First Reply A Land most barren...

[Sars Sarad]

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Planet X924N
Wild Space

Once it had been a thriving world but now only barren earth remained.

For as far as the eye could see there was wasteland, dark and rocky soil that an unforgiving sky held dominion over. A Sun radiated through cloud cover that shifted on harsh winds. Water was scarce but the soil was dark and enriched hinting that life was abundant here long ago.

Desert Scrub best described the ecosystem now. Drier areas dominated this world where only hardy vegetation and plant life could survive. Rain may have only come once every few mnoths ensuring that the plantlife that was here used every drop before the soil dried again.

Rocky outcroppings existed, dotting the surface. Maybe they had been mountains worn away by time and the unrelenting winds. Not all all of them were natural though.

As tall as mountains some of the rock was shaped, like gigantic wheels their lower halves buried in the dirt with intricate marks carved across their surface in a dead language.

No one could understand what they meant but they resonated with the force, telling a story no was left to hear.

The Hub of these monumental 'wheels' cut from stone was the only shelter from those horrible winds. Outside the winds howled but inside they couldn't touch you. When the winds did stop, which was infrequent there was a stillness to this place akin to a tomb though it was not accompanied by the usual forboding sense.

Inside the hub of one such wheel, attached on one side to rock that stood almost as tall and was unworked he had made a camp. It had been a difficult climb just to reach the hub, the lower radial stretching hundreds of feet from the surface. The Winds offered no respite, they had bit at his face and his hands the entire climb.

Now the climb was done, his camp was small consisting of only a portable tent and an automated firemaker which, set on the smooth surface of carved stone produced a small flame....

 

[Merion Oreno]

All the motive, skill, and satisfaction of the Cult of the Central Isopter centered on witnessing disaster. Today a cult observatory asteroid-ship drifted high in the sky. Merion had brought down a shuttle for a closer look. He parked in the hub, which from this perspective was a huge red-stone surface that bent up into sheer cliff on either side. There was plenty of room for the shuttle, an old generic Niathal-class, and also what looked like a small camp.

The Cult accoutrements were a helmet, a set of cocoonlike robes, and a tall staff with complex abstract decorations, almost like a polearm. In a nod to practicality, Merion wore a lightsaber at his belt, the same weapon he'd carried all hundred thousand times the starweirds had killed him. He was many things, not just a death cultist, but none of those things made him less likely to incur his hundred-thousand-and-first death, and he was in no way excited for that death.

So he gave the little campsite a fairly wide berth and kept it in his peripheral vision as he observed the mountain-sized wheel from inside the hub.

Sars Sarad

 

[Sars Sarad]

His senses stirred.

As the Shuttle entered the hub he came out of his tent wearing attire that made him look more like a smuggler than anything else. Only the lightsaber at his hip might set him apart as something else.

The Wind had torn at his features during the climb, his skin had small abrasions where it had whipped against it adding to a rugged complexion.

Once the Shuttle had landed he'd leave the campsite.

It wasn't far, the Hub was large but not overly so and even capable of accommodating the both of them the trick would not have been overly long.

When he came upon the landing site he would have approached from the rear. As eyes set upon the cocoon like robes of the occupant that now observed the wheel from the inside he was struck with a familiarity. On a planet once he'd seen members of the Cult of the Central Isopter but he'd had little interaction with them.

Approaching he stayed a respectful distance away, well out of arms reach but his voice called out just the same...

"What is it?"

...he'd say...

"A record of history lost or a ledger of their end times?"

...the inner radial of the wheel, like the outside had intricate symbols in a variety of pattern cut into the stone. They seemed similar to hieroglyphs, a code messaged hidden in pictograms that would need to be deciphered.

The wind howled outside of the hub.

Merion Oreno

 

[Merion Oreno]

If those pictograms had been smaller, Merion might have taken out paper and charcoal and made a friction impression of them, but small they were not. His helmet recorded what he saw, and he tried to take it all in, get a good clear look despite the scope of it.

Over the howl, he caught the wastelander's approach. He had to replay the recording a bit in his mask lenses to be sure he'd heard it right. When Merion moved that way for ease of conversation, he saw the lightsaber. He let the wind tug open his outer robe to reveal his own saber, a simple thing scarred by starweird claws.

"The people of this world died centuries ago, and died rapidly and avoidably," he said, "or we'd never have found it. I've seen a lot of epitaphs. My sense is this is less a plea for relevance or a memento mori than a...well, a confession."

Sars Sarad

 

[Sars Sarad]

A Lightsaber, Sarad's eyes were instinctively drawn to it after the wind had opened Merion Oreno 's robes.

He could feel the Cultist in the force now, his mind had been elsewhere and he'd been distracted.

Almost as if on cue his hand set itself across the hilt of his own. Tapping it briefly he felt the pull of old habits gnawing at the back of his mind. There was a moment where Sarad saw himself drawing his blade, igniting it and challenging the Cultist.

No, not today though.

After he'd tapped the lightsaber several times more it appeared as though Sarad had a change of heart, his hand tensed but then slid away.

Eyes turned towards the epitaphs again, he'd have remarked...

"Do you think their confession might also be a warning if their deaths were so avoidable?"

...not all death was avoidable after all, in many cases it was inevitable...

"This planet is barren aside from these hubs which suggests either great catastrophe or ignorance. Yet I feel something of the force resonating in the engravings, perhaps something that was left here for us to find."

 

[Merion Oreno]

Sars Sarad had a looks about him — not quite Echani; not quite Thyrsian, their cousins, but close. Merion took off his helmet and let the wind rush across his skin, revealing he was Echani. And as Echani, he'd grown up considering all things combat a form of communication. He thought he read what Sars was saying by his motions in re: that lightsaber; what Sars did, what he didn't do. Whether it had been meant to communicate or not, you could learn a lot about someone by the little details of their relationship with weapons.

"A warning in the sense of 'be more wise than we have been?' It could be." Merion set his helmet under his arm and squinted up at the tall old engravings with his natural eyes. "'This is not a place of honour, nothing of value is here...' Maybe something like that. I'm afraid the Force isn't telling me what it's telling you. I was sensitive enough to find this world's tragedy. The details... aren't coming through."

Which was maybe premature to say; he'd just got here. A few hours of mediation might do the trick.

"Not yet, anyway. What does it feel like to you? What should I be looking for?"