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VESTAPOL, BOROVA - Museum of Precolonial Antiquities
Sifting through the debris and damage left behind by the Hegemony attack has been an arduous process for museum curator Josef Severn. Large portions of the museum complex were leveled by plasma weapons used during the fighting, and advanced scientific intrustments have been needed to sort out fragments of ancient artifacts from the scattered pieces of the walls and display cases that once housed them. After weeks of painstaking work, most of the museum's collection of antiquities have been identified. However, the Borovan Archaelith remains among the missing.
The Museum of Precolonial Antiquities was established sixty years ago by the Borovan Government to preserve and research xeno-archaelogical discoveries on the Baradan Peninsula. The Museum specializes in the ancient artifacts of the unknown "Precursor" civilization that inhabited the Blue Drift Region some eight million years ago. Little is known about the Precursor species, and only a few of their technological works have survived the eight thousand millenia since their demise.
The Borovan Archaelith is the oldest and most complete artifact in the museum collection. The object is a perfect black crystal, almost half a meter in length. To the naked eye, the Archaelith appears to be a smooth hexagonal prism. However, deep sonic imaging has revealed a surprisingly complex inner structure of facets and fissures of unknown purpose.
When the museum clean-up process began to recover fragments of the other Precursor artifacts, there was initial hope that the Archaelith might be recovered intact. The ancient crystal had been removed from public display and taken to a scanning laboratory in a separate part of the museum only hours before the attack began. The scanning facility was heavily sheltered to prevent ambient radiation from interfering with the sensitive tests, and this served to protect the laboratory from the worst damage of the heavy plasma weapons.
However, it now appears that some Hegemony ground forces may have entered the laboratory wing of the museum during the battle. Much of the equipment in the area was destroyed by small arms fire, and several rooms were forcibly entered. The Hegemony has officially denied removing any of the ancient artifacts from the museum or laboratories. But today, weeks after the fighting has ended, the location of the Borovan Archaelith remains a mystery.
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