Crypt Part Two
Crypt Part Two
Summary: Greje, Zaharis and some tech's go back to the crypt for more clues.
Date: 29 ACH
Related Logs: Other Muskeg Logs
Players:
Greje..Zaharis..

File created: 2008-12-11 20:22

Some last minute workings brings the team back down to the Crypt. It looks like the water is rising now, as another level of the mummified people are covered. Stability here is starting to look bad.

While the med team works in the Crypt, others finally kill those snakes and get the box out of the room. It's possible, snake killing is also a bad thing, as the place makes some groaning and resettling sound as the ground shifts and water leaks in further.

Some last minute workings brings the team back down to the Crypt. It looks like the water is rising now, as another level of the mummified people are covered. Stability here is starting to look bad.

Some last minute workings brings the team back down to the Crypt. It looks like the water is rising now, as another level of the mummified people are covered. Stability here is starting to look bad.

While the med team works in the Crypt, others finally kill those snakes and get the box out of the room. It's possible, snake killing is also a bad thing, as the place makes some groaning and resettling sound as the ground shifts and water leaks in further. (re)

The teams have specific orders. Photograph as much of the journal pages and parchment pieces that they can, disturbing as little as possible. Only if it's impossible to get readable shots should they move things. Zaharis has waded carefully through the rising water, waterproof case and (hopefully also waterproof) camera around his neck, now kneeling by one of the bodies where he thought he'd remembered seeing something sewn into the fabric of the person's robe during Ramiro's unfortunate incident.

Greje heads down after the teams, having dizzied herself trying to decipher (quite literally, now) the shapes on the crypt walls. She slips down into the water and unclips herself from the line, staying out of the way of the medical teams, for the most part, having been alerted that this may be the last chance to see the place in its entirety… to get a look at the larger picture. After having looked at so many minute pieces, maybe she's just hoping that being here will make something… click? And hopefully not another land mine. She presses her lips together but then takes a breath, trying to relax and open her mind to Apollo, Lord of Enlightenment. No rush. She wades into the crypt.

The small parchement Zaharis looks for is still there. Having been pulled out a little farther before the doc was interrupted by a mine. It's ink is starting to fade, but some other words can be made out. A prayer for the most part. But it seems to mention that the 'Gods will take us. They will make us reborn. Asclepius, Serpent Bearer.'

Zaharis sets his case down on a wet rock, popping it open. He finds a tiny pair of tweezers within, bracing his foot carefully on the side of the rock so he can lean forward to get at the parchment. Tug by careful tug until it's slipped out enough to make out some words. He squints at it, putting the back end of the tweezers between his teeth as he raises the camera, lowering the lens down to the text to get shots of the fading text. Once that's down he picks up his flashlight again, skimming it over the fragile sheet. "Chap?" He calls out after a minute. "'Gods will take us. They will make us reborn. Asclepius, Serpent Bearer.' That sound familiar to you?"

Greje hms, turning when being hailed, causing a little whorl of water around her. She listens, and nods, "Invokes most of the common topoi of Asclepius cult. Mortal son of Apollo who was killed by Zeus for bringing people back to life and then was deified as a manifestation of Apollo Paianos, Apollo the Healer. He carries a serpent entwined around a staff… the staff is a boundary between states. Male and female. Life and death. The serpent crosses the boundary effortlessly… Asclepius is transcendance, allows the living and the dead, the mortal and the divine, the male and the female a unity of being. If they were looking to transcend the harsh winds and winter storms of the North wind… transcend death and emerge into life… Asclepius and his father would be the logical numinous to call upon."

The water continues to lap, it isn't still like before. It's as if the stone around them is ready to return to the earth in some way. A larger crack also formed and it runs down the back of the Crypt now, passing over the hard surface to chase away some of the grime and lichen that is covering the words.

"Alright." Zaharis taps the flashlight against his leg, trying to think. His eyes absently skim around the watery crypt and the other photographers doing their stuff. "Know they committed suicide. Invoking Asclepius. Question still remains…why?" He's talking to himself in part, from the sound of it. Frowning slightly, he stands up and turns his flashlight towards the wall where Ramiro had spotted the cylon pictogram. "You're part of this, aren't you. Did they see you coming? Is that what they wanted us to know?" He steps off the rock, heading for another body.

Greje hears the water trickling down the wall, and turns again, a little more quickly than is right to keep a solemn atmosphere among the dead, lantern searching for the glistening of water down the wall. She presses her lips together again and wades closer, head tipping to one side as if willing some of that algae to come loose. Dane told her not to touch anything, but that water seems to be doing a good job of getting rid of the greenery without smudging the letters. Pensively she switches the light into her other hand, and dips her right into the water, getting a small palmful and lofting it to hit just above some of the lichen still holding on.

The old pictogram of one of the first cylons, doesn't answer Zaharis' question. As the water slides over the stone, it clears for another picture that was etched there. It has the curled form of a serpent ready to strike the cylon pictogram. And behind the serpent, the Gemenese word for 'North Wind' comes clearer.

Another part of the team is trying her best to not disturb so much, but to take pictures of the one holding what looks like a diary? Book of scrolls? It's too hard to tell and the hand is hiding any inscription. "Doc? What should I do here? Leave it or try to remove it?"

Zaharis turns his flashlight around towards the voice. "See if you can move their hand enough to see the papers. Be careful. If the body's too fragile, don't wrench it."

Greje narrows her eyes at the serpent, stepping closer. Her mind stuck on the transcendant serpent of Asclepius and Teiresias… she shakes her head for a moment, as if pretty sure that can't be right, before her eyes widen and she makes a signal of expiation over her lips with two fingers for the inappropriate language that was about to tumble out therefrom in the middle of the tomb. That done, "It's a sea-serpent," she comments in her usual meek and mild tone, just subtly illuminated with scholarly interest hedging on excitement. "The reverse-L posture, the coiling of the tail is almost exclusively iconographic of the sea-serpent, the sea-monster… associated with Scylla, some underworld divinities, and the fight against stormy weather on the sea. The North Wind… Boreas… is shown with serpents as legs, representing his danger to those trying to pass through his gales. Boreas is warding off the Cylon… an apotropaic figure. Almost as if… almost as if it were being conflated with the serpent of Athena… with Medusa, the serpent Aegis which turns away enemies."

The team member takes a tongue depressor and tests the fingers to see if they will move a little. It is painstaking work, but nothing breaks off. The book itself is leather-bound against the elements and holds a small lock, but no key is present. Etched on the outside is simply - 'Duties of a Doctor - ' "Uh. Major?" The flashlight swings to the leather bound, which isn't entirely free yet. "You might want to look at this."

Zaharis turns his light back to the medic by the book. He raises an eyebrow, stepping over some wet rocks and through the deep water over to what they're looking at, shining the light down on the book. It gives him pause for a second or two and he kneels down by it. "Go on and keep looking over the others. We need answers about these cylons." For his part he doesn't move immediately, his fingers brushing the lock on the book. "Had to lock it, didn't you. Said we weren't going to take your stuff, you know," he mutters at the body who it belonged to, as though a dead body gave a crap. His head turns and he glances over his shoulder at Greje's talking. "Not sure I get what you're saying. That they suicided as a means to ward off the Cylons?"

Greje hms. "Possibly. Well… as you noted before, if the Cylons came knocking at their front door, killing themselves would at the very least stop the Cylons from killing them. In the Dionysiac Gospel of Heracles the Mad, Heracles' wife decides to kill herself to prevent her enemies from being able to gloat over her body. On a less… worldly scale, they seemed to think that by escaping to Hyperborea, the land beyond Boreas, with the aid of Apollo, who makes his home there in the winter, when Boreas' storms are raging, and with that of Asclepius, transcender of boundaries, Boreas, the Sea Monster, now conveniently located between those who died here and this world, would ward off the Cylon attack and allow them to rest undisturbed in peace."

"What would it hurt? They can't use it," The team member mentions and then moves off to look over anything else he can find. There isn't much, mostly small personal objects laid to rest with them. He does look up though, "Maybe they died to keep from being taken too? What about those pieces they found?" He turns back, shining his light and notices a locket, but he doesn't disturb it. Another woman holds an idol of Aphrodite in her hand. A man holds Zeus and it looks like a lightening bolt was inked into his cheek.

As the water flows down the stone, taking the lichen with it. There is a set of words along the bottom. "So Say We All." And the date about a week before Armistace Day.

Zaharis nods to Greje and blows a stream of air through pursed lips, thinking. "Maybe. Have to hope there's something more definite in all these journals, I guess." His hand stays on the locked book they found. "Taken? Which pieces are you talking about?" His light flickers where the tech's headed, and he frowns at the words. "Get a picture of that, please."

Journals? Yes, Greje is in her own little world, over there by the sea serpent and the cylon. Her eyes settle on those final words, and the hair on the back of her neck stands up as she seems to hear the voices of the dead. "So say we all," she replies to them in low tones, giving voice-offerings to the dead. She turns, then, and looks back toward Jesse, "We aren't," she tips her head toward the locked scroll, "Taking… things. Are we?" she asks, the level of awkward in her voice going up about three notches, since she's not, obviously, in any position to demand things not be taken, but… well, grave robbing seems a poor plan, to her.

The tech takes the pictures as he is told. "The wing of that old Raider," he says. "A wing broke off on the ground? Where is the rest of it." Being as thorough as possible, he takes and retakes pictures of the same area, so there will be copies.

Zaharis motions Greje at the group of techs. And their cameras. "Photographs. A little credit, we're not monsters." He exhales and stands up, scratching his hairline as he looks back at the tech. The question about the Raider, he doesn't answer, as he's looking at the date on that rock. "A week before…"

Greje exhales in something like a half-laugh, even smiling as she nods in approbation to Jesse, put at ease by his declaration. She moves to one of the other areas of inscription, now less shyly but with the same careful diligence and respect tossing handfuls of water to clear away some of the growth and clear up some of the letters she'd been puzzling over in her office.

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