Chances were that in a few weeks nobody would be around any more.
I had big doubts myself about staying down in the caverns, but I had invested so much work and time, that I decided to stay, whatever happened around me.
Then, in march 2014, surface issues forced me to abandon my team for some weeks, spending a lot of time in my home country of Austria to sort things out.
I finally returned to Afelahn in June, only to find the age deserted. Everyone had left. I tried to contact some of the other groups, but no one answered. It was as if D’ni had once again died.

From my previous experience, I was sure, that D’ni finally would revive again, like it had again and again – still, a dark spot of doubt lay on my soul. What if nobody ever would return? What if D’ni was done for good this time?

I lost motivation. Many of my projects came to an abrupt halt. I locked away the books I still had, with the exception of Afelahn, which I visited sporadically.

Then, in september 2014, when I once again browsed some of the explorers forums, I read an announcement by some former team members of the Forberg expedition. Funding had been secured again, scientists, workers and explorers from the former team returned at a fast pace, and projects were restarted, continued and begun.

Euphorically, I packed my stuff, told the surface goodbye once again, and returned to D’ni.

It wasn´t for the first time, but it felt different – hope, and a feeling of determination were stronger and more urgent than ever before.

Work in Risoahl is nearly finished – the age will stay private for the time being, though. The expedition has decided we need a refuge, a recreation age only accessible by us.

My personal opinion? I don´t think, areas and ages should be claimed by individuals or organisations – they should be open to all, if they are safe enough. But the council has decided, and I can´t argue with that.

My own ages, Afelahn, Ahnoto and the third age I´m writing (without a name yet), will be open to all, that´s for sure.

Again, we found traces of strangers in some of our ages. Someone has access to at least seven ages. They stole equipment, food, and even sabotaged some of our projects. Who are they? Why are they interfering with our work?

All we´ve found out, that they are humans, surface dwellers from our very own earth. Their motivation is still shrouded in mystery.

It is the highest room at the moment, reaching up to the surface of Afelahn, to lead any kinetic energy of a possible explosion outwards.

Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and Carla Mastrelli led a team that installed the power marble in its encasement. The inner part is covered by nara, the hardest  artificial stone the D’ni have invented. On the outside a massive concrete layer has been added for additional safety.

The room will have a heavy blast door, as planned.

Now, all that’s left to power the base, are the wirings and control computers.

It´s amazing, what they were able to accomplish – a neat mixture of surface and D’ni technology. I do hope, it doesn’t blow up, though.

I have some more KI-shots for you. The first two are of lamp designs I used in the garage:

They are rather huge, as you can see.

Then, I added some artwork to make the base a little bit more friendly – it’s not a Picasso, but for a first try on canvas it´s not that bad imho:

There was another, big earthquake in Dasharen. Nobody of the expedition was there, but the seismographs recorded it.
Maybe the quakes are the reason, Dasharen was deserted and left alone – maybe the D’ni who lived there had enough of the constant danger and went to live in a more – convenient age.

Ah, and I forgot: two nights ago, someone again tried to break into one of the sheds at Asheten mansion. But this time, the lock – one of the secure ones we installed after the last incident – didn’t give way. So they – whoever they were – gave up and left.

Unfortunately, the video data isn’t good, you can only see dark silhouettes. But now we know, they are humans, not Bahro. They wore boots and trousers of surface design, so they aren’t D’ni either (unless D’ni trying to fool us by dressing like us… unlikely, yes, but possible.)

The question is – are they other explorers? Members of our own expedition? Looters?

I suggested to let guards patrol the area – without weapons of course, the only guns we have are the hunting rifles Noemi and Clint brought, and we don´t want to start a war down here.
But whoever they are, they won’t be successful again.

The council met immediately after the theft was detected. Teams searched the near vicinity of the mansion, but no clues were found.

This is really disturbing – until now, we hadn’t had any problems with other groups or individuals in D’ni. The list of suspects is long – from surviving D’ni over begrudging explorers to evil Bahro, everyone could have done it. Even our own expedition members could be involved.

For now, the council decided to improve security – cameras  around the mansion, and safer locks will be installed.

I’m thinking of increasing security in Afelahn as well.. at least take the linking book to a safer place. If the culprits are Bahro, of course everything we can do is in vain.

Nevertheless, there are positive news as well.

I’ve brought some samples from other ages to Afelahn, to finally start to work in my new home base, though it still isn’t complete yet.

I’d like to show you some of those samples on KI-shots:

The first image shows a “Star fruit” from Yagee Mohts. It is quite big – approximately the size of a medium pumpkin – and tastes sweet and sour. This one has been primed (right english word?) to last without rotting.

On the second shot you can see a crystal from Eder Kamonee. Do you remember our first, disastrous expedition to that age? If not, I recommend reading the old posts on this blog.

To give you a summary: The crystals of Eder Kamonee are very fragile and sensitive to vibrations – as we found out the hard way, when someone accidently hit one of them, and – well, you could say, hell broke loose on us. Luckily, most of us were only injured lightly, and the age as since been closed for anyone.

Some weeks ago, a small group of expedition members went there in medium maintainer suits, though, and took some samples. After sealing one of the crystals with some kind of artificial wax (forgot, how they called it), Tom Woods gave me this sample for my studies in Afelahn. The wax keeps the crystal from imploding or hurting anyone.

On the third picture you can see a vase we found in one of D’nis lower districts, in a devastated pottery shop. It was one of the only undamaged pieces – not interesting scientifically, but a nice example of D’ni craftsmanship. So I took it to Afelahn and put it into my lab.

Oh, by the way – I nearly forgot to mention the earthquake in Dasharen.

I wasn’t there when it struck, but Alex was. She told us, that it scared them quite a lot, and that one of the hallways broke down, fortunately without injuring anyone. It wasn’t a major quake, but still did some damage.

Keira Bracetty and her team will try to secure the structure in case of more quakes.

B.P. suggested bringing one or two seismographs to the age so we can record the frequency and intensity of future quakes. Might help us to understand the geological status of Dasharen better.

Maybe it would be a bit of a distraction to do some work on other ages…

Oh, and by the way: I started researching two of the strange species of Tufolehn: the already mentioned “sea urchin”, and one of the various sea snail-species. I brought a sea snail and two living sea urchins, and also some dead ones as well.

I guess, it´s about time to post some KI-shots here on the blog. I plan to do that this weekend.

At first, it seemed like that was it – interesting enough – but then they discovered a secret door, leading to a hallway, leading to a room with shelves full of books – linking books! No descriptive books, as it seems, but a big number of linking books. B.P. says, they counted at least 20 books of different ages.
Nobody knows, how Ri’tehraf was able to keep such a big number of books, when even the richest D’ni didn´t – the most likely theory is that he had stolen them.

Anyway – it will be difficult to research such a huge number of ages with a rather limited staff. Most of the expeditions members are already working on the ages we have access to yet, and so the new ones will have to wait for some time (although many of us can´t wait to visit them.)

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.

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.

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?