," he announces to no one in particular.

[Jon]

"Oh? What did you get?" Michael peers over at the terminal with interest.

[thepanda]

“A hernia, I think,” Christopher says, frowning up and rubbing his head. “Anyone got some aspirin?”

“Anyway, I got us into the system, nerfed rig and all,” he says, boasting only a little. “I now have maps and admin level clearance into the system. Saw a few interesting tidbits while I was glancing around. The power generators are reading at seventy percent, but apparently the batteries aren’t holding any juice. Well have to look into that soon if we want to run lights, power, and all that good stuff. But hey, it is located near the research sector so at least there’s that to look forward to.”

He finally catches sight of the flashing icon and hums, starting it up through more conventional means. “And I wasn’t playing about that aspirin. Anyone got some?”

[Halbarad]

The playback begins without further ado, a man dressed in a crisply pressed light blue uniform appearing on the screen. He looks a bit past middle age, and a pair of wire-frame glasses adorn his face, his hair a short-cropped brown shading to grey. He begins to speak a few moments later, in slightly accented Lunarian.

"Greetings, to whoever's finding this message. My name is Arris Densalver, and I am the colonial governor here in Arcadia. If you've unlocked this message, I can only assume that the rescue teams have arrived too late for most of us. As of this message, it's been nearly two weeks since word of the attack on Luna and the collapse of the planet's magical field; we've had no contact from offplanet since, and even most of the colonies here seem to be cut off from communications - it's been more than a week since the last message from Mariner City came though.

"I'm leaving this message to explain what's happened here, as best I can. Two weeks ago, on March 14th, we received an emergency communique from the Lunar government that they were under attack - some sort of invasion force from Earth, we gather; the message was cut off rather abruptly, so we're still not sure what happened there. All we know is that only a couple of hours later, there was some sort of massive magical drain, and the standing magical field for the entire planet seems to have collapsed - although we have no idea why. This colony has survived mostly intact, although the tunnels linking us with New Chatham and Breaux collapsed within a few hours of the magical field failure. We've also received word from Mariner City that much of the capital is in ruins, and that they've already patched a breach in the atmospheric seals; the only reason we're doing as well as we are here is that the Council voted to failsafe most of our systems in case of some kind of catastrophic failure.

"Unfortunately, and I hate to say this, all that seems to have done is prolong the inevitable. Without magic, water and food production have dropped to zero; we have enough water on hand to last for perhaps another week, and food for another day, maybe two if we ration it. The air seems to be holding well enough; the recycling system should last far longer than anything else.

"If you're seeing this message, it must mean that I've already died. If that's the case, please - take the time to look for survivors. I know there are a few people who have hoarded food and water, so there might still be one or two people left here that are still alive. If so, get them offplanet to someplace safe - Venus should hopefully still be all right, and it's the closest to us here."

The man in the video sighs. "I don't know what caused this disaster, and at this point it probably doesn't matter anymore. We'll do our best to survive for as long as we can... although it may not be all that long, anymore."

The picture winks out at this point, and a date is displayed on the screen: March 31, 1047.

"This is Governor Arris Densalver's final message. The governor's life signs terminated April 7, 1047." a computerized voice announces.

[Ebiris]

Rowan sighs after the message completes. "The Dark Kingdom didn't even have to directly attack the other worlds... even technologically inclined Mercury collapsed with no magic to sustain it...

"What a beautifully fragile house of cards our precursers made for themselves in the Silver Millenium..."

Still musing on that, she goes to acquire some painkillers for Chris, returning with a pill and a glass of water, which she hands over. "From the tone of that message - especially the point about people hoarding food - we're likely to find evidence of rioting and social disorder in the colony itself. Not exactly the most flattering view of the Silver Millenium..."

[Carthrat]

"I wonder..." murmurs Arkian, shrugging. "Can we transfer any of this data back to the ship?"

Rioting? No doubt.. I wonder how long the last survivors held out for?

[thepanda]

Christopher takes the offered painkillers with some relief.

"Yeah, transfering the data shouldn't be a problem. Their systems aren't that alien. Just give me some nappy time and I'll jump right on it, ok?"

[Carthrat]

"Right," replies Arkian, turning back to the screen. "I guess our first order of business, then, is to see what we can do about the batteries.."

[Halbarad]

It takes Chris a while to collect himself, but once he does so he transfers the map and the recording back to the shipboard computers - although it takes a little wrangling to set up the interface for the fairly large data transfer, eating up another couple of hours.

By the time he's finished, it's getting close to 1400 - almost twelve hours since the onboard computers awakened you in orbit, and the odd hours are beginning to tell on most of you.

[Carthrat]

Arkian yawns, stretching somewhat.

"I'm going to transmit this data back to the Moon," he says. "Then I'm turning in for now. I guess we all will be; once we're awake, we'll start delving."

Sounding cheerful and perky at that, Arkian retreats into the Star to do exactly what he said.

[Ebiris]

"I can't wait to see what we'll find past this hangar, tomorrow," Rowan agrees. "Can our radio transmit to the moon from here, or will we have to exit the hangar to make contact?"

[Halbarad]

OOC: Getting things kickstarted again; major timeskip post here so we can move on to more interesting things. Think of this as an overview of what WOULD have happened on Mercury if everything had gone well.

The next few days pass fairly quietly. It's soon discovered that the thickness of the planet's crust prevents any kind of radio communications offplanet, so Arkian and Michael take the ship out to make a report while Rowan and Chris begin work on exploring and mapping the cargo bay and surrounding areas.

Most of the second day under the surface is spent photographing the ruins of the city and making reports on the conditions; there are several sets of skeletal remains in various places around the city, the long millenia having left them nearly untouched. Michael collects several samples of these, as well as some of the shreds of clothing still left on the bodies - with no atmosphere to speak of, there has been little decay of even semi-fragile items over the years. Some of the administrative offices, discovered by Rowan as the team maps the ruins, even have papers still intact - extremely brittle, but still legible. Much of what can be deciphered from the state of the city reveals that the people still living past the fall of the Silver Millenium went fairly quietly; most of the remains found are inside residential areas, with only a few showing signs of violence as the first inside the cargo bay did.

The third morning is spent on the planet's surface. Chris and Arkian take the ship to the surface, having gleaned information from the computer systems on its type and location - a network of specially formed cables buried about ten meters below the planet's surface, capable of generating power from the immense heat of the sun while the colony faces the Sun. A sample of this cable is detached and placed in the ship's hold for study back on the Moon. The latter part of the day is spent inspecting the power systems inside the colony itself. While the colony is away from the dayside, it should be powered by a system of both magically enhanced and standard batteries. This colony's foresight in making non-magical backup systems seems not to have extended to the battery array; barely one in ten of the massive batteries is functional without a magical field being present - although testing DOES reveal that the magical batteries are indeed still functional when the magical field is restored.

During Chris' inspection of the computer systems surrounding the power grid for the colony, he manages to discover an entirely separate battery array in one of the research labs, functioning almost perfectly and entirely composed of non-magical batteries. The lab itself is rather far from the cargo bay itself - the team's temporary base of operations while exploring the colony - and so the exploration of the laboratory is left until the fourth day.

Chris and Michael defer from the expedition; Chris is more interested in mapping out the intricacies of the Mercurian data network, and Michael is intent on searching for further evidence of the events in the colony following the Silver Millenium's collapse. And so it is that Arkian and Rowan find themselves outside the Silver Star, bound for a high-level research facility on the far side of the colony.

OOC #2: Jon, if you could contact me when you see this, I'd appreciate it.

[Ebiris]

Once more attired in her spacesuit, Rowan checks over their route one last time as she and Arkian prepare to depart the vicinity of base camp.

[Halbarad]

It's going to be a fairly long trip. The lab in question is a mostly below-ground-level facility about three miles from the cargo bay - it'll take about an hour to reach it on foot. The route you're planning to take will lead through the 'downtown' section of the colony, a collection of office buildings and manufacturing facilities around which most of the residential areas are clustered. From the information you've found so far, this was the main shipping port for the planet; most of the offworld goods were received here and distributed through the planet's now-collapsed tunnel system to the other colonies scattered throughout Mercury's crust.

[Ebiris]

With things clear in mind, Rowan glances over at Arkian. "You ready to go?" she asks.