thisavrou_log | Insert Whale Noises

Who: Nihlus and anyone who wants to come along really
When: March 11th
Where: Ceta, the docks and then moving onto a whale watching spot
What: Whaaaale watching
Warnings: None yet!

Docks

"Alright everyone!" Nihlus announces, halfway up the ramp, waving his hand to get everyone's attention on him. "Before any of you boards this ship, there are some rules! They're about the same for the Temporaries for the most part: no potential sources of ignition, keep your breathing masks on and definitely do NOT try to go skydiving."

Seriously. Not good for your health.

"There is one additional rule to this however," he continues. "NO light shows. Whatsoever. No flashlights, no laser pointers, no holograms or anything similar. According to our the ship's Captain -and our guide for the day-, the whales react badly to light displays and since we're whale watching, scaring them off defeats the entire purpose of the trip."

He pauses, looking over the small gathering before shrugging and finishing: "If that all sounds good with you, feel free to board. We'll be leaving in about ten minutes. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me or our Captain."

And with that, Nihlus ducks out of view. He will be found again in the ship's cabin, speaking in low tones with the Captain as they prepare to leave.

Whale Watching

It'll be almost an hour before they actually, properly, see any whales.

The boat sits perfectly still, hanging in the calm air between the massive canyons of clouds that stretched up and down for kilometers on either side of them. Below them, far, far below them, and yet still so far from the planet's core, is a dark roiling mass that was lit up by a spiderweb of super sized lightning storms.

In the distance, dark, fuzzy silhouettes begin to appear against the white and strange, alien teal of the gas giant's skies. They drift lazily through the upper atmosphere and leaving trails of white fluff in their wake.

Mic Test

It's another hour into the watching. The whales are closer now, curiouser now, and relaxed enough to drift close to the boat.

In some ways, the whale watching was a bit of a guise.

Tourists doing touristy things was expected and they were nothing if not tourists here.

Nihlus is leaning against the ship's railing, watching the pod of whales at they lazily circled the boat. He's dimmed the glow of his omni-tool down to its lowest setting, the outlines of the tool barely visible against his forearm. He appears to be fiddling with some settings on the device.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I don't know," She glances over the recordings. It's thorough, if nothing else. "I kind of like the idea of giant flying whales shouting obscenities. Have you spotted anything with it yet?"

"Disappointingly, none of these sound particularly like obscenities, but there are definitely some repetitions. What they might mean is up for speculation though."

Names? Greetings? Warnings? Who even knew? Nihlus wasn't a specialist in deciphering alien languages. That said, the whales looked relatively relaxed as far as what he could decipher through body language.

"The deep rumbling is new. I haven't heard that sound before."

"Oh. Good. That's not totally ominous." Alice adjusts her mask, squinting back to the clouds about them. It's difficult to think anything optimistic of the revelation, not when her brain's busy recounting half a dozen different disaster movie premises. "Are you sure it's coming from the whales?"

She's fiddling with own MID now, but the language functions are as much a mystery as ever.

"Yes, although they only started emitting it about ten minutes ago." Coinciding with one of the whales circling in particularly close. It sounded... almost content?

Just because it sounded content didn't mean Nihlus should assume that's what it meant though. Asari bearing their teeth had a very different meaning compared to when a turian did it, after all.

"I'm taking the boat not being flipped over as good sign that it's nothing too terrible at least..."

"Yeah. If it was a threat you think they'd act a little more..." She waves a hand, then follows up lamely. "... Threatening."

Nailed it.

"Do they have any animals like this where you're from? We've got something similar, but they're waterbound."

And smart as all fuck. Alice has read papers on just some of the things that whales can do — or at least, what magicians suspect they can.

"Anything that large tends to be in the waters for us too," Nihlus remarks with a thoughtful hum. "The biggest is the aroib. They're, hm. Very long? Silver-blue. And scalier than these whales."

Basically a sea serpent, except Nihlus doesn't know the word 'serpent' here.

"Their heads are about the same size as this boat and they eat microscopic ocean life forms."

"Sounds almost like dragons." She isn't about to explain that part. "Do they hunt them? The aroib?"

She parrots the pronunciation almost perfectly, only a slight hesitation to throw it off.

"They, uh. They used to hunt our whales." Her voice lowers, again as though the creatures around them will hear. "Still do, but it's. Controversial."

"Turians eat nearly animal on the planet and then some," Nihlus shrugs, although he notes the oddly perfect pronunciation with interest: the only thing lacking were the undertones. "The aroib aren't very smart. They're solitary and most of what they do is eat and swim. One of the previous Palavenian Primarchs really loved them though, and pushed a successful conservation program for them into effect."

Leaning back from the rail slightly, he sighs quietly.

"That said, the black market for parts of sentient people isn't new in terms of intergalactic history."

"Overhunting, corruption, charismatic megafauna... are you sure you guys aren't secretly human?"

It's a joke, but it's also a measure: Alice never knew Garrus well enough to guess at his species' broader relations. Nihlus doesn't seem to mind hanging around humanity, but if there's a line, Alice wants to know when it's crossed.

She shakes her head as he sighs.

"You think that's what's going on here, though?" The language in the museum was a little too defensive for her to take at face value, but there's smart and there's too smart to hunt. "The calls and all that, you think it might be a language?"

"Contrary to what supremacists think, we have a lot of commonalities and most of them aren't bad." Which isn't to say there aren't a lot of bad commonalities. The fact that Supremacists existed and think that the other species were all out to destroy their's was... an unfortunate commonality.

Still he casts her an amused look and offers, "That's an oddly species-centrist question though, don't you think?"

As for her second question, he shakes he head and looks out at the whales swimming around them.

"I don't know yet. Most of what I know is what I could glean from the people in the Temporaries. Most deny any signs of sentience but there are a few who think otherwise. This venture is mostly seeing if I can record some kind of evidence. Unfortunately, First Contact is not a situation I am fully trained for."

"Probably." She grins back — it's nice to be around someone who notices things. It's rarer than it ought to be. "We've barely been to our own moon. Haven't had much of an alternative to anthropocentrism."

It's half a lie: if magicians haven't been often off-world, they're still keenly aware of not being alone in it. To say nothing of the practice she's had in the days since.

"I'm not sure it still counts as First Contact if they've been slaughtering them for years. But I bet someone on the ship has experience. The Captains, if nothing else. Too many different kinds of people come through the Ingress for anything else."

"What year are you from? If you don't mind me asking. I'm from 2183 and a lot of people here seem to come from a significantly earlier time."

Like how many humans have never met aliens or even heard of any colonies on Mars yet.

"In this instance, First Contact is the first officially documented instance of communication," Nihlus explains with a slight shrug. "The people here might have communicated first, but they haven't recorded it. Mind you, I haven't really either, so far."

"2008. Well. It might be 2009 by now." She shrugs. Time gets a little weird with world-hopping. "Is the future cool?"

She suspects it's a more complicated answer than just 'yes' or 'no'.

"Either way, I'll put you down in the history books for it. Nihlus, documented first contact with giant space whales. That's got to be a pretty rare thing, even with galactic travel."

"Well, the last bit of human tech news I heard was something about perfecting the technology for making this, ah, 'coffee'? Apparently they used the mass effecting properties of element zero to separate the grounds and the final liquid product. Very fancy."

That was cool right? Domestic appliances on steroids was totally neat.

"I think I'd celebrate this historic occasion more if I didn't feel like such a tourist," Nihlus remarks dryly. "And so ill equipped. The usual diplomatic ships are all geared up with various forms of communications tech just for these occasion and here I am with an omni-tool."

Insert Whale Noises

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