Apart from this minor destructions, all went well. We excavated a corridor downwards, and then a huge room, which will be our “atrium” for the residential wing of the base.
Shane also used a smaller D’ni machine, which is able to cut stairs out of the rock to add an amazing stone staircase downwards to the atrium.
From this place, we will be able to dig deep into the rock and establish all the rooms necessary to live here for a longer time.

The number of expediton members is now equal to before all went down some years ago.
Most members have returned and/or rejoined the expedition now.
Some of those who stay away might have been involved with the destruction of Asheten mansion…
Since nobody on the surface officially knows about the cavern, we can´t really do anything against them – at least not legally. They are at least banned from any age or area we are researching and/or rebuilding – they cost us a lot, not only money, but also time and ressources.
Now, we have to depend on the ressources of D’ni and its ages mostly – we gather food from the ages, use more and more D’ni tools and machines, and many of us have made a home down here in the caverns on a permanent basis.

As I am writing this, Yeeshas words from her last visit at K’veer come into my mind: “Find a way, make a home!”
Well, I guess that´s exactly what we are doing.

Maybe we together, explorers, scientists, visitors – not only of the Forberg expedition, but the whole number of people down here in the caverns and in D’ni can find a solution to the big conflict that might still be going on out there…

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.

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?

The strange lack of data the seismographs did record – or, in fact, DIDN’T record – puzzled us all. But when Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and Carla Mastrelli used some of their equipment – don´t ask me, they explained it to me, but I didn´t understand more than “electromagnetic” and “field” and stuff – they found out, that there indeed are unusual electromagnetic energy flux thingymabobs (I`m sorry for the gibberish), which means, that Dasharens magnetic field is unstable and fluctuating in a strange manner.

That´s what caused the errors in our seismographs – overloaded their circuits, and so they stopped working.

I´ve heard that it was comparable to an electromagnetic pulse…

That makes Dasharen an age with:

• earthquakes
• electromagnetic – things
• dust storms
• arid desertlike environment

No wonder, the community of D’ni in this age didn´t stay there.

The status of Nifehrehn is devastating. The frost has destroyed much of the equipment, and most of the data about the age is lost. Fortunately, we had copied most of it and stored it in our computers.
Whoever did this vile act of sabotage, he or she managed to undo work of months.
It is really upsetting and unsettling to know there is someone out there wanting to harm us, or at least our work…

On the green smoke in Afelahn: When I searched the complex, I found a small D’ni device behind some crates in storage  I. I think it was this thing, that emitted the smoke somehow – I´ve given it to Shanes team. Hopefully they can determine what purpose it has.

Yesterday I finally had time to finish the measurements for the new rooms. I´ve plans for Afelahn – GREAT plans. It will be expanded greatly. One of the new parts will be the residental area I´ve talked about – some private rooms for myself, and when it is determined how many people will join me in Afelahn, I’ll add more facilities for them.

Then there will be an atrium, with stairs and light and a fountain – or an artpiece, I´ve not yet decided that.

And some more labs will be necessary.
Well, a lot of work for the next weeks.

Because Critter 2 had been damaged in a little accident in a rocky crack, Shane Kennett, Jack Rowe and Tom Woods agreed to use it for this purpose.

It will be upgraded with a deretheni shell, new engines for more power, and its crawler tracks will be changed to small, balllike wheels.

We hope to gather more data about the age, to answer some of the questions that arose.

On another, long postponed project: Ahnoto.
If you remember – it is the second age I´ve written by myself. The book links into the middle of a vast freshwater lake, the shorelines can´t be seen from the link in point.
We´ve anchored a buy and a raft at the position, but weren´t sure what to do with the age.

Now I´ve devised a plan: I´m thinking of a big, floating structure, like a huge raft, made of wood, we could walk around on and use as a platform for scientific research and observations. The plan is in a pretty early stage, but I´m confident it will work out nicely.

Maybe I will begin to write another age – it´s been some time that I used my writing skills, might improve them a little more.

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.

I asked Shane (Kennett) to borrow me one of the small guys to explore a crack in a rock wall near my home base in Afelahn. The crack is too narrow for a human to enter it (maybe besides a small child). So Shane and two of our interns (Jack Rowe and Sally LaCroix from Canada) visited me in my age.
We carefully positioned Critter 2 in front of the crack, and Jack, who is an avid model maker, steered it into the dark at slow pace.

The camera worked fine, we could see the image data on a laptop screen. It was a strange feeling… like this robot, that has explored one of the shafts in the Cheops pyramide some years ago, Critter 2 crawled forward on its crawler tracks.

The crack wasn’t all too interesting … mostly rock, and some moss growing on it.
We recorded the data anyway, might have overseen something of interest – maybe our geologists will be satisfied with what we have.

Then it happened. When we arrived – or better, when Critter 2 arrived – at the end of the crack, we decided to turn it around and go back outwards.
The ground there was littered with small pebble stones, and somehow our little friend managed to slide sideways – maybe Jack turned it too fast – and got itself stuck on a small rock ledge.
Jack tried to move forward and backward to break free, but to no avail.
Critter 2 is fully functional still, but it can´t move – we fear, it could be impossible to get it out there.

Shane plans to devise a plan to rescue it – maybe with Critter 3, which has a significantly stronger “engine”, or “more power”, so to speak.
Until then, Critter 2 is gone.

Well, to better news:
The harvesting of the Er’Nirah lichen is going well, we already have a great stock in one of the storage houses in the city. Dr. Haugaard, one of our botanists, says they can be stored for some time and still be edible – maybe we can reactivate one of the industrial plants of the D’ni to dry the lichen, so that they are storable even longer.

Of course, the lichen isn´t the only food we have at our disposal. Fruits from Yagee Mohts, Fish from Shashodahl and even some game from Yateesh.
We surely won´t starve for the next months.

Another project of mine I’m focusing right now is the restoration of Tufolehn – or better, the setup. There are no visible D’ni buildings in this age, so I guess, it wasn´t officially used by them. But I´d like to provide means for our fellow explorers to visit it – the strange, Cambrium or Ordovicium-like fauna really is an eye-catcher.
I plan to connect the two islands with some kind of bridge or catwalk to provide easy access.