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.

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.

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!

Fortunately I´m always wearing a hard hat when venturing into ruined districts… otherwise this could have ended badly for me. A big chunk of wall hit me on the head – it chopped a big scratch into my helmet. Another one touched on my arm, but only lightly.

I´m not hurt badly, except for a biiig headache… maybe I should see a doctor, just to be sure.

Besides from the headache, I brought nothing of value with me… the place is very much devastated. Not much left there.

After that I went to my Relto and once again examined the burnt linking book. From the looks of it, I more and more come to think it IS a descriptive book – so this age, Afelahn, is essentially defunct now. (or at least the link to it.)

I think, I´ll stay with the name for my own, very first written age – if all goes well, I´d like to set up a “base camp” or an office or something like that in the age … Relto is a nice place, but space is limited, and it can be quite cold sometimes, even with the fireplace activated.

But… without ink, I´m not even ready to start writing, which is really annoying right now.

If someone knows a place, where one can find ink, please let me know!

But I found another thing which will hopefully help me a lot learning the Art: a book of commentary, 200+ pages, all written in D´ni, of course. The age it belongs to I couldn´t find, though.

I´ll need the help of a really skilled translator now – any volunteers? No payment, but the warm feeling of having helped a promising young writer?

I´ll go for another “treasure hunt” today in the afternoon. If anyone looks for me, I´ll be in the city proper.

Now, after months of reading, learning, watching, I think, I´m ready to try and write my first age.

Last week I had ventured into one of the more devastated districts of the city proper. On this little expedition, I broke into… err, entered a house, that seems to once have belonged to a member of the original guild of writers. I searched the house for anything helpful, and actually found a pile of kortee´nea, blank books, waiting for someone to write into them!

The second discovery I made was the burnt remain of a linking book. On the cover, barely noticable, a D´ni word was written.

I managed to transcribe it, and it says “Afelahn”. I guess, this was the name of the age. The book has no maintainers stamp (at least, as far as I can tell, it really is badly burnt) and of course has ceased to work. If this is a descriptive book, then it seems to have been rejected by the maintainers… a failed work of the late owner of this house perhaps?

I´ve tinkered with the idea of using the name for my first age… would this be appropriate?