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May « 2011 « Rabenschwinges Cavern blog

Archive for May, 2011

Something stupid

Today I did something completely stupid. I´d found a linking book, lying in a small building near Asheten mansion, covered in debris and dust. And what would I do? Link into the unknown place without a maintainer suit on, without any preparations or security measures. Why did I do this? Well, I didn´t think about my actions. Children, don´t do this at home!
Fortunately, the place I linked to didn´t kill me. I arrived in a small room. There were a lot of rocks on one side of the area, piled up. I suspect, there could be a doorway beneath the rocks, because there is none on any other side of the room. Air was bad, but breathable – there seems to be some kind of ventilation shaft, although no machines were hearable.

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!

Dasharen desert plant

While determining the details of Afelahn power supply, I brought some plant samples to the age. One of the most interesting ones is a desert plant growing on Dasharens surface. I planted some into my big plant patch in Lab II, and they seem to be fine.

As you can see on the KI-shot, it has no leafs, so our guess is it doesn´t need any photosynthesis to grow. I called it a “plant”, but it could be a fungus, too, or something else entirely. Future examination will be necessary.

What we know is, that it stores a lot of water (like many desert organisms do) in its bulbous stem (or fruiting body).
If anyone would like to do some research on this plant/fungus/thingymabob, you´re welcome!

Stability issues resolved

After thoroughly examining the stability of Lab II, Tom Woods said that he now thinks, it is safe. It seems, that there only was a small, unstable cavity which we accidently hit while enlarging the room.
Lab II is deemed safe for working on it again, and we´ve already done a lot. One of the greatest additions to the room is a big patch for plants to seed, much bigger than my plant experiment-table in Lab I. I plan to plant trees, bushes and other bigger plants here to observe and research them.

Additionaly, now every room is properly lighted.
I added two new lamp designs to the garage, done all by myself. They are rather big and standing instead of hanging from the roof – I like to think of them not only as lighting source, but also some kind of decorative art, some kind of sculptures.
I redid the big lamp in Lab I, too. It was too heavy and I had feared it would endanger the stability of the roof there. Now, after making it lighter, I think, it will work great.
We plan to excavate more of the planned rooms over the next days – maybe starting with the “power room” would be a good idea.
Tom Woods, Shane Kennett and I discussed it a lot, and we still think, a power marble is the best choice for getting energy on in Afelahn.
We´ll have to add some extra security measures, though, to prevent some worst case scenarios – mainly, the power marble exploding, letting the whole complex collapse on itself (and everyone in it.).
One of the measures will be the already mentioned altered height of the room (maybe even with an opening to the outside of the age, so that an explosion could be led outwards instead of inwards.) Another thing we plan is to add a massive, blast resistant door.
Any other suggestions are welcome, as always!

Because of all the work, I had to postpone my studies of the Alitnee eggs, but I definitely will continue the project.

Energy sources

Tom Woods and I are working on powering Afelahn properly. At the moment, the only energy sources are the few firemarbles for the light, and a small generator for electricity. But it won´t be long, that I will need much more energy for different purposes.
So we sat together the other day, and discussed, what to do. The most promising variant of power source would be a D’ni power marble.
These are, according to DPWR, “a special type of firemarble which explode when struck, releasing all of their energy at once, rather than glowing softly like normal firemarbles do. They were invented by the D’ni as a way to power heavy machinery”.
Other sources, like geothermal, water or wind energy aren´t feasible in the age or would be difficult to install.
So, I will likely have to cut out a “generator room” for a D’ni power device.
The only problem with power marbles is, that they are rather dangerous. They store so much energy, that they can easily explode… So we´ll have to take serious precautions to prevent my working space from annihilation. Maybe some heavy door for the generator room? And I had the idea of making the generator room higher than normal, so that possible kinetic energy from an explosion would have more room to disperse.
Will have to sort that out.

Another topic:
I started to gather eggs from Alitnee. Learned to empty and clean them BEFORE bringing them to Afelahn (the foul stench of the first batch still is smellable – Yuck!)

They come in various sizes, from a centimeter to double the size of a chickens egg. And the colors are rather beautiful. I plan to install some kind of display case to show the prettiest ones.

A promise fulfilled

Now, behold: The first KI-shot of Afelahn ever officially posted.
This is what you´ll see, when you link in. (well, not exactly, the link in point is a little bit more to the right side.)

A broken promise

I´m sorry, I didn´t find time last weekend to provide the KI-shots I promised. I´ll post them as soon as I can!

Work on Afelahn has been stopped for the moment, until we can sort out the stability issues with Lab II. The big lamp in Lab I worries me a little, too… it is very heavy, and I don´t know, if the ceiling is stable enough to support it. I´ll ask Shane Kennett to do a test on that, too.

Did some research on the Tufolehn sea urchins. They have no spines like our earths sea urchins, but rather microscopical nettles. I suspect, they use the nettles to catch their food and pull it into small, microscopical openings. To call those “mouths” would be greatly exaggerating.

The sea snail, on the other hand, seems to nourish from a) the nettles, or b) the prey the nettles catches, before these can pull it into the sea urchin. Although the nettles are slightly poisonous (and hurt, as I found out), the sea snail seems not to be bothered.
On the other hand, the snails don´t harm the sea urchin, they eat very slowly and not much.
On Tufolehn, I watched some bigger, predatory sea snails trying to eat one of the small, orange ones which I´m researching. When the big snail approached a smaller one, sitting next to a sea urchin, it suddenly buckled, as if feeling pain, and hurried away (well, if you can call 30 cm per minute to “hurry”.)

I spent some time on Alitnee, as well. Before our teams arrived, the birds there had nests not only on the rocks, but also on the metallic platforms the D’ni built to watch them. After we came there, most of these close nests have been abandoned, and the eggs sadly decayed. I plan to gather some of the eggs, empty them from their ruined content, and study their different sizes and colors.

Stability issues

While I was adding furniture and lamps to the existing rooms in Afelahn, Tom Woods and his team worked on Lab II, the big room adjacent to the “garage”. When they caved out more space to make the room higher, parts of the roof suddenly collapsed. No one was hurt, fortunately, but we decided to close access to the room for the moment until we can secure it more properly.
It raises questions about the whole place – how safe is it? I´ve read reports of other explorers, who have repeatedly lost whole complexes because of geological instabilities… don´t want that to happen in Afelahn! We´ve spent so much work… it would be a shame to loose it.

Maybe it would be a bit of a distraction to do some work on other ages…

Oh, and by the way: I started researching two of the strange species of Tufolehn: the already mentioned “sea urchin”, and one of the various sea snail-species. I brought a sea snail and two living sea urchins, and also some dead ones as well.

I guess, it´s about time to post some KI-shots here on the blog. I plan to do that this weekend.

Er’Nirah

As reported, we´ve visited two caterer ages two weeks ago. The one I want to write about this time is Er’Nirah. The whole place is covered by a thick, soft layer of a species of lichen, with a dark red hue, that gives the age a strange, but somewhat appealing color. Nearly every inch of the ground is covered, the few places where it isn´t, I could see barren rock. There seem to be various other lichen, fungi and animals who depend strongly on the red lichen, either by nourishing from it, or seeking shelter in it, or just growing on it.

B.P. gave me some information about the age. As you´ll already have guessed by the name “Er’Nirah”, it was an age of the guild of caterers. And if we aren´t mistaken, the D’ni harvested the red lichen for food – there are some species of lichen here on earth which are edible (but not very tasteful, as far as I´ve read). I´m really curious how it tastes, but first we´ll have to thoroughfully analyze it.

In Afelahn, I did a lot of work the last days. Although the place isn´t quite ready yet, I brought some specimen, so I can start doing my first projects. I`d like to post some of them at the Zoologist-Forum (D’ni Zoological society), so we can do some research on lifeforms together.

And then, I managed (with some help) to design my first lamps for Afelahn (until now, it was lit by makeshift lights). Although I don´t plan the age to be highly aesthetic, they clearly help it in a visual way.

Updated age list

Some updates to the age list: added adapted restoration phases and some clarification, and added particular phases to the ages and areas.
Why does WordPress ignore my “br”-tags if I try to do more than one empty line?