Dr. Daniel Jackson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hi_there_aliens) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
trans_92011-12-15 10:09 am
hi_there_aliens) wrote in trans_92011-12-15 10:09 am
Entry tags:
Sobek the Immortal [Closed]
Planet Designation: Kalimba
Status: Terrestrial, H-class.
Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: Unknown
Sentient Life: Ruins and step pyramids suggest the presence of intelligent life at some point. Currently: Unknown.
Water: 70.2% of the planet's surface. Heavy rainfall/monsoons.
Climate: Earth-like.
Landscape: Primarily jungle and swamp, some plains, severe arctic conditions in northern and southern poles.
Air: Type I (breathable)
Sky: Blue-green.
Warnings: Medium to high levels of megafauna. Watch your step. Conditions in the atmosphere make several forms of orbital scans and equipment unreliable.
Mission: Archaeological investigation of step pyramids and ruins, investigate for signs of source of abnormal energy signature in target area.
The first thing the group would notice was that Kalimba's air was humid and heavy, with a light breeze. The morning had long since burned off most of the mist, and in the distance, clouds lazily drifted onwards towards the horizon. The typhoon season was a long ways off.
The undergrowth was tangled and dense, seemingly impassable in places. Vibrant flowers and vines took up residence where some of the tree cover faltered. With limited sunlight available, it was every plant for themselves. Disturbed by the archaeology group, "birds", each easily half the size of a person and more salamander than avian suddenly took to the air in a flash of brilliantly colored wings. They were gone almost instantly, slicing through the air and leaving only the ear-splitting shriek behind.
The hill sloped down. The cover of trees broke as they came out onto the stone remains of path that must have once been heavily used. Now, just like everywhere else, massive roots and tanglers tore at the ground, slowly swallowing any signs of civilization back within itself. There were trees of all shapes and sizes as far as the eye could see, a rolling wave of jungle and rainforest. Tan and dirty gray step pyramids, all more massive than those found on Earth, and the occasional obelisk rose through the canopy cover like claws, dotting the landscape.
Stac's scans indicated much of the planet was covered in these structures, with the largest in this location. Aside from the archaeological mission, her scans also indicated the presence of an abnormal power that may be of interest.
Non-sentient life: Extensive flora and fauna.
Semi-Sentient Life: Unknown
Sentient Life: Ruins and step pyramids suggest the presence of intelligent life at some point. Currently: Unknown.
Water: 70.2% of the planet's surface. Heavy rainfall/monsoons.
Climate: Earth-like.
Landscape: Primarily jungle and swamp, some plains, severe arctic conditions in northern and southern poles.
Air: Type I (breathable)
Sky: Blue-green.
Warnings: Medium to high levels of megafauna. Watch your step. Conditions in the atmosphere make several forms of orbital scans and equipment unreliable.
Mission: Archaeological investigation of step pyramids and ruins, investigate for signs of source of abnormal energy signature in target area.
The first thing the group would notice was that Kalimba's air was humid and heavy, with a light breeze. The morning had long since burned off most of the mist, and in the distance, clouds lazily drifted onwards towards the horizon. The typhoon season was a long ways off.
The undergrowth was tangled and dense, seemingly impassable in places. Vibrant flowers and vines took up residence where some of the tree cover faltered. With limited sunlight available, it was every plant for themselves. Disturbed by the archaeology group, "birds", each easily half the size of a person and more salamander than avian suddenly took to the air in a flash of brilliantly colored wings. They were gone almost instantly, slicing through the air and leaving only the ear-splitting shriek behind.
The hill sloped down. The cover of trees broke as they came out onto the stone remains of path that must have once been heavily used. Now, just like everywhere else, massive roots and tanglers tore at the ground, slowly swallowing any signs of civilization back within itself. There were trees of all shapes and sizes as far as the eye could see, a rolling wave of jungle and rainforest. Tan and dirty gray step pyramids, all more massive than those found on Earth, and the occasional obelisk rose through the canopy cover like claws, dotting the landscape.
Stac's scans indicated much of the planet was covered in these structures, with the largest in this location. Aside from the archaeological mission, her scans also indicated the presence of an abnormal power that may be of interest.
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
The grimace morphs into a bit of a scowls, a twitch that drags the corner of her mouth down towards her jawline, when Daniel bosses her around, although she doesn't argue with him. She supposes she should try and watch what he does, do as he does. She isn't too old to learn, she just doesn't find this particular set of ruins especially captivating. She doesn't know enough about archaeology to look at what would make them fascinating.
She turns the corner to investigate the rooms and concludes that the one that lays before her must be some sort of prayer room, similar to mosques. There are still dried, rotted remains of mats on the floors, lined up equidistant from each other, and unless the race here was really into recreational yoga Eva can't think of another reason for it. The room itself is more luxurious than the one before it, a tomb raider's dream. The blocks are smoother cut, the eyes, teeth and nostrils of the statues plated in some sort of reflective golden metal to make the crocodiles look endlessly ravenous and intelligent.
"First one. Let's hope I get some beginner's luck. I've heard horror stories about the missions here." By some instinct she doesn't touch anything - this feels less like living history to her than it does a museum. "Have you made any educated guesses about the religious leanings of this people?"
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
"I think anything's possible with another universe," Daniel paused to stare at the remains of the mats. Stacy's scans had been incomplete, but if he had to make a guess, these ruins were easily thousands and thousands of years old, judging at the state of the area, especially the size of the trees and how far down they'd burrowed. Maybe older. The mats, while deteriorated, weren't as bad off as they should be. It said something for the material and workmanship. Incredible. The statues themselves were anything a museum would give an entire wing to have, gold plated and smooth. Definitely a room of interest- "the land masses don't seem right for any time period though."
"The last dig wasn't so bad," Better if he didn't mention the imminent bombardment or the fact someone had attacked him in the sarcophagus room. He drifted from room to room. So far Eva had found the most promising one. Score one for a first timer. They'd have to come back to it after the rest of the place was scoped out.
"I'd say they spent a lot of time and effort in perfecting metal working, especially in a religious capacity. Their God or Gods were very likely something of a vengeful, ferocious god, more of a force of nature, someone to respect and worship but someone who could turn on followers. If the decorations are any indication, they may have practiced human sacrifice, much like the Mayans or Aztecs. I wouldn't call their religious figure all loving and all forgiving but..."
Daniel didn't finish, his eye catching a flicker of brilliant color. It was barely there, and if he hadn't looked this way, at this angle, he might have missed it. He drew closer. A part of a column had fallen, only supported by the gigantic web of roots clutched at it like fingers. He tilted his head to get a better look past it, and just as he thought- Daniel didn't wait to tell her what he was doing or where he was going. The archaeologist bent nearly all six feet double and twisted. He seemed to worm in and around the massive, fallen beam and vanished from sight into the wall.
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
Even if she thought "whammo!" was a word for two years.
"...but powerful," she fills in for Daniel, staring into the reflective eyes of the crocodile. Like the inside of a spoon, the concave surface flips her reflection upside down, dark hair dangling upwards and the curious pout reversed into a puffy close-mouthed smile. "A powerful god who probably, when on their side, could allow them to overtake any of their enemies, or at least defend themselves. They had enemies, I would wager. Or hard seasons where a lot of them died."
She turns back around and startles. "Daniel?"
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
Daniel pushed the boonie off his head. The journey through the wall smashed the thing beyond recognition. If he was lucky, he could straighten out or something before he saw Eneesh again. The aliens did take hats as marks of leadership very seriously.
This chamber was large, roughly the size of three, four tennis courts. There was an open hole in one of the walls. Sunlight drifted in, dark orange and fading where it landed against the stone. It must nearly be sunset. There were more of those statues. They looked like they'd been carved out of a single mass of stone, rather than assembled in blocks, and if you ignored the creeping jungle, flawless. It said a lot for the maker's technique. Unlike the earlier one, these were double-headed, with the top most head serving as a pillar head. There were solid stone tables scattered around, packed with odds and ends, plates, weaponry, jewelery, a few strange devices. There was gold, what looked like platinum, silver. Lots of it. This room would have been plundered if a grave robber had found it instead. Daniel's eyes continued their journey until they landed on the ground. On the floor were large, circular decorations inset into the stone, framed by similar geometric patterns. Daniel knelt by the closest one and lightly drew a finger over the hard surface. Maybe a form of writing.
"You have to see this" Daniel began. When there wasn't any answer, he looked over his shoulder. Oops. He thought she'd followed him. Like a cat doing its best ferret impression, Daniel squeezed himself part ways back through the crack. His head and shoulders popped back out.
"In here."
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
"Alright." Twisting her way through the crack isn't easy on her - aside from the way her hair gets caught on a jutting edge of stone, she feels her shoulder pop a little as she contorts. The shooting pain isn't enough to stop her any, but she does grunt and rub her old war wound once she's extracted herself and sidled up next to Daniel. "This is..."
She surveys the room, smiles a bit and then decides that she may as well admit it. "This is impressive. A throne room, maybe?"
Re: [Eva and Daniel]
Once she was inside, Eva took the time to study the place. Even she was impressed. Daniel beamed at her, an actual unguarded smile. "Maybe. I was thinking a personal chamber or a storage for offerings."
He wandered over to one of the tables. So much wealth and none of it looked disturbed. Just one table along could easily fund a student through several PhD or feature prominently in several museum collections. Mostly jewelery and metals, some rusted. Daniel moved to the next table. More of the same, except..
Bending over, Daniel fished something out of the rubble. It was practically jammed between table and wall, easily missed. Sneezing from the dust, Daniel straightened.
"Huh." It was less puzzlement at what it was and more puzzlement at what it was doing here. Daniel turned the object over in his hands. It was the standard size for such a jar, smooth and ceramic, with a lid that was carved into the shape of a jackal. Strange that it followed the format.
no subject
"What's that you've got there?" She walks over to where Daniel found the jar, although she gives him plenty of personal space. Whether or not they're getting along now - and Eva would insist they only are because it's more pleasant to do an archaeological dig with someone you're fine with than someone you want to tell to back off - she doesn't consider them friends enough anymore to get too close to him, mentally or physically. "A dog? That's different than the crocodiles, at least. Have you seen any indications that they're pantheistic?"
She wanders back out towards the table in the room, examining the objects. She feels as if she shouldn't touch them. They're arranged so neatly, in a concentric sort of order instead of linear, like most Earth humans would probably set them up. She strokes her chin as she thinks on this and realizes her head's bleeding slightly, probably from whatever she snagged herself on. Apparently in catching her hair, it also scraped against her cheekbone. It must have been sticking out quite a lot.
Without asking Daniel's permission, she walks back to the entrance crack to examine it.
no subject
Daniel held the jar up to the light, turning it in his hands. Not quite enough light to make out the inscriptions. "It's a canopic jar. These were used during mummification by the Ancient Egyptians, namely to store specific human organs."
Wandering away from the table, eyes only on the find, Daniel stepped out into the room's open space, closer to the window. He held it up again. There, better. Sure enough, Ancient Egyptian writing graced the sides. It took him a second to get the basic gist: the writing was similar but not quite the same as the writing back home. It wasn't quite what he'd expected from a funerary object. Something about the nameless owner being erased from history, which was weird, because why bother going through all the trouble of the jars if you were essentially condemning someone to the worst death.
"The practice of using the four sons of Horus on the seal really only came about during the late Eighteenth Dynasty. I think this Duamutef, who protected the stomach. You don't see the significance of finding this here?"
no subject
"You think I don't see the significance?" She blinks at him, then puts her hands on her hips.
"Well. Golly, Daniel. I didn't recognize what dynasty an obscure Egyptian God came from, so clearly I'm too stupid to figure out simple math, like that the number eighteen is a larger number than..." she pretends to count on her hands, making a face like she's thinking really hard, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...is eighteen a bigger number than seventeen, Daniel? I don't know, I have a shriveled up little walnut of a brain because I was such a nitwit and studied politics in school instead of investing all my time in archaic dead people! Maybe if I'd bothered to memorize everything about King Tut and Hatshepsut, I'd have noticed that that jar was from the Eighteenth Dynasty, but don't worry, dear, I'm too busy standing in a corner being stupid to one-up your incredibly manly and completely impressive scholarship."
To cap it off, she strokes her chin and pouts. "Besides, I don't want to strain myself thinking about anything harder than Reader's Digest or baking pies."
She turns back around and continues examining the place that caught her.
no subject
"I was talking more about the fact that we have a Eighteeth Dynasty-style canopic jar, an Ancient Egyptian practice, of all things, here out in another dimension and on another planet-" Daniel started to say heatedly. "I wasn't calling you stupid, I was trying to start a conversation with you-"
He barely heard it: the sound of a faint click, and a mechanism coming to life. A familiar sound suddenly filled the room, a droning hum that made his skin prickle. Daniel had the briefest second to look over at Eva, to see her hand fall from the wall, and then feel the floor suddenly spreading like triangular petals of a flower right out from under him. “Wait-“
There was nothing else, no surge of energy or the sound of rings. With one foot inside the opening ring, he didn't have a chance. Daniel didn’t have time to even wonder what went wrong with the ring platform before he fell through. He was only aware of a rush of air, the canopic jar tumbling out of his grasp as he hit part of a jutting statue support on the way down. There was a sharp burst of pain in his back and then strangely enough, nothing. He caught flashes of gold and yellows, coins? Hoarded offerings? Right before Daniel hit the slope hard. He lay there, stunned.
no subject
She feels something flip under her hands, like a switch. Her hand falls as she feels a sound, more than hears it. She turns, suddenly keenly aware of the noise Daniel makes.
"Daniel!" Caring little for her own safety, she rishes to the edge of the petal-shaped pieces of floor, catching herself from tipping forward on the ledge with one hand far, far too late to catch him.
"Daniel! Oh god, are you alright?" He's not moving. She can see him from the edge and he isn't moving. If he has a head injury he needs medical care sooner rather than later. "I'm finding a way down. Please be alright!"
no subject
“I can’t...” Daniel considered his next words very carefully. “I can’t move my legs.”
Couldn’t move them, more like he couldn’t even feel them. Daniel was incredibly proud he managed to keep his voice steady. The first read implied they were just broken. He needed Eva to keep calm and go get help, do something other than panicking, because he had that base pretty much covered. It started to churn his gut, threatened to close off his throat. He couldn’t feel his hands, couldn’t feel anything past his collar bone. Daniel wasn’t a medical doctor. Not by a long shot, but if he had to guess, he had a major spinal injury. Paralyzed from the neck down, Stacy, they had Stacy, she had to have something onboard, this wasn’t permanent. She was an alien ship with an incredibly advanced medical bay with all kinds of technology that put Earth's best medicine to shame. There had to be something- But who was he kidding, this was desperation talking.
Other than the spinal injury, on the plus side, he didn't think he'd completely cracked his head open.
"Go find Eneesh or any of the others. Don't try to climb down."
no subject
And that's one thing the temple should be afraid of. Once Eva has a goal in mind, she's very hard to dissuade. And she doesn't want to go looking for Eneesh because she doesn't know if she could lead them back to this location, and either way, just leaving someone in a pit without seeing if you can get them out first is not exactly kosher in her mind.
"Keep talking so I can hear my way to you." She starts to trace her way out, looking for stairs. Taking a quick mental stock of how far down Daniel seems to be, she starts on the nearest set of stairs. The steps are a bit too far apart, as if built for someone much taller than her. Getting on the same floor seems to be the right idea, at least.
no subject
Daniel waited. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere, the hysterical corner of his mind blurted out. Daniel did his best to squash it and remain calm. After a few minutes of constant contact, Eva seemed to vanish into the labyrinth, and silence fell. Not even an echo of her footsteps. It was so quiet that you could almost imagine she didn’t ever even set foot in the chamber. Just his thoughts and the designs on the ceiling, which wasn’t really...
That’s when he heard it. A sound of something moist slapping around stone and gold, disturbing pottery. Daniel turned his head and went very still. The remains of the canopic jar lay on the floor below. It must have impacted on the way down and then rolled against a pillar. The top was cracked clean off. The rest had shattered into an irreparable mess. The loss of an important archaeological find was the furthest thing from his mind. Daniel squinted. Something flopped around in the shards, reminded him strangely of a fish. Something pale. It righted itself. Whatever it was, was long, thin, with a flared head, spines maybe, and almost the length of his forearm-
Oh. Oh shit.
The realization was like a gunshot. Eva. Where the hell was Eva?! Getting help, which wasn’t going to bring anyone back so soon. Big pyramid (step pyramid), plenty of ground to cover, the comms unreliable. Maybe it would move on. The Goa’uld righted itself. He hoped to God it didn’t notice him yet. Keeping absolutely still wasn’t going to be a problem. Maybe it wouldn’t if he stopped breathing for a few seconds. The snake’s head swayed to the left and right. The movement was sluggish. It was also getting stronger with each swerve.
Daniel didn’t need to his glasses to know when it spotted him. The Goa’uld’s head stopped. He could feel its eyes light on his body. Worse, he felt when its eyes locked on his own. It actually met his gaze. Then horrifyingly, it glided across the floor, slow at first, then gaining strength with each foot. It was like watching a spined viper on the hunt. Daniel tried to push himself up, get away, anything, everything that his mind and baser survival instinct wanted to do. He couldn’t even sit up. He could only lay there. The archaeologist’s heart did its best to escape from his chest, his heart beat hammering away in his ears as he could only watch as it drew closer and closer.
The Goa’uld slithered up the pile of treasure, coming right at him. He couldn’t breathe. The last thing Daniel cried out in his terror was a strangled “Jack!”