thisavrou | 003

[The feed starts, as Robin holds her MID out away from herself a bit, giving the crew a good look at her.

It's weird, putting herself on display like this - she'd only made a few other posts on the network, but they had been text. Now, though... she's made the decision not to hide her face anymore. Besides, if someone wants to contact her in person, it'll be important that they know what she looks like.

What she looks like is a small child with black hair and... three arms. Even as she starts recording, she's multitasking - scribbling down notes with one hand in a notebook, about some pamphlets and brochures she's gotten from the planets that she's leafing through with another. Her third arm is, of course, holding her MID up.]

I'm busy, so I'll make this quick. My name is Robin and I became the ship's historian a few weeks ago.

If any of you come across any useful or interesting information about the ship or this planet's, please let me know. Send me a message, or come see me in my office on the Nomo deck.

[She only glances up at the camera occasionally as she begins to speak.]

Also if you're planning on doing some exploring and you want some help, you can send me a message as well. I can get past most locked doors, and I don't mind helping you if I can learn something from it.

[Maybe not the wisest thing to advertise over the network, but Robin doesn't mind breaking rules or getting in trouble in search of the truth.

She stops writing for a moment and looks directly at the camera, wearing a serious expression. Time to address the possibility of someone from her own world being here:]

...lastly, if anyone recognizes my name or my face from the posters back home, don't bother contacting me. You can just go to hell instead.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Great. So not only do I get yanked into space, I get inconveniently yanked into space.

[Well, it was always going to be inconvenient. But this makes it so on both ends.]

I could totally have done that.

[Whine more, Nate.]

[Excuse you, Nate, are you implying that you would have beaten her for this position? Robin huffs like the indignant child she is at that.]

...they might have still picked me over you, you know.

Back home I was an archaeologist - I was certified and everything.

Ooh, a certified archaeologist. Impressive.

[NATHAN DO NOT PICK FIGHTS WITH CHILDREN DO NOT]

Ever find a mythological lost city?

[That earns him a glare.]

No. [She will though, in about twenty years - not that she knows that.] Do you know how to read the Poneglyphs?

[If Nate knew what those were, he'd understand that she's upping the ante in a huge way.]

No.

[He glares back. But he is by nature a curious creature, so he can't help himself in the end.]

What's a Poneglyph?

They're coded messages, written in a unique language on giant stone blocks scattered all across the world. They were left there by a lost civilization 800 years ago.

[A pause.]

I guess they don't have a Void Century where you're from either, then?

Really. I'm pretty good at codes. I wouldn't mind giving them a go.

[Not that that's likely to happen here.]

Uh, no. Definitely not.

You'd be executed for trying, if you did.

[Which isn't saying that he shouldn't try, but he deserves a fair warning.]

It's a century that started almost 900 years ago - from the early 620s to the early 720s - that's had all of its historical documentation destroyed by the world government.

[Simple math will reveal that her own world is very different than Nate's own - unless he recalls some kind of global government existing in the 1500s.]

...except for the Poneglyphs.

[Which, as she said, were left around 800 years ago, give or take. She gives him a knowing look - are you picking up what she's putting down?]

[He kind of rolls his eyes at that—plenty of people have tried to kill him for worse crimes than being curious about history, and he's still kicking—but listens, obviously intrigued.]

Nothing's that clean. Historical documentation comes in all forms—books, personal diaries, drawings even. And there's oral history, too, the oldest kind. Did your whole world suffer mass amnesia or something?

800 years is a long time, and it's a crime to spread information about the void century. If someone from the government overhears you, or you get reported, you can get in huge trouble. I know of a few stories, but they're all really vague and unspecific for those reasons.

[Which is frustrating, she knows.]

There are somethings. Scraps and artifacts, mostly - but most written works were destroyed. The rest...

[Her pleasant expression sort of fades into a frown. This topic walks a fine line between 'things she wants to talk about' and 'things she absolutely doesn't want to talk about.]

The scholars of a small country called Ohara were studying the Void Century in secret for the last few decades. The library there - the Tree of Knowledge - was the biggest source of historical knowledge in the world.

Everything about that period of time that the scholars could find - from places all over the world - were gathered there to be studied in secret. They were the only ones I know of who know the language of the poneglyphs.

[There's a pause there. It isn't for dramatic tension, she's trying not to remember what happened next too vividly. She's from Ohara, you see.]

...a little less than a year ago, the World Government found out about them and burned the library to the ground, and leveled Ohara. Even the people who weren't scholars weren't spared.

[Which should emphasize the importance of this secret. Ohara wasn't a big island, but the government was willing to wipe it off the map entirely to keep this secret.]

[This isn't Nathan's world, isn't his history, but he can hear the weight of her story in the word she speaks and the way she speaks them, and he understands. History is important, an amazing mystery to unravel, and that someone should try to burn away that mystery...it's wrong.]

...that's shitty.

[To say the least.]

But there's got to be more than just those scholars. They got the information from somewhere—even if you can't get back what was lost, there have to be things out there you can find, if you can figure out where to look.

Yeah.

[She takes a second to take a deep breath, giving her voice a chance to steady itself before she speaks again.]

I know, I haven't given up.

[There's a pause. A hesitance that comes inherent with this information, but... She's already come to terms with the fact that this doesn't need to be a secret anymore.

When she does speak, her voice has a little less waver to it - she's making the choice to be confident here.]

And not everyone on Ohara died. I might be young, but I grew up in that library. I got certified to be an archaeologist there.

A lot of what was in that library was lost, but I know how to read the language of the Poneglyphs. I just have to find them - someday I'll piece together what happened in that time period, and tell the world.

[It's a big dream, and a dangerous one. She sounds pretty confident about it, too.

There's a another slight pause before she digresses:]

Anyway, that's why I'm the ship's historian and you aren't.

[Nate listens carefully, eyes gone soft, and finds himself nodding and smiling a little as she finished her story. The part of it she's telling him, anyway. He's pretty sure that there's a lot more to it than he's getting now.

But he snaps back to attention when she asserts her historical authority.]

Nah, it's like you said—you happened to be around when the position was open. I'd have given you a run for your money.

[Grow up, Nathan.]

But as long as you've got it, you might as well do a good job. Keep yourself in practice for when you go home and put your lost history back together.

003 - Video

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;

video;