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.
The age still is in the works, it will need some more wiring to be safe enough for everyone to visit it.
First, I´d like to show you a sketch of the lobsterpede I did, when I had the opportunity to watch it again. This time it didn´t see me for a while, so I had time to sketch it.
This creature seems to be some kind of crustacean or insect – it is land-dwelling and breathes air. I estimate its length about 3 feet (roughly 1 meter). It seems to be harmless, albeit ugly, and living near the cave which leads to my home base, under a big rock.
I´m not very good in drawing, so this sketch isn´t 100% accurate. But I think, you can get a nice impression of the creature, and why I´m keeping my distance when I meet it
Next, I´ll show you some overview shots of my home base.
First, the link-in or as I call it, “Entry room”.
If you remember the shot I showed on this blog some months ago, you will recognize the changes. I installed a new lamp, with a simpler but more appealing design, added some carpets (to welcome my guests), and some signs and information.
The following shot shows “Lab I”, which also serves as a room for a small exhibit of my research and accomplishments.
This is the “Garage”, at the moment the biggest room of my home base. It has a huge door that leads to the outside of the age (not seen in this pic). As you see, it is also meant to provide space for big specimens to be researched – the tree is a species of pine tree from Yagee Mohts, brought to Afelahn with the help of a couple of Toosha. The lamp in the left corner is a design I did with a little help from Tom Woods. Did I mention that I enjoy designing lamps?
This is “Storage I”, a – storage room. You can see the door leading to it in the former picture (to the right of the lamp.) It is currently not used, most of my equipment ist stored in Asheten mansion still, until the age is ready.
This is Lab II, primary used for experiments with bigger plants.
At the moment, there is only one species here – the Dasharan desert plant I´ve mentioned some months ago. I´ve changed the soil since then, because the plant didn´t do well with the former variant. Now it is more desertlike, and the plant seems to enjoy it.
The last KI-shot I´d like to share with you is the huge door I mentioned before, with me standing besides it for size comparison.
It needed a lot of work to install this door, I tell ya…
Hope, you enjoyed the KI-shots – there will be some more incoming in the next days.
]]>With the help of my toosha, Tubby, we brought a heavy metal door to the age. Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and a bunch of guys with muscles managed to build it into the opening between the “garage” and the cave, so that the inner area is now secured against at least the strongest wind.
Shane told me, he would insulate the rooms when they are ready and that he had found a sprayer with some kind of D’ni material (stone?) that had been used by them for that purpose.
In Ahnoto, we have anchored a boat – a bigger, wooden one, not an inflatable – at the link in spot. It will stay there for the moment, so that we can bring material there, when we have time for that.
B.P. updated us about the Resehren books at the last meeting. They´ve found 23 of them. Unfortunately, four of them ceased to work, out of unknown reasons – maybe the descriptive books have been destroyed.
The other ones link to different ages and locations – 9 ages and 7 city locations altogether (some of the books link to the same places as others).
At the moment, we don´t have the personnel, nor the time to explore this new places, though we really would love to.
B.P. hinted, that he is actually trying to recruit more people for the expedition.
With the help of Tom Woods, I planned the overall layout of my home base – complete with an office, labors, storage rooms… and of course a “link in room” for visitors comfort.
I don´t plan any recreational facilities yet – it will solely be a working space, maybe with presentation of my findings from various ages to give visitors an overview.
While we were working with the excavator, I saw the “lobsterpede” again (from “lobster” and “centipede”). It was as ugly as ever, and as dumb as ever: it hid under the same rock as last time.
Maybe it has a nest there?
I visited Tufolehn again, and took a boat with me this time. I couldn´t resist my curiosity – the second island is only a few meters away, and so I row there.
It surely was worth it. The second island is approximately double the size of the first, and there is much more to see: on the beach, beyond some medium sized rocks, there are some strange organisms growing on some smaller rocks, above the water line. They belong to different species – most of them are quite colorful. I don´t even know, if they are plants or animals (or something else(tm)), but I really like watching them. Between the motionless ones, there are some creatures creeping and slithering around – I guess, they could be some kind of sea cucumber or conches. Will have to ask Peter Chang.
I watched them for a while (from a safe distance, beyond the medium rocks) and decided to take some KI-shots (I tend to forget to do this, so I haven´t got a lot of them yet.)
Before I post them publicly, I want to do some research. (And let some other guys from the expedition do some research for me )
When I was done with the linking book, I spent a few hours with them, sitting up there and watching the marvelous creatures of the age. Besides the already mentioned antelopelike species (we are calling them “Royalopes”), there were bigger, more bulkier built herbivores, much like the Toosha, but with a much rounder snout and even larger. They slowly grazed the grass around our observation post, a small group of about a dozen individuals.
Another, much smaller species of herbivores, which looked like big rodents, ran about in the high grass – so fast, that we couldn´t recognize any other specifics about them.
The highlight of our trip was to watch one of the predators hunt. Noemi and Clint had seen it long before I did – Clint touched my arm, signaled me to be quiet and pointed into a certain direction. It took me some minutes to see the silhouette of a large animal – nearly as large as the big, bulky herbivores – lying there in the grass, motionless, focussing on one of the youngs.
For ten minutes nothing happened. The herbivores grazed on, not seeing the predator, which lay in a distance about thirty feet away from them.
Then it struck. It moved so fast, I only could see a blur. The next second, the young herbivore lay on the ground, with a big, furry predator biting into its neck, effectively killing it.
We watched the predator feeding. Now, standing in full sunlight, it was perfectly visible. It was about 15 feet long, had four big paws with long claws. It was nearly built like a female lion, but a little leaner, with a long, rather thin snout with a lot of sharp teeth. The teeth looked like crocodiles teeth, almost the same size, without fangs like our predatory mammals have.
It had a long, scrubby fur, with a dark brown hue on his back, neck and tail, and a short, grayish fur on the face, paws and lower side of its body.
After the creature had finished its meal, it dragged the rest of the carcass into the high grass, where we lost sight of it.
After that, nothing special happened – the big herbivores had ran away, obviously, and the other species kept distance to the site of the hunt, so we couldn´t see much for some hours.
We left Yateesh before dusk.
]]>Shane Kennett managed to activate a holografic interface, and we got access to a big amount of scientific records, made by the D’ni explorers of old.
There is much information stored in here about the age. It seems, that the age, despite being a frozen wasteland, has a lot of local fauna and even flora, adapted to the extreme climate.
I will dig into this information and post some of the more interesting bits later.
Tom Woods, another of our engineers, has made some progress in Risoahl, the age with the giant bamboo forests. He found a D’ni sawing machine, made to cut big trees, and brought it to the age – with the help of a Toosha.
I didn´t mention it before, but we now have an agreement with the Yagi – they borrow us one or two Toosha from time to time, and we deliver them food and wood from other ages (of course, we don´t tell them, were the stuff came from). We do this with care, and only after every single bit of biological matter was tested for poisons, bacteria or other dangerous stuff. We don´t want to import diseases from other ages to Yagee Mohts, after all.
The Toosha have become invaluable to us. They are capable of pulling cartloads up to two and a half metrical tons (How much is that in pounds? Sorry, too lazy to convert this right now :P).
Their calm and lethargic behaviour makes them perfect beasts of burden, even an untrained person can easily direct them.
I watched them from the valley for more than an hour – it was fascinating, how they used every ledge to their advantage.
When they finally had come down, they showed me the KI-shots. They showed an extensive mountain region. To the west, great plains can be seen, far in the distance. All other directions only show mountains, all to the horizon.
It seems, the region of Afelahn we link to is quite isolated – it would be very difficult and time consuming to climb down to the western plains.
I wonder, if I should start naming landmarks – basically, I´m the discoverer of whole new worlds, continents, seas, lakes… so I guess, it´s my right to name them *smile*
By the way, our work on the cave are finished. The next logical step would be excavating deeper into the rock, cutting rooms out of it. But at the moment, everyone is busy, and I´ve not yet thought of a good explanation for the Yagi to borrow me one or two Toosha.
Our diving team made its first trip to Ahnoto. They kindly anchored a colorful buoy at the link in spot, so any visitor can find it easily.
Their first dive lasted for an hour, and they shot a lot of pictures of the lake bed and of some fish. They didn´t encounter the huge creature I had seen before – grateful for that, I don´t want anyone munched on in one of my ages…
They brought back some samples of soil and water, to be analyzed in Asheten mansion.
I didn´t go to Ahnoto since my last visit – I have no real concept for now how to proceed with it. One of the first steps will be to anchor a boat in there, but I came to the conclusion, that it has to be more stable than an inflatable one. If a storm would occur, an inflatable boat could easily be destroyed by the wind or the heavy waves, or at least blown away, even despite being anchored. But I have to think that one over for a while, I´m pretty unsure yet.
]]>The expedition has found three ages, that had been in his possession. (One of them beeing Risoahl.)
There is an interesting bit about Asheten: He once had been married to a woman named Naila, who had suddenly gotten ill, and, after some years, had succumbed to the illness. Rumors had gone wild in D’ni about her, some claimed, Asheten had been very jealous about her and accused him of having killed her. There seems to have been an investigation by the maintainers, but they couldn´t find any evidence to proof this accusations.
Asheten had not married again, and died like many other D’ni in the Fall. The expedition had found his remains in what happens to have been his study, and some other remains (maybe his servants) in various other rooms of the mansion.
He had been 298 hahrtee old on the day of the Fall.
Though he had been a writer, no ages written by him are known yet. But if one might speculate – as influential as he was, surely he was a skilled writer.
Coincidentally, Asheten seems to have befriended another fellow guild member with a familiar name – Anesh.
Since they lived both at the same time – the late D’ni era before the fall – and they both were influential guild masters of the same guild, this is only logical.
Another topic: We have succeeded to prepare the cave on Afelahn to the state, where we just could go on with excavating, if, only if we had a bigger excavator in the age.
I think, I should talk to Alex and Noelle. Maybe the Yagi can be convinced to “borrow” us one or two Toosha.
The problem is: We can´t tell them, were we´ll take the Toosha, of course. So, how do we explain this?
And another topic: I think, I´ll keep the watery age I initially was so disappointed with. Yeah, sure, I don´t know what to do with it yet, but it is stable, it is mine, and I wrote it 
So, with the help of the Linguists (Link: http://linguists.bahro.com), I made up a name for it: Ahnoto, which literally means “water place”. It´s not a very elegant translation, I know, but I like the sound of it, and it fits. So, this is the second age written by me
If any of you, who read my blog, have ideas, what could be done with an age consisting of a big lake with no shores in vicinity, tell me, I´d be interested to hear (or read) your opinions!
So we linked there last saturday.
I was surprised, how cool (fresh) the age was – I had expected a tropical climate. There were pine trees on the islands, a lot of long grass, and ferns of various sizes.
The village we visited lies on a rather big island, adjacent to a small bay. We were joyfully welcomed by nearly the whole village population. The Yagi are clearly humanoid, and quite similar to us. But there are some differences: They are smaller and broader built, and their heads are rounder. Their language is strange, they seem to speak very fast (I couldn´t make out any single word) and add many snarling and hissing sounds.
They are a very friendly and peaceful people. Noelle and Alex are already well known, but I was eyed curiously. Some of them touched my hands and my arms, as if they hadn´t seen something like them before (but their arms and hands are nearly identical to ours, so I guess it´s some kind of greeting gesture).
Noelle is quite fluent in their language by now, and she translated.
I got to observe the fishing techniques of the Yagi – I think, I´ve seen this techniques in TV on our own earth. They stand in a semi cycle in the shallow water and slowly direct the fish between them into the direction they want: A gap in the circle, where another group of Yagi waits patiently with big nets. When the fish have been driven into the nets, the Yagi enwrap them quickly. This technique works surprisingly well, and we were invited to a opulent fish meal that evening.
The most intriguing fact about the Yagi are their domestic animals: They have tamed a huge species of herbivore, which they call “Toosha”. They are bigger than a Rhino, but very calm and imperturbable.
They are really strong – Onsha, one of our hosts, showed us a Toosha pulling a big tree down – it didn´t seem to strain itself a lot.
I wonder, if the Yagi might borrow us one or two of these formidable beasts – they could easily pull a medium excavator!
We left the Yagi late at night. They first wouldn´t let us go, and always brought more food. Very hospitable.
That visit will stay in my mind for a while, what a great day!
And, of course, the Toosha.