ACCORDING TO THE BUREAU of Colonial Records, the abandoned remains of the New Roanoke settlement were discovered on Independence Day, 3916 (Year 475 under the revised Imperial Calendar). The settlement was located on the northwest coast of Idris, the largest island on the surface of the planet Iranon.
Founded just 18 months prior to the tragic event (or so it was estimated), the colony of New Roanoke was the 5th colony to be established on the planet. The location of New Roanoke was selected because of proximity to both fertile soil and rich mineral deposits.
The proposed location of the colony had been contested by the regional governors, at first, as the site earmarked for the settlement was over eighty kilometers from the nearest sister colony. Ultimately, however, the board of governors gave Osiris Smith the charter and groundbreaking at the colony commenced in February of 3915.
The following items were removed from the site and catalogued by a team led by DCI Shane Yang and Lieutenant Colonel John Chastewick (assisted by Arianna Armitage, Professor Emerita of the Oread Theological College), and are currently housed in the Colonial History Collection at the college.
Our entire understanding of the New Roanoke Event is based on these 17 items.
Exhibit 01: Child’s stuffed bear, brown-and-white fur. Approximately one-third of the animal has been burned away, with the remaining portion of the toy covered in heavy smoke stains. The button eyes have been removed. Examination of the remaining threads under magnification showed a clean cut, indicating the eyes were deliberated removed from the bear, rather than lost due to normal wear and tear.
Exhibit 02: Cracked ceramic serving platter, blue-willow pattern. Stamped marking on the back reads: “Bell & Dobson 6871.”
Exhibit 03: Twisted lengths of metal (6). Believed to be the wheelchair of Dr. Thurston. Five of the fragments appear to be from the frame of the chair, with the last piece of debris resembling a modified tread-style wheel. Thurston had been paralysed from the waist down since her mid-thirties, and had preferred to use a wheelchair with tank-like treads, which allowed her greater mobility on the uneven terrain of the settlement.
Exhibit 04: The field journal of Dr. Zulema Thurston, partial. Some pages believed missing, or possibly out of sequence. Handwritten notes on bound pulp, transcribed below:
Day 471: Several days ago, the engineers tried unsuccessfully to dig a new well. After Mr. Farre’s team abandoned their previous dig site, they attempted to draw water from a site farther to the east. However, the efforts at this site were also unsuccessful. Rather than uncovering more red water, however, the team broke ground into an underground cavern that the initial survey team must have missed.
There is still further digging to be done at the site, but Mr. Farre and Mr. Tydway brought me into the conversation, as some type of ancient writing adorned the walls of the cavern. As the debris is shifted, they say they will bring me images of the walls and any artifacts they find.
Who would have guessed I’d have a chance to use my doctorate out here in the colonies?
I’d expected my retirement to be boring. This could be the making of me.
Day 492: I got fed up with the digging team today and blew my top at poor Ananais. It’s no damn fun at all for them to bring me stray bits and pieces, so I’ve convinced them to increase the diameter of the dig and create an angled ramp into the cavern pit, so I can catalogue all of the findings myself.
It’s a testament to Mr. Farre’s character that he’s making way for me. I know, by rights, his priority ought to be finding more water, but, truth be told, I think he enjoys a good mystery more than most.
Except for books and the occasional show on the wi-vane, there’s not much in terms of entertainment out here. I think he likes this almost as much as I do.
Day 517: We had no idea. Or, at least, the survey team gave us no indication.
This planet, this whole planet, and our settlement in particular, had to have been populated. If not by an advanced civilization, then, at least, by a people who had a religion, writing and architecture.
There’s so much under our feet. There must have been a whole city, once.
I can’t translate it. Not yet. We need more text.
Day 533: The last bit of rock got chipped away, today. We found the source of the river, but more importantly, we found the center of the ancient city.
There is a stone ziggurat at the centre of the centre, a sacrificial altar at the top of it all. The altar is carved with circles and spheres, and it appears to be made of a red stone, while the rest of the pyramid is moss-covered greystone.
Translation is getting closer. Ananais is coming over, later tonight, to help me cross-reference the inscriptions against some of the books he brought. He says his great-grandfather left him a strange, antique book that has odd writing in it, too.
Exhibit 05: A rubbing from a bas-relief, graphite on butcher paper. Pictured are a series of concentric spheres with beams of light emanating from them, hovering over a cityscape. A border of skeleton-shaped keys frames the entire image. There is some text in an unknown language along the bottom-right-hand corner of the rubbing. Red pencil has been used to write initials on the upper left corner: “YOG.”
When questioned by DCI Yang and Lieutenant Colonel Chastewick about possible meanings of the initials, Professor Armitage declined to speculate.
Exhibit 06: Unopened bottle of Tokyo-style whisky. Ju-On brand single malt, aged 12 years. Slight moisture damage to label and minor tears on the wrapper around the cork, but otherwise in excellent condition. In fact, the condition is quite impressive, given the disarray the settlement was found in and the state of many of the other New Roanoke items enumerated here.
The only unusual markings on the bottle are five bloody fingerprints, too smudged to be matched with any certainty to any of the colonists.
Exhibit 07: Damaged solid state drive. Files include the following:
A: Translation.txt: Contents: jibberish symbols, letters, and numbers, save for one fragment in English text, which reads, “He no longer lurks.”
B: Video file of iridescent glowing spheres, four seconds in length. Thought to be some sort of meteorological phenomena.
C: Image, likely from a colonist’s personal library. Depicts a naked shoulder with a key-shaped tattoo.
Exhibit 08: Polyphasic rifle, damaged in such a way that it appears to be melted like a candle. Yang and Chastewick identified it as Bell & Dobson Mark Seven, making it the second artifact from this conglomerated firm to be salvaged from New Roanoke. Both investigators were at a loss as to what sort of environmental conditions could cause this level of damage.
Exhibit 09: Femur. Likely from male in his mid-forties. Remarkable in that it is the only human remain recovered at the site. It is unknown whom the femur belonged to, as many of the men in the colony were around that age.