One Morning Outside the Jedi Temple...

[agrii]

At first, from a distance, the object might look like a bundle of flowers. They're bright, friendly, colorful like flowers, but the shape's wrong, and there's no leaves. No, as someone approaches, they find about eight or nine objects that seem to be toy lightsabers, in varied colors. The usual red and green and blue are there, but there's also a hideous puke yellow, and one in a magenta shade. They light up, and when waved through the air while lit, they make the traditional "zhoooom-zhoom" sounds, a tinny metallic recording of the actual sound lightsabers make.

There is a note attached to the bundle--

Moor light say burs for jade die! Hope you all in joy these!

- Te Mi

(OOC note: feel free to use this as a Mingle. Te Mi will not be coming down in person, but you can use this as a catalyst for more play among yourselves.)

Network video

[dr_riley]

[A familiar face and a familiar setting appear, Drake sitting at a desk with the dimly lit lab space behind him. His jacket is flopped over the back of his chair and he looks a bit tired, but that could be the harsh light of the communicator giving him shadows.]

Hello. Me again. I imagine most of you have heard by now, but if you haven't, the machinery discovered in the mines has been powered up and [sigh] activated. I haven't worked out the long term consequences of this, but three things became immediately apparent.

[He holds a finger up for each point]

One: there was a false wall that hid an active monitoring station.

Two: a hangar was opened, allowing the new ships to be moved.

Three: a persistent data transmission is now being broadcast.

The monitors show parts of a city I'm not familiar with, and there isn't any user interface that I can find. There doesn't seem to be a way to control the views, rewind to earlier recordings - if indeed they are recording - no accessible information about how it's operated, why it's buried, what this place's purpose is, who was watching who, or why. Without taking apart the entire assembly and digging out a mainframe, the only thing I can say isn't complete, wild conjecture is that whatever is being spied on, it's been abandoned for a long while.

Similarly, I have no way of telling what's being transmitted, how far, how much power it's consuming, or who it's meant for. I'd suggest shutting it down, but what's the point: Whoever has the means to receive it will likely also have the means to tack down its point of origin if it goes dead.

There is this, though.

[He holds up his tablet, and on the screen are the symbols found on the monitors, drawn by hand in red using a basic Paint program.]

These symbols were displayed in the corner of each monitor. I've tried cross referencing them with notes I've collected, but all I can be sure of is that these characters [He points with a pencil at the symbols that will eventually translate to "Sh'Ka."] appear over and over. Possibly a numbering system, or a list of places, the name of this station or whatever it's watching. Maybe even the emblem of a political or military organization. [shrug] Wild conjecture, etcetera, etcetera. If anyone recognises these symbols, please let me know. It might help in finding out what the aim of all this was, or even how to access the system.

I think that's all for now. I'm still working on understanding what we're looking at, but I think it's about time that tunnel got widened to allow more access.

Riley out.