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… if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Well, I´m not a woodchuck, that´s for sure.
Yesterday we went on with our work in Risoahl, and it was worse than the last time. We only managed to fell five of that giant bamboo stems, and it was really hard. I cut my hands open, despite wearing thick leather gloves.

Fortunately we decided to break off for the day. Shane Kennett, who led our little working crew, said he would try to find some D´ni equipment – maybe they have some faster, less exhaustive means of doing this.

I used the break to become familiar with other members of the “Forberg expedition” (it really needs an official name, one which can be abbreviated, like the DRC or SR, or TTP, or all the other cool names.)

I had a nice conversation with Alex and another woman, Noelle Belfiore, who is the expeditions linguist. They told me more about the Yagi, the first – and yet only – people of “ahrotahntee”, the expedition has encountered until now.
They seem to be a simple, but spiritual fishing community, living in the age of Yagee Mohts. They aren´t aware of the art, of the D´ni or of the terokh jeruth, and it is official policy of the expedition to not telling them if possible. I agree. It would be a cultural shock to them.
Alex and Noelle have visited them several times – they said, they came from far away (which, from a certain point of view, is true). They did research on the culture, religious believes and the language of the Yagi.
Alex again invited me to join them on their next visit, which is planned for the next week. I´m looking forward to that!

And I was able to meet B.P. and ask him about a place to sleep… told him about my problems with Relto. He assigned a room on the second floor to me. It´s small, but sufficient for me. And it is rather quiet, so I can work on my age.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…

Work on Risoahl is progressing, albeit slowly. The warm and moist climate of this area may be comfortable when sitting around and chatting, but when you do manual work, you get exhausted rather quick.
We (that is, six adult men) tried to fell some of the giant bamboo to cut free a path through one of the thickest parts of the forest – but the plants are extremely tenacious. After five hours of hard work we managed to fell a small area of the size of a basketball court. Quite disappointing.
We saw quite some wildlife while doing that work – some fish, a 2 feet long lizardlike creature, and some birds, who had a nest in one of the bamboo (We didn´t touch that one. We aren´t that heartless!)
I think, I saw some wormlike creature that suspiciously looked like a leech – I hope I´m wrong. Can´t stand that things.

After we were done for that day, I linked back to my Relto, and tried to get some sleep. Again I recognized, how cold it can be… I fear, my cold will worsen if I keep sleeping there. I wonder, if B.P. can give me a free room in Asheten mansion?

On the next day, I went on writing into my second kor´nea (I had wasted my first one, as I´ve mentioned earlier on this blog.).
This time I am even more cautious than before, only writing gahrohevtee which I know, repeating them to emphasize certain important features I would like to have in my first age.

For example, it should be warm and cozy, and there shouldn´t be any walls which could fall on me… (kidding.)

A first mission

Our meeting went well. Besides Dr. Forberg, I met again the curly, bulky man, who introduced himself as Shane Kennett. Dr. Forberg told me, he was a longtime friend of him and an engineer and IT specialist.
Then there was an elderly woman, Dr. Krista Haugaard from Danmark, who is a botanist, and Alex, whom I had met before, the red haired woman. Her full name is Dr. Alexandra Rebman-Bartos, and she´s an anthropologist.
First of all, Forberg asked me to just call him B.P., like everyone else did. Then the others made their reports of the week. Kennett explained his progress on some energy conduct in Asheten mansion and some computer problems.
Dr. Haugaard reported her newest findings about the plants of Risoahl – didn´t understand much, but one thing that stayed in my mind was, that the giant bamboo of that age (which we were right sitting in at the time) were unusual in some ways (other than the size). For example, they were extremly adaptable to conditions like a high concentration of salts – the water of Risoahl seems to be quite brackish – and standing right in the deep water of  the lake filling most of the area doesn´t harm them either.
Alex told us some interesting stuff about the Yagi people they had met on one of the ages they had found. I haven´t met any non-humans except some Bahro yet, so I´m especially excited about them. I asked Alex, if I could join her next time she visits them, and she agreed.
Then the reports were done, and B.P. turned to me. He asked me, if I would like to help to do restoration work in Risoahl – especially tidying up the place a bit, cutting a path through the giant bamboo-forest and such things. I happily agreed – doesn´t sound to hard to do for me, no special skills needed :)
B.P. told me about their plans for the age – they would like to use it as an example and as  a test in restoration. As I´ve posted before, they usually just do their research. Restoration is something new for them.
Their ultimate goal is to open the age for all explorers – but there is a lot of work to do first.

Writing failures

Well, today I wasted my first kor´nea. I don´t know, what exactly went wrong – I was writing gahrohevtee into my book, thought, I was making progress – and then it happend. Without a warning, the linking panel changed on the first page, and nearly instantly went black. I had read about that possibility, and knew, all work was all lost.

I have yet to analyze my mistakes, and when I´ll find out, I´ll have to start over again.

But I have pleasant news as well: I´ve thought about Dr. Forbergs offer, and have decided to accept it. How could I have declined it? It opens so much possibilites for me, I just had to say yes!

I sent a KI-mail to Dr. Forberg, and received an answer a few minutes ago. Seems we´ll be meeting again this evening to talk about our first conjoint tasks.
This time we´ll meet in Risoahl again, which I personally like a lot, I find it to be a relaxing place.

Asheten mansion

Continuing my report about what happened yesterday:

After I had made my preparations, I linked back to the Kurat neighborhood and met with Dr. Forberg. He had an interesting, portable D´ni-device with him: some kind of KI-encoder/decoder. He told me to put my hand with my KI into the device, programmed it, and it loaded a new Nexus-link into my KI (better said: the clearance for a new area.)
We then moved on to the Nexus, and from there to the expedition´s headquarters, a mansion at a lower part of city proper, which lies directly at the lakeshore.

By the way: In the meantime I´ve asked Dr. Forberg about the name “Kurat” meaning derogative things in some languages, and he answered, this was purely coincidental, as it was a D´ni name. So, all Estonians who read this, this name is not meant as an offense to you :)

It was quite impressive. The mansion was in exceptional good condition, and Dr. Forberg told me later, that they had been cleaning up and restoring it for nearly 2 years now. It once had belonged to a D´ni guildmaster namend Asheten, who had been a rich and influential individual.
The three ages that had been in Ashetens possession now are in the hands of the expedition, Risoahl being one of them.

I was introduced to some members of the expedition, was given a tour through the mansion – the architecture of that place is astounding – and then we sat down in the dining room with four other people to discuss things out.
A redhaired young woman, wo intruced herself as Alex, a certain Dr. Stejskal, two guys whos names I can´t remember, and another, curly haired, bulky man, who nearly squashed my hand when shaking it. We had a long, interesting conversation about the goals of the expedition and their achievements of the past two years, and of my possible role.
I found out, that the main purpose of Dr. Forbergs expedition was research, not restoration, though they of course had to do some cleaning up to be able to do their work.
After talking a lot, Dr. Forberg asked me, what I thought about the offer. I said, I had to think it over – but if I would work with them, then not as a part of the expedition, but as an outsider – but with full access to their ressources and manpower.
Dr. Forberg smiled, and after giving me a thoughtfull look, agreed.
In return, he said, the expedition would like to have the right to examine and research each of the ages, I would write. I stated, that I would allow that, but only on my terms. If anyone did something with/ in my ages, I didn´t like, I would withdraw my allowance at once.
We talked at least two hours more, and then said goodbye to each other.

After the meeting, a lot of thoughts went through my head, and I decided to make another visit in Tufolehn. It is a calm, peaceful place, and really good if you need some time for yourself.

I had brought a backpack with me, with my kor´nea I had begun to write in. When I was slowly walking along the beach of my small island, I watched the greenish sea, and suddenly saw something, aproximately twenty meters away from the shore, in the sea. It drift closer to the beach, and I recognized it being some sort of big jellyfish, two meters in diameter, with long, thin tentacles. It was shining in dark blue and bright red – it seems, that many of the creatures in Tufolehn are quite colorful.
It was washed to the beach finally, by the surf. I stayed away from it – didn´t know, if the nettles were dangerous – and admired it´s beautiful colors.
I think, I will have to name the creatures I discover – I don´t have a good name for this one, maybe one of my blog readers can help me out with that?

Opportunities

Today I was sitting in my Relto, shivering (I got me a cold, it´s really not the best place to work…) and writing into my first kor´nea. My gahrohevtee become better, but my progress is slow.

Anyway, so I was sitting there, writing, when I suddenly got a KI-mail. It was from a guy who called himself Dr. Forberg. He wrote, he was the leader of an independent expedition, and had heard of my projects from a fellow explorer. He asked for a meeting to discuss my possible involvement with said expedition. He mentioned their capacious funds and the possibilities resulting from those.

I was suspicious at first, but my curiosity made me writing back almost instantly. I agreed to meet him, and asked where and when. He answered quickly, and we agreed to meet in Ae´Gura, in front of the guild hall.

When I arrived there, a bunch of people were standing around and talking, as usual – and one guy stood a little backwards, looking around, as if he waited for someone. I approached him, and it was said Dr. Forberg. We talked a little, and then he asked me to come to a more secluded place so we could talk in privacy. He lead me through the Nexus into a hood named Kurat (which had a very interesting design, by the way – never saw anything like that in other neighbourhoods). There we used a linking book, and stood in an age Dr. Forberg called Risoahl. It was warm and damp, and a lot of birds sang. We stood inmidst a forest of giant bamboo – up to six feet in diameter, and dozens of meters high.

We talked for nearly two hours. Dr. Forberg told me a lot about their expedition, that it was privately financed by an explorer who wanted to stay anonymous and that there were more than 40 people involved, most of them scientists of different fields.

The more I heard about this group, the more I got interested – they would provide solutions to a lot of my concerns about not being able to restore or at least secure my ages and areas – they had the means which I hadn´t.
The next thing that came into my mind was – why would they need me?
Dr. Forberg seemed to know what I was thinking and told me, that they had no one able to write, at least until now. They did not find enough information on age writing, and hoped to learn it from someone, who knew it already. I told him, I was only beginning, but he seemed to be satisfied with that. If I would like to come with him, he would introduce me to the rest of the staff. I agreed, just said I had to prepare some things.
We agreed to meet some hours later in said ´hood, and I linked to my Relto.

First trip

Just came back from my first trip to Tufolehn. Well, it is an interesting age, at the same time it is very minimalist.
If I understood the book of commentary correctly, this is the typical style which Anesh wrote in, and it was appreciated by many (including Tumak).
I put on my maintainer suit (don´t ask me, where I got it from) and laid my hand on the linking panel.
The area I linked in to was a small, flat island amidst a vast, green ocean. The sky and the sun looked quite similar to those on earth.

In the shallow water around the island, there were strange, round creatures – maybe invertebrates – formed like little, green balls with red spots in various sizes. At least think those are animals, can´t tell for sure. Other than that, I didn´t see any animals or plant life. I heard no other sounds than the ocean surf.

There is another, bigger island in the near vicinity of the first one, but I chose not to swim over to it before the basic tests – maybe the water is acidic or poisonous, I´d rather find that out the comfortable way.

I´ve taken some samples of soil and water and plan on coming back soon. For now, I´ve got a lot of preparations to make for my first book, my first age.

(edited to give more details on my visit)

Tufolehn

I´ve returned to the general area where I´d found the book of commentary. The house, where it had laid in, was in good condition, and so I searched it inch for inch.

I found some notebooks, appearantly written by Tumak, so I suppose, the house must have belonged to him.

I quickly read through the notebooks – most of the stuff was not very interesting – but then I found a part, where Tumak mentioned a secret room, where he had the descriptive books he had researched! I suddenly felt exhilarated, and looked for an entrance.

Finally, after two hours of examination, I found a secret lever, which opened a door behind a bookshelf. There I found the aforementioned secret book room – and a leatherbound tome, with the name “Tufolehn” written on it in D´ni letters.
A descriptive book!
My hands trembled, when I took the book from the place it had rested for hundreds of years.

I opened it slowly, and there it was, the linking panel, showing a bright, amazing panorama.

Now I´ll have to visit this age – see it for myself!

Writing vs. Restoring

I´m just a single person. Obviously, I know, but that is what came into my mind today, when I thought about restoring places written or built by the D´ni.

It´s a great task to do all the restoration work – I´m not very good in handcraft, technology or translation. So when it comes to tidy up a place, so that explorers can visit it without a wall collapsing on them (there, I told you I would bear that in my mind for some time!), I feel overstrained with all the work needed to accomplish that.

So I fear, I´ll have to stick to writing my own, new ages until I have a solution for that.
On the opposite, I won´t be able to do much restoration on my own ages as well, if needed… this is really concerning me. How could I open an area, which I couldn´t make safe enough for people not getting hurt?

I´ll have to think this over.

Ink breakthrough!

Finally! Today I made another trip to the city proper (still a little dizzy, so I took it slow).

I tried my luck in a district which is in a much better state than the other ones I´d visited before.
After a short time looking around, I found a house with the symbol of the guild of ink makers over the door – jackpot!
It seems to have been a storage for this guild. The door, which was very big and made of a heavy, stable stone (maybe even nara?) was broken, probably during the fall.

I went inside, always looking for falling walls (I´ll do that for some time, I fear …), and found a room filled with shelves. On each shelve there were dozens of big vessels, sealed, each with the symbol of the guild of ink makers on the front.

I decided to open one – and it was filled with a dark liquid – ink! And not any ink, if I´m right, but relehm!

Some of the seals of the vessels were broken, and the ink dried, some of the vessels were empty – but nevertheless I´ve now a really big supply for my work.