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High expectations

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Monday, November 22nd, 2010

As I wrote on my last entry, I had the honorable task of introducing the “newbies” to the expedition. B.P. had talked of a dozen people – in fact, there were more than twenty who came to Zandis property, up there in New Mexico. We let them sign a NDA (just to be on the safer side) and then introduced them. Alex was with me, which was greatly relieving for me. I´m not comfortable with speaking to a large group all by myself.

There were some interesting people there – scientists, students, explorers, interns…
We gave them a tour through some major parts of D’ni – Ae’Gura, Great Tree Pub, some hoods… and then led them to Risoahl (which is quite tidied up now.)

It was entertaining to watch how they reacted to all that stuff… I can very well remember how it was for me, linking for the first time, standing there, watching in awe about all those wonders…

B.P. took over after that, and explained to them, what kind of help we need, what tasks there are to do, and so on.

So, after this, our staff has increased greatly – and the work on the new ages and areas we found can finally begin!

The other day, in our spare time, Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and myself visited an old maintainer facility in one of the outlying districts. It was in good shape, and there was plenty of interesting equipment there. The most interesting parts were the maintainer suits. Not only the newest ones, like in Gahreesen, but also some older models – some looking like a kind of insect, and some – the oldest ones – huge and bulky, and extremly tough looking. I guess, these would be suitable even for the harshest ages.

Shane said, he thought about using this maintainer outpost for the same purpose it was used back then, by the D’ni – as a starting point for expeditions to new ages. With all the new areas, we could make good use of all that equipment.

Tags: Ae´Gura, age, Alex, B.P., D´ni, Gahreesen, Great Tree Pub, hood, Jeff Zandi, maintainer, maintainer suit, New Mexico, Risoahl, Shane Kennett, Tom Woods
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Forecast: stormy, with heavy rains

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Friday, November 19th, 2010

So, what we feared to happen, happened to happen. (Sorry for the pun.)

In Ahnoto, a huge storm flushed away not only our boat, but also the buoy at the linking spot. Both anchor ropes were riven – we didn´t watch the storm, but it must have been enormous.

I talked to Shane Kennett and B.P., and they agree, that at the moment no one should visit Ahnoto – we have no means of forecasting the weather in Ahnoto by now, and it would be too dangerous to link into the middle of a lake while a hurricane (or something like that) is raging there.

In Afelahn, we carved two more rooms into the rock. A medium sized one, which will become Lab I, and a small one, which will become the “entry room”, where the link in spot will be.

I already started to write a linking book to that place, so that visitors will be able to come to Afelahn in a convenient way.

Shane told me, they had found more D’ni engineering equipment in one of Ri’tehrafs ages, including machines, that generate furniture out of stone.
It works like a printer – you enter the plans of what you want to design, and the machines does it for you. It is able to cast, but also to cut stone into the desired mold.

That will make many things so much easier! I think, I will get to do some interior decoration

In Resehren, some of Ri’tehrafs journals have been translated. It seems, that he was neither mad nor scientist – he did some chemical research on ages given to him by other guilds, but more of an engineering , than of a scientific kind. So he didn´t steal any of the linking books either – I´m sorry to have suspected you, Ri’tehraf!

B.P. told me, he managed to hire another dozen guys for all the work in the new ages and areas we have found – they will arrive this weekend. He asked me to introduce them to the expedition, tell them a little about D’ni, the expedition and so on. Gosh, why me? I´m not fond of giving speeches in public! (I hope I won´t stutter too much.)

Tags: Afelahn, age, Ahnoto, B.P., D´ni, guilds, linking book, Resehren, Ri'tehraf, Shane Kennett
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Work, work, work…

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

The last days we were really busy. First, we carved out two more rooms in Afelahn – everything is going as planned, and I´m happy to see the advancements. These rooms will be a storage room, and lab II, (lab I has yet to be done) when my “home base” will be ready.

With the help of my toosha, Tubby, we brought a heavy metal door to the age. Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and a bunch of guys with muscles managed to build it into the opening between the “garage” and the cave, so that the inner area is now secured against at least the strongest wind.

Shane told me, he would insulate the rooms when they are ready and that he had found a sprayer with some kind of D’ni material (stone?) that had been used by them for that purpose.

In Ahnoto, we have anchored a boat – a bigger, wooden one, not an inflatable – at the link in spot. It will stay there for the moment, so that we can bring material there, when we have time for that.

B.P. updated us about the Resehren books at the last meeting. They´ve found 23 of them. Unfortunately, four of them ceased to work, out of unknown reasons – maybe the descriptive books have been destroyed.
The other ones link to different ages and locations – 9 ages and 7 city locations altogether (some of the books link to the same places as others).
At the moment, we don´t have the personnel, nor the time to explore this new places, though we really would love to.
B.P. hinted, that he is actually trying to recruit more people for the expedition.

Tags: Afelahn, age, Ahnoto, B.P., descriptive book, D´ni, link in spot, linking book, Resehren, Shane Kennett, Tom Woods, Toosha, Tubby
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Discoveries

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Monday, November 8th, 2010

The last few days have been very exciting. A small group of explorers from the expedition, led by B.P. himself, visited a new age they had found some weeks ago – a private age named Resehren of a guy named Ri’tehraf – and did some research on the equipment there. It seems, like Ri’tehraf was a member of the guild of chemists and did a lot of strange experiments in his age (I´m imagining some kind of “mad scientist” type of character).

At first, it seemed like that was it – interesting enough – but then they discovered a secret door, leading to a hallway, leading to a room with shelves full of books – linking books! No descriptive books, as it seems, but a big number of linking books. B.P. says, they counted at least 20 books of different ages.
Nobody knows, how Ri’tehraf was able to keep such a big number of books, when even the richest D’ni didn´t – the most likely theory is that he had stolen them.

Anyway – it will be difficult to research such a huge number of ages with a rather limited staff. Most of the expeditions members are already working on the ages we have access to yet, and so the new ones will have to wait for some time (although many of us can´t wait to visit them.)

Tags: age, B.P., D´ni, explorer, guild of chemists, linking book, Resehren, Ri'tehraf
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Breakthrough

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Thursday, November 4th, 2010

We did a lot of work on Afelahn during the last days. With the help of a Toosha (I´m calling him “Tubby”) we managed to link a medium excavator into Afelahn and started to excavate (surprise, surprise) first a rectangular opening which will become a door – I´m planning to use a big, stable gate – and then a big, rectangular room, an entry room into my future home base so to speak. I think, I´ll call it “the garage”.

With the help of Tom Woods, I planned the overall layout of my home base – complete with an office, labors, storage rooms… and of course a “link in room” for visitors comfort.

I don´t plan any recreational facilities yet – it will solely be a working space, maybe with presentation of my findings from various ages to give visitors an overview.

While we were working with the excavator, I saw the “lobsterpede” again (from “lobster” and “centipede”). It was as ugly as ever, and as dumb as ever: it hid under the same rock as last time.
Maybe it has a nest there?

I visited Tufolehn again, and took a boat with me this time. I couldn´t resist my curiosity – the second island is only a few meters away, and so I row there.
It surely was worth it. The second island is approximately double the size of the first, and there is much more to see: on the beach, beyond some medium sized rocks, there are some strange organisms growing on some smaller rocks, above the water line. They belong to different species – most of them are quite colorful. I don´t even know, if they are plants or animals (or something else(tm)), but I really like watching them. Between the motionless ones, there are some creatures creeping and slithering around – I guess, they could be some kind of sea cucumber or conches. Will have to ask Peter Chang.

I watched them for a while (from a safe distance, beyond the medium rocks) and decided to take some KI-shots (I tend to forget to do this, so I haven´t got a lot of them yet.)
Before I post them publicly, I want to do some research. (And let some other guys from the expedition do some research for me )

Tags: Afelahn, age, excavator, KI-shot, link in room, lobsterpede, Peter Chang, Something else, Tom Woods, Toosha, Tubby, Tufolehn
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Yateesh observations

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Friday, October 29th, 2010

The last days I was busy with writing a linking book for Yateesh. Noemi and Clint asked me to do it, because they had erected a high seat for watching the wildlife, without the danger of being hunted by the … more unpleasant species of the age.

When I was done with the linking book, I spent a few hours with them, sitting up there and watching the marvelous creatures of the age. Besides the already mentioned antelopelike species (we are calling them “Royalopes”), there were bigger, more bulkier built herbivores, much like the Toosha, but with a much rounder snout and even larger. They slowly grazed the grass around our observation post, a small group of about a dozen individuals.

Another, much smaller species of herbivores, which looked like big rodents, ran about in the high grass – so fast, that we couldn´t recognize any other specifics about them.

The highlight of our trip was to watch one of the predators hunt. Noemi and Clint had seen it long before I did – Clint touched my arm, signaled me to be quiet and pointed into a certain direction. It took me some minutes to see the silhouette of a large animal – nearly as large as the big, bulky herbivores – lying there in the grass, motionless, focussing on one of the youngs.
For ten minutes nothing happened. The herbivores grazed on, not seeing the predator, which lay in a distance about thirty feet away from them.

Then it struck. It moved so fast, I only could see a blur. The next second, the young herbivore lay on the ground, with a big, furry predator biting into its neck, effectively killing it.

We watched the predator feeding. Now, standing in full sunlight, it was perfectly visible. It was about 15 feet long, had four big paws with long claws. It was nearly built like a female lion, but a little leaner, with a long, rather thin snout with a lot of sharp teeth. The teeth looked like crocodiles teeth, almost the same size, without fangs like our predatory mammals have.
It had a long, scrubby fur, with a dark brown hue on his back, neck and tail, and a short, grayish fur on the face, paws and lower side of its body.

After the creature had finished its meal, it dragged the rest of the carcass into the high grass, where we lost sight of it.

After that, nothing special happened – the big herbivores had ran away, obviously, and the other species kept distance to the site of the hunt, so we couldn´t see much for some hours.

We left Yateesh before dusk.

Tags: Clint Spano, Noemi Moots, Royalope, Toosha, Yateesh
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Turning on Nifehrehn

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Monday, October 25th, 2010

Kennett managed to find the energy source of the outpost in Nifehrehn. As suspected, it is a geothermal thing (don´t ask me, how it works, I´m a lame duck in engineering). He put it on, and suddenly the outpost is quite a cosy place, warm and dry. The equipment is slowly freed from the frost. Kennett thinks, most of it made it intact through the “frosty times”, and so we are looking forward to reactivate them.

Shane Kennett managed to activate a holografic interface, and we got access to a big amount of scientific records, made by the D’ni explorers of old.
There is much information stored in here about the age. It seems, that the age, despite being a frozen wasteland, has a lot of local fauna and even flora, adapted to the extreme climate.
I will dig into this information and post some of the more interesting bits later.

Tom Woods, another of our engineers, has made some progress in Risoahl, the age with the giant bamboo forests. He found a D’ni sawing machine, made to cut big trees, and brought it to the age – with the help of a Toosha.
I didn´t mention it before, but we now have an agreement with the Yagi – they borrow us one or two Toosha from time to time, and we deliver them food and wood from other ages (of course, we don´t tell them, were the stuff came from). We do this with care, and only after every single bit of biological matter was tested for poisons, bacteria or other dangerous stuff. We don´t want to import diseases from other ages to Yagee Mohts, after all.

The Toosha have become invaluable to us. They are capable of pulling cartloads up to two and a half metrical tons (How much is that in pounds? Sorry, too lazy to convert this right now :P).
Their calm and lethargic behaviour makes them perfect beasts of burden, even an untrained person can easily direct them.

Tags: D´ni, Nifehrehn, Risoahl, Shane Kennett, Tom Woods, Toosha, Yagee Mohts, Yagi
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Ahnoto surprise

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Two days ago, I linked to Ahnoto again with the diving team, this time wearing a diving suit. I´m not a avid diver, just wanted to see the lake bed myself, floating just beyond the surface. I did only use a snorkel, didn´t plan to go all the way down.

Of course, I didn´t see much at first, the water was too murky. The divers fanned out beneath me, and I watched them disappear slowly in the dark depths. After some time – I was getting more and more uncomfortable, it´s like looking into a gaping maw – I thought I had seen a dark shadow moving through the deep water. I watched more closely, but the shadow had vanished as quick as it had appeared.
Ten minutes or so later, the divers came back. We surfaced and I asked them, if they had seen anything unusual – they hadn´t.
As we prepared to link out, I – fortunately – made a last glance into the dark – and saw it. A strange, alien creature, just 20 feet beneath us, floating there and watching us. I flinched so extremely, that my companions immediately understood something was wrong with me. They submerged, and saw it too. One of them put his hand on my arm, to calm me and gestured towards me not to move.
The creature was approximately 10 feet long. It had four large fins and a round, tortoiselike head with a beak. I could see four black eyes, two on each sides of the head. It had a smooth skin, similar to that of a dolphin, with dark stripes on a greyish background color. It didn´t move a lot, just holding it´s position, and watched us as intense as we watched it.
After some minutes, it turned away from us and dived away from us rather quickly, disappeared again into the dark.
After this encounter, we linked out and stood there for two hours, talking about our discovery excitedly.

Tags: Ahnoto
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More Afelahn

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Thursday, October 14th, 2010

Yesterday Noemi and Clint climbed a ridge and took KI-shots from the surrounding areas.
I watched them from the valley for more than an hour – it was fascinating, how they used every ledge to their advantage.
When they finally had come down, they showed me the KI-shots. They showed an extensive mountain region. To the west, great plains can be seen, far in the distance. All other directions only show mountains, all to the horizon.
It seems, the region of Afelahn we link to is quite isolated – it would be very difficult and time consuming to climb down to the western plains.

I wonder, if I should start naming landmarks – basically, I´m the discoverer of whole new worlds, continents, seas, lakes… so I guess, it´s my right to name them *smile*

By the way, our work on the cave are finished. The next logical step would be excavating deeper into the rock, cutting rooms out of it. But at the moment, everyone is busy, and I´ve not yet thought of a good explanation for the Yagi to borrow me one or two Toosha.

Our diving team made its first trip to Ahnoto. They kindly anchored a colorful buoy at the link in spot, so any visitor can find it easily.
Their first dive lasted for an hour, and they shot a lot of pictures of the lake bed and of some fish. They didn´t encounter the huge creature I had seen before – grateful for that, I don´t want anyone munched on in one of my ages…

They brought back some samples of soil and water, to be analyzed in Asheten mansion.

I didn´t go to Ahnoto since my last visit – I have no real concept for now how to proceed with it. One of the first steps will be to anchor a boat in there, but I came to the conclusion, that it has to be more stable than an inflatable one. If a storm would occur, an inflatable boat could easily be destroyed by the wind or the heavy waves, or at least blown away, even despite being anchored. But I have to think that one over for a while, I´m pretty unsure yet.

Tags: Afelahn, Ahnoto, Asheten mansion, Clint Spano, KI-shot, Noemi Moots, Toosha, Yagi
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Wild life

Posted by Rabenschwinge - Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

B.P. had promised me information about an age some while ago, but had forgotten to tell me more. So he approached me yesterday afternoon, and asked, if I wanted to see it.
We were joined by Alex and Peter Chang, our microbiologist, and our “scouts”, Clint Spano and Noemi Moots, two survival specialists who get to do the dangerous stuff. Both are skilled mountaineers, they have climbed mountains like the Nanga Parbat and the K2. They also are avid divers, and have taken tours through some of the most hostile environments on earth: the Sahara, the Karakorum, Antarctica and many more.
I can´t help feeling safer with them around.

B.P. told me a little about the age we would visit. It was one of those that had belonged to Asheten before the fall, and one of the most intriguing. The name of the age is Yateesh, and it is some kind of game reserve. They think, that the D’ni went there for hunting trips (of course only selected people from the upper class.)

The place was rather rough and dangerous, and they told me more than once to stay with the group and not venturing around without telling them. The age is full of big carnivores and the terrain is not safe either.

So we linked in there, and a marvelous vista appeared before us. The link in spot is situated on a big plateau, which is mostly isolated from the grassy plains around it because of the steeps seperating them from each other.
The plateau is roughly fifteen miles in diameter. Dense forests and wide, grassy plains alternate on its surface, mixed by bizarre rock formations.
Almost immediately, we saw the first animals. They were a herd of big, elegant herbivores – similar to antelopes, but bigger, leaner, and sinously built. Their movements were almost royal, and they didn´t seem to be bothered by our presence.

Noemi and Clint peered into all directions, while Peter Chang and B.P. took some soil samples.

We stayed there for a while, until dusk fell. Clint urged us to leave, because “at night the big preds come out to play”. I think, it is wise to take such advice.

After we had returned to Asheten mansion, I asked B.P., if they intended to restore Yateesh. He said, they had discussed this, but came to the conclusion, that the age is too dangerous to let everyone in.
Maybe we will be able to provide some kind of secured structure or building in the future, but in the meantime the age will stay closed.
Regardless, I will definitely do some research there.

Tags: age, Alex, Asheten, Asheten mansion, B.P., Clint Spano, D´ni, Noemi Moots, Peter Chang, Yateesh
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