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age « Rabenschwinges Cavern blog

Posts Tagged ‘age’

Nifehrehn shivering

Okay, this age IS cold. I went there yesterday, with a small group of fellow expedition members. We explored the outpost first. It is partly underground, and rather small. There are sleeping rooms for four people, so I guess, it was crewed for more than just short visits. The expedition had found three journals before, which Noelle has translated partly. It seems, the writers were three survivors, who had fled here, when the Fall happened, two men and a woman. The dates given in the journals suggest, that they stayed here for at least two months – because of the limited space and ressources, the tensions between them rose, and it seems, that at least two of them got rather deranged after some weeks. What happened to them? Why did they leave with most of their equipment left behind, not to mention, their personal journals?
I fear, a great tragedy has happened here.

The outpost itself is mostly disfunctional currently. The gauges and scales seem to get no energy, and frost has entered most of the equipment, rendering it unusable.

At least some kind of emergency light is still working – maybe we just have to find the energy source and turn it on again.

We left the outpost through some kind of lock – not an airlock, but something similar, maybe to better keep the cold outside.

All of us weared our maintainer suits, because we were repeatedly warned – the temperatures are really low, beyond -50.0 °C (approx. -58.0 °F).
Even with the maintainer suits, we only stayed out there for 10 minutes – if the D’ni survivors really left the outpost, they wouldn´t have been able to survive there for long.

After that visit, I had to warm myself up, so I was rather happy to be invited to a small party given for one of the explorers because of his birthday, in Risoahl.
The age is very comfortable, as I mentioned before, at least, if you´re not doing any hard manual work there.
We had a campfire, sat around on some felled giant bamboo stems and roasted marshmallows (I had just learned how to do this, I´m not from the US, so this was new to me – I like this particular custom :P ).
Of course we told each other ghost stories (especially creepy, when some unknown creatures suddenly shriek inmidst the night, as we found out)

I got to know some of the guys from the expedition a little better, for example, our diving team. They are cave divers from New Zealand, and asked, if I would mind them dive in my new age, Ahnoto. I told them to go ahead, but of course told them of the huge shadow I saw on my last visit. They weren´t scared at all, said, they had dived with sharks, whales and giant squids, and they could handle any creature. Well, it´s their necks they risk – maybe I should let them sign a waiver of liability.
Just kidding … or am I?

Ahnoto preparations

I talked to B.P. and Kennett about Ahnoto. They agree with Pavitra (thanks again for the advice), that some kind of boat would be the first step, and after that a floating platform should be installed. Kennett suggested to position a buoy at the link in point, so that if one was carried away by a current, the linking point would be recognizable. He said, he could provide some.

I asked for a sounder, but he was reluctant to give me one – I think, he feared I could loose it in the lake, and he only has four of them.

So I decided to do it the earthling-way, and to fathom the deep with a plumb line.
I linked in, with a plumb line of 40 feet length. It wasn´t easy to use it, though, because of the waves – it was quite windy, and I swallowed a lot of water trying to stay on the surface. But finally I managed to determine the depth of the lake: at this spot, it was approx. 30 feet deep.

As I prepared to link out, I saw a huge, dark silhouette beneath me, slowly moving. I freezed and tried not to move (which isn´t easy, when swimming). The thing – whatever it was – disappeared into the dark depths and didn´t come back. I waited for some seconds to be sure it was gone, and then linked out. I have no idea what it was, but it surely scared me silly. I´m not sure, I want to return to Ahnoto with such big creatures swimming around in there…

Finally, we had another meeting (it had been postponed several times, because everyone was really busy).
B.P. told us about the progress they made in one of the other ages they had found, Nifehrehn. It is a very cold, polar age with a small D’ni outpost inmidst an arctic desert.
I´m not very fond of cold places, but what they told me about the D’ni outpost was very interesting. It seems, the D’ni researched these place like our scientists do in Antarctica. And – after the Fall, a small group of survivors had fled to Nifehrehn! The expedition found some records made by them, but no remains – maybe they made it and went on to another age? Or they died out there in the ice wastes, searching for food and water…
I definitely will visit this place!

Ashetens fate

Today B.P. told us a little about Asheten and his life. He had been a wealthy and influental guild master of the guild of writers.
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 :P
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!

Writing failures, Part II

Wasted another kor’nea. Remember the one I was confident to finish last week? Well, I didn´t.

Well… that´s not entirely true. I DID finish the age – but it seems, I overdid it a little with moisture… when I linked into that age – and DON´T you dare to laugh! – I materialized some 10 feet above a sheet of water. It felt like standing still in the air for a heartbeat (of course I didn´t, but it seemed so), then gravity had me, and I fell. It was very unpleasant, I got wet all over (fortunately the Relto book seems to be waterprove). For a moment, I thought I would sink to the bottom, I had my maintainer suit on – but it seems, they were built to handle such situations.

Now I swam there, looking around – no landmass is visible from the link in spot, as far as I can tell. And so, though the age is stable as far as I can tell, I consider this a failure. What would one do with an age, were there only is water?
It seems to be fresh water, if the displayed informations were correct.
I stayed a little, swimming around a bit, but then I thought about what might swim beneath me, down there, in the dark depths of that lake or whatever it is … suddenly I imagined big fish with long teeth, or big, maritime reptiles like in our earths past – needless to say I linked out very quickly.
There I stood on Relto, soaking wet and really disappointed.

At first, I wanted to burn the book. But then… it IS stable, after all. Maybe it is of any use. I will keep it for now, and think it over.

I visited Afelahn to distract me a little. Kennett has brought me another D’ni excavation-machine – don´t know, what it is called – which can be used to level a rocky floor. I worked for some hours in the cave we had discovered before, and managed to get rid of the most annoying bumps.
By the way: the “clams” I had noticed, are not clams, but tiny crustaceans with clam-like shells. They dig through the soil, like worms on earth. They are approx. 1 to 3 mm long (can´t recall, what this is in inches, sorry)
And I saw another, much bigger creature, at least 3 feet long – it seemed like a really big (and ugly) centipede, but with long, spiny legs and a hard shell, like a lobster. It moved rather quickly, when it saw me, and hid beyond a huge boulder. I didn´t want to follow it – might be poisonous, after all.

Why do I always get ugly, dangerous creatures in the ages I visit? Why not a Squee or something like that?

Yagi visit

As I had mentioned before, Alex and Noelle had invited me to join them visiting the Yagi, our first “ahrotantee” people (if you don´t count the Bahro).
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.

Sounding

Kennett brought a D’ni sounding device with him last time he visited me in Afelahn. He determined, that there was a rather large cavern behind one of the rock walls of the valley. The wall was rather thin, and the surrounding parts of it stable enough to try and bore a hole into it.

When the dust had settled, we looked through the hole in what appeared to be a cavern, that had been enclosed by rocks always until that time. It is stable, so we can bring some bigger equipment into it and start drilling or excavating from there on. There still is the problem with the bigger machines, though…
I talked to Kennett, and he said, he wouldn´t take those machines apart. He isn´t even sure, if they CAN be dismantled, because some parts of it look like they are fused together – there are no screws, bolts or stuff like that visible. They are much to big to carry them with us… the only other option would be some kind of beast of burden. I don´t think, we´ll be able to make an elephant walk down to D`ni… that would the only beast of burden on earth I could imagine that would be strong enough to pull one of the bigger excavators.

While having a break from all the work in Afelahn, I began to write another age. This time I want an age with a little more humidity and warmth – Afelahn is quite cool, dry and windy, and I want a more comfortable place, maybe even something like a garden age.
I started the second age some days ago, and I´m confident to finish it this week already… it will be nothing to complicated. (Well, sweet and simple did work for Anesh, so why not for me?)

Progress

I´ll finish my first age this weekend, it´s nearly done. I feel so excited!
What will it look like? Will it be flawed? Will it be suitable for a home base?
It´s hard for me to keep concentrated on writing with all that thoughts running through my head…

Yesterday I had a chat with B.P. He told me they had found some documentation on the crystal age we had escaped narrowly… he said, it was a garden age!
It´s name was Eder Kamonee. Can´t believe the maintainers allowed such a dangerous place to be a garden age… what were they thinking? Though, I like the name, sounds nice.
B.P. said he thinks, there must have been some kind of shelter in the age once… otherwise the D´ni wouldn´t have been able to visit the “garden age” safely.
Maybe there is another linking book to this shelter?
At the moment, it will keep closed for any visitors, even of the expedition itself. They clearly won´t risk anyones life.

Work in Risoahl has stopped for now – felling the bamboo is to time consuming right now. B.P. said, it will be restored later. They´d rather do some work on another age they found last year… B.P. said, I would be told more about it at the next meeting.

My wounds from that visit to Eder Kamonee are slowly healing, but they still hurt.
On the positive side: We heard news from Claire, the intern that got hurt most in the incident. She is alright, the cut will heal without any long-term sequela.
Alex collected some money to buy her flowers and “get well soon” cards. And then, she told me, she and Noelle would make a visit in Yagee Mohts next week, and invited me again to join them. Great!

Crystalline menace

After a few days of relaxing, B.P. assigned me to another task, this time to an expedition into a new age they found in J’taeri last weekend. They don´t know its name yet, unfortunately, but Alex is leading a group right now whos objective is to find additional documentary on the age.

We linked in this morning. It was an astounding view, the whole age is covered in crystals of various sizes, from small, thumbnail size, to giants of 20 meters.
Our crew started to survey the age. One of the first things we noticed was, that the crystals vibrated when we made noises. The louder the noise, the more vibrations. Kennett told us to stay as silent as possible, fearing that the vibrations could cause a “crystal slide”. We moved slowly and didn´t talk much. It was a strange, eerie atmosphere – no other noise could be heard, and we didn´t see any signs of life.
The crystals had a blueish hue mostly, though some of the smaller ones were more green.
Kennett asked me to take some small samples (but carefully) and put them into a knapsack he had brought with him.

I was concentrated on my work, so I didn´t see, what happened next – but the others told me later: Someone must have stumbled and fell against one of the bigger, fragile crystals, which gave way and fell against another – and so on. A terrible, loud noise filled the air, as more and more crystals – well, I think you can say, they imploded, and sent their sharp shards into all directions. Everyone of us was cut by those shards, we were bleeding, I couldn´t see much because blood ran into my eyes. Someone took my hand and put it on a linking book they had brought into the age.

Somehow we all made it out of the age, but all of us are hurt in some way. Fortunately, most wounds are only skin deep and light, but Claire, one of our interns, got a gaping wound on her left shoulder, and was taken to hospital.
Our M.D. and his two nurses tended to us others. Now I´m sitting in my room, my cuts are slowly healing – B.P. said, we won´t go back there, until we find a way to better shield ourselves. Maybe one of the older maintainer suits would provide enough shelter?

Until then, the age is deemed “unsafe” and “volatile”.
I thought I had had enough of tumbling things, but it seems like this is a recurring theme in my career as an explorer…

Something more pleasant: My first age is making progress. I think, when I can upkeep my pace, it will be finished at the end of the week. Finished writing, of course. I really hope, that the age will be sufficient to build me a “home base” of some kind… well, we know, that writing isn´t a exact thing. Who knows, what the age will be like.

Asheten mansion

Continuing my report about what happened yesterday:

After I had made my preparations, I linked back to the Kurat neighborhood and met with Dr. Forberg. He had an interesting, portable D´ni-device with him: some kind of KI-encoder/decoder. He told me to put my hand with my KI into the device, programmed it, and it loaded a new Nexus-link into my KI (better said: the clearance for a new area.)
We then moved on to the Nexus, and from there to the expedition´s headquarters, a mansion at a lower part of city proper, which lies directly at the lakeshore.

By the way: In the meantime I´ve asked Dr. Forberg about the name “Kurat” meaning derogative things in some languages, and he answered, this was purely coincidental, as it was a D´ni name. So, all Estonians who read this, this name is not meant as an offense to you :)

It was quite impressive. The mansion was in exceptional good condition, and Dr. Forberg told me later, that they had been cleaning up and restoring it for nearly 2 years now. It once had belonged to a D´ni guildmaster namend Asheten, who had been a rich and influential individual.
The three ages that had been in Ashetens possession now are in the hands of the expedition, Risoahl being one of them.

I was introduced to some members of the expedition, was given a tour through the mansion – the architecture of that place is astounding – and then we sat down in the dining room with four other people to discuss things out.
A redhaired young woman, wo intruced herself as Alex, a certain Dr. Stejskal, two guys whos names I can´t remember, and another, curly haired, bulky man, who nearly squashed my hand when shaking it. We had a long, interesting conversation about the goals of the expedition and their achievements of the past two years, and of my possible role.
I found out, that the main purpose of Dr. Forbergs expedition was research, not restoration, though they of course had to do some cleaning up to be able to do their work.
After talking a lot, Dr. Forberg asked me, what I thought about the offer. I said, I had to think it over – but if I would work with them, then not as a part of the expedition, but as an outsider – but with full access to their ressources and manpower.
Dr. Forberg smiled, and after giving me a thoughtfull look, agreed.
In return, he said, the expedition would like to have the right to examine and research each of the ages, I would write. I stated, that I would allow that, but only on my terms. If anyone did something with/ in my ages, I didn´t like, I would withdraw my allowance at once.
We talked at least two hours more, and then said goodbye to each other.

After the meeting, a lot of thoughts went through my head, and I decided to make another visit in Tufolehn. It is a calm, peaceful place, and really good if you need some time for yourself.

I had brought a backpack with me, with my kor´nea I had begun to write in. When I was slowly walking along the beach of my small island, I watched the greenish sea, and suddenly saw something, aproximately twenty meters away from the shore, in the sea. It drift closer to the beach, and I recognized it being some sort of big jellyfish, two meters in diameter, with long, thin tentacles. It was shining in dark blue and bright red – it seems, that many of the creatures in Tufolehn are quite colorful.
It was washed to the beach finally, by the surf. I stayed away from it – didn´t know, if the nettles were dangerous – and admired it´s beautiful colors.
I think, I will have to name the creatures I discover – I don´t have a good name for this one, maybe one of my blog readers can help me out with that?

Opportunities

Today I was sitting in my Relto, shivering (I got me a cold, it´s really not the best place to work…) and writing into my first kor´nea. My gahrohevtee become better, but my progress is slow.

Anyway, so I was sitting there, writing, when I suddenly got a KI-mail. It was from a guy who called himself Dr. Forberg. He wrote, he was the leader of an independent expedition, and had heard of my projects from a fellow explorer. He asked for a meeting to discuss my possible involvement with said expedition. He mentioned their capacious funds and the possibilities resulting from those.

I was suspicious at first, but my curiosity made me writing back almost instantly. I agreed to meet him, and asked where and when. He answered quickly, and we agreed to meet in Ae´Gura, in front of the guild hall.

When I arrived there, a bunch of people were standing around and talking, as usual – and one guy stood a little backwards, looking around, as if he waited for someone. I approached him, and it was said Dr. Forberg. We talked a little, and then he asked me to come to a more secluded place so we could talk in privacy. He lead me through the Nexus into a hood named Kurat (which had a very interesting design, by the way – never saw anything like that in other neighbourhoods). There we used a linking book, and stood in an age Dr. Forberg called Risoahl. It was warm and damp, and a lot of birds sang. We stood inmidst a forest of giant bamboo – up to six feet in diameter, and dozens of meters high.

We talked for nearly two hours. Dr. Forberg told me a lot about their expedition, that it was privately financed by an explorer who wanted to stay anonymous and that there were more than 40 people involved, most of them scientists of different fields.

The more I heard about this group, the more I got interested – they would provide solutions to a lot of my concerns about not being able to restore or at least secure my ages and areas – they had the means which I hadn´t.
The next thing that came into my mind was – why would they need me?
Dr. Forberg seemed to know what I was thinking and told me, that they had no one able to write, at least until now. They did not find enough information on age writing, and hoped to learn it from someone, who knew it already. I told him, I was only beginning, but he seemed to be satisfied with that. If I would like to come with him, he would introduce me to the rest of the staff. I agreed, just said I had to prepare some things.
We agreed to meet some hours later in said ´hood, and I linked to my Relto.