Miya-East III, Southern Tropics, A Journeyman Touching Down
There was a transmission from the Val'ta on the way down, relayed over speaker to the crew and captain going down. "Team, head of science here," that smoky and distorted voice again, with no clear image, alleging to be from science. "The conditions seemed a little
too right judging by the Resort-like constructions. We suspect this planet was a quick and dirty terraforming job, the weather patterns get very strange. That's our current angle, a product gone wrong."
Porrim looked at the intercom in the middle of the ship and crossed her legs, trying to watch the Spider's reaction. All the while, she had opinions of her own on this: "Come now, a bit of still wind works in our favour. The ride's been so pleasant!" She sounded a little squawky about it, the calm conditions were winding her up, and the others could see it in her wings, fluttering impatiently.
"We're going to be down in two," the pilot cut in over intercom, "Captain. Get the team ready." Porrim clapped her hands together and let the speech happen later.
The hull of the little ship wasn't rattling as much as usual when it entered atmosphere and the sublight thrusters took over. The winds felt quite still, the whole ride displeasingly smooth. The shuttle landed softly on the top of a forested hill overlooking the extent of the strange ooze which had covered the tropical area inland displayed on the map. The hatches opened and Porrim signalled to move once the two Mecha had come down close to their position to provide overwatch.
The first thing those who stepped off the shuttle noticed was the arrangement of the trees immediately ahead of them, looking down the mountain.
Highly methodical, evenly spaced apart to create someone's idea of an ideal environment. Almost like a house that wasn't lived in, things felt too clinical for this to be a forest. It felt more like a tree collection. When Porrim moved between them all to look herself, she frowned. "Is it just me, or do things feel ... dead here?" She was examining the boughs, the ground, looking for animal life, listening for birds. Nothing here. Was it like that
before the grey stuff showed up?
Looking around, it was a strange mix of coniferous and tropical trees dotted around the landscape, with the majority of tropical looking plants arrayed neatly. The deeper down the valley the trees were, the worse the grey damage got, with trees fallen over each other in the sludge - and even a building sunk roughly halfway down had tilted precariously on its side in the middle of the morass, maybe some sort of beacon, control tower, or monument. Some buildings were intact - including one on in the middle of the grey stuff, while others around it had tilted too precariously into the ooze, needing a prop-up.
Heading east along the north side of the mountain was a dam of some sort, just down to the right. A bridge was also visible in the middle of the valley, a two laner which looked relatively stable despite the layer of grey sludge which had accumulated over the water. The water was visible at the edges of the settlement, but the closer to the middle the team looked, it piled higher and thicker, roiling restlessly on the water.
The view would let the group orient themselves on foot, maybe find a local vehicle on the road just west and south of them before dropping anything from the Val'ta down. The roads up here on the mountain still looked relatively fresh, though some time left to the elements had left the grass to either side grow wild and tall, while some had begun encroaching on the road from underneath. Still looked like a good drive. Porrim tried to get a better view of the buildings down south of the team's position.
"Something you don't see every day, then." Porrim grabbed her
kakatan and gave the grass off the side of the road a whack, testing the density by feel. After slicing through it with surprising ease for how thick the grass looked, the strands almost floated away, light as feathers. "The grass isn't right for this sort of hill," Porrim pointed out, before looking down into the trees. "It's like the place wasn't put together right."
