“I mean, yeah, maybe a little, but I wonder why the sculptor chose to create them without eyes?”  Lotharys replied.  “I know, in some iconological traditions, the personification of justice is often depicted as being blind; perhaps the structure was dedicated to a personification of justice?”  She sounded quite excited to delve deeper into the site, eager to uncover its secrets.

“Or its another Vezda site, and a sign that the Dergans were once slaves or vassals of them. The fleets been finding signs of this area being a Vezda stronghold over 10 millenia ago all over the region.” Wong said as he passed a padd to Lotharys with all the pertinent reports from around the Expanse. He had never heard of the Vezda before going through the reports from the past several days.

Lotharys scanned the reports quickly.  “Hmmm…” she mused as she read.  “Yeah, that fits better,” she finished with a self-deprecating laugh, which petered out as she considered the ramifications.  “But if this is a Vezda site, then we have to be even more careful; I mean, Derganix isn’t Vadia IX, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing dangerous here.”

“Exactly. Why don’t you look through the Dergan records we intercepted on our flight in Mr. Singh, see if you can find any other references that might signal that these Vezda have a history here.” Wong turned to his head of comms.

“Yes, Sahib.”

“Why don’t you take me on a tour of the site Lt.” Wong turned back to Ophelia, realizing he hadn’t been out of the runabout much, even though they’d been on the surface for nearly 12 hours now.

“Sure!  I mean, yes sir,” she corrected herself, the need for a degree of decorum finally breaking through her intellectual excitement.

Lotharys led Wong out of the runabout and towards the expedition’s small base camp area just outside the ruin.  The ruin itself was an imposing structure, with an impressive colonnade flanking massive, open doors.  Glyphs above the doorframe said something, but they were still unsure of the translation.  Inside, the structure was equally impressive – dominating, one might say – not only in scale but also in grandeur; spaced regularly were alcoves with statues in them, many shown without eyes, along with additional glyph groupings and cartouches.  Interestingly, there was a lack of pigments used on the statues and structure, though this could be simply as a result of long millennia of disuse.  The final section of the Complex, was the nearly 80 foot tall, 15 foot wide dust-covered and partially-eroded spire at the far end of the site.

“We’ve only explored the areas nearest the exit so far,” Lotharys said.  “So far, nobody’s run into problems, just lots of questions.”

“What about that spire there, that seems like a natural focal point.”

“We’re being methodical with our survey, but we are moving towards that end of the site.  Our initial scans do show a cluster of what could be artifacts near its base, but we don’t want to trample over other finds in a rush to get there, sir,” Lotharys replied.

“I appreciate the process Lt. So what do you have for dating so far? Without jumping to any conclusions, but if these ruins are around the 10000 year old mark, that’d be a further sign that this planet was a part of the Vezdan realm?” Wong inquired.

“So far, everything we’ve dated has come back as being about that old; the actual range we’ve gotten is,” she consulted her PADD, “between 9,500 and 11,300 years old.  It’s a wider range than we’d like, but…” she shrugged.  “It does look like we go higher in that range as we get closer to the spire, though, which suggests that the spire may have been built first, with everything else built around it.”

“Interesting. Well these Vezda are apparently extremely dangerous and capable of psychic and physical possession of peoples minds and bodies, or so I’ve read. So take extra precautions and try not to activate any doomsday devices please Lt.” Wong replied.

“Naturally,” Lotharys answered, turning away to tap her combadge and confirm with the field team that they were being sufficiently cautious.