Posts Tagged ‘Asheten’

Unknown Age 07

That´s how we´ve named the age I mentioned in my last post. We don´t know its name, only that it was written by a D’ni.
Because we found it near Asheten mansion, it could have been Asheten himself, who wrote it – but that´s only assumption yet.

We managed to clear the rubble in the first room, revealing a doorway to another, bigger room. Found remains of at least two D’ni in this. Tom Woods says, he thinks, the cave-in had happened just some years ago, so the two must have been killed earlier, maybe at the time of the Fall.
Found some kind of weapons near the bodies. Were they maintainers on some mission? City guards? Or criminials? We don´t know yet.

Soundings showed that there is at least one more room, even bigger. The door that leads there is huge and heavy, and jammed. Will have to bring some heavy tools to open it but first we´ll have to inspect the integrity of the surrounding rock.

No news of Quaxo as of yet… I hope, he is allright? For those who didn´t see the post: We have been planning an expedition to Nifehrehn to do research on lifeforms there. You can find the thread at the D’ni Zoologist Society forum, here.

Wild life

B.P. had promised me information about an age some while ago, but had forgotten to tell me more. So he approached me yesterday afternoon, and asked, if I wanted to see it.
We were joined by Alex and Peter Chang, our microbiologist, and our “scouts”, Clint Spano and Noemi Moots, two survival specialists who get to do the dangerous stuff. Both are skilled mountaineers, they have climbed mountains like the Nanga Parbat and the K2. They also are avid divers, and have taken tours through some of the most hostile environments on earth: the Sahara, the Karakorum, Antarctica and many more.
I can´t help feeling safer with them around.

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.

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!

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?