I plan on opening the age to the public in 2015, I know, I have announced this a few times already, but this time the age is in a state I can predict to be safe and interesting in only a couple of months, maybe even earlier.
I also will post KI-shots over the next weeks to show you how far the age has developed, and what you can expect to see.
My home base has come a long way. It started with a cavern in the rock, and now has grown to almost 20 rooms.
Looking forward to hear opinions on Afelahn soon!

By the way, the expedition also has almost regrown to its old numbers, most of our former members are back and already working again on various projects.
Yesterday, Shane Kennett, Carla Mastrelli and Keira Bracetty presented their plans of rebuilding at least part of old Asheten mansion, our former headquarters until its destruction in the year 2012.

The next big projects after Afelahn to restore to a level, where the ages can be visited by the general public, will be Ahnoto and Risoahl.

Stay tuned over the next months!

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.

I was one of the few who remained – mainly working on my own ages, but sometimes I managed to pay a visit to ages like Risoahl, Resehren or even Yoshonah.

Then came the darkest day of the year 2013. On 20th of September, a small expedition, consisting of Shane Kennett, Alex, Noelle, Jack Rowe and myself, went to Nifehrehn.
We wore our maintainer suits to protect ourselves from the extremely harsh cold of the age.
When we left the abandoned D’ni outpost, we almost immediately got lost due to our compasses spinning around maniacally, which had happened never before in Nifehrehn.
As we were trying to find the way back, one of the apex predators of the age attacked us out of the blue – or rather, out of the white – and quickly locked jaws onto Jacks suit, ripping it open.
It would surely have killed him, if not for Shane, who had a D’ni stun gun with him. He stabbed the thing with the gun, and it shrieked terribly, rearing up and starting to run away. Some 20 meters (approx. 60 feet) away, it collapsed and – as we found out later – died. It seems, these creatures are extremely vulnerable to this kind of stunning device.

Jack lost a lot of blood, and the cold started to take a heavy toll on him. Fortunately, our combined efforts helped us to rescue him just in time, and then leaving quickly with our emergency books that led us back to D’ni.
Jack had to undergo massive medical treatment, but after a few weeks, he fully recovered from his wounds.
We decided not to go out into Nifehrehns dangerous environment until we would be able to protect us better.

After the accident, we played it safe – stayed in a few secure ages mostly, doing a lot of harmless research.
Alex and Noelle decided to leave the cavern shortly after the incident and wouldn´t come back until much later.

All these things happened from July to October in 2013.

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.

So, thanks, guys, it was a real pleasure!

Didn´t expect it, my birthday was over a week ago – they managed to keep it a secret, even when they congratulated me.

Well, back to work. I still have unknown ages for you to present, plus a bunch of new ages we found over the last months.

I will gather informations and post more about them the next days and weeks.

We´ve decided to take countermeasures – using mouse traps didn´t work, so we used rat poison, but they seem to be to smart to take the baits we used.

So we did it the hard way – cornering and catching them with nets and brailers (? right word?).

Managed to catch two dozens of them, but judging from the chirping sounds all over the place, there are much more.

I guess, I will spend the next weeks like this…

In the meantime, the council decided to close Dasharen for everyone. The age is deemed too dangerous to stay there for longer than a few minutes. This means, our research of the age has come to a sudden hold.

In Nifehrehn, we are making progress again, albeit slowly. The sabotage had destroyed much of the equipment. Shane and Tom Woods managed to replace and substitute some of it with similar devices from other ages, but some of them can´t be replaced.

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?

When they ventured a little deeper into the forests, they suddenly found the small carcass of an antilope.
First they didn´t suspect anything unusual, the age is teeming with wild life, including some really nasty predators.

But then they saw, that someone – someone with a knife – had skinned  and disembowled the animal.
So that means, that someone else also has access to Yateesh, and uses it as a hunting ground, just like we do.
Could these be the same people who stole from us before?

Tubby, my Toosha, is sick since he ate some berries in Risoahl.
He had been used to pull down some of the most sturdy giant bamboos when it happened. I really hope, they were not venomous …
We don´t have a veterinarian with us yet, so I asked Dr. Shingler, one of our zoologists, to look after him.

As I looked through my supplies and tools, I stumbled over a small crate with the Alitnee eggs I had gathered and prepared months ago.
I decided to put them into my home base, for everyone to see.

Because Afelahn will still need some work before the grand opening, here are some KI-shots of the eggs.
I might add some information about the different species the eggs are from in the future.

In Afelahn, we excavated two more rooms: the aforementioned control room, and a huge room I plan to … well, I guess, this one will stay secret for the moment I think, you will really like this one, and so I won’t spoil it for you.

The second thing to mention about Afelahn is, that I made a decision regarding harboring other people in the base. I will add living quarters and all the other stuff needed – the base is growing still, and I have a lot of ideas for future expansions. If the base really is going to be as big as I imagine, there will be plenty of room for other people to do research.
I am amazed to see what Afelahn has become until now, and I think, there will be a lot more.

I´ll try to gather some people so we can clear the room of the debris, and see, where it leads.
I´ll keep you updated on that one!

Our research on the red lichen of Er’Nirah has shown, that it is indeed edible. Some of the bold members of the expedition – me included – tried it out.
We sat together in Risoahl, which has become some “expedition relaxing age” for us for some time now.
Our best cook is Tom Woods, so he had the honorable task to serve us his “lichen á la cavern”, a rather interesting combination of said lichen, spices, some vegetables from the surface, and an interesting sauce. It was absolutely delicious! I had expected the lichen to taste bitter, but quite in the opposite, it was a meat-like taste, maybe a little like goat meat, but with a slight sweet aftertaste. I can really recommend it to anyone who is brave enough to test it – it´s worth a try!

By the way, after that, we had coffee and sweet fruits from Yagee Mohts for dessert.
A perfect day!

There were some interesting people there – scientists, students, explorers, interns…
We gave them a tour through some major parts of D’ni – Ae’Gura, Great Tree Pub, some hoods… and then led them to Risoahl (which is quite tidied up now.)

It was entertaining to watch how they reacted to all that stuff… I can very well remember how it was for me, linking for the first time, standing there, watching in awe about all those wonders…

B.P. took over after that, and explained to them, what kind of help we need, what tasks there are to do, and so on.

So, after this, our staff has increased greatly – and the work on the new ages and areas we found can finally begin!

The other day, in our spare time, Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and myself visited an old maintainer facility in one of the outlying districts. It was in good shape, and there was plenty of interesting equipment there. The most interesting parts were the maintainer suits. Not only the newest ones, like in Gahreesen, but also some older models – some looking like a kind of insect, and some – the oldest ones – huge and bulky, and extremly tough looking. I guess, these would be suitable even for the harshest ages.

Shane said, he thought about using this maintainer outpost for the same purpose it was used back then, by the D’ni – as a starting point for expeditions to new ages. With all the new areas, we could make good use of all that equipment.