therookery | Calling all travellers, please report to gate

FORM: Crystal
SENDER: Daniel Jackson
RECIPIENT: Everyone
WHAT: Anyone seen a Stargate lying around?
WHEN: Early Bloomingtide. Backdated to some days before phylactery shenanigans because he's gonna be distracted by that.
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: He doesn't have super high hopes at this point, but he's yet to come across anything in his research and he's getting impatient.

[ If this sounds vaguely like someone speaking over an announcement loudspeaker, that's because that's how Daniel is treating this. ]

Hi, my name is Daniel Jackson. If anyone has seen, heard, or read of something called a Stargate, please get in touch with me.

It looks like a large metal ring, about twenty feet tall, with roughly forty glyphs around the circumference, and nine chevrons along the edges. It'll probably be very old, maybe found in a ruin somewhere. Uh, it could also have been called a Chappa'ai, Astria Porta, Ring of the Gods...

Anyway, if this rings a bell for anyone, please let me know. It's important. Thank you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No clue what a fucking chevron is, but here we call them rifts and you likely fell out of one.

No, that's.... [ Ugh. He's not an idiot, thanks. ]

A chevron is just a shape that looks like a V.

Anyway, I obviously wasn't talking about rifts, but thank you for your contribution.

[ Regardless, Stargates have way more in common with eluvians, if anything. ]

Then call it a V, no reason to get fancy about it.

It's the proper terminology for architecture, if I said a V you might've thought I was referring to the writing, it's-- [ Brief pauses and some shuffling noises as takes his glasses off and rubs the bridge of his nose. ]

They're shapes that are attached onto the ring, they're vital components that light up when they're activated.

What's the point of that?

It's... a teleportation device. Like a.. Magical gateway for travel. The chevrons are sort of the... keys.

[ He's already started to give up on explaining the concept of space travel and advanced technology to the people of Thedas. Magical doorway will have to do. It's not the first time he's had to fall back on it when explaining stargates to more primitive planets, and it won't be the last. ]

Travel where.

To other stargates.

[ Please don't make him. ]

.......why

To... travel.

[ Imagine his face just going ??? right now. ]

To cross long distances quickly?

[A long, contemplative silence. Then:]

Haven't seen any.

....

[ Finally, overly pleasant/cheerful, but definitely somewhat sarcastic. ]

Alright, well, thanks anyway!

Is it some fucked up Tevinter shit?

No.

For all I know, it might be in Tevinter, but they wouldn't have made it.

[ Although if Tevinter has a Stargate Program, Southern Thedas is probably going to have their work cut out for them. ]

Tevinter were into all sorts of well freaky shit though, like, you seen some of their statues? Dragon worship? Could show you the old bits of Kirkwall you can stumble into if you go through the lower bits, well dodgy looking stuff.

So what is it then? What's it do? Might narrow it down a bit or I can talk to folk I know.

[Rey knows weird stuff.]

I can safely say that I have never heard of such a device, but I will keep you informed if it's discovered.

What is the significance of the glyphs and chevrons?

[ He gives a deep sigh - Inessa was definitely one of the people he hoped would've come across something like this during research. ] Thanks...

And, well, you need a combination of glyphs to open the doorway, so the chevrons are sort of the locks while the glyphs are the possible keys. Or, probably more accurate, the combination of glyphs is the address of where you want to go.

Fascinating. [No sarcasm, she really is intrigued.] And is there a projected number of addresses? How many have you discovered?

...I should that that researching glyphs here will more likely than not lead to mage textbooks. That said, the oldest written lore is often found in tomes from the Tevinter Imperium. Elven ruins are also a possibility, though much less convenient.

Oh, god, probably thousands. We've got several hundred hundred of them discovered, and I've been to... a lot of them. Haven't counted recently.

[ He doesn't have his missions logs, so he'd have to sit down and make a list. Which... is definitely something he would do. He's been here long enough that he's started recreating the most important of his notes on Ancient technology, partly for sharing, partly in case he forgets. ]

And yeah, those are the two main sources I've been trying to dive into. I haven't found any evidence of goa'uld activity here so far, so it seems likely they don't know about this planet, which means if there is a stargate here, it might have been put here by the Ancients thousands if not millions of years ago.

...and thus well-hidden. It's possible they might not be in Thedas, but on another continent. We are only familiar with a portion of this world, and very little is known about the lands and societies from elsewhere.

There were two of them on my planet, and one of them were in the frozen southern pole, probably similar to the Sunless Lands here.

[ He sighs with tired annoyance. ]

You know, back home, we have ships that can fly? If I just had one of those, I could pop right over the Hunterhorns, the Donarks, or to the Amaranth. Easy peasy. Back in time for lunch.

[ It's not the first time he's been on a planet that is unmapped, but usually they have access to ways to solve that. ]

Perhaps, perhaps not. The Amaranth is not to be underestimated; it's devoid of any sentient species and all colonization attempts have failed. Supposedly, a lone survivor was driven mad and killed himself a short time after being discovered. It makes me wonder about the state of the Veil there, and whether the Breach could have made the status quo even worse from so far away.

( A long silence, and then: )

Not chevron like the car, right?

No, chevron like a V-shaped architectural feature.

[ But she knows what a car is, so at least she's familiar with more modern things. ]

See, that makes more sense, but the cars are a lot funnier to imagine, don't you reckon?

Calling all travellers, please report to gate

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