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 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.

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.

B.P. told me a little about the age we would visit. It was one of those that had belonged to Asheten before the fall, and one of the most intriguing. The name of the age is Yateesh, and it is some kind of game reserve. They think, that the D’ni went there for hunting trips (of course only selected people from the upper class.)

The place was rather rough and dangerous, and they told me more than once to stay with the group and not venturing around without telling them. The age is full of big carnivores and the terrain is not safe either.

So we linked in there, and a marvelous vista appeared before us. The link in spot is situated on a big plateau, which is mostly isolated from the grassy plains around it because of the steeps seperating them from each other.
The plateau is roughly fifteen miles in diameter. Dense forests and wide, grassy plains alternate on its surface, mixed by bizarre rock formations.
Almost immediately, we saw the first animals. They were a herd of big, elegant herbivores – similar to antelopes, but bigger, leaner, and sinously built. Their movements were almost royal, and they didn´t seem to be bothered by our presence.

Noemi and Clint peered into all directions, while Peter Chang and B.P. took some soil samples.

We stayed there for a while, until dusk fell. Clint urged us to leave, because “at night the big preds come out to play”. I think, it is wise to take such advice.

After we had returned to Asheten mansion, I asked B.P., if they intended to restore Yateesh. He said, they had discussed this, but came to the conclusion, that the age is too dangerous to let everyone in.
Maybe we will be able to provide some kind of secured structure or building in the future, but in the meantime the age will stay closed.
Regardless, I will definitely do some research there.