Fabula
Object
Object

Cygna Five Colony Aqueduct

A broad, weathered stone aqueduct and shallow public pool that channels mountain water through the colony's main street. Its sun-bleached masonry bears hairline cracks, mineral streaks, and faint hand-carved notches; algae darkens the waterline. Colonists treat the pool as a communal fixture: leaders lift cupped hands to take water, children skirt its edges, and opponents point to its exposed conduit when threatening or defending the settlement.
6 appearances

Purpose

To collect, channel, and distribute freshwater for drinking, irrigation, and communal use across the settlement.

Significance

Functions as the colony's sacred emblem of ancestral sacrifice and collective labor; it anchors civic identity and becomes a political lever when Data threatens its destruction. The aqueduct's presence crystallizes dissent, fuels public appeals, and symbolically raises the stakes of evacuation versus preservation.

Appearances in the Narrative

When this object appears and how it's used

6 moments
S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Data's Evacuation Plea Rejected; Ard'rian Offers an Alliance

The colony aqueduct and its purifying pool form the physical center of the scene: Gosheven supervises water testing there, the station is a concrete demonstration of the colony's engineering accomplishments and becomes the rhetorical backdrop for claims of ownership and survival.

Before: Functional and active — water churns in the purification pool, workers are testing samples under Gosheven's supervision.
After: Remains operational and unchanged physically, but its symbolic meaning is contested—used by Gosheven to justify staying and by Data as an example of what must be safeguarded.
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S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Ard'rian Tests Data and Quietly Allies with Him

The colony aqueduct and its purifying pool form the physical locus for the confrontation: Gosheven supervises tests at the pool while Data delivers his evacuation warning, making the aqueduct both a literal achievement to defend and a visual argument for the colony's claim to the land.

Before: Intact and operational, channeling mountain water into the settlement; serving as evidence of the colonists' engineering success.
After: Unchanged physically, but reframed symbolically by the debate — a trophy of survival that complicates the decision to abandon the planet.
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S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Blood and Water — The First Rift

The aqueduct's pool functions as a sacred prop: Gosheven cups its water and uses it as proof of collective toil and ancestral sacrifice. It anchors his rhetoric, serving symbolic weight that transforms a factual refilling of water into an emblem of lineage and claim.

Before: Intact sun‑bleached masonry with algae-darkened waterline; publicly accessible on the main street as the colony's communal fixture.
After: Physically unchanged but symbolically reinforced as a totem of resistance after Gosheven's invocation; remains a focal point for the debate over leaving.
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S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Alliance of Persuasion — Data and Ard'rian Pivot to a Public Plea

The aqueduct pool serves as a tactile emblem in Gosheven's rhetoric: he cups its water to embody ancestral labor and sacrifice, converting a mundane resource into proof of historical claim and moral authority during the confrontation.

Before: Intact, sun-bleached masonry with a visible pool of water used by colonists as communal infrastructure and symbol.
After: Physically unchanged but symbolically contested—its meaning polarized as both sacred relic and pragmatic water source, central to the dispute.
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S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Data Tears Himself Apart to Make a Demonstration

The colony aqueduct is invoked as the threatened target: a communal water conduit whose destruction would cripple the settlement. It functions narratively as leverage—threatened infrastructure to force moral choice and collective evacuation.

Before: Intact and serving as the colony's water conduit, publicly visible and politically significant.
After: Remains physically unchanged within the scene, but now placed under an explicit threat of destruction that alters the colony's strategic and moral calculus.
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S3E2 · The Ensigns of Command
Data's Aqueduct Ultimatum

The colony aqueduct serves as the explicit threatened object — Data names it as the thing he will destroy to force a confrontation, making it the leverage point of his moral gambit and the symbolic heart of the community's survival.

Before: Intact and functioning as the colony's primary communal water conduit, treated reverentially by inhabitants.
After: Immediately unchanged physically, but newly imperiled by Data's declared intent; its safety is now contingent on forthcoming confrontations and decisions.
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