Inevitability

Sigh. I hate that I'm going to have to do this, but I don't really have a choice at this point.

I'm going to have to leave for a while.

I really don't want to. I've gotten quite comfortable in my tavern house here. I just don't have the funds to continue buying supplies, and I've been unable to make myself completely self-sufficient down here, despite my best efforts so far. Unfortunately, ghosts and lake water make for a pretty lousy diet. I've got an Age that makes lake pellets and an Age with a fruit orchard at this point, but neither is very good for feeding me on a regular and long-term basis.

I'm going to have to take a job in Carlsbad doing something so that I can start saving up for a return at some point in the future. I may not be able to come back for a couple of years, realistically, and I need to leave soon so that I have enough of a buffer in my supplies and funds to last for a while in case I can't get a job immediately.

I hate that I have to leave. But as much as I'll miss D'ni while I'm gone, I know I'll be back. I'm not sure when, but I will be back eventually. Until then, good night and good luck. To those of you who may find a way back into D'ni on your own, be careful down there.

Exotic Gardening, Day Only

Yeah, this Age really isn't big enough to merit another full day of exploration at this point. I'm really only still here because it's such a nice, relaxing space, though 200 years of neglect has made it grow a bit wild. Nothing is even remotely interested in being contained by the boxes, fences, flower beds, and formerly-sculpted topiaries. I imagine it used to resemble a bizarre formal English garden back in the day, but right now it's closer in appearance to some sort of crazy alien jungle. I think it's clear that this was a private garden Age for a wealthy member of D'ni society who either had a green thumb themselves, or paid a number of others who did to enable him to enjoy the fruits of their labor. It's got a very different feeling from the more unbridled and open "garden Ages" of Eder Kemo, Gira, Delin, or Tsogahl, all of which feel more like parks than gardens.

The whole Age – which my KI tells me is Eder Deeahno – seems to consist of an island with some pretty clear signs of heavy D'ni-made efforts to sculpt its final appearance away from a purely natural design. There are terraced rows of plants in one area, and a long-overgrown waterway wide enough for a small one- or two-person gondola cuts its way through the landscape at hard angles, now softened by years of growth and decay. The gondola itself is a small pile of rotten timber at this point. There's a hedge maze (for lack of a better word for it) that has almost completely choked itself shut. The waterway leads into it, and from the faint glimpses I've gotten through the slightly thinner hedge overgrowth around the entry point, there seems to be a fountain of some kind inside, with small stone bridges criss-crossing the waterway which are presumably retractible in some manner.

Other features include a small orchard of citrus-like fruit trees – which is good news and means I'll have some fresh, seasonal fruity additions to my collection of MREs, beef jerky, and canned goods. Elsewhere a waterfall that runs down the steep side of the island and into a series of stone waterways that at one time seem to have featured mechanisms for making sound and moving small art sculptures around, but the mechanisms have been totally frozen by rust. A wide stone walkway arcs out at a downward slope to sweep through the air around this installation, providing what I imagine are some really nice views. I opted not to tempt fate by walking out onto it without some closer structural inspection. The walkway then carves into the terrain, providing a colonnaded walk around the backside of the waterfall. This continuing downward spiral finally terminates in a small balcony at the base of the artwork that is built into the falls.

I can tell there used to be a Linking Book in a gazebo not too far from the link-in point, but it's mostly been decayed down to the binding at this point. Luckily, in addition to the Linking Book I brought with me, the DRC saw fit to put a Nexus Book on a second, covered pedestal to shelter it from the elements.

The weather here is pleasantly mild, and the sky has been relatively clear of clouds so far. The sun set a couple of hours ago, and the fireflies have come out to play since then. For as overgrown and wild as it is, it's still a nice place. I can see myself coming back and probably trying to re-tend the various gardens as a side project. Tending plants is a lot easier than shoring up buildings when you're all by yourself. I do think it would make a nice retreat, and I can see putting links to it in a public space once it's been cleaned up a bit for folks to visit and relax.

I don't think I'll be spending the night here though. It's too open to the elements, and I don't have my tent with me because the sand in Er'tsuda beat the crap out of its weatherproofing.

Exotic Gardening Prologue

Today I take off on my trip to explore the garden Age I found in the DRC tent all those months ago. I don't expect this expedition to last more than a day or two. I'll be posting back-dated daily reports once I get back to the City. Hopefully nothing there will kill me, since I still haven't found a link to Gahreesen that I can use to "borrow" a Maintainer's suit for this purpose.

Updates later!

Resurfacing

Mid-day update today.

It turns out that the guy who's been working in the DRC office is in fact a native Carlsbad resident, so I don't really have to worry about him vanishing on me in the future. I think he's gone on to other employment at this point though, because the DRC surely don't have the money to keep paying him. In any case, I'm glad he's willing to help drive me back and forth for a supply run. I've got enough funds for another couple of months, but I'm seriously approaching the point where I may have to take up a job in town to cover expenses. I really don't want to have to do that, because it'll slow my plans down considerably, but life being what it is, I probably don't have a choice.

I'll re-evaluate in the new year; my supplies should last me until then.

Anyway, I'm writing this while I wait at the edge of Zandi's property for my ride to get here. I still haven't made an excursion into the garden Age; I've spent most of my time since my last update trying to figure out what I need and how much it'll cost. I ultimately decided to save the trip until I get back to D'ni tomorrow so it's not rushed.

Colonizing

Oy, quick update before I collapse.

It's been a hectic three days since I got back from my hike in Er'tsuda. The trip exhausted a large portion of my supplies without really getting me much of anything in return, so I've been re-rationing the remaining gear until I can make a return trip to the Surface and do some more shopping in Carlsbad. Should be able to make that happen in a few days; coordinating anything with the last straggling employees of a virtually non-existent organization is really difficult (in less bizarre terms, I have to get a hold of a DRC lackey who can come pick me up at the Cleft). Aside from that, I've been pouring over both the DRC's notes and my own looking for information about the DRC-stamped garden Age I found a while back at the research tent. Other concerns and my then-plentiful supplies made the Age a low priority on my list, but now it's moved up the ranks a bit, as my supply of cash has been getting low, and coordinating these Surface trips gets more and more difficult each time they're necessary. I think this will be the last for a while, and will refresh my stores of non-perishables like canned goods and jerky, which I can supplement with fresh food from the garden Age if all goes well.

I still need to locate another spare Nexus Book to take with me, in case the DRC's own way back was again lost in the intervening years since their last expedition. I've been contemplating trying to find a Gahreesen Book as well, so I can steal a Maintainer's Suit for these initial trips just to make sure nothing nasty happens to me. Bacteria, viruses, chemicals, and even plants and animals can all be potentially deadly out in the Ages. Having an extra layer of protection is always a good idea, I think. The trick is just getting a hold of one. I guess I'll burn that bridge while I'm crossing it, as Dr. Watson was fond of saying.

In other news, the tavern is looking more and more like home now. I've probably reorganized the main dining area five times since I first moved in and got it all straightened up, trying to keep my growing piles of paperwork – as well as the copious volumes of material I've found from the DRC – properly categorized and uncluttered. I think I've finally hit upon a layout that does so without breaking up the flow of the room itself, so it's still easy to get around. In the past couple of days I've also been tinkering with one of the wall-mounted holographic projectors to see if I can get it working again. Nothing so far but a few unpleasant shocks from the circuitry, unfortunately. Did I mention that I'm better at orienteering than engineering? I don't think "Restoration Engineer" was ever really a very good summary of my talents, heh. I'm usually pretty good with electronics, though, but working without schematics or even a frame of reference, it's really rough going.

Okay, it's late and I'm exhausted. Hopefully I'll have more exploration-oriented updates in the next few days.

Er'tsuda Expedition, Day 14

Wow, what a hike.

The past eight days have been long and largely dull, though I did cover a lot of ground and get a much better handle on how the whole harvesting operation must have worked back in D'ni's heyday.

About 20 minutes from the factory, the canyon split into four sub-canyons, with a harvester track leading into each. Determined to get an idea of what to expect if my harvester ever starts working again, I continued to follow its track into the unknown. Beside me, the irrigation canal forged an angular path along the base of the canyon.

Eventually, the walls of the canyon widened a bit, and I entered what can only be described as a forest. Plants not dissimilar to those in Er'cana towered above me, thick as a pine tree forest back on Earth and in some cases just as tall. The irrigation canal apparently still functioned well enough to provide a regular flow of water to these plants, and they thrived after the Fall. Some seem to have infiltrated the canal itself, so some repair work will no doubt be necessary once this initial overgrowth is dealt with. Assuming the harvester blades are capable of cutting through growth this substantial, it might be a good idea to clearcut some of this for future use and replant it with seeds or spores (or whatever) from these now-ancient specimens.

Interestingly, the walls of the canyon themselves gave me a pretty solid idea of just how overgrown the plantlife here had gotten. In some of the naturally narrower parts of the canyon, the walls had been widened at the height where the harvester blades once passed, creating an odd and distinctive shape that served as a handy benchmark for roughly how tall the plants needed to be to be harvested efficiently. This benchmark was easily forty feet over my head, and in some cases the plants stretched thirty feet above that. Hardly what I would call optimal harvesting conditions now.

It would also seem that at least some of these plants had seen the last days of the D'ni empire, as the growth above the harvest line was considerably thinner than that below it, indicating that the plants can be cropped off at the top and still continue to grow. To what extent this may still be true in this now-forested mess is unclear. I'll have to remember to get a hold of a botanist at some point now as well to try and get some answers.

After walking for eight days through dense, inhospitable forestry to find little of ultimate interest besides the fact that the harvester tracks are at least fundamentally intact for several miles despite the overgrowth of the plants, I'm ready to get back to the cavern and do some more exploring in the city. Funny how fast my interests can change, but I've had enough of this dry and dusty place for now. Hopefully I can come back in the future with more assistance and get this place up and running again. It'll take more than what I have at my disposal right now to make that happen though, so for now, it's back to D'ni.

Er'tsuda Expedition, Day 6

Early update today. Still no success getting the harvester going. I think that it, along with most of the rest of the machinery in this Age, will need to wait until I can get a few more folks "down here" to assist me, since mechanical engineering is not my forte; I'm more into orienteering. On the bright side, I have plenty of documents and manuals to show to whatever linguists and mechanics I eventually manage to con into taking over for the DRC...

Rather than spin my wheels – no pun intended – any longer I've decided to pack up and hike along the track for this harvester to see if I can get a better lay of the land outside of the factory. I spent most of the morning breaking down camp and assessing my supplies. I figure I can be gone for 10 days at the most if I take it easy and ration my food and water well. The weather has so far been fairly favorable, so hydration shouldn't be a huge problem, even in a desert-ish environment like this one.

Assuming the rest of this Age is anything like Er'cana, I have a reasonable idea of what to expect along my hike, but I'm still likely to be surprised along the way. Will probably not have an update until I get back from the hike, though since these entries are all being back-dated anyway, it won't really matter in the long run.

Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 5

I've got a rudimentary shelter built in the shanty town for the Nexus Book. While I was salvaging materials from some of the collapsed shacks, I came across a few bleached skeletons. I wouldn't be surprised if Veovis and A'Gaeris linked a plague-ridden body into this Age, landing it smack in the middle of town. Nobody who lived here would have stood a chance, and anyone who fled back to D'ni would have been equally doomed. I found a place off to one corner of the village where the ground was soft enough to dig, and gave them as proper a burial as I could manage before returning to the task at hand. Within a couple of hours, I had a lean-to and a basic pedestal put together to shelter the Book from the wind and dust blowing around.

I returned to the factory afterwards and continued to rifle through stacks of moldy or disintegrating papers to see if I could find anything that might help me get the harvester back online, or even just have it start. I think the thing runs on powermarbles, much like the ones Gehn used on Riven to power his firemarble domes, but with a lower yield and a more controlled output. There are still a few boxes in the maintenance room I uncovered with cautionary labels on them that look like they might be what I'm after, so now all I need is a diagram of what the engine is supposed to look like so I can make sure it matches. Little success on that score, though there are a couple of hard-bound books with voluminous amounts of D'ni text in them. God help me if that's the only user manual the thing came with...

If I can't get anything accomplished with this thing within a couple of hours tomorrow, I'm going to leave it for later when I have more skilled hands at my disposal, and go on a hike to see what lies along one of the irrigation canals. I'll probably follow the one that runs beneath the track my broken harvester is sitting on, so that if it ever does start working again, I'll have some idea of what to expect when I take it for a spin.

Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 4

I'm honestly starting to get a little frustrated by how inoperative a lot of this equipment is. I don't know if any of the factory machinery still works, and it's going to take a long time with a haz-mat suit to clean out the crap that's grown in the harvester hoppers. On top of that, there's the one inoperable harvester in the factory, and the seven other harvesters that are lost out in the fields somewhere, which could very well be totally unsalvageable.

On a bright note, I did finally find the Linking Book back to D'ni. Unsurprisingly, it goes somewhere that the DRC probably haven't investigated, as there is no stamp on the Book. I suspect their original expedition to this Age used a Nexus Book to get back to the known areas of D'ni, and it's been blown away or buried or something else. It looks like I'm going to need to build a shelter of some kind up in the shanty town and make sure that the Nexus Book I brought with me is well protected so that I don't need to worry about losing it in the future.

No further progress on finding spare parts or replacement lube for the harvester engine. I'm not a mechanic, unfortunately, so I really have no idea what's going on in there. It seems relatively straightforward, as most D'ni machinery is (their electronics are a different story, but machines are all pretty basic), but lacking even so much as a blueprint, I'm not sure where to begin with tinkering. Let it be known that the D'ni built everything to last, but they did so with the assumption that they'd be there to maintain it. Grr...

Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 3

A bit of an early update today...

I've found a way out onto the canyon floor from the factory. There is a small service passage at the outermost end of the harvester receiving area. This leads to a narrow flight of stairs, some ladders, and a claustrophobically thin hallway before finally ending in a door. The door took me outside, where I followed a very weather-worn path down to ground level. The enormous arc of the pellet factory swept up and away from me across the breadth of the canyon, backlit by the light of the morning sun; a sight so incredible I nearly fell over trying to take it all in.

I planted a stick in the ground, marked the position of its shadow, and set up some equipment to record the passage of time here. I have a time-lapse camera and a stopwatch attached to a tripod and trained on the stick. Some time tomorrow, I'll come back and check on the stick to see how long it took the planet to make a full revolution. The science of exploring these worlds is arguably my favorite part... I could take or leave the heavy manual labor of fixing everything, I just want to look at stuff and see how it works.

I also set up a more permanent camp down here near the bottom of the canyon. Like Er'cana, it's a wide basin rather than a more precipitous chasm like most of the Grand Canyon, so my concerns about a storm potentially flooding my base of operations require less drastic precautions... it takes a lot more water to fill up a broad, flat canyon than it does to fill up a narrow one. I'm set up about 15 feet from the bottom right now, on one of the widest parts of the access path.

Cursory efforts to get the docked harvester up and running have proven unsuccessful. I'm not exactly surprised, though. As I said yesterday, the thing's been sitting for at least 200 years now. Any lubricant and fuel that could possibly have been in the thing is gone now. I'm going to do some more searching around the crawl spaces in the factory this evening and see if I can find any useful replacement materials that might have survived (I doubt it... might need to make an excursion to the Surface again for some engine repair stuff).

Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 2

Today I got down to the nitty gritty of exploring the factory. Given the heavy, industrial requirements of the architecture, and the lack of any environmental signs of instability such as earthquakes or other damaging conditions, I feel a lot more certain about the factory's inherent stability than I do about most of the structures in the City Proper back in the Cavern. That's not to say I've let my guard down any, but I think this building is inherently far less likely to collapse on my head, or I wouldn't even be going into it.

The interior spaces of the factory are incredible. I started at the top floor and worked my way down, as that was the only way I could approach given my starting point. On the way down I came across numerous hallways filled with machinery for manufacturing considerable quantities of pellets to be fed into the Lake. Each floor seems to be dedicated to a single phase of pellet production and distribution. The top-most floor is a long central walkway with alcoves containing pellet dispensing machines. Beside each machine is a Linking Book leading to what looks like a drop point in D'ni. Given that I was already pressing my luck with getting stuck in a bad part of the Multiverse, I opted not to try using any of those Books until I had thoroughly investigated the rest of the factory and found a link back to the Cavern, or at least back to the Nexus.

The floor below is a similar single hallway with alcoves on either side. These alcoves hold control interfaces for the ovens that feed pellets into the dispensers above. Below that is a wider hall with water troughs open to the outside for rainwater collection and vats for mixing the ingredients to be fed into the ovens. Finally, on the bottom floor, are eight separate harvester docking stations (meaning that my theory yesterday about the tracks being large circuits is bunk), with considerable amounts of dangerous-looking machinery arrayed around them, presumably for collecting the harvested material and processing it before sending it into the storage silos that line the inner walls of this floor.

As luck would have it, there is a single harvester left in the factory; the others are probably out in the fields somewhere, and probably in need of some serious repairs. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to get the one I've found up and running without any problems, but I suspect not. 200 years is a long time for an engine to sit, and I don't even know where the dip stick is. I'll probably fiddle with it more tomorrow. Right now I'm mostly focused on finishing my survey of the factory before the daylight fades (the sun in this Age seems to be offset a bit from Mountain Standard Time... and I haven't yet managed to calculate the planet's rotational period).

Er'tsuda Expedition: Day 1

I spent the better part of yesterday making sure I had everything in place for this trip. I absconded with a Nexus Book from one of the harbor pedestals, just in case I found myself stuck in an Age with no return access (unlikely, given that the DRC have already stamped this Book with their seal of approval, and this was done well before anybody on their staff had a Relto Book). My backpack is loaded with gear and supplies, and I made sure to pack the tent I bought on my recuperative trip to the Surface earlier this year, since there wasn't much available information on the Age's climate or terrain beyond what little I could make out in the Gateway Image.

Today I took my first step toward the larger project of exploring, cataloging, and eventually restoring the remaining Ages of the D'ni empire, though to be honest this Age feels a lot like ground I've already covered before.

I'm amazed at how similar this Age is to Er'cana, in both climate and structure. I suspect the D'ni knew a good thing when they saw one, and rather than continue to experiment with other ways of feeding the Lake algae, they stuck with the first thing that worked and endlessly iterated that idea into a more and more efficient industry.

The link-in point was in the middle of a long-abandoned shanty town in a small offshoot from a major canyon. Wind gusts blasted through the settlement and rattled the few buildings that still stood, and the dust it kicked up stung my eyes. It seems like I'll be getting plenty of use out of the D'ni goggles I found in the Cleft. I'd hoped to be able to set up camp here, but I think I'll look for a less blustery location.

After documenting the layout of the shanty town (I suspect whatever workers the D'ni "employed" here used this village as their home), I made my way out into the main canyon. The offshoot containing the settlement is actually about 200 feet from the canyon floor, and long catwalks connect it to a large factory-looking structure that straddles the walls, almost looking more like a bridge than a building. No part of it actually touches the bottom of the canyon; instead it arcs gracefully but powerfully across the chasm, anchored to either side in a brutal mass of stonework. Tall, slender water reservoirs line the walls of the canyon on either side, and empty into irrigation canals that lead off downstream to parts unknown. The architectural differences between this Age and Er'cana are striking, while at the same time there is a similarity that underscores the common purpose of these two Ages.

Eight sets of familiar-looking elevated tracks feed into the bottom-most level of the factory, four to a side. Given that the irrigation canals only run out from one side, I'd venture to guess that either these tracks run in huge loops, or that there is some other irrigation platform further upstream that irrigates harvesting grounds in that direction. Hopefully I'll be able to find out.

I've spent most of the day today going over the area around the link-in point. Lacking any real survey equipment, my measurements and maps are probably far less accurate than I'd like, but they'll have to do for now. I'm going to take one of the catwalks down to the factory tonight and set up camp for the night in its more sheltered environment. More tomorrow, I hope...

Happy Birthday to Me

Today was my birthday, and I'm now 24 years old. In celebration, I took the day off from the tedium of cataloging and reading the voluminous DRC meeting notes and research notebooks I found in the abandoned base camp earlier this year. I've been at it since I got back from Mysterium, since I've hit the limit of where I can go safely and easily around the harbor. I don't want to make another multi-day expedition like the one I made to check the source of my water supply, because that requires a fair amount of planning ahead, and I feel like I need to get a better idea of the lay of the land around here before I go doing that again. So since Mysterium, I've been going over everything I can find in the DRC tent, making my own notes and incorporating the findings from my own explorations as I go. I'm about two-thirds of the way through all this stuff, so I don't expect to have any really exciting updates any time in the near future. Sorry.

In other news, I've got the courtyard outside my tavern lit up like the 4th of July now, and in my spare time am tinkering with the internals of one of the imagers from the building next door, which I think was some kind of news stand run by the D'ni Guild of Messengers.

Mysterium...

... was a lot of fun. We should do it again next year ;).

Boarding my return flight to New Mexico in a few minutes. Will update again when I'm back in the City.

Once More Into the Breach

Well, it's been more than a week, but I'm finally heading back to D'ni. I've made plans to attend Mysterium this year at the end of July, now that I know I can actually get there, so there's one more week-long hiatus definitely planned for this year, but beyond that, I don't think there's any plans to spend a considerable amount of time on the Surface before the end of the year (Christmas seems like a good time to be with my family, at the very least...).

I'm finding it difficult to really keep an interesting blog of the stuff I'm doing in D'ni, so updates may be fewer and more far-between for a while. I'm also running into the limits of what I feel comfortable doing on my own right now, because I'm not a structural engineer, and I don't have access to a lot of the DRC's equipment for shoring things up and securing them before doing extensive restoration work, or even just looking around. This is as much disaster recovery as it is archaeology, and I'm only marginally more well-equipped for the latter (still can't find a really good bull whip...).

Hopefully a lot more info will be forthcoming once I manage to stabilize the data connection between the Surface and D'ni so that I can send more than just text along the uplink. Photos and drawings are definitely things I want to include in my posts, but for now, the written word is all my crummy connection can handle. The DRC did some crazy wizardry with the KI network several years ago to allow them to make posts on their old forum from their KI, and I've managed to hook into that to send these updates to Blogger, but sending an image stream is a lot more complicated, and without actual internet access in the Cavern, this is the best I can do at the moment.

Holy Crap, My KI is Working!

I apologize for not writing in a while... I've been doing more thorough studies of the stuff left in the DRC base camp, and none of it makes for terribly compelling blog posts. However, my KI had been acting weird over the past couple of weeks, and I think it's about time I mentioned it, just for the sake of keeping an accurate record.

I haven't really been wearing my KI lately, because it's largely useless with the Lattice all mucked up. Around the 27th, it started making odd beeping noises every once in a while, which did wonders for keeping me awake at all hours, but little else. A few days later, I noticed the hologram emitter started turning itself on and off every few seconds, causing the heads-up display interface to flicker annoyingly out of the corner of my eye. I initially just chalked it up to further Lattice destabilization and stuffed the thing in a drawer wrapped in a blanket where I wouldn't have to see or listen to it anymore, but today I noticed during a morning walk to the DRC camp that I could see the trail of Markers I'd dropped during my initial exploration of the area. As I reached out to trigger one of the holographic spheres, the entire set blinked and then vanished.

Needless to say, I rushed back to the tavern and pulled my KI out of its drawer to see what was going on. In the chat interface were several status messages from the Lattice, which read roughly as follows (I've cut out a lot of redundant messages):

System: Unable to repair damaged Lattice branches. Data is unrecoverable. Attempting to restore to secondary tree.

System: Restoration Success. Some data lost during restoration to secondary tree. Polling field units for additional information.

System: Field unit 6409780 Discovered. Time: 4/28/08 9:57:05

System: Attempting to synchronize with field unit 6409780. Awaiting unit response...

System: Field unit 6409780 Discovered. Time: 5/13/08 13:54:27

System: Attempting to synchronize with field unit 6409780. Awaiting unit response...

Elated that the Lattice may have been able to repair itself (Laxman was a busy man before he left!), I quickly activated my KI and dropped a Marker to try and synchronize it with the Lattice network. The following message appeared in my chat interface:

System: Response from field unit 6409780. Synchronization successful. WARNING: Some data may have been lost due to Lattice corruption. Verify data is intact before use.

Getting happier by the minute, I checked my files and marker missions, and with few exceptions, they were all intact and readable by my KI. All of the Ages I had visited were also still listed in the device as well, though obviously I was unable to reach any of them because of having lost my Relto Book.

I decided to take advantage of my former Restoration Engineer status to try and poll the Nexus to see if it was working. I entered a custom command into the chat interface and received the following response:

System: Nexus access granted. Welcome ResEng G. Buddell. Nexus status code: 0001.

This was fantastic news. A status code of 0001 meant that the Nexus was fully functional, and I wasn't going to get trapped there if I linked in. Whether I'd be able to access any of my previously-registered Nexus Terminal links was another question entirely, so I made sure to register the nearest terminal before linking back to the Nexus for the first time in over a month.

The familiar clatter of the Nexus machinery welcomed me back to the access room, and the Book Machine happily accepted my KI signature when I placed my hand in the registry slot. A quick look at my available links confirmed at least some of my fears: most of the links I had registered were missing, prticularly the older ones that gave me direct access to Ae'Gura. However, the links I had registered on the way down the Descent were all still intact. Almost literally bouncing with glee, I touched the line that read "Great Shaft - Top", waited impatiently for the machine to vend the Book, and linked back to the eder tomahn at the top of the Great Shaft. A quick jog back up the path to the Surface confirmed that it was still clear all the way back to the Volcano's caldera (I was concerned that some of the tremors I'd felt while descending may have caused further collapses in the cave system), meaning I now had almost immediate access back to the Surface, and any supplies I might need, without needing to spend the better part of a week going back and forth.

As dedicated as I am to restoring D'ni and keeping it alive, I think I'm going to take a week or so on the Surface to get some more things, rest, relax, and sleep in a bed that's bound to be better than the sleeping-bag-on-a-cot arrangement I've got in the tavern. D'ni is great, but I occasionally need to see the sun. I'll post again before I head back down.

Emo D'ni

The dimness of this place is kind of starting to get to me... I've been sleeping a lot more than I usually do, and spend a fair amount of my waking hours feeling tired. I don't think I noticed this nearly as much while I was working for the DRC because we were in parts of the Cavern that were much better-lit, and I always had easy access to several above-ground Ages if I needed a breath of fresh air and the warmth of the sun on my face. Despite Ri'neref's intention that the D'ni love their home here in the Cavern, I can't help but understand why many viewed it as a place to hang their hat and little more, while they basked in the splendor of their Ages. Perhaps his plan to teach the D'ni some humility through their surroundings ultimately backfired...

I think what will help me the most is getting some of the firemarbles around the harbor lit up again. Knowing that the Nexus is currently FUBAR, I doubt many people are going to be able to get to Ae'Gura right now, so I'm not nearly as concerned about someone finding me out here and invading my space (for everything else that's got me down, the silence isn't all that depressing). A little bit more light in the area couldn't hurt, at any rate.

Uphill Battle

My how the time flies. I've been off on an expedition for the past week, without a way to post an update. As part of my new high priority plan to make sure I can live off the land down here (so to speak), I took off on a hike to track down the source of the water flowing through the channel near the tavern I'm still calling home for the time being. I've made extensive use of my dye paint since I can't map my way with Markers any more, and hopefully I won't need to go on any more long treks like that, because I don't think I have the paint for it.

My explorations took me deep into the City Proper, and the level of devastation there makes even what I've seen on the harbor front pale in comparison. Whole buildings are completely leveled... and not little one-story affairs, either. I'm talking about major structures, including what looks like the remains of an apartment complex or something similar. This is one of the oldest areas of the City, so these buildings are likely to be upwards of 9,000 years old in some cases, and their stability was probably somewhat questionable at the time of the Fall. What the quakes back then didn't completely flatten, two hundred years of neglect likely managed to pull down later.

The view of the Lake – when I had one – was breathtaking, though. I ended up several hundred yards above the waterfront before I reached the main aqueduct for the water channel I was following, and the top of the Arch was seemingly at eye level. Ae'Gura glistened in the dim evernight of the Cavern, and its mirror image shimmered darkly but elegantly in the water below. It was a hollow image, though, remembering not just the millions of D'ni who had lived here in the past, but the thousands of explorers who had also called that island – and this Cavern – their home for upwards of five years. Not to mention the DRC members, Elias and Jeff Zandi, and Branch Loftin, who had first discovered this place over two decades ago. That view, more than any other, impressed upon me the sheer scale of D'ni's size and history. Even if it remains just me, alone down here in the dark, for the rest of my life, I am determined now more than ever to make sure that the memory of this place does not burn out, and that someone is still here to keep it alive.

I continued to follow the aqueduct back to a long, elevated archway that stretched across a wide canyon to where the waterfall that fed it cascaded down in a misty stream into a collection basin. Knowing that channel was elevated from here back to its source,  and having not stumbled across anything that might sully the waters between this junction and my home in the tavern, I have concluded that the water here is as pure as I might hope to find in a cave. I'll run a few final chemical tests tomorrow to be sure there isn't anything growing in the aquifer, but I feel much safer about drinking the water here without needing to purify it first, which is fortunate, because I'm down to my last few purification tablets... after that, I start running it through my sock and boiling it with what little propane I have left for my stove.

Food, Glorious Food

My luck seems to be slowly turning around...

I've spent the last couple of days pouring over the rest of the stuff I found in the abandoned DRC base camp this week, looking for anything that might help me avoid an untimely death by starvation. In addition to the Er'tsuda Book (which is actually [eh|r|'|ts|oo|d|ah], not [ts|uh|d|ah] as I originally reported... my D'ni is very rusty), I also found a DRC-stamped Age that looks like a private garden from the Gateway Image. The note attached to it indicates it was found higher up in the City, but the specifics are hard to make out because of the DRC's tedious practice of turning everything into a 4-digit number. I found a notebook elsewhere in the camp that indicated the Book was part of a collection removed from a private home in a district accessible only by Linking Book, so it's fair to say it's pretty safe to use. I'm still not entirely sold on using it until I've found the restoration documents for the Age (and they're bound to be around the camp somewhere) and have some substantive proof that a DRC ResEng came back from the place alive, but it's a great lead.

There isn't too much more to report at the moment... there's a ton of stuff in this camp site, and I've only gone through about half of it. Most of it is pretty dull stuff... lots of catalogues of artifacts and a few maps which may prove useful if I can figure out where they're for. Tons of minutes from meetings held years ago, which I'd eventually like to go through, as they may help me figure out what areas are safe to explore and what the state of restoration was when this site was abandoned. For now, though, I've got a good lead on two new Ages, and a whole 'nother stack of research notes to go through. I also found a few boxes of MREs, so I should be set for food for a little while longer. Now, though, it's well past time for me to be in bed, so off I go. More as I have time to post it.

The Long Goodbye

God it's late... or early, depending on how you want to look at it. Since I haven't gone to bed yet, I choose to call it late.

The party went off largely without a hitch. I'm led to understand that there was a near-record number of people in the Cavern, which is nice – if a bit frustrating, given how hard everyone at the DRC has worked to attract attention to this place to no avail, and now that they're leaving, everyone piles in for one last "my parents are in Atlantic City"-style party. Not to say I don't appreciate it, I'm just kind of annoyed that it took something like this to bring people to the Cavern in such droves.

Still, it was a blast. People I hadn't seen in months were there, and many of my former co-workers were as well. We had about 5 or 6 current and former ResEngs in the Beginner's Bevin by the time the party ended, and all told, it was a pretty awesome time. The party ended around 10:00 Cavern Time, and a lot of folks left pretty quickly after that. After Beginner's Bevin cleared out, I went to the old DRC cafeteria with GreyDragon, Cowart, and BennyD for some reminiscing. We had fun, though we talked surprisingly little about the Cavern. I think I'm the only one of the crew that's sticking around after tonight, judging by the odd looks I got from GD and Cowart when I told them what I was up to.

We finally all left about half an hour ago, and it was at that point that the problems started; fortunately, I was prepared for it.

First, I realized that my KI was no longer reporting my location or my coordinates, and my message lists were all blank. There were also messages in my chat section from the Lattice system indicating a power and data failure. It seems the KI network is completely down now, which means all of the registration terminals and access points will be out as well. Had I not thought ahead, I would very likely have been up poop creek without a paddle. Fortunately, I raided the Nexus last night and absconded with a Linking Book back to the City harbor before linking back to a location closer to the tavern. When I realized after leaving the cafeteria that the Lattice was down (everyone else had linked away using their Relto Books, probably to head back to the Cleft), I linked back to the Nexus, pulled the Book back to the harbor out of my knapsack, and linked away without needing to worry about accessing the Nexus terminal. I've only just returned to the tavern after treking back from the waterfront.

I seem to be very much on my own now. Even if I wanted someone to talk to, I wouldn't be able to find them using the KI at this point. I can't use the Nexus because I'll be trapped there, and because of the massive nature of the place, I can't count on linking back to the same access station where I was forced to leave the harbor Book behind.

Oh well. I suspected something like this would happen eventually, so it doesn't really set me back all that much. I've been keeping notes of my explorations on good old notebook paper, and think I've found one of the DRC's old generators that I can use to recharge my laptop from time to time so that I can keep posting. I have a new priority tomorrow, though: finding something to eat that won't kill me. My supplies are a couple of weeks from running out, but after that, I'd rather not have to keep spending what little money I have left at Wal-Mart for food.

Jackpot

I think I just got extremely lucky.

While I was out exploring one of the other walter-level courtyards in the harbor area, I stumbled across a decidedly modern-looking tent. Inside were piles of DRC documents, notebooks, papers, and more importantly, Linking Books. Some had DRC stamps on them, but most didn't. I suspect the DRC was running a small salvage operation out of this base while working in the City, and when they later refocused their efforts on Ae'Gura and the neighborhoods, this tent was abandoned – possibly even forgotten entirely.

I have no intention of using any of the Linking Books just yet, though the DRC-stamped ones may be useful in the near future. The documents and research notebooks I found, however, are a treasure trove of information. A lot of it is maps of the various areas in the harbor region, but there's more here that pertains to D'ni history, architecture, etc.

Perhaps the best of the Linking Books is the one with a sticky-note on it labeled "Nexus Control Access". I suspect that Laxman used this Book and others like it to link into the control center for the Nexus and maintain the Lattice. If that's the case, then it's highly likely that if the Lattice fails, I might eventually be able to restore it (with considerable help, obviously... this isn't Stargate, where completely alien technology is controlled by code written in C – or better yet, JavaScript).

There is also a Book labeled in D'ni as Er'tsuda (eh|r|'|ts|uh|d|ah). Given the "Er" prefix, I suspect it's either a granary Age or some Age similar to Er'cana, which was used to feed nutrients to the lake algae. It may be worth investigating at some point, because Er'cana's output is absurdly low, and I think we're going to need a much higher-capacity system to get the lake back into shape again someday. If it's a granary Age, then at least I won't starve (hooray!) once my food supply runs out.

One last note: I've gotten word via a KI message that there's going to be a big gathering tomorrow as a sort of send-off... it would appear that a lot of explorers have either already left, or will be leaving tomorrow. I plan on attending, but for now will keep news of my current explorations to myself.

Progress Report

I've been quite busy the past week or so, though most of what I've done has been fairly mundane. Still, this process is nothing if not chock full of tedium, and I set up this blog to report on the process, so here we go.

I've spent most of my time working on cleaning up the few rooms in the tavern I'm occupying. The floors are all cleared up, I've re-set the tables and chairs, and I've re-organized the storage rooms into "ancient moldy wine of doom!" and "my stuff" categories, each in their own room. I found a small stash of firemarbles in one of the boxes of old materials I felt compelled to inventory (because it would seem you never know when you'll find something useful in an ancient box), and have been using them to light the tavern instead of draining my supply of batteries by using my flashlight and lantern.

I've also found a source of fresh water that doesn't require boiling and filtering to remove the algae from the lake. The DRC research notes indicated that there was a waterfall in the City around which Ri'Neref and his followers built their initial settlement after coming here from Ronay. It would seem that over the millennia, the D'ni channeled this source of water all around the City in a series of aqueducts. One of them zig-zags through the City, connecting to long-silent fountains and skirting the edges of plazas in ornamental designs. I'll probably still use water purifiers before drinking any of this until I fully chart the path of this particular waterway, but it's definitely closer to drinkable than the lake water would be.

On an unrelated but concerning note, my KI has been acting fritzy lately (well, fritzier than usual), and I suspect that the Lattice is very close to some sort of data failure. How that will impact life in the Cavern – and my explorations specifically – I don't know. Still, data failures are never good. Hopefully, basic functions like photography and note-taking will stay online; marker systems would be highly beneficial, but if they go down, I don't suspect it'll be the end of the world... I'll just have to be more thorough with my documentation and orienteering.

In any case, I will continue with my explorations, and will keep registering my KI at any Nexus terminals I can find. With luck, the Nexus itself will stay up, even if the Lattice suffers some catastrophic failure, and I'll still be able to get around with relative ease. Now, back to the clean-up.

Recovery

Definitely going to run out of witty post titles before much longer...

Anyway, I'm mostly writing this as a follow-up to my last post. After finishing my investigation of the tavern earlier, I went back to the boat house and investigated the boat I found last night. It seemed stable enough, and proved to be so on my trip back across the lake. I had my raft in tow as planned in case the bottom of the boat suddenly collapsed from the shock of use after 200 years of abandonment, but as has been noted before, the D'ni built things to last for a very long time.

The trip back to the other side of the Cavern was considerably easier than my stumbling progress last night, mostly thanks to the fact that this boat is streamlined and not just a slab of rubber and plastic. I piled the rest of my gear into the boat and hauled it back to my new home away from home in the tavern. I still haven't investigated the upstairs section of this building, and I don't think I'm going to until I have someone around who's actually trained in structural engineering to make sure the whole thing won't collapse on me when I set foot on the stairs. Still, there's plenty of room down here, and I suspect it'll be quite a while before I outgrow this space.

I may not have maps as soon as I might have liked... I'll see what I can do, but it may be a while. The fact that I lack a scanner to import any sketches I make into my computer is not helping me... look forward to dim, grainy, orange-tinted photographs of my doodles in the future.

Now, I'm going to bed. I have a lot to do, and rowing around the Cavern for a few hours has tired me out considerably.

Man About Town

Perhaps my greatest fear is that I shall run out of witty post titles before my time down here comes to an end...

After a long night's sleep recovering from my grueling trip across the lake, I awoke in the dim orange of mid-whenever that is ever-present here in D'ni, turned on my lantern, and did some of the exploring I'd wanted to do last night.

The City's structure is interesting. Seeing it up close like this really gives me a better understanding of the D'ni's approach to city planning. There are hints of it in the neighborhoods and Ae'Gura, but the City really lays it bare. Whereas human cities tend to be sprawling grids or tangled knots of criss-crossing streets with buildings filling the empty areas between them, the D'ni City is much more structured in a way. There are large courtyards scattered across the terrain around the harbor, each with a cluster of buildings and access paths radiating out from them a short distance, seemingly limited in reach by the surrounding landscape for the most part. The courtyard areas are all connected to each other with broad, clear avenues, and navigation posts sit at the junction points indicating where various important landmarks are located.

The harbor level is marked by a collection of water-level docks and service buildings  – again with attendant courtyards – arrayed around the rim. As on Ae'Gura, broad, steep staircases climb the rough terrain away from the shallow slope of the immediate harbor area to connect with larger courtyards at higher elevations. In other places where the separation is more cliff-like, broad stair-cased tunnels are carved through the rock to connect these two levels. At the center of the harbor's arc is a large round courtyard that sits a little higher off the water's edge than the docks, and is ringed by an ornate fence that serves to prevent it from being used as a pier. It looks distinctively ceremonial, and based on its alignment with Kerath's Arch, I'm going to guess that it's positioned along the line of the Great Zero. There's some sort of large sculpture in the center of it, but I don't have a context for what it might represent. It connects directly to a smaller circular plaza at a higher elevation, which is itself connected by a long flight of stairs to a huge structure that sits astride a peak in the terrain. I suspect it's the original Temple of Yahvo built by Ri'Neref and his followers when they first arrived here.

Despite roaming around this area for an hour or two looking for a suitably undamaged place to settle in for the night, I never felt lost. The layout of the area makes it easy to keep your bearings using environmental landmarks, and for the most part traffic was designed to be funneled along the major avenues that connect all of the courtyards, with only limited extents of side-paths and back alleys branching off to navigate the surrounding clutch of buildings, so getting from place to place is a relatively painless affair.

Farther back from the harbor, the levels of the City begin to climb quickly, and it rises sharply from the surrounding rock in tall, thin arcs of heavy yet delicate construction. The island of Ae'Gura looms in the distance across the way. With the aid of a pair of binoculars, I can make out occasional shapes moving on the Great Stairs and around the Library courtyard area, but more often than not, the Island looks desolate, save for the glow of the firemarble lamps.

I think I've found a good base of operations in my explorations today. I wanted to find a place that was not only stable, but relatively obscured from sight when looking from Ae'Gura. I'd rather not attract any attention, and the glow of a firemarble, flashlight, or campfire would certainly manage to draw someone's eye eventually. Finally, I came across a small tavern-looking structure in one of the smaller courtyards, about 300 yards from the cliffs that drop into the harbor. It can't be seen from Ae'Gura due to a taller structure located across the plaza, between the tavern and the lake. I can also cover up any lake-facing windows, just to be safe.

From what I can tell, the structure is reasonably stable, or at least is in no danger of imminent collapse. It's close enough to the harbor that I can get there quickly, but far enough away and secluded enough that I doubt someone will stumble upon me, should anyone decide to be foolish enough to just start bumbling around the City. There is ample room for storing supplies, and further exploration indicates that my initial assessment of the purpose of this structure were correct: it's a tavern or bar of some sort, or at least it was. I found several store rooms, one of which was stocked with rotted-out barrels of something that thankfully lost its stench decades ago. The floor there will probably never be clean again, and I'm inclined to avoid storing my gear and other findings there until all the other rooms are full. There were also shelves of glass bottles which I dared not open, and a collection of overturned tables and chairs were strewn around the large main room. It wasn't a large establishment by any means... more of an out-of-the-way dive-type place. There is also a second floor to this building, though I'm not exactly inclined to push my luck by trying the stairs. I suspect that the second floor is full of bedrooms, and that this place was also a rest house for those who worked the ships of the D'ni merchant fleet.

I intend to spend the next week or more exploring the harbor area, determining which buildings are safe for further investigation and putting together a map of the area. I will try to have something worth posting soon, but I can't promise that. I've got a lot of other priorities and exploration targets to get to, and more work to do getting the rest of my gear back. I still have yet to inspect the boat I found in the boat house on the harbor-front; I woke up much later than I intended to today, and have spent most of the day thus far exploring the City and investigating the tavern.

Solidarity

It took the better part of three hours to paddle my way across the lake to the City Proper (which I will hereafter simply call the City... what the DRC and explorers call "the city" is actually Ae'Gura, and I intend to use its proper name to avoid confusion). My arms are killing me; I haven't paddled this much since I went on an expedition to Boundary Waters with my scout troop about 8 years ago. I'm so tired I'm having trouble getting into the spirit of exploration and documenting what I find, but I'll do my best.

I docked my raft in the boat house at the City's harbor and hauled myself out onto dry (and stable) land. I hadn't anticipated how much of a nightmare it would be paddling across over a mile of water in a soft-hulled boat, and I'm really not looking forward to doing it again. Fortunately, I may not have to... there's a solitary boat left in the boat house here that seems relatively undamaged by the destruction of D'ni. I'll test its seaworthiness tomorrow when I've got a clearer mind. Even if I do decide it's safe to use, I'll probably tow the raft along behind me in case of any trouble in the middle of the lake.

The amount of devastation is simply overwhelming. I can certainly see why the DRC never let anybody over here. I can also understand why Atrus was so overwhelmed when he and the D'ni survivors attempted their own restoration. For the first time, I think I'm starting to grasp the true scope of the task at hand, and can better understand why the DRC generally seemed to be depressed or snippy. Even during my time as a ResEng, I was never really granted access to un-opened areas like this. My job was mostly dealing with and assisting explorers as they arrived from the Surface, or as they needed help on their journeys. Occasionally I would be asked to help do a final once-over of an Age or area of D'ni before it was released, but by then all of the hard work had pretty much been done.

I may have mentioned this already, but I am so very tired. I nearly fell asleep where I sat after climbing up onto the pier from my raft. I've managed to haul the rest of my gear out of the raft though, and I plan on just collapsing in the nearest me-sized patch of ground that's relatively rubble-free. Ugh. Good night!

Returning

Well, it took a little longer than I expected, but I managed to make my way back to the Cavern today. There's a considerable amount of damage to the outlying regions of D'ni, and a fair portion of the tunnel network has suffered collapses or is otherwise unsafe to explore due to structural instability resulting from the earthquakes experienced during the Fall. I'm glad there are as many side passages and alternate routes as there are this close to the main Cavern, because otherwise, I don't think I would have made it back. Aside from the considerable number of detours I had to make, I can't say there was really much eventful about this last leg of the trip, though. The passages I found myself in had either been access tunnels, or had been cleaned up by the DRC, and any doorways to "interior" spaces were either locked or required higher security clearance than my KI is currently granted.

I eventually found my way into the main Cavern, and I couldn't have asked for a more advantageous location. I discovered a small side-cave with a boat dock and boat house on the water level, tucked under a long overhang that blocked the view of the main Cavern. Another Nexus terminal was nestled in the back wall, and I registered my KI there as well, so I can now still get back to the Surface whenever I need to, and can skip the whole trip back down in favor of linking here and taking my raft. This all assumes, of course, that the Nexus will keep working in Laxman's absence, but better to try and fail than never try at all...

Fortunately, the inflatable raft survived the heat of the Lava Chamber, and still seems to be sea-worthy. It's not big enough to take all of my gear with me in one trip - especially not while it's still in the wagon - but it should be fine for getting across the lake to the City Proper a few times. I'm not entirely looking forward to paddling that far, and am beginning to wish I'd gotten some sort of motor, but then I'd have to deal with gasoline, and I think that'd be more trouble than it's worth.

The boat house looks like it's been ransacked; there's no boats left in there, and most of the equipment and furniture (such as it is) has been smashed up pretty bad. There's no signs of the roof collapsing, so it was probably destroyed at someone's hands. There's a fair amount of scorching on the walls too, which leads me to suspect it was put to the torch in the chaos of the Fall. Hopefully I can find some intact D'ni hard-hulled boats at some point so I don't have to trust myself and my gear to a flimsy inflatable each time I want to go exploring elsewhere in the Cavern.

Since I very, very seriously doubt that anyone will be coming through here on their way out, I've secured what I can't take with me on the raft in the old boat house, and will return for it first thing tomorrow. I'm not sure how long it will take to get across this lake, but since it's just myself and about 30 pounds of gear this trip, across over a mile of lake, I imagine it will take the better part of a couple hours each way. It's just now mid-afternoon, so one trip to the City should give me enough time to find a temporary place to sleep for the night before I continue looking for better accomodations and move the rest of my gear over here.

Hot Under the Collar

I found my position on the map this morning shortly after getting underway. Somehow I managed to cross over the path and come out in Room 8 last night (I'm aware that these numbers likely don't indicate actual room numbers, but I'm at a loss to explain their significance and they provide a handy reference point). I decided after writing my last journal entry that I would just pitch camp where I was and not bother trying to explore further until today.

While I was fairly confident that I'd found my place on the map again, I couldn't be certain until I reached the next major landmark on the map: the Lava Chamber. I found the room itself around noon, but I could feel its effects long before then. The heat was intense enough to be felt several nodes away, which was impressive, given the distance they were from the chamber. I eventually entered a large cave-like room with a massive edifice on the far side, framing an exit that spilled a dirty orange light across the floor. The tunnel continued, somewhat broader and with a considerably thicker floor of solid nara that extended into the room and terminated in a semi-circular step decorated with colorful stone. The edifice of the doorway was a wall of huge dark stone polished to a nearly mirror-like shine, making the room seem even larger than it truly was. In the dim collected light of the lava's glow and the firemarble seated atop the node door behind me, I could make out D'ni phrases and pictograms carved into the face of the rock. Sadly, I could only guess at the meaning of the words, but the pictograms seemed to be expressing a warning about what lie ahead. Given that this path was originally intended to be used by D'ni and human alike, I imagine that the pictograms were for our benefit, and the text for the D'ni's.

I pulled out a bandana from my backpack and tied it around my face. In the process I noticed a small crate sitting in the corner of the room beside the great slab of rock framing the cave's exit. The DRC logo was stamped onto the side, and within it I found a few sets of protective gear. I grabbed one and pulled it on without hesitation: any protection is better than just a bandana across one's mouth when you're dealing with magma...

The heat was beyond intense. I wondered to myself what level of madness the D'ni must have been experiencing to think that this would be a good idea – or even just a not-completely-terrible one. I walked as quickly as I dared across the broad bridge that spanned the chamber, trying not to look down at the lake of molten rock beneath me. The air shimmered in front of me, and the hazy outline of the exit danced as I watched it. The glow of the magma, combined with the dryness of the air and the incredible heat, made my eyes water. I looked back briefly the entrance and noticed that the rubber wheels on the wagon were beginning to melt, and had left skid marks along the bridge where the rubber had been dragged off of the tires. Suddenly, I remembered the section of The Book of Atrus that detailed Atrus and Gehn's crossing of this bridge and the mention of a missing section, and I had a brief moment of panic before managing to make out the rest of the bridge. It was certainly not still intact, but the last span had been bridged by a more reliable suspension scaffold that held up a set of thin concrete slabs. It was wobbly, and I was worried for a while that the wagon wheels would melt completely on the less heat-resistant material, causing it to become unstable and fall, but I made it across with all of my gear, and without incident.

Ten minutes later I was clear of the worst of the heat, but the heavy sulfur had drifted down the tunnel from the lava chamber, and my initial attempts to remove my helmet resulted in a bit of unpleasant gagging at the stench, so I left it on until I was in the next room. If the room preceding the lava chamber had been impressive, this was stunning. Not quite on the same engineering level as the Great Shaft, but still a feat requiring considerable skill, craftsmanship, and above all, artistry.

The room was bisected just after the entrance by a wall of polished rock, not unlike that of the edifice in the previous room. The nara pathway terminated just beyond it in another round step that stood at the base of a great mosaic depicting a massive tree. Pathways sprang from the trunk and branched off in all directions, leaving the room to form a network of tunnels through the surrounding rock. The top of the tree mosaic, at the far side of the room, depicted the glow of the sun, with a single ray sprouting from the top to continue on down the main path. Despite its worn and damaged appearance, it was remarkably beautiful. But the beauty did not stop there. The wall which bisected the room was engraved with countless lines of D'ni text and pictograms, depicting prominent figures and events from D'ni's history, as well as icons which I could only assume were meant to indicate the open trade between D'ni and the surface dwellers that the Path had originally been intended to foster. On the side facing into the room, the symbols continued, with a section beside the door reserved for the same warning text and pictograms as those on the entrance to the lava chamber I had come from.

I have found the Southern Gate. Once again, I am in D'ni. From here, the way will likely become easier, and also more difficult. The network of connected passageways will make it more likely for me to get lost, but the odds of serious, impassable collapse are greatly diminished as a result. Although, if the path retains the golden color given to it by the mosaic, following it shouldn't be difficult. Besides, there should be signs at some point saying "Ae'Gura is this way". I believe I will camp here for the night, and spend the rest of the afternoon recovering from my trip through the lava chamber and exploring this incredible room.

Lost & Found

Had a bit of a scare today...

Yesterday was fairly uneventful. After a very cautious trip, I'd gotten all of my gear down to the ground floor of the Shaft by way of its main spiral ramp. I poked my head into the eder tomahn in the middle of the Shaft, where the Bahro Stone leads, but was unable to find anything useful, or even interesting. The KI light dispenser is still glowing that obnoxious purple-pink, and the effect is still limited to about 60 seconds of light. The Nexus Terminal here was also, predictably, still out of service.

The Path continued largely uninterrupted after leaving the Shaft, save for the occasional pile of rubble. There were some obvious signs of major reconstruction, and a few places had walls shored up with heavy wooden support frames, which leads me to believe that this path used to be a lot harder to travel, but by and large, it was a straight shot through several of the Nodes and connecting passageways. There were a few flights of stairs in the steeper areas that naturally gave me hell trying to lug my wagon down them, but that's about it.

Today, however, was a different story. I arrived in an area which, assuming I'm on the right track, corresponds to the room marked "11" on Aitrus' map to find the D'ni path interrupted by a cave-in just beyond the Node door. Markings on the Node door leading into this room seem to confirm my guess. Since the route was blocked and I gathered from the look of the rock that it wasn't at all recent, I set about looking for a way around the collapsed section of tunnel. I referred to Aitrus' map and determined that the cave system I had foregone exploring one node back connected to a node closer to D'ni that was hopefully beyond the damaged region. I backtracked the short distance to the node and left my wagon so that I could explore without worrying about how to get it across the uneven terrain of the cave, then come back once I'd found my way through. I tied a considerable length of rope to the base of the node door's control arm and set off, using the rope to keep me from getting lost, and began searching the cave's rooms for a way through. My flashlight danced across the rock formations, long since frozen in time by the absence of continued water flow.

Eventually, I ran out of rope, and silently cursed Aitrus' cursory mapping of this particular segment of cave. I pulled a dye marker from my bag and began spraying indicators on the walls that could lead me back to where the rope ended when I went back for the wagon. I had just begun worrying whether I had been mistaken about this cave system connecting to another node when I saw the cool, dim glow of a firemarble around a corner. Relieved, I hurried ahead only to find the node door closed tight, its control mechanism damaged by a stalactite that had fallen from the high ceiling.

Frustrated, I returned to the last junction in the cave system and sprayed a large red X on the wall before returning to my search. It was another two hours before I found a way through to another node door, which was thankfully open. I activated my KI and started dropping custom markers as I walked to guide me back through the cave with the wagon (or if I ever needed to get back through it again later). A full nine hours after I encountered the blocked tunnel in Room 11, I was back on the path, my wagon trundling happily - if loudly - behind me. The trouble is, I'm unsure as to where on the path I am now... Aitrus' map of the cave system was so woefully inadequate that I couldn't tell where I came out, and distinguishing rooms are relatively few and far between. I'm pretty sure that I'm some considerable distance from Room 11, but with how winding the caves were, I'm not sure at all just how far I've gone. I'd use my KI to help me, but it's still reporting coordinates of 0, 0, 0... it's a wonder the markers even work out here.

It's been a long and frustrating day, so I will probably not go much farther before turning in for the night. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to figure out just how much ground I've covered.

Descending

It's been a long first day and a half on my journey back to D'ni "the hard way". I'm still decidedly annoyed at the fact that my Relto Book is gone... with any luck, whoever took it was clever enough to get to the Cavern themselves and is being looked after by the (diminishing) contingent of other explorers, assuming they used it at all. As for me, I've got a long road ahead of me before I can re-join their company. To make matters worse, there have been occasional tremors in the rock. Hardly frequent, and barely noticeable, but they can have a cumulative effect that is most disconcerting. In fact, I may be lucky if I can still even get to D'ni in the first place...

After my last entry two days ago, I returned to the Cleft and spent much of the day getting my belongings and equipment into the Volcano's caldera, and then into the cave below. It was very hard going, and for future reference, the Volcano is deceptively small from the outside. Awkward as it made me feel to do so, I had no choice but to sleep in the Cleft that night, as the tunnel to the first Eder Tomahn on the Path appeared to be a considerable distance from the Caldera, and I didn't have the energy to transport all of my gear by then. I can't say how much sleep I got; the history of where I was sleeping (or trying to, anyway) was almost overwhelming, and I probably spent most of the night looking out the door of the bedroom at the thin sliver of sky visible above the rim of the Cleft. Nonetheless, I awoke feeling refreshed, and spent the first few hours at the entrance to the caves beneath the Volcano organizing my supplies and having a simple breakfast. I decided to take my descent slowly; I was really in no rush given the amount of supplies I had, and knowing that it would likely be several days' journey anyway, I didn't want to over-do it and end up in trouble, alone in a cave few others knew about, miles from help in either direction.

The trip to the first Eder Tomahn took about 15 minutes, which in retrospect wouldn't have been all that bad to walk last night, but again, I'm trying not to over-do it. I set up camp there, and spent most of the "day" exploring the area. Fortunately, the Node doors here still work, though there's no need to operate them as the DRC left everything unlocked when last they used this path. I'm hoping that their frequent supply trips several years ago have left their mark, making it easier for me to follow in their footsteps. The Nexus Terminal here also appears to be functioning properly, and I took the opportunity to register the station with my KI for the sake of convenience. If I need to make a return trip now, I shouldn't have to walk the entire way again.

The Great Shaft itself continues to amaze me. It tunnels I-don't-know-how-many hundreds of feet straight down, and the acoustics of the place are stunning. The architecture is typical D'ni, with heavy arches and thick pillars either carved from the surrounding rock or built – almost fused – into it. The elevators are unfortunately still non-functional, though there are signs of "recent" repair work. The DRC does some great work, but it's obvious they haven't come this way in a few years; I think most of the resupply operations in 2006-2007 were coordinated through one or more of the Council's Reltos for the sake of speed. As a result, the restoration work has already started to give way to the hundreds of years of prior abandonment, and even D'ni machinery has its limits when left alone for that long.

My explorations ended up taking me to the bottom of the Shaft by the end of the day. The scale of this construction is still mind-blowing, and it's almost too easy to get some pretty severe vertigo in here. The access tunnels leading to the floor are all clear and debris-free, and the floor itself has seen some degree of restoration work done to remove fallen bits of rock and ornamentation from higher up the Shaft. The Path continues through another Node door set in the wall, and my brief foray into the passageway indicated that the Node itself was still intact and operational. The faint breeze blowing up the tunnel also indicates that the ventilation system is still working; if it's hooked into the same air supply system as the great fans in the Cavern itself, that's hardly surprising... the DRC left them on for the sake of the sizable population that remained after they'd gone.

Quite possibly the best part about being on the Path is that I don't need to use my flashlight. I'm contemplating prying a firemarble out of one of the light fixtures here to take with me so that I can keep the flashlight for absolute emergencies, but I'll need to see if I have the right tools to do so. Tomorrow I will begin my expedition "for real" and bring my gear with me when I return to the base of the Shaft, but for now, the exploration has made me rather tired, and I'll need my strength and my wits from here on.

Son of a...

I'm beginning to suspect that the universe has something against me...

Thursday I spent most of the afternoon moving my belongings out of Relto to the Cleft. I decided that there just wasn't enough room on the island for all of my stuff, and I didn't think the environment was conducive to long-term storage given the amount of moisture in the air most of the time (and the fact that the roof still leaks when it rains). I shipped most of it back home, and the rest of it I stashed at the DRC offices for the weekend while I got my affairs in order. At this point, I'm glad I did.

Friday I got a ride into Carlsbad with one of the remaining DRC lackeys, whom I'd never met before and didn't manage to remember well enough to tell you his name. I stowed my stuff at the office and got a room at the Holiday Inn in town - the same place we stayed at Mysterium 2001. I decided to take a day or two away from the Cavern, and besides that, I didn't want to trouble the DRC fort-holder more than once in a day... the offices aren't far from town, but they are a ways away from the Cleft. I got a raft from Wal-Mart on the way into town, and made arrangements to be picked up on Sunday. With nothing to do with myself but relax for a weekend before starting on a long expedition in D'ni, I spent the rest of the day around Carlsbad, mostly down at the park by the river. The backpack with the rest of my gear and my Relto Book lay safely in the hotel room. Or so I thought...

I returned after having lunch on Saturday to find my Relto Book gone. My backpack was untouched, but evidently the cleaning crew had been through and discovered the Book, which I had burried under the backpack after not being able to jam it into any of the over-stuffed pockets without damaging it. I hadn't taken it with me out of concern for losing it on the streets, and now I've lost it anyway. The worst part is that whoever took it probably used it, intentionally or not, and is now lost in the remnants of my Relto with absolutely no idea what's going on. Were it not such a terrible thing to have happen (for me and them), I'd probably make some sort of glib joke about turning it into a video game.

On the bright side, my KI was safely tucked away in a pouch of my backpack, so all is not completely lost... though I'm going to have a heck of a time getting back to the Cavern and finding anything to eat down there now.

Anyway, I'm writing this from the DRC offices before I go back on safari. I made a return trip to Wal-Mart yesterday to get provisions for a month, a bigger backpack, and a little wagon to cart what I can't carry. I don't exactly look forward to the prospect of walking back to the Cavern with a wagon of supplies and a raft in tow, but such is life. I just hope Zandi doesn't catch me climbing over the "do not enter" signs around the volcano... I don't know whether he'd laugh or have me arrested.

This is another notice that I will probably be off the radar for a number of days while I work my way back down to D'ni. With this turning into a real travelogue, I'd like to start providing photos or sketches as I go through this, but I'll have to see what I can do. The lighting down there is pretty crap for the most part, and the caves are going to be a nightmare without any lights but my flashlight. I'll probably back-date any updates I write so that they chronicle my journey after the fact, but I won't have any real-time updates to post until I get back to the Cavern and can get back to an internet access terminal. What I wouldn't give to have D'ni bathed in Wi-fi right now...

b'D'ni!

Moving Out

No, I'm not moving out of the Cavern, just my neighborhood. I'm disinclined to trust my ongoing access to D'ni to the whims of the Nexus and the KI Lattice system given how flaky they can be. The neighborhoods are far enough removed from Ae'Gura that getting back there without linking is going to be a royal pain. I need a Linking Book...

Getting my hands on one will obviously be the tricky part. Once I've got a link back to a safe, open section of D'ni (like Ferry Terminal), putting it somewhere secure - like Relto - will be completely trivial. I think my best bet is to abscond with a Book from the Book Machine vendor in the Nexus while I still have guaranteed access to it. Failing that, I know the DRC has a stash of D'ni Books laying around somewhere, but their offices are no longer in the Tokotah Building, Kirel has been converted for use by the Guild Recruiters, and I don't have access to their private 'hood; never did, to be honest. Yes, I'm well aware that finding a working Linking Book back to D'ni in D'ni is going to be quite difficult, and I'm pretty sure the DRC have swept the rest of the Ages clean of any unapproved links back into the Cavern. I may have to pull some strings for this, or spend a great deal of time in Gahreesen with a pick-axe.

Back to the subject of moving out, though. Most of my gear and such has been relocated to Relto for the time being. I probably won't make it a point to live there - the roof still leaks despite my best efforts and the noise keeps me up at night - but it's the safest place I can think of for keeping my stuff until I can find a good place in the Cavern to set up camp. I don't want to keep it anywhere that people might be able to steal it (not that I think they would intentionally commit a theft, but the explorers seems to be more inclined than most to "borrow" things, thinking they're important), which means Ae'Gura is out, and I don't want to keep them anywhere accessible only by the Nexus, which means everywhere else I can get to in D'ni is out. Maybe I need a boat more than a Linking Book... the trouble is, once again, where to find one.

It may be a while before I have a chance to write again. I need to do some digging (perhaps literally; wish I still had my hardhat), and a whole lot of exploring.

Endings and Beginnings...

I've never been good at starting at the beginning of something. My mind always tried to jump around in time, tracking bits and bobs that have already happened, or are about to. Still, the beginning is typically a good place to start, and I want to provide some context for this little blog of mine before it gets much farther along. My name is Gary Buddell, and I worked as a Restoration Engineer for the DRC from March to May of 2007. Like many of my co-workers, I was charged with keeping an eye on the explorers, helping them when they needed assistance, and running daily orientations in the Beginner's Bevin neighborhood. After leaving the DRC, I remained in the Cavern, and was understandably upset when I received word that the DRC had been unable to obtain further funding to continue their work of restoring D'ni.

I am very concerned about the state of affairs in the Cavern, and what may happen in the future should the DRC still be unable to return soon. In 2004, Victor Laxman took some rather extraordinary precautions to ensure that everything would keep working down here indefinitely; this time everyone left in a considerable hurry, and things seem to have been slowly degrading ever since. I need to start taking precautions in case something severe happens to the KI Lattice and nobody's around to fix it. Maybe move out of the neighborhoods to somewhere a bit more easily-accessible by traditional means. Will have to see what to do about this. Granted, Dr. Watson and Phil Henderson are supposed to still be around, but Phil's a complete flake, and I'm inclined to believe that Dr. Watson is more talk than action... should push come to shove, I don't know whether he'll do any shoving. Of course, I haven't even seen Dr. Watson since his big re-appearance last year, so who knows what he's up to.

All I do know is this: I'm not leaving. They'll have to drag me up the Descent in a bodybag before I abandon this place again. Everything I need to live on is here. I'm betting the DRC didn't empty their food stores before leaving, and there's plenty of other Ages I can start making use of once that runs out. If worst comes to worst I can return to the Surface and try to buy food there, but I have very little saved up from my time as a ResEng, so I doubt that it will last long. Plus, there's plenty of places in which to set up camp. Obviously some are more stable than others, and it'll take some work to find something that suits me, but there's plenty of places to be had should it come to that. I've got several changes of clothes, and access to fresh water in a few out-of-the-way spots for washing them (and for drinking, since that's important too).

I don't know what will come of this; I may go mad from the solitude, or die in a building collapse two weeks in, or link to a dead Age looking for food when the supplies from the DRC run out, or any number of other ugly things, but I'm hopeful that I can carve out a niche in this huge space to call my home, and perhaps some day, more will come to join me.