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 Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:55 am
Athene nodded, "That would work" he agreed as he continued walking towards where he'd thought he'd spotted the door, the only sounds, the sounds of their footsteps along the floor, the hallway as empty as the rest of the place seemed to be. "I mean we can take things with us as long as we're not touching them when we power up, that's how I manage to take hot drinks with me during winter patrol." He thought on it before adding "And it probably means that we wouldn't have to leave things like first aid kit here, one could just be carried along." He nodded at Thraen's offer of sketching their progress "I wouldn't mind a copy of a map if you decide to draw one" he admitted. After all a map would be nice in seeing where they'd managed to get to. "But only if you don't mind doing it." By that point he'd reached the thing that he'd spotted up ahead a little earlier and Athene was gratified when it turned out that it [i[was a door he'd spotted, pointing it out to Thraen as he turned slightly and asked "Do you want to see if we can look in here or continue up the passageway for a little longer?" After all they could always backtrack if needs be.
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Posted: Thu Dec 19, 2013 7:15 pm
"I'm a fan of seeing what's behind door number one, Bob." It was a lame reference, but any amount of time in the hospital and The Price is Right re-runs seemed inevitable. "But more practically, if its a room, it will give us both a landmark to judge things and reference to. If it's another hallway, my theory is shot. " Thraen put a hand to the thing to test if it was a push or a pull sort of effort- he had no reservations about his already extant membership in the Midvale School for the Gifted.
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Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2013 5:17 pm
"Okay, the door it is" Athene said with a slight smile at Thraen's comment, reaching out to put his own hand to the door. "And I guess we won't know if it's a room or another hallway unless we try and see if we can get it open." Opening up the door however, seemed easier said than done, the thing stiff - probably from disuse. Eventually though (after what felt like a lot of pushing), the door finally swung open with a loud creak. It was a room after all that the door opened onto, rather than hallway - a room from what Athene could see from the doorway, that seemed lined with book upon book. He stepped forward and realised that the room really was lined with books - lots of them, all on shelves, "It looks kind of like some kind of library" he commented to Thraen as his eyes took in the books, noting even as he did so that unlike the hallway there seemed to be no rubble here. The lack of rubble, however, seemed to be made up for by the dust with everything in the room appearing to have a liberal coating of the stuff.
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Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2013 12:24 am
Thraen was dually impressed when between his own pushing and that of an eternal senshi, the door still resisted their efforts. The revelation of the library was like walking in on every dream he could have entertained in his earliest youth- and the room itself was pristine. He didn't breath at first, just followed in with eyes as wide as tea saucers. Then the breadth of the find hit him and he pulled his sash off and lifted it up as a covering , tying it like a mask over his mouth and nose. "If Aquarius' estimate was correct, these books are ...either around or a little younger than ST. Cuthberts or the Lindisfarne gospels from the 7th century.....Equal chance they could disintegrate to dust or be as hale, if delicate, as those manuscripts. God's Breath, Athene look at them all!" The last was practically the tones of a school boy were it not Thraen's distinct baritone to differentiate. "Philology finds whole worlds from single words. Imagine given an whole library. " My gloves don't have full fingers on them to protect relics from the acidity of human hands. I don't want to hurt an...are any legible? A thousand years ago, I can't even really read Old English, let alone what these could be. "What language did the moon even use? I doubt Latin or ancient Greek , unless there are books here they traded with Earth. Or even how much the history of Earth as known in history books we have can be considered reliable narrator to the events of a magical world. The glamour makes everything illogical." "This would take years of study, " it was expressed not as a negative, but as an enthusiastic positive. He turned on his heel, as though trying to memorize the whole of the room in that one moment.
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Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 2:59 pm
"It's pretty amazing" Athene agreed as he took a few steps further into the room, before having to stop and cough as his movements disturbed the dust. Thraen's idea with his sash was a good one, and Athene retreated back to the hallway for a moment taking the opportunity to breathe in the non dust-laden air before unwinding the two sashes wrapped round his waist. Keeping the lighter of the two, he first re-tied the heavier dark jade and bronze sash round his waist before using the thinner light jade one as his own makeshift mask. "The oldest books I've seen were some antique ones in a book shop" he said as he stepped back into the room full of books. "But they weren't nearly as old as these." He'd never been up close and personal to books this old. "I have no idea of what language they're in but do you reckon it'll be okay to take a closer look at one?" Athene didn't really know anything about old books, although he'd heard Thraen mention something about them maybe disintegrating before he'd had his little coughing fit and was guessing that mayhaps the taller senshi might know more about them. And although he wanted to have a closer look at the books, really wanted to do so in fact - Athene didn't want to end up damaging any of them or worse by accident.
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Posted: Fri Dec 27, 2013 5:43 pm
When Athene turned the question to him Thraen blinked a moment then smiled behind his scarf, enough that it traveled into his eyes. "It might be, if we're careful. My cousin is a professional art restoration specialist. She usually works on antiques, but she's done a couple museum pieces. " "I don't know if you've watched any BBC-type documentaries, but if you have you'll have seen those white gloves they always where before they handle the Domesday book or Charles I's execution tunic or whatever. They're lintless nylon gloves, sometimes cotton. Sometimes nitrile is used to maximize dexterity. Anyway...human hands are covered in oils and dirt, and other than that being damaging enough on its own some of the oils have a high enough acidity to cause damage to manuscript pieces. My gloves cover the middle fingers, but not enough else. I wish they covered the thumb." "Do you have any hair sticks? Usually we'd have rods for page turning, " There was a possibility that one of those pretty decorations was a hair stick, looking at Athene's ample mane. "Or any gloves as part of your uniform?" So far it had seemed like Athene was usually bare-handed when he saw him, but it was possible the eternal just took them off. "Not that its absolutely necessary in either case...its just the usual precautions for usual books. I guess there's always the case that these are magical books in a magical place and we'll get zapped with a fireball for opening one like a bad RPG. " "It isn't wholly necessary. Researchers do handle some manuscripts barehanded. We can use one as a control, I guess." Thraen reached for a thin, hide-of-some-sort bound chapbook sized book and slid it off the shelf. "Hides tend to hold up better than just plain vellum or paper binds. Cloth is variable. Well....it doesn't look dry-rotted. The weather and air in here has been more or less still, dry, and untouched I think. Good for preservation. " He offered it out to his superior, "Honor is yours."
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Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 9:35 am
"I haven't really heard mention of the BBC since I came to Destiny City. I used the watch the schools stuff sometimes, although that was back in Primary School and occasionally I'd watch some of the stuff on BBC Switch too" Athene commented before admitting. "To be honest I preferred watching cartoons and the odd series that was based on book stories" his voice turned rueful as he added. "Although the books always seemed better." He shook his head at Thraen's query about hair sticks "No, no hair sticks - just a hair clip and some beads," the two things combining to help keep the braided part of his hair up in its braid. "And no gloves either" The rueful note was back in his voice as he added "I had gloves of a sort back when I was a Super senshi, but for whatever the reason, when ********* upgraded me, the..." Athene tried to think up a word and eventually settled on "Cosmic force or whatever it is that comes up with our outfits decided to get rid of the gloves. But if needs be I can pull one of my sleeves off" he indicated the fabric making up the outer part of the long detached sleeve on his left arm. "Well I can if will help." Although it did not look like it was necessary, at least not at the moment, the book that Thraen had pulled out not looking like it was about to instantaneously crumble. Athene had no idea that Thraen saw him as a superior, would have commented on it if he'd had an inkling - unlike some senshi, he wasn't one to personally stand on rank and the notion of being seen as anyone's superior would have been something that made him feel uncomfortable. As it was however, he didn't really think on Thraen's choice of words and instead reached for the book with a quiet 'thank you' as he tried to keep his grasp on the book gentle, hesitating for a moment before flipping the book open. Trying to hold the book in such a way so that Thraen could see too if he wanted, Athene carefully flicked through a few pages, but the unfamiliar characters may have been Greek for all the sense they made, and after scanning through a couple more pages he carefully closed the book. "I think its safe to say that whatever the language is that its not written in English," he commented before adding "Although I wasn't expecting it to be." He held out the book to Thraen "I've never seen written characters like that before though. Do you think that the Aquarius that you've mentioned may have?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 6:57 pm
Looking on at the same time Athene was examining the manuscript wasn't a problem, given their height differential. There was just under a foot difference, and the eternal's eyes were somewhere level with Thraen's own chest. Still, when the other offered him the manuscript directly, he took it with ginger hands to look over the opened pages of glyphs. He looked at it hard, trying to bring to mind the scrawls in the Guard's notebook, page after page that she had shared. "Nothing matches up, offhand, but one look at either isn't much to go off of. And it was only one notebook, she might have others in her keeping already filled. If she hasn't copies of these, then she'd like them just the same. A lot of the study and decoding will be determining if these are analphabetic phonetic, plain phonetic and alphabetic, or any of the types of logographic....there may be others...linguistics isn't exactly my specialization however fascinating it is. " "It isn't Greek though, I don't think. Not any kind that I've seen before, anyway." He chuckled. "What we really need to bring is a 600dpi handheld document scanner. I think they're about sixty if grabbed off amazon or so. I'll look into it. " He considered their surroundings, "If batteries or regular electronics function here. Gravity does, which is just strange. We can breath...so why complain..." His attention drew swiftly back to the shelves, "Do you think the chances are good they're all unreadable without decoding first?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 8:04 am
Athene hadn't realised that he'd said the Greek comment out loud, although he was happy to take the taller senshi's word for it given that his own foray into languages didn't stretch past the little bit of school boy French, that was a side effect of it being school policy at his old school back in England that one of his GCSEs had to be a language. "I wouldn't have thought to look on Amazon for a scanner" he admitted. "But I guess it's true that you can pick up just anything from Amazon." Removing his glasses, he carefully wiped the lenses on the inner part of his outer sleeve before settling them back in place as he continued "And I guess a good way to test if electronics work up here would be to bring something like one of those little mp3 players or something one day and see if it functions." His eyes looked thoughtful at Thraen's question about the rest of the books and he turned to look at the bookshelves before adding "Maybe we could look at a couple more books," he amended it to "Well a couple more books with hide covers" as he remembered what Thraen had said about them taking to handling better than the other types of books. "If they're like they're like the first one then I guess there's a good chance that the rest of them are that way too."
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Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 11:54 am
"Or even a regular cellphone. I don't carry mine on me in uniform, though. You?" The senshi of gardens carefully padded other books that matched what they wanted with his gloved fingers, listening for crinkling and watching for brittleness before sliding them out one by one- three smallish books. He offered them over again to Athene for opening one and a time. "We can start with some basic information, in any event, like Sherlock and Watson. We can assume fairly safely this is a library or boudoir-sitting room. Either would have a lot of books. Whichever library sort it is, the majority of the books will be in the trade language of most use...which isn't necessarily the native language. Like how most early manuscripts across Europe were Latin, then later French, in spite of the spoken language dominance. " "Which leaves us with the questions- if this was the primary library, than the most common language we find was at least the records language of the Moon Kingdom. If this was a secondary library, or a personal chamber to say a foreign ambassador it would be in their primary records language." "Not much to go on, but its a start? Decoding the languages and trying to find evidence of other personal effects or in mapping out the rest of the ruins of other libraries, would narrow the assumptions and postulates." "Any different looking glyphs? If we can't find Ancient Greek....there is that hope still for Latin," he chuckled. "Or Ancient Chinese. "
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Posted: Sat Jan 04, 2014 6:11 am
"I do sometimes" Athene admitted "But I don't have it on me today." It depended on when he started his patrol as to whether he was likely to have his normal mobile on him with the likelihood decreasing the later at night it was. He held onto the books carefully as he listened to Thraen outline his theories on the room that they'd managed to uncover - more personally leaning towards the idea that they'd managed to find some sort of library rather than a sitting room, however he also acknowledged that Thraen most likely knew a heck of a lot more about these sorts of things than he did - at least it was coming across that he did. "You're right it is a start" he said as he offered the topmost book to the taller senshi before carefully reaching for the second book. "It might be better if we each take a book" he suggested. "And if they seem to look similar enough then mayhaps try and compare them to the first book." He smiled slightly, although the sash acting as a makeshift mask masked the slight tilt upwards of his lips. "And then whoever finishes up can look through the third." He carefully opened up the book and started scan through the first page, noting that the characters were just as unfamiliar-looking as the first book had been "I won't recognise Ancient Chinese any more than I'd recognise Ancient Greek" he admitted as he brought the book closer so as to have a better look at the characters and see if he could spot any similarities. "I don't think it's Latin though," Athene flipped the page carefully and started studying the characters on it, his voice turning rueful as he added "But I also admit that I'm perhaps not the best judge of that." Although Latin had been compulsory at his secondary school back in England, he hadn't seen the point of studying what was effectively a dead language and had dropped it as soon as soon as he could and opted for French instead as his language to study at GCSE level and his ability at even that was more school boy than proficient as he hadn't bothered with it beyond his GCSE exams. Ivynian I apologise for being so slow
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Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2014 2:54 pm
Thraen carefully accepted the manuscript offered him and used his covered fingers to carefully support the pages as he turned them. "There's going to be the problem of what direction the glyphs read- right to left, left to right, top to bottom, or any other system or combination. There's some insets in this one...maybe math, maybe poetry? It doesn't look right away similar. " But latching onto single glyphs of a foreign system on first glancing would be something special. It was simply an informational overload, and likely caused a lot of chunk parsing instead of individualized stroke detail. They'd need to study a while before getting the grid of it. "If it were math, we'd also have the question of if they were using a base-ten, base six, base whatever...and measures in a system like metric or something more like the Imperial system. " More questions than answers, but maybe that is usual. Its nice to have something scholarly and 'mundane' to think on, either way. "I don't even know. I don't think this one is a match or something related to Earth. " He shook his head, unperturbed and amused, "Any luck?" litian No trouble, lit~ RL gets busy.
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Posted: Sat Jan 11, 2014 6:41 am
Direction was a factor that Athene hadn't considered as he scanning through the pages. He'd been looking through the pages as he would any other book, from left to right and working from top to bottom. "I guess direction is a factor," he said quietly as he finished scanning through yet another page and turned over to the next. "Although without knowing what these symbols mean, it probably doesn't make a difference." He was really hoping that it wasn't some sort of lunar Maths book though - after all Maths had never been his strong point and Athene doubted that lunar Maths, if this was what is was, would be any different - although given that the symbols were just that - symbols, then it could be a book on practically anything. At Thraen's question on whether he was having any luck, he shook his head "I'm about halfway through but I haven't seen anything I recognise from the other book" he admitted. "Although for a small book, this one seems to have more writing in it." His voice held a rueful note as he added "It's a pity the magic doesn't come with some sort of translator." After all, it granted them powers, changed their outfits and hid their civilian identities - he didn't personally think some sort of translator was really that big an ask compared to all that.
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Posted: Sun Jan 12, 2014 10:50 am
"So far as I can tell, anything that logical and useful to an effort at rediscovering ourselves, and information that would help us succeed, is too much to ask for of the magic that makes us." " ' We are a fluke of the universe, we have no right to be here, and whether we can hear it or not- the universe is laughing behind our backs,' " he didn't bother singing the tune with the words, but Deteriorata felt more and more appropriate to the senshi life. Even here in their home of homes- the seat of our history and rule amid hundreds of sources of help and we can touch None Of It. We call ourselves the White Moon Court, and what has it come to mean? As much as one of these made dust would. Sad, but as pointless as its being here unmarked and unread. Lost, no matter what happens."My memory isn't so good as to be pertinent to keeping these pages but as familiarity. And we have no paper. Taking them back would be dangerous. I think we're at an impasse of usefulness without better supply."
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 11:39 am
Athene laughed at Thraen's logical and useful comment "I guess you have a point there." Although given all the other stuff the magic could do, Athene still didn't think a translator was that big an ask. At Thraen's comment about taking the books back Athene nodded "I agree that it's probably best that they stay here" he said quietly. Although with his cousin still at his Uncle and Aunt's any books would be probably safe enough at the apartment, it wasn't something that he particularly wanted to take a chance with especially since he didn't think that he could come up with a reason as to why he'd suddenly come into possession a book that he couldn't even read. "And we could always bring some paper next time round." He looked thoughtful as he added "Given that it's possible that the remaining books are just as unreadable, did you want to try looking around this place further? See if we can find something." Because if not, then mayhaps it was time to start thinking about heading back to Earth, given that Athene had no idea how long they had been up here or even how fast time passed on the Moon and despite the empty apartment waiting for him back at home he still had classes tomorrow - classes that he, well rather Arian, would be expected to turn up to. Ivynian sorry I have been the worst at tagging anything lately, this may be a good place to start to wrap?
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