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.