Rabenschwinges Cavern blog » giant bamboo

Twenty days

Rabenschwinge — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:04:41 +0000

Twenty days since my last post.

I´ve been busy with a lot of things, and finally found time again to keep you updated.

One of the worst things that happened was the theft of one of our Dasharen linking books. It happened two weeks ago, when B.P. brought some linking books to a conference. When he packed together after it had ended, he found the book missing.

So, someone who has access to our conferences must have taken it – unfortunately, nearly all of the expedition members took part in this particular presentation.

Further investigations pending.

About Dasharen: Tom Woods and Shane Kennett have devised a theory about the “big blast” that happened some months ago, when our powermarble experiment exploded rather spectacularly. They suspect the strange electromagnetic fields to be responsible for the energy fluctuation that caused the explosion. So, we have to be careful with bringing energy devices to this age in the future…

Ah, by the way: I´ve brought some unexpected guests to Afelahn without even noticing.

We were watching animal life in Risoahl, our giant bamboo age, and somehow they must have gotten into one of the bags I had my equipment in.

When I had returned to Afelahn, I heard some chirping sounds – at first, I thought the source of the noise to be outside of the base. But when I moved, I could make out it actually was inside… an unsettling feeling, you know, especially because the creatures in Afelahn I´ve met yet are not very pretty or pleasant. (e.g. the lobsterpede).

Only after I found bite marks on a sandwich I had left on my desk in my office, I knew it had to be some kind of rodent.

Now, I´ve searched through the whole base, but didn´t find anything, albeit hearing these noises from time to time. A least it seems to be smaller than a rat, according to the bite marks… maybe some kind of mouse? Where could it be hiding?

Nifehrehn shivering

Rabenschwinge — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 10:10:45 +0000

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 ).
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?

… if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Rabenschwinge — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:56:48 +0000

Well, I´m not a woodchuck, that´s for sure.
Yesterday we went on with our work in Risoahl, and it was worse than the last time. We only managed to fell five of that giant bamboo stems, and it was really hard. I cut my hands open, despite wearing thick leather gloves.

Fortunately we decided to break off for the day. Shane Kennett, who led our little working crew, said he would try to find some D´ni equipment – maybe they have some faster, less exhaustive means of doing this.

I used the break to become familiar with other members of the “Forberg expedition” (it really needs an official name, one which can be abbreviated, like the DRC or SR, or TTP, or all the other cool names.)

I had a nice conversation with Alex and another woman, Noelle Belfiore, who is the expeditions linguist. They told me more about the Yagi, the first – and yet only – people of “ahrotahntee”, the expedition has encountered until now.
They seem to be a simple, but spiritual fishing community, living in the age of Yagee Mohts. They aren´t aware of the art, of the D´ni or of the terokh jeruth, and it is official policy of the expedition to not telling them if possible. I agree. It would be a cultural shock to them.
Alex and Noelle have visited them several times – they said, they came from far away (which, from a certain point of view, is true). They did research on the culture, religious believes and the language of the Yagi.
Alex again invited me to join them on their next visit, which is planned for the next week. I´m looking forward to that!

And I was able to meet B.P. and ask him about a place to sleep… told him about my problems with Relto. He assigned a room on the second floor to me. It´s small, but sufficient for me. And it is rather quiet, so I can work on my age.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck…

Rabenschwinge — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:59:53 +0000

Work on Risoahl is progressing, albeit slowly. The warm and moist climate of this area may be comfortable when sitting around and chatting, but when you do manual work, you get exhausted rather quick.
We (that is, six adult men) tried to fell some of the giant bamboo to cut free a path through one of the thickest parts of the forest – but the plants are extremely tenacious. After five hours of hard work we managed to fell a small area of the size of a basketball court. Quite disappointing.
We saw quite some wildlife while doing that work – some fish, a 2 feet long lizardlike creature, and some birds, who had a nest in one of the bamboo (We didn´t touch that one. We aren´t that heartless!)
I think, I saw some wormlike creature that suspiciously looked like a leech – I hope I´m wrong. Can´t stand that things.

After we were done for that day, I linked back to my Relto, and tried to get some sleep. Again I recognized, how cold it can be… I fear, my cold will worsen if I keep sleeping there. I wonder, if B.P. can give me a free room in Asheten mansion?

On the next day, I went on writing into my second kor´nea (I had wasted my first one, as I´ve mentioned earlier on this blog.).
This time I am even more cautious than before, only writing gahrohevtee which I know, repeating them to emphasize certain important features I would like to have in my first age.

For example, it should be warm and cozy, and there shouldn´t be any walls which could fall on me… (kidding.)

A first mission

Rabenschwinge — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 17:53:17 +0000

Our meeting went well. Besides Dr. Forberg, I met again the curly, bulky man, who introduced himself as Shane Kennett. Dr. Forberg told me, he was a longtime friend of him and an engineer and IT specialist.
Then there was an elderly woman, Dr. Krista Haugaard from Danmark, who is a botanist, and Alex, whom I had met before, the red haired woman. Her full name is Dr. Alexandra Rebman-Bartos, and she´s an anthropologist.
First of all, Forberg asked me to just call him B.P., like everyone else did. Then the others made their reports of the week. Kennett explained his progress on some energy conduct in Asheten mansion and some computer problems.
Dr. Haugaard reported her newest findings about the plants of Risoahl – didn´t understand much, but one thing that stayed in my mind was, that the giant bamboo of that age (which we were right sitting in at the time) were unusual in some ways (other than the size). For example, they were extremly adaptable to conditions like a high concentration of salts – the water of Risoahl seems to be quite brackish – and standing right in the deep water of the lake filling most of the area doesn´t harm them either.
Alex told us some interesting stuff about the Yagi people they had met on one of the ages they had found. I haven´t met any non-humans except some Bahro yet, so I´m especially excited about them. I asked Alex, if I could join her next time she visits them, and she agreed.
Then the reports were done, and B.P. turned to me. He asked me, if I would like to help to do restoration work in Risoahl – especially tidying up the place a bit, cutting a path through the giant bamboo-forest and such things. I happily agreed – doesn´t sound to hard to do for me, no special skills needed
B.P. told me about their plans for the age – they would like to use it as an example and as a test in restoration. As I´ve posted before, they usually just do their research. Restoration is something new for them.
Their ultimate goal is to open the age for all explorers – but there is a lot of work to do first.