Now, we are exploring the first part of the age. It seems to be a medium sized area, shaped like the generic “hole in the ground” garden age.

The first image data sent by critter 2 didn´t show much, besides green mist and the greenish, sandy ground. A dark rock came into our field of vision when Jack slowly drove the critter forward.

Nothing interesting up to that point – but when the vehicle drove around the rock, the first amazing find. An elongate, whitish object protruded out of the sand. After a small moment we realized it was a bone…

What we then found was more than we had anticipated. The whole area is cluttered with bones of different creatures. Some look vaguely like bones of bovine creatures, others like predatory animals. And a few – as gruesome as it is – seem to be of humanoid origin. We don´t know, if they belong to D’ni or other humanoids.

We will continue to explore the area… whoever lies there, we hopefully will find out more about them.

The expedition council approved my proposal regarding Ahnoto, and they promised me supplies, interns and tools for my work on the age.

Meanwhile, I´ve started to write my third age. I plan it to be a garden age, this time hopefully not too dry and not too moist …
My gahrohevtee become better and better. After my previous mistakes, I´m confident to at least bring the age to a successful end, so at least the book should work. What awaits me after linking in, I can only guess – the branches of the great tree are limitless, after all.

The upgrade of Critter 2 is done – the guys worked restlessly for hours, and managed to get it ready only a few hours ago.

So, now we are preparing everything for our little guys mission.
The maintainer outpost is running and ready, critter 2 is polished and eagerly awaits his… well, you get the idea.

I managed to draw a sketch – as always, please remember, this is not meant to be 100% accurate. I´m a beginner in sketching.

As mentioned, the new encasement is made of deretheni, a light but resistant artificial D’ni stone.

B.P. will link in with his mighty maintainer suit, with critter 2 in his hands. Then he will put it down, and link out again immediately.
The risk is high, and we discussed it a lot – is it worth it? What, if anybody is hurt? The gas is extremely dangerous – will the data be worth it?

Shane Kennett has designed a small receiver, that translates KI signals from other ages into ordinary radio signals, to steer the small vehicle through the age.
Because the KI signal reaches so deep into another age, we can steer it much farther than we could on earth – the small range of the radio receiver can be neglected, it is only centimetres (or inches) away from the KI-receiver.
The only concern are possible interferences from electromagnetic fields in the age itself.

Jack Rowe will steer critter 2 from a control room in Asheten mansion, while a team will take care of B.P. and his suit in the maintainer facility.

Everything is prepared… only 2 hours until we start. I will keep you updated. We should know more tomorrow.

Because Critter 2 had been damaged in a little accident in a rocky crack, Shane Kennett, Jack Rowe and Tom Woods agreed to use it for this purpose.

It will be upgraded with a deretheni shell, new engines for more power, and its crawler tracks will be changed to small, balllike wheels.

We hope to gather more data about the age, to answer some of the questions that arose.

On another, long postponed project: Ahnoto.
If you remember – it is the second age I´ve written by myself. The book links into the middle of a vast freshwater lake, the shorelines can´t be seen from the link in point.
We´ve anchored a buy and a raft at the position, but weren´t sure what to do with the age.

Now I´ve devised a plan: I´m thinking of a big, floating structure, like a huge raft, made of wood, we could walk around on and use as a platform for scientific research and observations. The plan is in a pretty early stage, but I´m confident it will work out nicely.

Maybe I will begin to write another age – it´s been some time that I used my writing skills, might improve them a little more.

Now, we finally have managed to get it out of there, with the help of the more powerful Critter 3 and a small grappling hook.

Of course, Critter 2 is a little bit damaged now and has to be repaired, but at least we have it back

Today, I´ll tell you a bit about Unknown age 03. We found it in the mantainer facility I´ve written about some dozen posts ago, on a pile of ages that we suspect were to be examined by the maintainers, shortly before the fall. As we know, they never got to finish this pile, so the age lacks any maintainers stamp. The linking book we found had no name on its cover, nor did we find any books of commentary.

So, we used extreme caution when visiting the age. Tom Woods, Alex Rebman-Bartos and B.P. Forberg were the first three members of the expedition to link through, wearing maintainer suits.

B.P. wanted to try out one of the biggest, heaviest suits we have, so we helped him putting it on.
After the three linked, we waited for some seconds, till they reappeared in the facility.

As soon as they materialized, green fumes appeared, having attached themselves on the suits. At once, an alarm started to sound – chemical alert! We ran out of the linking chamber, and the doors shut automatically behind us. The three remained in there, when the ventilation system ran up and sucked the greenish haze out of the chamber.

The sensors showed, that it was a rather corrosive, highly toxic gas – hadn´t we reacted so fast, who knows what had happened!
The ventilation system worked flawless, and soon there was no more sign of the gas in the linking chamber.

The door opened again, and we helped the three out of their suits.
“It is a whole mess. The place is absolutely unsafe”, were B.P.s first words when we lifted the heavy helmet part of his suit.
It seems, that the age is covered not only in this gas, but also in kneedeep dust composed of the same corrosive material, in a chemical compound with other matter.

We decided to put the age under quarantine immediately – it is much too unsafe to let anyone go there, at least without the proper security measures.

I asked Shane (Kennett) to borrow me one of the small guys to explore a crack in a rock wall near my home base in Afelahn. The crack is too narrow for a human to enter it (maybe besides a small child). So Shane and two of our interns (Jack Rowe and Sally LaCroix from Canada) visited me in my age.
We carefully positioned Critter 2 in front of the crack, and Jack, who is an avid model maker, steered it into the dark at slow pace.

The camera worked fine, we could see the image data on a laptop screen. It was a strange feeling… like this robot, that has explored one of the shafts in the Cheops pyramide some years ago, Critter 2 crawled forward on its crawler tracks.

The crack wasn’t all too interesting … mostly rock, and some moss growing on it.
We recorded the data anyway, might have overseen something of interest – maybe our geologists will be satisfied with what we have.

Then it happened. When we arrived – or better, when Critter 2 arrived – at the end of the crack, we decided to turn it around and go back outwards.
The ground there was littered with small pebble stones, and somehow our little friend managed to slide sideways – maybe Jack turned it too fast – and got itself stuck on a small rock ledge.
Jack tried to move forward and backward to break free, but to no avail.
Critter 2 is fully functional still, but it can´t move – we fear, it could be impossible to get it out there.

Shane plans to devise a plan to rescue it – maybe with Critter 3, which has a significantly stronger “engine”, or “more power”, so to speak.
Until then, Critter 2 is gone.

Well, to better news:
The harvesting of the Er’Nirah lichen is going well, we already have a great stock in one of the storage houses in the city. Dr. Haugaard, one of our botanists, says they can be stored for some time and still be edible – maybe we can reactivate one of the industrial plants of the D’ni to dry the lichen, so that they are storable even longer.

Of course, the lichen isn´t the only food we have at our disposal. Fruits from Yagee Mohts, Fish from Shashodahl and even some game from Yateesh.
We surely won´t starve for the next months.

Another project of mine I’m focusing right now is the restoration of Tufolehn – or better, the setup. There are no visible D’ni buildings in this age, so I guess, it wasn´t officially used by them. But I´d like to provide means for our fellow explorers to visit it – the strange, Cambrium or Ordovicium-like fauna really is an eye-catcher.
I plan to connect the two islands with some kind of bridge or catwalk to provide easy access.

One of our teams has done extensive work in Nifehrehn, since Quaxo still hasn´t reported in. The age is deemed to dangerous for the moment, so we can´t let anybody in – and still, some of the equipment isn´t working yet – the frost of centuries has left some damage.

Tom Woods and Shane Kennett have made some small vehicles of spare parts of model cars, boats and airplanes, and equipped them with small cameras.
They affectionally call them the “Critters”. Critters 1 to 3 are land-based, with wheels or crawler tracks, Critters 4 to 6 are waterborne, 7 and 8 are airborne – and 9 is a small, floating thingy, similar to a balloon.
They will be used to explore hazardous or inaccessible areas.

Their first mission will be the research of a small ice cave in Nifehrehn. Our scientists suspect some creatures living in there.

I still owe you information about the other “unknown ages”.
Today, behold Unknown age 02:
It seems to have been some kind of submarine science station erected by the old D’ni. It is some kind of pod – but a different one than those we know from “Reziksehv” – with some observation cupolas. The marine life in this age is very different from what we know – there are no fish, but some strange, ribbonlike animals, which are slowly moving through the water.
The temperature seems to be quite hot – the pod is heavily insulated, but there are D’ni scales that show temperatures about 176° Fahrenheit (80° Celsius).
How these creatures can survive this hellish environment, is one of the goals of our research there.
Our interns have dubbed them “Hadesfish”, after the greek underworld.

Again spent some time in Shashodahl, this time for researches. The islands the resort is situated on are surrounded by a light blue, almost turquoise ocean, with abundant marine life.
There seems to be the wreck of a rather big ship in the vicinity of one of the minor islands – we haven´t been able to visit it yet, but our diving team (the guys from New Zealand, remember?) are planning to get there soon. I´m thinking about joining them – the water isn´t deep there, and even I as a absolute beginner in diving should be able to manage this.
And if Shane will have Critters 10 and 11 ready, the planned submarine-camera platforms, we´ll even have nice shots of the wreckage.
Looking forward to that!