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!

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.

After I had made my preparations, I linked back to the Kurat neighborhood and met with Dr. Forberg. He had an interesting, portable D´ni-device with him: some kind of KI-encoder/decoder. He told me to put my hand with my KI into the device, programmed it, and it loaded a new Nexus-link into my KI (better said: the clearance for a new area.)
We then moved on to the Nexus, and from there to the expedition´s headquarters, a mansion at a lower part of city proper, which lies directly at the lakeshore.

By the way: In the meantime I´ve asked Dr. Forberg about the name “Kurat” meaning derogative things in some languages, and he answered, this was purely coincidental, as it was a D´ni name. So, all Estonians who read this, this name is not meant as an offense to you

It was quite impressive. The mansion was in exceptional good condition, and Dr. Forberg told me later, that they had been cleaning up and restoring it for nearly 2 years now. It once had belonged to a D´ni guildmaster namend Asheten, who had been a rich and influential individual.
The three ages that had been in Ashetens possession now are in the hands of the expedition, Risoahl being one of them.

I was introduced to some members of the expedition, was given a tour through the mansion – the architecture of that place is astounding – and then we sat down in the dining room with four other people to discuss things out.
A redhaired young woman, wo intruced herself as Alex, a certain Dr. Stejskal, two guys whos names I can´t remember, and another, curly haired, bulky man, who nearly squashed my hand when shaking it. We had a long, interesting conversation about the goals of the expedition and their achievements of the past two years, and of my possible role.
I found out, that the main purpose of Dr. Forbergs expedition was research, not restoration, though they of course had to do some cleaning up to be able to do their work.
After talking a lot, Dr. Forberg asked me, what I thought about the offer. I said, I had to think it over – but if I would work with them, then not as a part of the expedition, but as an outsider – but with full access to their ressources and manpower.
Dr. Forberg smiled, and after giving me a thoughtfull look, agreed.
In return, he said, the expedition would like to have the right to examine and research each of the ages, I would write. I stated, that I would allow that, but only on my terms. If anyone did something with/ in my ages, I didn´t like, I would withdraw my allowance at once.
We talked at least two hours more, and then said goodbye to each other.

After the meeting, a lot of thoughts went through my head, and I decided to make another visit in Tufolehn. It is a calm, peaceful place, and really good if you need some time for yourself.

I had brought a backpack with me, with my kor´nea I had begun to write in. When I was slowly walking along the beach of my small island, I watched the greenish sea, and suddenly saw something, aproximately twenty meters away from the shore, in the sea. It drift closer to the beach, and I recognized it being some sort of big jellyfish, two meters in diameter, with long, thin tentacles. It was shining in dark blue and bright red – it seems, that many of the creatures in Tufolehn are quite colorful.
It was washed to the beach finally, by the surf. I stayed away from it – didn´t know, if the nettles were dangerous – and admired it´s beautiful colors.
I think, I will have to name the creatures I discover – I don´t have a good name for this one, maybe one of my blog readers can help me out with that?