ISD Unknown - Battle of Asara

The Sollan Empire's victory against the Cielcin at Asara led to the recovery of the Asara Cylinder, an ancient, golden atlas inscribed with the location of nineteen Vaiartu worlds.

Asara Cylinder:

The gaunt secretary removed a holograph wafer from a breast pocket and placed it on the rim of the holography well that stood beside him and the seated Oberlin. The black glass rim glowed where he’d placed it down, scanning the laser-fine flaws cut into the quartz disc. Lascaris punched a key on the well’s control console, and a moment later an image appeared above the recessed hemisphere of the projector in the center of the well. It depicted what appeared to be a dented cylinder—wider in the center and tapering at either end, with slotted depressions at those ends where it might have fitted onto a spindle. It reminded me of a scroll, though it seemed to be fashioned from a single piece of gold.

I recognized at once the writing that spiraled around its surface. A single, continuous line of script, with letters made by fine, wedge-shaped indentations that rose from the center line like the rise and fall of a sine wave.

It was Vaiartu script. The language of those the Cielcin had called the Enar.

“This,” Rassam began, a schoolmasterish edge to his tone, “is K-887. It is a cylinder of Vaiartu manufacture, taken from a Cielcin horde captured at the Battle of Asara. As you can see, it is of solid gold, massing some seventeen kilograms.” The image revolved as he spoke, showcasing new facets of the Vaiartu inscription that wound about its surface. “Uranium-thorium-helium dating puts the cylinder between nine hundred thousand and one-point-one million years old, placing it rather late in the development of the Vaiartu Kingdom. This estimate is corroborated by the sineoform writing, which is of a style commensurate with the period.”

As he spoke, I moved to the rail surrounding the holography well, the better to study the Vaiartu artifact. The one side was badly dented, as if the soft, yellow metal had been crushed in the teeth of some mighty gear. Along the other, a well-worn ring of anaglyphs ran. Not the scratchy writing of the Enar. The circular writing of the Firstborn, of the Quiet. It was—in its way—akin to the tablet I had seen Ugin Attavaisa gift Syriani Dorayaica, and the one I recalled from my memories of the visit to Echidna that had never happened.

“It’s an atlas,” I said.

Disquiet Gods, Chapter 9: Gnomon