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Breakthrough

Posted by - 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 :) )

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Yateesh observations

Posted by - 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.

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Turning on Nifehrehn

Posted by - 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.

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Ahnoto surprise

Posted by - 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.

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More Afelahn

Posted by - 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.

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Wild life

Posted by - 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.

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Nifehrehn shivering

Posted by - Friday, October 8th, 2010

Okay, this age IS cold. I went there yesterday, with a small group of fellow expedition members. We explored the outpost first. It is partly underground, and rather small. There are sleeping rooms for four people, so I guess, it was crewed for more than just short visits. The expedition had found three journals before, which Noelle has translated partly. It seems, the writers were three survivors, who had fled here, when the Fall happened, two men and a woman. The dates given in the journals suggest, that they stayed here for at least two months – because of the limited space and ressources, the tensions between them rose, and it seems, that at least two of them got rather deranged after some weeks. What happened to them? Why did they leave with most of their equipment left behind, not to mention, their personal journals?
I fear, a great tragedy has happened here.

The outpost itself is mostly disfunctional currently. The gauges and scales seem to get no energy, and frost has entered most of the equipment, rendering it unusable.

At least some kind of emergency light is still working – maybe we just have to find the energy source and turn it on again.

We left the outpost through some kind of lock – not an airlock, but something similar, maybe to better keep the cold outside.

All of us weared our maintainer suits, because we were repeatedly warned – the temperatures are really low, beyond -50.0 °C (approx. -58.0 °F).
Even with the maintainer suits, we only stayed out there for 10 minutes – if the D’ni survivors really left the outpost, they wouldn´t have been able to survive there for long.

After that visit, I had to warm myself up, so I was rather happy to be invited to a small party given for one of the explorers because of his birthday, in Risoahl.
The age is very comfortable, as I mentioned before, at least, if you´re not doing any hard manual work there.
We had a campfire, sat around on some felled giant bamboo stems and roasted marshmallows (I had just learned how to do this, I´m not from the US, so this was new to me – I like this particular custom :P ).
Of course we told each other ghost stories (especially creepy, when some unknown creatures suddenly shriek inmidst the night, as we found out)

I got to know some of the guys from the expedition a little better, for example, our diving team. They are cave divers from New Zealand, and asked, if I would mind them dive in my new age, Ahnoto. I told them to go ahead, but of course told them of the huge shadow I saw on my last visit. They weren´t scared at all, said, they had dived with sharks, whales and giant squids, and they could handle any creature. Well, it´s their necks they risk – maybe I should let them sign a waiver of liability.
Just kidding … or am I?

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Ahnoto preparations

Posted by - Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

I talked to B.P. and Kennett about Ahnoto. They agree with Pavitra (thanks again for the advice), that some kind of boat would be the first step, and after that a floating platform should be installed. Kennett suggested to position a buoy at the link in point, so that if one was carried away by a current, the linking point would be recognizable. He said, he could provide some.

I asked for a sounder, but he was reluctant to give me one – I think, he feared I could loose it in the lake, and he only has four of them.

So I decided to do it the earthling-way, and to fathom the deep with a plumb line.
I linked in, with a plumb line of 40 feet length. It wasn´t easy to use it, though, because of the waves – it was quite windy, and I swallowed a lot of water trying to stay on the surface. But finally I managed to determine the depth of the lake: at this spot, it was approx. 30 feet deep.

As I prepared to link out, I saw a huge, dark silhouette beneath me, slowly moving. I freezed and tried not to move (which isn´t easy, when swimming). The thing – whatever it was – disappeared into the dark depths and didn´t come back. I waited for some seconds to be sure it was gone, and then linked out. I have no idea what it was, but it surely scared me silly. I´m not sure, I want to return to Ahnoto with such big creatures swimming around in there…

Finally, we had another meeting (it had been postponed several times, because everyone was really busy).
B.P. told us about the progress they made in one of the other ages they had found, Nifehrehn. It is a very cold, polar age with a small D’ni outpost inmidst an arctic desert.
I´m not very fond of cold places, but what they told me about the D’ni outpost was very interesting. It seems, the D’ni researched these place like our scientists do in Antarctica. And – after the Fall, a small group of survivors had fled to Nifehrehn! The expedition found some records made by them, but no remains – maybe they made it and went on to another age? Or they died out there in the ice wastes, searching for food and water…
I definitely will visit this place!

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Ashetens fate

Posted by - Monday, October 4th, 2010

Today B.P. told us a little about Asheten and his life. He had been a wealthy and influental guild master of the guild of writers.
The expedition has found three ages, that had been in his possession. (One of them beeing Risoahl.)
There is an interesting bit about Asheten: He once had been married to a woman named Naila, who had suddenly gotten ill, and, after some years, had succumbed to the illness. Rumors had gone wild in D’ni about her, some claimed, Asheten had been very jealous about her and accused him of having killed her. There seems to have been an investigation by the maintainers, but they couldn´t find any evidence to proof this accusations.
Asheten had not married again, and died like many other D’ni in the Fall. The expedition had found his remains in what happens to have been his study, and some other remains (maybe his servants) in various other rooms of the mansion.
He had been 298 hahrtee old on the day of the Fall.
Though he had been a writer, no ages written by him are known yet. But if one might speculate – as influential as he was, surely he was a skilled writer.
Coincidentally, Asheten seems to have befriended another fellow guild member with a familiar name – Anesh.
Since they lived both at the same time – the late D’ni era before the fall – and they both were influential guild masters of the same guild, this is only logical.

Another topic: We have succeeded to prepare the cave on Afelahn to the state, where we just could go on with excavating, if, only if we had a bigger excavator in the age.
I think, I should talk to Alex and Noelle. Maybe the Yagi can be convinced to “borrow” us one or two Toosha.
The problem is: We can´t tell them, were we´ll take the Toosha, of course. So, how do we explain this?

And another topic: I think, I´ll keep the watery age I initially was so disappointed with. Yeah, sure, I don´t know what to do with it yet, but it is stable, it is mine, and I wrote it :P
So, with the help of the Linguists (Link: http://linguists.bahro.com), I made up a name for it: Ahnoto, which literally means “water place”. It´s not a very elegant translation, I know, but I like the sound of it, and it fits. So, this is the second age written by me :)
If any of you, who read my blog, have ideas, what could be done with an age consisting of a big lake with no shores in vicinity, tell me, I´d be interested to hear (or read) your opinions!

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Writing failures, Part II

Posted by - Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

Wasted another kor’nea. Remember the one I was confident to finish last week? Well, I didn´t.

Well… that´s not entirely true. I DID finish the age – but it seems, I overdid it a little with moisture… when I linked into that age – and DON´T you dare to laugh! – I materialized some 10 feet above a sheet of water. It felt like standing still in the air for a heartbeat (of course I didn´t, but it seemed so), then gravity had me, and I fell. It was very unpleasant, I got wet all over (fortunately the Relto book seems to be waterprove). For a moment, I thought I would sink to the bottom, I had my maintainer suit on – but it seems, they were built to handle such situations.

Now I swam there, looking around – no landmass is visible from the link in spot, as far as I can tell. And so, though the age is stable as far as I can tell, I consider this a failure. What would one do with an age, were there only is water?
It seems to be fresh water, if the displayed informations were correct.
I stayed a little, swimming around a bit, but then I thought about what might swim beneath me, down there, in the dark depths of that lake or whatever it is … suddenly I imagined big fish with long teeth, or big, maritime reptiles like in our earths past – needless to say I linked out very quickly.
There I stood on Relto, soaking wet and really disappointed.

At first, I wanted to burn the book. But then… it IS stable, after all. Maybe it is of any use. I will keep it for now, and think it over.

I visited Afelahn to distract me a little. Kennett has brought me another D’ni excavation-machine – don´t know, what it is called – which can be used to level a rocky floor. I worked for some hours in the cave we had discovered before, and managed to get rid of the most annoying bumps.
By the way: the “clams” I had noticed, are not clams, but tiny crustaceans with clam-like shells. They dig through the soil, like worms on earth. They are approx. 1 to 3 mm long (can´t recall, what this is in inches, sorry)
And I saw another, much bigger creature, at least 3 feet long – it seemed like a really big (and ugly) centipede, but with long, spiny legs and a hard shell, like a lobster. It moved rather quickly, when it saw me, and hid beyond a huge boulder. I didn´t want to follow it – might be poisonous, after all.

Why do I always get ugly, dangerous creatures in the ages I visit? Why not a Squee or something like that?

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