The following happened in September 2014, in my first age of Afelahn.

Since our last expedition some years ago, we hadn´t went far from the valley where my home base is situated – or better, near the mountain, were the base is in.
But on 20th of september, Clint Spano, Noemi Moots, Alex – who had returned to the cavern only one week earlier – and myself went on a hike up the valley, into the mountain range.

It was almost evening, when we finally came to a small brook, which after some hundred meters disappeared underground.
We took water samples and returned to the base.

Some days later, Alex told me, she wanted to explore the lower side of the valley, to look for the exact spot, where the brook came out of the mountain again.
I had some work to do on another of my projects, and so Noemi went with her.

When they returned, they brought some really good KI-shots with them – they indeed had found the brook again, only now it was a river, more than 5 meters wide and at least 2 meters deep.

When we sat in my office, discussing their findings and examining the pictures on our KIs, I came up with an idea.

I dont know, if you, dear readers, remember my old posts about the so called critters, our small, remote controlled vessels, some on wheels, some flying – and some floating on water.
One of the latter, critter 4, is stable enough to withstand the currents of a fast flowing river – and so we decided, to give it a try and explore the river downwards by letting poor little critter 4 be carried away by the water.

We realized, that we almost certainly wouldn´t be able to retrieve the small vessel, but at least we´d get a lot of interesting shots from the downhill part of the mountain range.
And so we did.

The camera that was built into the critter showed us, that beyond the part of the river that we could see there was a section with dangerous rapids – the critter was flung from one side to the other very fast and violently, but miraculously, it survived the harsh voyage, until it reached calmer, slower currents. It was not until then that we saw the rocks part way to let us watch in astounishment, as we saw a huge, lush forest with big trees, long, green vines and big, almost three meter high ferns. A little bit it reminded me of Yagee Mohts, but it was even cooler, and even more moist.
We hadn´t expected such vegetation after having experienced only the harsh, cool and barren mountain range.

Critter 4 finally came to a halt, when it hit a big root, that grew into the water in a big arch. We tried to get loose, but to no avail.

We decided to shut down Critter 4, to spare some battery power for later.

All these pictures and film material will need some time for examination – we still aren´t done with it five months later!

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!