User blog:Lazarus Grimm/Elder Effect: The Dark Discovery

Elder Effect
The Dark Discovery

Planet Caecilly was an unwelcoming place. The sediments of the small planetoid’s surface spoke lengths of just what sort of eons the planet had gone through. The air was barely breathable, even though it had underwent some terraforming for the last couple of months, almost as if the planet didn’t want to sustain life. And it wasn’t as if they could request any help from the Elder Council. No further attention could be brought to this sector of the galaxy, or else the media would start to wonder just why so much equipment and personnel were shipped out to the one and the same backwater planet in the middle of nowhere. They were already suspicious however, she could tell.

Miriam Auxelia of the Archaeologists’ Guild wasn’t fond of prying journalists. Nor did she like her work to be interrupted by outside factors. And though she loved her work, she hated the idea of having to perform it in such hostile environments as Caecilly.

The rocky planet consisted of nothing more than near-impenetrable rocky terrain and crags. Fissures burst out of cracks in the concrete hard ground and the surface itself seemed to be plagued with constant dust storms. And it was cold. Very cold. It was almost as if the planet was conscious and didn’t like freeloaders lurking about. Yet she had to remain here and supervise the digging. The Guild had personally requested that she be the one to lead the expedition, but just as to what they were hoping to find here, she had no idea. It had certainly tickled her sense of curiosity however. And she knew that the Guild had to be on to something big, considering all the effort they had made to keep the dig a secret. Even going so far as to make the Elder Council keeping their mouths shut about it. All she knew was that a year ago the Guild had caught a signal from a survey ship that had just happened to pass by. Though the crew of the ship had no idea what the signal meant, the Guild certainly did. They had paid every member of the crew a handsome sum to keep their mouths shut about their find and sent them on their way, before restricting that particular region of the sector.

Apparently the signal came from the planet surface itself, and it wasn’t just some sort of disturbance from seismic activity or the like. The signal was artificial. And its strange repeating pattern broke every rule of definition. The Guild had encountered ancient Dwemer signals before and managed to partially decode them. This signal however was ancient, surpassing the Dwemer with only the Gods knew for how long. Which either meant that the Dwemer had somehow mastered their tech with thousands of years earlier than what was essentially written in the history books, or there had existed another technologically advanced alien race even long before the Dwemer. It boggled her mind. Either of those possibilities would mean a historical breakthrough for all of Mundus.

Soon however her concentration was broken by the sound of a heavy suit heading for her shelter. The sluice door flung open and almost struck her deaf the moment she heard the roaring of the harsh winds outside, before it all fell eerily silent again as soon as the doors closed behind the suit-wearing individual.

The character who had entered her office was none other than Bihani, the Khajiit foreman. He didn’t exactly live up to her expectations of a Khajiit, he was a lot slower thinker and learner than the rest of his kin, but at least he was capable of performing his given tasks on time.

The Khajiit detached the helmet of his suit, gasping for air as he held the helmet under his arm. “The diggers are waiting”, he told her, panting heavily.

The walk from the dig site to the personnel complex was horrendous, and she knew it. Just taking a couple of steps outside in the storm felt like being crushed from all sides by mauls while dragging five full sacks of potatoes at once.

“What are they waiting for?” Miriam asked, lowering her glasses to get a better look of the Khajiit. “We are not through yet, are we? According to my calculations we would be hitting the target wall before the end of this week.”

Bihani smiled. “This one’s men have been working hard”, he panted. “We are close to breaking through now. The storm prevented us from establishing radio contact, so Bihani ran all the way back here to bring you to the dig site.”

Miriam could feel the hair stand on the back of her neck. They were already there? At the source? For a moment she felt as if though she could kiss him, but looking at his unkempt whiskers and the expression on his face indicating that he would either pass out or throw up, she decided not to.

“Show me!” she instead ordered.

The Khajiit glanced up at her with a look of dismay. She understood. Running from the dig site and there was an accomplishment in its own right.

“Fine”, she told him. “Go get yourself some rest. And drink much. I will need you sharp tomorrow. No doubt that you will be needed to clear much of the area with your crew once we figure out just what that source is.”

He smiled again. “Yes, this one will do just that. Thank you.”

“Lend me your suit though! And be quick about it! I need to see this!”

Once she was out of her quarters and out in the storm she was just reminded of how much she missed Cyrodiil, especially Aleswell where she had been born and raised. While looking around at the strange, uncanny rock formations, and the fissures leaking from the ground, everything seemed so distant and foreign. Cyrodiil might as well have been a place in a forgotten time from thousands upon thousands of years ago in comparison to this place forgotten by space and time. If it hadn’t been for the fact that an ancient alien signal was emitting from deep below the ground, she wouldn’t have believed that anyone had ever put their feet on this planet’s surface before. Nor did it seem as if anyone was ever intended to do.

The storm pushed her heavily forward and almost threw her to the ground a couple of times. The helmet she wore, drowned out almost all of the sounds, but every now and then a rock came flying at the glass and left a small but insignificant mark on its surface. She breathed heavily as she made her way towards the lift, leaving the personnel complex behind her in the distance where it was quickly absorbed by the smudgy gusts. It was hard to believe that almost two hundred people were now living here for this archaeological dig only, even though she couldn’t make out a single person or machine out in the open. They were all most likely asleep or dining in the mess hall, or already down at the dig site, waiting for her arrival. A line of lights had been established to guide the traveler from the complex and down into the shafts.

Once she had made the exhausting trip to the lift she pulled the lever and descended down into the darkness. As the platform gained in momentum she passed layers upon layers of various sediments. On occasion she believed herself to spot gigantic bones mixed in with the hard rock they had been excavating, but she knew better than that. Caecilly had no history of life and was incapable of sustaining life as well, until now on both accounts. The terraforming had been going smoothly, and though the storms would still be a problem they wouldn’t need the suits in a couple of months or so. Nonetheless they were vital to protect oneself from flying stones and rocks.

Finally the lift landed with a hard metallic clang against the foundation of hardened magma. Though Caecilly might have had volcanic activity once in its vast and long lifetime of solitude, those times were long gone. Now it only consisted of heavy metals and a cold, unforgiving climate that had made the very rock as hard as the most tempered of alloys. It had taken them an entire month just to break through the first layer of sediment with a Delver alone, exhausting two drills in the process. From thereon it only seemed to get easier.

The deep caverns down here were well lit with glowing blue lights that cast eerie shadows on the walls. The strange, intestinal tunnels, were lava had once been flowing now served as their passageway to the source of the signal. Far up ahead she could see the Delver standing by, as well as the crew of diggers, composed of all kinds of races. All sworn to secrecy, and all just as eager to see what was behind the final wall as she was.

Drole Lathandras, a Dunmer scientist and historian approached her with an excited smile. “Ready for the final push?”

Miriam removed her helmet, though the air was quite thick and heavy down here, she wanted to see this whole event clearly. “As ready as I will ever be”, she panted.

“Good”, Drole said and signaled for the Delver pilot to go ahead.

The floodlights were all aimed at a wall composed of a fossilized magma flow. The diggers made way for the machine to go on ahead. It started its engines and pressed on onward. Miriam’s heart was pounding excitedly inside of her chest as she watched the giant Mech take one step at a time. Equipped with a hammer-module its arms swung wide and hard, shattering the wall upon impact. There was a loud rumble as the cave wall started to collapse and came crashing down. The Delver took a couple of steps back and waited for the dust to settle. And then the diggers returned to the opening. They drove up with vehicles equipped with maneuverable floodlights all aimed at the darkness revealed behind the rock, then they all looked at Miriam.

She swallowed hard and approached the wide crack as the Delver powered down. Drole was hot on her footsteps. “Somebody lend me a flashlight”, she said.

A volunteer of the digging crew approached her and handed his light over to her. She activated it and let its beam track along the insides of the cave. There didn’t seem to be anything aside from a gigantic block, blotting out the majority of the interior, though her tracker certainly implied that the signal was indeed coming from within. She stepped inside and walked along the side of the block. And then it dawned on her…

It wasn’t a block. It was a ship. And it was massive. She could almost feel her chin drop against her throat. Tracing the light along the surface revealed that it was partially buried. This was indeed the source of the signal. An incoherent mumble of concern came from the crowd of diggers as they all slowly approached the gigantic artifact. Drole just stood like frozen in place and gazed up upon it. Its tail was still buried inside the sediment, and bore witness to the fact that the planet had most likely looked completely different during the time when it had landed or crashed, whereas time had eventually enveloped the slumbering ruin with layers upon layers of rock and lava. It perplexed her even more as to what the material was made of. She couldn’t find any single trace of burn marks or signs of molten metal. As of now there were no unshielded ships whose hull could withstand the heat of boiling lava. So just what made this material so special? Could it even be analyzed? Could they even enter?

“I… want an analysist down here this very instant”, she said to no one in particular, her eyes still hexed with the immeasurable beauty and terror that was the gigantic black ship.

A digger took her word for it and ran back up, grabbing what suit he could along the way, clearly eager to back in time to see what secrets would be unveiled.

Miriam glanced back down at the tracker application installed in her CHIM. It was going off the charts in terms of signal power. Just what the signal meant, however, was beyond her.

“Imagine what the Archaeologists’ Guild will have to say about this”, Drole wheezed with excitement. “I’ll have to get back to the radio soon enough to tell them.”

“Just don’t tell anything we’ve yet to uncover”, Miriam said. “I want to know everything about this before any of their experts come here to steal our spotlight.”

“Of course”, Drole said. “Wouldn’t dream of it. This is my discovery too, after all.”

It didn’t take long for the diggers to fill the enormous chamber with the floodlights, revealing the ships true form. It was colossal and pitch black, though the darkness of the color was an understatement. It seemed to be drinking the light they shone upon it as it cast no reflection. Vague details could be made out from the sides. There appeared to be a pair of folded wings. Their purpose was obscure as the ship seemed to be made for interstellar travel, but then again that just a theory supported by the fact that there didn’t appear to be any other types of constructs on the planet, so the ship couldn’t have been indigenous.

Gazing upon the ship filled Miriam with an unexplainable sense of fear and dread. The signal had been going strong for Gods knew how long, which meant that something had activated it. The ship seemed remarkably intact after spending thousands upon thousands of years below the ground. In fact it didn’t seem to even have a dent or a scratch. The surface of the hull was completely smooth and ominously black, as if staring into a void. She took a step back, almost as if she feared that the ship would somehow spring to life and chase after her like some disturbed animal awoken from its slumber.

The cockpit of the ship was obscured by rocks, though she could tell there was something inside. She felt another chill run down her spine when she realized the size of the cockpit. It was definitely not made with the size of any Men, Mer, or Beastfolk in mind. Judging by its scale ratio, she garnered that the constructors must have been at least 16 to 20 feet in height. It made her feel small – small and insignificant. Not to mention that these kinds of ships existed even long before the Dwemer had first started to draw the first schematics for basic Animunculi. She wondered what had become of the race that built them, and whether or not they still existed out there, somewhere in the darkest reaches of the deep space.

Drole soon returned with a team of scientists and analysists, each equipped with the right tools to perform their investigation of the ship. Miriam allowed them the moment to stand as frozen as she had upon realization of just what they were dealing with. None of them seemed to fathom the consequences of this discovery. History books would need to be rewritten, and new scientific breakthroughs were bound to be made from the technology this ship carried. There was a reason the expedition had been sworn to secrecy by the Elder Council. If one race held monopoly on the discovery, it could easily culminate into a diplomatic turmoil.

She didn’t even need to say a word as the science team set up camp by the ship. It surprised her to see how gently they treated the surface as they began to inspect just what it was made of and how they were supposed to analyze it without harming it, if such a thing was even possible. While the discussions went on, Miriam took the opportunity to stroll around the ship a couple of times. Completing the trek from to the entrance of the cavern, around the ship, and then back to the entrance took approximately ten minutes.

And as an entire hour passed of Miriam just talking a walk alongside their amazing discovery, admiring its grim and sharp outlines, Drole approached her. “They’ve managed to sample some of the hull material”, he said excitedly.

Miriam thought that he at first was joking with her. How had her team managed to put a dent in a ship that hadn’t even been harmed by flows of lava after millennia was beyond her, but she chose not to question it. She was too eager to find out what results they came up with rather than ask what methods they were using.

She approached the science team where they had set up a computer and some research gear. Thorrin Brown-Beard, a Nord computer whiz and general expert on materials and metals of all kinds, sat down and started typing eagerly on the keyboard, comparing what little they had managed to salvage from the hull to the various elements on the chart.

He removed his glasses and shook his head. “Un-fucking-believable”, he said. “There isn’t a single material like it in the whole Mundus Galaxy. Not a single match.”

This find was getting more interesting by the minute.

Miriam leaned over his shoulder, adjusting her own glasses in the process. “You mean to tell me that this monster is not from Mundus at all?”

The Nord shrugged. “I wouldn’t rule it out. It’s just weird. There is not a single trace of any known elements in there. Though I have via some computer magic, research and basic deduction skills, managed to set an approximate year when this stuff was created.”

Miriam could barely believe what she was hearing, they had just arrived and were already establishing a set timeline.

Thorrin scoffed. “You are not going to like this though.” He flipped a button on his computer and it showcased the approximate age of the ship’s material and most likely the ship itself.

All their faces turned into shades of pale.

“That’s … that’s not possible”, Miriam stuttered. “It’s just not. You must have done something wrong.”

The Nord seemed offended. “My calculations are never wrong. And if I am wrong, so is this computer. So would every computer be.”

Miriam couldn’t wrap her head around it. The final reading of the ship’s approximate age said that it was created over 20 billion years ago. The approximate age of the universe was estimated to be at around 14 billion years. How was it even possible for an alien spacecraft to be older than the creation of the universe itself?